


We Make Our Own Future

by Eilonwy_the_white



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alpha Sam, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Not Related, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Azazel (Supernatural)'s Special Children, BAMF Dean Winchester, BAMF Sam Winchester, Bottom Dean, Bottom Dean Winchester/Top Sam Winchester, But it is REALLY not porn, Claiming Bites, Dean Winchester Has Panic Attacks, Dean Winchester Whump, Domestic Violence, Dystopian society, F/M, Hallucinating Sam Winchester, Horror, Hurt Dean Winchester, I promise he's not, Idiots in Love, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, LARP-ing, M/M, Men of Letters Bunker, Mostly to Dean, Mpreg, Novel, Okay so this has gotten smuttier, Omega Dean, Omega Dean Winchester/Alpha Sam Winchester, Protective Sam Winchester, Sam Winchester's Demonic Powers, Sam seems like a dick at first, Sexual Assault, Slow Burn, So don't come here in search of porn, This is MUCH darker than the synopsis sounds, Top Sam, Torture, Very bad things happen, Wincest - Freeform, Wincest adjacent, cast of thousands, false imprisonment
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-27
Updated: 2019-06-13
Packaged: 2019-06-17 03:57:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 147
Words: 826,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15452853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eilonwy_the_white/pseuds/Eilonwy_the_white
Summary: In an alternate universe where there are two genders (male/female) and three designations (alpha/beta/omega) life could be better for an om. Federal and state laws are restrictive, making life for an unmated omega all but impossible to navigate.Sam Campbell and Dean Winchester meet when Dean is enrolled with his younger brother, Adam, in a boarding school that trains alphas to be hunters. Adam and Dean's father, John, is a transient hunter while Sam's grandfather is a powerful official with the Federal Department of Hunters, but despite their differences the three young boys become friends. When Dean presents unexpectedly as an omega and is expelled, his friendship with Sam is fundamentally changed. Dean goes on to be a hunter and Sam goes off to college, returning to the life after a few years.Now all grown up and active hunters themselves, Sam and Dean hate each other. Or do they...? One night, a hotel room, and a Lord of the Rings drinking game are about to change everything.Please read the tags. This is (mostly) not domestic or fluffy.tldr: My love letter to Sam and Dean Winchester (who are not related in this fic), complete with the happy ending the show will never give them.





	1. Mistakes Were Made

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [This is our story](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10124969) by [Smokengote](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smokengote/pseuds/Smokengote). 



> This is going to be a very long story. I've never been one to write short stories. And there are 13 seasons of canon to pull from. As it gets longer it will take longer to post, as I'll need to make sure I'm staying consistent and will have to review my work.
> 
> This is unbeta'd. All errors are mine. Also I obviously don't own these characters (although Adam really is kind of mine).
> 
> Some chapters may be trigger-y for some people. I will warn in advance and summarize at the end if you need to skip something important.

Dean Winchester was never drinking again. Whether that was by choice or because he wasn’t going to survive this hangover he didn’t know yet; but as he half-laid on the bathroom floor and clung to the porcelain bowl waiting for whatever little was left in his stomach to take its revenge upon him for last night’s clear abuse of his body, he wasn’t sure that living was the better option anyway and had therefore begun to quietly pray for death. What he did know for certain was the bathroom floor was freezing, the overhead light was too bright, his back was sore as hell, and he was never drinking again.

Well, perhaps that was a bridge too far. He was at the very least never drinking tequila again. He hated tequila. And _The Lord of the Rings_. And life. And Sam Campbell. Not necessarily in that order.

It all had seemed very innocent last night. Certainly nothing that would have ended up with Dean feeling a desperate desire to scrape his taste buds off by way of his toothbrush in an attempt to rid himself of the dead rodent/stomach bile flavor currently coating the inside of his mouth in a semi-slimy, semi-fuzzy film that made him shiver with disgust. Dean had teamed up with Sam on a pretty routine vampire hunt and after tracking the vamps down yesterday neither had gotten killed or even seriously maimed while taking out the nest. A routine vamp hunt was not really anything to celebrate, let alone celebrate with a drinking game involving a large bottle of Don Julio ( _that shit was nearly $150 a bottle, which went a long way to convincing Dean_ ), but it was one of those things that just kind of happened and now here he was.

It certainly didn’t seem like it would happen when Sam found _The Lord of the Rings_ on cable while Dean worked on submitting the paperwork certifying the hunt had been successful. However, after listening to Dean protest that nerd stuff wasn’t really his thing, Sam stole the laptop and pulled up the official _LOTR: The Fellowship of the Ring_ drinking game rules. Dean read through them, quirked an eyebrow, and had remained skeptical until the first close-up of the One Ring came barely two minutes into the film, at which point he was convinced this was going to be awesome. And it had been awesome, especially after the halfway mark when they were both hammered and abandoned the movie in favor of pursuing other activities of a much more intimate nature. The “this is a _bad_ idea Winchester” warning sign hadn’t even flashed once, and this morning Dean found himself waking up alone in the Holiday Inn room Sam had booked for them ( _“_ _Just because you’re getting us a fancy room, don’t expect me to be putting out, Campbell,” “Please. Don’t flatter yourself, Winchester,”_ ) and making a mad dash for the toilet.

The events from the night before were a bit of a blur as he climbed shakily to his feet after what must have been at least a half hour vomit session, though he was aware both he and Sam had been willing participants. If his head hadn’t felt like someone had mistaken him for a zombie and left an axe buried in his cerebellum he might have been inclined to try to parse through _why_ they’d both been willing participants but that was for another time. He wasn’t really clear on who had kissed whom first to start the whole thing off, but his short term memory banks at least had decided the expanse of Sam’s tanned chest ( _somehow soft and solid in equal measure at the same time_ ), the absurd width of his shoulders ( _Dean couldn’t even see the overhead light they’d forgotten to turn off before tumbling to the floor; he had never felt so thrillingly petite_ ), and the warmth and flavor of his mouth ( _the taste of pepperoni and green pepper pizza on Sam’s tongue was almost enough to outweigh the misery of this morning_ ) needed to be stored away for future use; and though Dean really wanted to forget last night completely his dick was now actively trying to outvote his brain. His head throbbed as he glared down at the tent in his grey boxer briefs.

“You don’t get a say in this anymore, pal,” he grumbled before stripping to climb into the shower to see if he could gently clean some of the carpet fibers out of the rug burn on his back.

The water pressure in the shower was glorious and gave him a much needed jolt to help clear the fog from his head. The soap, shampoo, and conditioner were some fancy blend infused with gardenias and vanilla, and despite the huge mistake he’d made last night - and that encompassed both the tequila _and_ Campbell - he was going to enjoy the built-in massage showerhead and stay here in the steamy enclosure until the water ran cold. This was so much better than he usually got to experience at the seedy motels he’d always stayed in with Dad; first as a little kid and then later on when they’d started hunting together again. God, he really was hungover. Three whole seconds thinking about life with Dad and he felt like someone had reached into his chest to squeeze until something burst, and now he was on the verge of tears like a ridiculous baby. He needed his stupid brain to just shut off so he could enjoy this shower, which of course meant his stupid brain was _not_ going to shut off, and he soon found himself scrubbing with far too much force at his skin, hot tears mercifully masked by the water while he willed his dick to stop being happy with the memories of last night since _that’s not ever happening again, goddammit, so just forget the whole fucking mess_.

Because Sam Campbell and Dean Winchester didn’t like each other; not anymore, not since Dean presented as an omega when he was sixteen with only two years left until graduation and promptly got kicked out of Actaeon Academy, the most prestigious hunter’s boarding school for alphas in the nation. Before that they’d been...not exactly _best_ friends, but certainly _good_ friends, despite the four year age difference between them. Both boys were considered legacies within the community and had been admitted with little more than a handwave. Dean had been well into middle school when he and his baby brother, Adam, were dropped off in front of the school with half-empty duffel bags and the squeal of tires. Their father, John Winchester, was practically a legend within hunting circles, primarily for his talent in taking down the worst of the supernatural creatures that made all kinds of things go bump in the night, and secondarily for his violent alcohol-fueled temper. He did not play well with others and a challenge to his request to enroll his boys would have been unwise, even though John was in no position to pay the exorbitant tuition the school charged.

The admissions office was more than willing to overlook this minor point not only because of John’s well-known volatility, but because of who John’s father was. Henry Winchester was one of the highest ranking members of the oh-so-secretive Men of Letters - an organization shrouded in mystery and devoted entirely to the study of the supernatural - and a gifted practitioner of the magical arts. Though his temperament was known to be far milder and considerably more sober than his son’s, Henry was largely shrouded in mystery as well and no one in admissions cared to refuse to let his grandchildren into the school and risk seeing just _how_ good he was with all those spells the MoL had collected over the centuries.

As for Sam - well. Sam’s grandfather was not only obscenely wealthy ( _old money thank you very much; the Campbells came over on the Mayflower after all_ ) but very high up in the Federal Department of Hunters. Sam could have had his pick of any school in the nation, any university, any post-graduate college, could choose any career he wanted and Samuel Campbell would have only needed to pick up the phone to make it happen. Samuel had apparently caved for the first time when Sam insisted he was going to be a lawyer and went off to Stanford for a couple of years, until something happened that Dean never really caught the gist of and Sam returned to hunting. Dean had wondered when whatever it was that happened _happened_ if Samuel had arranged it. The whole reason Samuel shipped Sam off to Actaeon in the first place was so he could follow in the Campbell family footsteps to become a hunter.

But their childhood...friendship? Dean wasn’t exactly sure anymore what it had actually been, that was a decade ago by now and at the end it certainly hadn’t proved to be any true friendship. Whatever it was had long since been replaced by the current open and mutual distaste they harbored for each other. Dean had noticed the break between them immediately after his presentation, and it was an old wound he wouldn’t admit that he carried, but he did. Male omegas were extremely rare, like a white rhinoceros or a Sumatran tiger, which _should_ have made them cherished but didn’t. Instead, alphas largely saw it as some sort of flaw ( _though no such opinion was held about female alphas_ ), like an error in evolution that needed to be raped out of existence. The majority of his classmates turned on him when they found out he was an omega; the Board of Administrators had expelled him before he’d even been released from quarantine in the Nurse’s Office where they’d locked him up during his first heat ( _and he was grateful, even though it had nearly killed him, that they’d at least had the decency to lock him away from all the knotheads_ ); and when his father came to pick him up...well. That hadn’t exactly been the happy family reunion he’d hoped for.

The only ones who seemed to care that he was leaving the school were his younger brother, who at ten years old was reduced to sobbing like a toddler, and his best friend ( _truly a best friend_ ) Benny. When Adam presented as a beta on his sixteenth birthday and was still allowed to stay and graduate from the alpha-only academy it had been another twist of the knife, and another underscoring of how Dean had landed himself firmly in second class citizen territory thanks to his biology. It was still a topic his younger brother was careful to avoid whenever they were together. Both did their best to act like Actaeon Academy didn’t exist.

That would have been much easier if Sam Campbell didn’t exist either, but of course because Dean’s life was one long running cosmic joke he did. Sam had no trouble remaining friends with Adam after Dean left school so it was impossible for the eldest Winchester brother to avoid the knowledge that his once-childhood - let’s call it friend - couldn’t stand being in the same room with him. Perhaps that’s why after all this time it still stung, despite being what most would dismiss as “typical kid stuff.” Logically Dean understood that’s what it was, and he should have been able to let it go. The reality that beta Adam, who was now out of the life completely and in college for nursing, was good enough for the high and mighty alpha Sam Campbell to stay friends with to this day, while Dean, a lowly omega quietly regarded as one of the best hunters in the country ( _behind closed doors, mind you - no one would ever admit how good he was publicly_ ) ought to be barefoot and pregnant somewhere baking pies as far as Sam was concerned...it had Dean suppressing the urge to reach for his silver boot knife whenever he caught the smell of gunpowder, books, well worn leather, and green tea that indicated Sam’s presence in a room.

The shower was still putting out a steady stream of high pressure warm water when he decided he’d had enough and if he stayed in there longer he’d just make himself sick again. Wiping away the steam he checked the mirror over the sink to assess just how bloodshot his eyes were ( _very_ ), and quietly cursed his stupidity at not turning and walking right out of the Roadhouse the second he caught Sam’s scent in the air four days ago. He started in on the scrubbing of his tongue, which still retained something of the flavor of a toad that had been soaked in alcohol and left to bake in the sun, poured himself a glass of water after feeling he’d done the best he could and that his breath at least smelled somewhat minty, then headed back to the bedroom to fish through his duffel bag for some clean clothes and his trusty bottle of aspirin. Absently he noted that Sam had left at some point when he was in the bathroom, but Dean’s head hurt too much to figure out how he felt about that right now. Later he’d probably be really pissed, but at the moment he just felt a conflicted mixture of sadness and anger, but he needed aspirin too much to bother with emotions.

After rummaging for a few minutes he gave up all pretense of attempting to keep his possessions orderly and dumped the whole bag on the maroon bedspread. He quickly found the small bottle he kept for traveling purposes so he didn’t always have to lug around the 500 count bottles he typically bought ( _why hadn’t he invested in aspirin stock yet? Oh right, hunting didn’t pay for shit_ ), but also uncovered a folded piece of hotel stationary that certainly hadn’t been there when he packed and the roll of $400 FDH coupons he’d flung back in Campbell’s face at the bar. He could feel his cheeks grow hot as he looked at the coupons and blushed all the way down from his hair line to his chest, then opened the stationary to see what it said.

_This doesn’t make us friends. - S.C._

_P.S. - Buy yourself some decent scent blockers and save us all the trouble._

For a long moment Dean stared at the note from Sam and blinked, re-reading the two simple lines in the neat cursive writing. Not that he’d expected anything but continued disdain from the other hunter, but damn - it was one thing knowing someone despised you, but seeing it on hotel stationary in well practiced script? Shit like this was why he stuck exclusively to betas and omegas. Besides not having to deal with being knotted, he didn’t have to deal with the damn smug superior alpha attitude either.

He should have just thrown the note in the trash without reading it. Or burned it. Or thrown it in the trash and _then_ burned it. Both the note and the coupons. But he _really_ needed the coupons, it was the only reason he’d stayed on the stupid fucking hunt to begin with once he knew Sam had caught wind of it as well, it was convenient to have the coupons in hand and not have to wait for the automatic payment to hit his bank account, and fuck now he was crying again and no matter how many times he pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes the tears just wouldn’t stop. He grabbed a clean pair of jeans and shoved his legs in, pulled his favorite Metallica tee shirt over his head, threw on socks and his boots, then jammed everything back in the duffel. After pausing for a second, he stuffed the note and the $400 coupons into his pants pocket, just so he’d have a reminder in case Sam Campbell ever wanted to do shots of tequila with him again.

Almost on autopilot given how many times he’d done it, Dean did a sweep of the room to make sure he had his tool kit properly put back together with the correct number of knives, guns, and various and sundry warding items, laptop, all of his clothes, toothbrush and paste, before swinging his duffels over his left shoulder and jamming his jacket over both bags. He ran his hand over his face to clear away the tear streaks now that he was finally getting himself under control as he did a last visual sweep to make sure he hadn’t forgotten something before slamming on his sunglasses. Yeah, he was going to be walking through the hotel wearing sunglasses and looking totally hungover, but it’s not like he knew anyone here so it didn’t matter. He could hardly be the first person doing the walk of shame out of this place, no matter how many stars it got on Hotels.com.  

His head still pounded like it would split in two as he exited the building into the parking lot, and his stomach threw out some warning waves of nausea to caution him about how quickly he was moving, but he couldn’t possibly have cared less. Ignoring the alpha who wolf-whistled and made a comment about how he smelled good enough to eat, he flung his belongings into the back of the Impala and then threw himself into the driver’s seat. He apologized immediately to his Baby for slamming the driver’s door so hard - none of this was her fault - then heard his phone buzzing in the glove compartment. He fumbled with the lock ( _never drinking again_ ) and dug through the fake IDs and car registrations to check it.

A message from John lit up his screen:

_What the hell were you thinking taking on a vamp’s nest with Campbell? Call me._

And another:

_Dean? Where the hell are you? Call me._

And another:

_I never should have let you hunt on your own. You’re not a hunter, Dean! Call me!_

There were another five texts, all under the contact “Dad,” but he didn’t bother with them. Dealing with one asshole alpha at a time this hungover was effectively his limit, and this morning that honor went to Sam Campbell. And Sam really was an asshole. Dean pulled his note out and read it again, before tossing it out the window and peeling out of the parking lot.

He’d known where he stood with Sam before this hunt, the stupid drinking game, and the mind blowing sex ( _thanks memory banks for retaining that fact clearly amidst the haze_ ) and it wasn’t that he had expected any of that to change just because they now knew all the incredibly-embarrassing-outside-the-moment sounds the other made when he came. He was a big boy who’d had plenty of casual partners, and he knew the morning-after drill. It’s just that this was the first time he’d ever left the morning after feeling like a whore.

He watched the hotel disappear in his rearview mirror, and willed himself to leave behind his many lapses in judgment since he answered Ellen’s phone call and agreed to take this case. He certainly wouldn’t be making those mistakes again.


	2. Who is This Lovely Young Thing?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We've met Dean. Say hello to Sam.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dean isn't treated very nicely in this chapter. Nothing terrible, just know we're a long way off from happiness for anyone, but especially Dean.

If he was going to be honest about the situation, this whole thing really was Ellen’s fault. Ellen Harvelle ran the Roadhouse where this whole sordid turn of events began, and she had given him a head’s up about the vamp job. Not only that, she was trying to keep it under wraps until he could get there because he’d begged her not to tell anyone else; he needed the money and she had a soft spot for the solitary omega. Ellen was about the closest thing he had to a mother and the vamp job paid $400 in FDH coupons. He _really_ needed those coupons.

So okay, maybe it wasn’t entirely Ellen’s fault. There was some key information he’d held back from her about his prescription running out, because he knew she’d want to help him out and he was twenty-six years old now, goddammit. He should be able to pay for his own necessities. But he couldn’t, and he didn’t tell her that he’d run out of his suppressants three days prior to getting her call because those things were damn expensive and she’d have insisted on getting them for him. ( _Just another way to keep oms in their proper place he had realized bitterly the first time he walked into the pharmacy and was told to hand over $267.37 for a three month supply._ ) Looking back at the whole mess now he’d really like to be able to tell himself this job wouldn’t have been worth it if he had any idea it was going to lead to one of the most miserable mornings he could remember in a long, long time, but when you came right down to it, he hadn’t had much choice.

Still. Maybe Dean could have walked away if he were a little less prideful, or if Ellen’s daughter Jo hadn’t been there all doe-eyed and offended on his behalf, or if Sam hadn’t been such a gigantic bag of dicks when Dean sat on the bar stool next to him in the packed-to-the-gills watering hole, or if the whole experience of getting _to_ the bar hadn’t been such a nightmare. If just one of those circumstances had been different he might have been spared this morning’s condescending note, and he wouldn’t be driving Baby to the nearest pharmacy feeling like a two dollar hooker.

Normally Dean avoided Sam like the plague when he had the misfortune of being in the same room with him, so it wasn’t like he’d decided to sit next to him on purpose. There was literally nowhere else to sit in the whole building when Dean walked in and stopped beside the first booth at the front windows. He should have kept moving forward, but the shock of so many people contained within those four walls froze him in place. For a moment he even wondered if they were exceeding the fire code, and with how regularly he had to salt and burn things he had trained himself to ignore fire codes.

The Roadhouse wasn’t exactly the most popular joint on the way, way outskirts of town on its best day. Today it was so full one might surmise that every other bar and convenience store in a fifty mile radius had burned to the ground and left the surrounding towns with no other place to get a beer. Dean had never seen so many people in here; wondered if there were some kind of hunter’s convention he hadn’t been told about. Not that it would have surprised him if there was some kind of hunter’s convention he hadn’t been told about. Nine long, frustrating years of still being tethered to his Dad after leaving school had driven home the point that the hunting community at large was never going to respect an omega hunter, and especially not an omega hunter that looked like Dean.

Because Dean was beautiful. Really breathtakingly beautiful. Traffic stopping beautiful. Marilyn Monroe and Cary Grant beautiful. From his pale skin flecked with freckles to his huge juniper green eyes framed by long charcoal lashes to his full, perfectly bowed and pouty pink mouth, there wasn’t an imperfection to be found when one gazed upon Dean Winchester’s face. Adam still teased him about being a Disney princess, and he’d been an omega for ten fucking years now. Adam had also unhelpfully informed Dean once that his face was the quintessential ( _that’s when Dean knew his brother wouldn’t be a hunter; no respectable hunter used words like quintessential_ ) example of Da Vinci’s Golden Ratio. When Dean looked up Da Vinci’s Golden Ratio he’d flushed with embarrassment to the tips of his ears, and all that had done was make his looks even more striking. He knew this because his annoying little brother laughed and told him.

And that was just Dean’s face. His perfectly symmetrical, perfectly proportioned face, beneath a crop of short, thick, dark blond hair begging anyone within a five foot radius to run their hands through it and tug, was just the beginning of the way his body’s appearance betrayed his efforts to be taken seriously as a hunter on his own without Daddy to protect him from the big bad alphas that populated their world. Dean had trained endlessly to build up the muscle mass to fend off anyone or anything that came at him, and all that had done was underscore how perfect his body was as well. He was compact but powerfully built, from his broad shoulders through his thick biceps, down to his trim waistline and what he had been told more than once was an “eminently fuckable ass.” It was true that he had never been able to develop his abs into a true six pack, but apparently that just made him more appealing as the slight softness to his belly was a sign of fertility. At 6’1” he was taller than the average omega by a good seven to eight inches, and he would have been even taller were he not slightly bow-legged. He’d always found his bow legs irritating even though it didn’t slow him down at all ( _and when he had to, Dean could_ **_run_** ). When he’d presented as an om his Dad had found his own special way to reassure Dean that even the bend to his legs wasn’t a flaw. It just meant he’d be able to wrap them around his alpha once he gave up this goddamned idea that he was going to be in any way useful as a hunter and accepted he was only good for pumping out pups.

“Can’t believe I couldn’t tell you were gonna be an om,” was how John’s drunken pep talk went at the motel the night he picked Dean up from school. “You’re a goddamn alpha’s wet dream.”  

That was why he wanted to find a seat as quickly as he could, and why he would have turned right around and left, shooting Ellen a “Sorry, something came up, be in tomorrow” text if he hadn’t _really_ needed those coupons; the sooner the better. A quick scan of the room revealed two open seats at the bar - the only available seats in the whole dimly-lit space - and he knew he needed to get there before they were gone. Most hunters were alphas, and alphas were assholes, and he was in a sea of them, surrounded by half-drunk sharks. Only the pair of knotheads in the booth had bothered to look up when he stopped beside them, and Dean was glad he’d taken a minute to spray on some scent blockers before coming inside; otherwise he might have had a serious problem on his hands. It seemed the stench of multiple alphas and the milder smell of numerous betas mixed with alcohol, tobacco, and bar food was enough to provide him additional cover while he did his visual sweep. He was about to make a beeline for one of the the open stools when he felt a hand on his left wrist.

It was one of the alphas in the booth. Apparently the competing scents in the air weren’t enough to completely mask him after all. Either that or they just straight-up liked the look of him in his ripped jeans, bright blue Henley, flannel, and Carhartt. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d been stopped because of his looks. Fuck, he should have just kept wandering around looking for a seat. He silently cursed whatever gods were out there for denying him just _one_ good day and tried to gently wrest himself free.

“What’s the matter darlin’?” the alpha sneered, sliming his way into Dean’s personal space as he tightened his grip. “You look lost.”

Dean knew the subtle growl that accompanied the way the alpha ground out the word “darlin’.” They’d definitely pegged him as an omega. The way the guy took a long, deep breath and held it for a second before releasing it, looking slightly dazed as he did so confirmed it. The jackass definitely had his scent. He was going to have to switch brands of blockers. ( _He was so glad scent blockers didn’t cost upwards of $20 per can. Oh wait, they did_. _Good thing he was here about a job - he was going to need every coupon of those $400._ )

Dean glanced down at the hand still holding him, then up at the people in the bar. No one had noticed how cozy his new buddies were getting with him, not that he really thought anyone would have been much help. Most of the hunters were too busy at the pool table, playing darts, or shoveling greasy burgers into their mouths to have spotted him yet. There were some couples ( _really strange to see couples in here - definitely a convention he didn’t know about_ ) moving on the dance floor to _In Your Eyes_ , and wow Dean was going to have to have a talk with Ellen about the music choices in the jukebox. Peter Gabriel and the Roadhouse were just not compatible in his understanding of the world. He took another quick scan of the room, this time looking specifically for Ellen, Ash, or Jo. Ellen and Ash weren’t anywhere to be seen ( _probably in the back room_ ), but Jo was at the bar. Just as he started to raise his free hand in her direction she vanished into the kitchen before he could catch her eye.

Great.

The alpha’s thumb was now rubbing little circles on Dean’s pulse-point while the scent of old sweat socks and regret flooded his nostrils. Why did every alpha have to be a goddamned stereotype? It really did get old after a while.

“You’re gonna wanna remove that hand if you wanna keep it,” Dean informed him evenly, his voice smooth and low as he reached carefully for the gun in the back of his waistband. If no one else had noticed them, he had a real chance to get out of this without causing a brawl. Dean didn’t doubt he could take this guy - he looked pretty hammered - but he’d rather not draw attention to himself unless he had to and a subtle flash of his pearl handled Colt seemed the quickest way to resolve this little problem quietly. “I’m not gonna tell you twice.”

His perfectly reasonable statement drew only a loud laugh from the alpha and his friend, who was now getting unsteadily to his feet while Dean registered that _I Wanna Know What Love Is_ had started playing lowly in the background. Under different circumstances he might have laughed at the absurdity. As it was he’d been driving for six hours straight, his back hurt, his neck was stiff, and he just wanted to take a piss and have a goddamn beer.

“That so, pretty boy?” He was even more in Dean’s space now, close enough that Dean could smell the nachos on his breath and count the missing teeth. “I think maybe me an’ Clem ( _Clem? What was this, “Deliverance”?_ ) oughtta take you outside and teach you to show alphas proper respect.”

The two alphas were either too stupid or too drunk to notice the flash of warning in the omega’s eyes or to see that the bright green irises had turned so dark they almost looked black, but Dean’s warning growl was audible even over the chatter of people, clack of pool balls knocking against each other, and hilariously inappropriate mood music provided by Foreigner. Both Toothless and Clem were really starting to encroach on his space now, and a quick glance in the immediate area of the door brought three more alphas to his attention who had taken notice of what was happening. He saw two of the three reaching for the insides of their jackets, because of course this was a hunter’s bar and by default nearly everyone would be carrying. Well shit. Clearly he shouldn’t have waited to draw his Colt to diffuse the situation but crying over spilt milk wasn’t going to get him anywhere now, so he calmly and slowly moved his hand away from his back. All three of the newly interested alphas were starting to sniff the air, which he was positive smelled faintly of an anxious omega despite the scent blocker, and their piqued interest in the standoff by the booth became immediately more disconcerting.

Dean began to calculate his odds of at least winging all five of them before they could disarm him and drag him outside and decided his chances were better at winning the lottery. He wouldn’t want to kill any of them as that was generally frowned upon in the community, and he certainly wasn’t interested in shooting some innocent bystander just trying to have some curly fries or hoping to get laid if he played enough ‘80s hits. He had already pressed his luck planning to fend off two alphas in a room full of alphas without assistance, even if Toothless and Clem were smaller than him and too drunk to stand up straight. Now that it was turning into five against one he could see this going sideways quickly, and he was not up for the very real possibility of being gang raped tonight in the parking lot. Toothless still had a grip on his wrist and along with Clem was trying to push him back towards the other alphas and Dean was thinking if he could get his boot knife he could at least take care of Toothless and Clem, maybe Jo would be back from the kitchen by then, which was precisely the moment he scented Sam.

This was exactly what he needed to make the evening complete. Two almost certainly inbred alphas putting their hands on him had been enough. Being utterly humiliated as a useless, defenseless omega in front of Sam Fucking Campbell was the icing on the cake. Not that he was going to be utterly humiliated, because now that he’d stowed the initial burst of panic at being stuck between two groups of alphas by the front door ( _wow those guys behind him were_ **_big_** ) and no one having spotted him yet to see him being manhandled, he was putting together a doable plan on how to fight them off that involved his boot knife, Toothless’ beer bottle, and Clem’s fork. Those alphas were _really_ going to regret messing with Dean…

“ _Winchester_!”

And just like that his whole plan fell to pieces. His good plan. His solid plan. His plan that would have worked because he was strong, squirrely, and fast. His plan that was now completely unnecessary, because Sam Fucking Campbell had just called to him across the bar using his alpha voice like some kind of goddamn white knight rescuing a princess from a cave of dragons, and now he couldn’t do anything but react to and focus on Sam. Who apparently had that effect on a lot of people, because now half the room had gone quiet and finally realized an omega had joined the party and was being openly threatened near the door. So now in addition to Sir Sam the Self-Righteous he had an audience of at least fifty hunters who weren’t going to get to see his excellent fork/bottle/boot knife escape, but instead had front row seats to a goddamn dinner theater performance about how chivalry wasn’t dead after all.

Sam had certainly dressed the part for this play in Doc Martens, dark, slim legged denims that probably cost more than Dean’s three month supply of suppressants, and a tight purple tee shirt with some kind of graphic under an unbuttoned gauzy white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up. At the moment he looked much older than the twenty-two year old kid Dean knew him to be, and that was due in no small part to how tall and broad shouldered he was. And boy, was he ever broad and tall. Whichever direction you looked, there was more Sam to see. Tilt your head up where a normal person’s height would have stopped - there was more Sam. Look to the left or the right where a decent human being’s shoulders would no longer be taking up space - more Sam. Even his feet were bigger than feet were supposed to be. The guy was just enormous, and not in a “World Donut Eating Champion” kind of way, but in a “Bigfoot Might Be Real and A Lot Sexier Than Everyone Thought” kind of way. Everything about him was vastly more than was necessary to convey his alpha status, including the amount of confidence he was exuding at this particular moment that he would have no problem taking out the five guys by the door without needing the aid of a bottle or a fork.

The reality of Sam’s size actually took Dean’s breath away for a second. The last time Dean had seen him properly, and not just in passing, had been at Adam’s Academy graduation party two years ago. Dad had been on a job and Adam hadn’t wanted to upset Dean by making a big deal out of the event, but Sam insisted on having a bunch of Adam and Sam’s mutual friends over to his grandfather’s estate outside of Shreveport. Dean had realized then that Sam had surpassed him in height, but clearly he had kept right on growing and now had to be close to 6’5”. A mop of brown hair fell into his eyes and curled around his ears, just the right length to draw attention to his high, sharp cheekbones. His normally full mouth was pulled into a stern, thin frown, the nostrils on his wide, sloped nose flared as he inhaled to assess his dominance in the room, and the muscles in his angled jaw were flexing in clear irritation. His eyes shuffled through their full spectrum of color, from blue to green to hazel, flashing red briefly before settling on a dark stormy grey. He looked like an actual goddamned prince and for reasons that utterly escaped Dean, he was _pissed._

The white shirt pulled tight as Sam flexed his shoulders in what appeared to be an attempt to control himself rather than as a threat, but it had the opposite of the intended effect on the assholes accosting Dean. It would have been impossible for anyone whose attention he held to miss just how large Sam’s upper body really was before whittling down to his narrow waist and hips. Or how large and veined his forearms were. Or his wrists. Or his hands. Dean found himself momentarily distracted as he wondered if Sam’s hands were large enough to hold both of Dean’s wrists at once or how easy it would be for Sam to overpower him now ( _he decided probably pretty easily, please god yes, before his upstairs brain wrestled control back from his downstairs brain_ ). He thought ruefully that he should have just taken his chances with these five guys in the parking lot, since now he was breaking out in a sweat and still couldn’t take his eyes off of Sam because the bastard had said his name as a command.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't get too used to frequent updates, I have a bunch of chapters complete but would hate to set a precedent for an update every couple of days and then go a week or more without a new chapter. :) It's just me working on this thing.


	3. I'm Just Real Happy to See You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam and Dean have a conversation. Sam's a bit of an ass. Jo doesn't take shit from anyone.

Surely hours _must_ have passed as Dean and half the room stood with their attention locked on Sam, so it was with some confusion that Dean became aware Foreigner still wanted to know what love is as he managed to choke out in response, “Yeah?”

Sam took three steps forward. It was a dog on the purple shirt; a whippet or a greyhound or some other really skinny dog, stretched so tight across Sam’s chest Dean actually licked his lips. He felt the moment Toothless’ hand turned clammy, and he was fairly sure that new smell was Clem pissing himself - possibly evacuating his bowels as well - which did nothing to reduce how much Dean wanted to trade places with that dog.

“ _I_ _s there a problem_?” Sam asked, still using his alpha voice.

Toothless finally let Dean go, and he could smell the fear pouring off the alphas behind him when they realized they weren’t just pushing around some pathetic little omega, but now had to deal with Sam Campbell. Dean would have liked to believe the only reason they were acting with deference now was because Sam’s grandfather was such a bigwig with the FDH, but he knew that was a very small part of their reaction to him. If they cared about who someone was related to they would have backed off the second they heard the name “Winchester” and not held on until Sam was clearly taking up Dean’s predicament as his own.

It was like Sam had walked into a room Dean wasn’t aware existed and flipped some kind of switch to make the other alphas cower in fear. Dean was never going to be able to flip that switch. Even worse, he had had enough of these encounters by now to know that even if he found the room he wouldn’t have the combination to get in and do anything. Meanwhile Sam not only had the combination to the room, he apparently owned the building the room was in.

Goddamn him.

“No.” Dean blushed a deep crimson as his voice cracked like a kid going through puberty, cleared his throat, and tried again. “No, everything’s fine here.”

“ _You’re sure_?”

Fuck, hadn’t anyone ever told Campbell how rude it was to use his alpha voice with an omega that wasn’t his mate? And why was it so hard for Dean to resist it? He’d become very good at resisting alpha commands.

“I said so, didn’t I?”

Sam regarded Dean sternly for a moment, clearly trying to determine whether he was telling the truth, and stubbornly refused to back down. Clem had squished his way back to his seat in damp trousers that were really starting to stink, leaving a puddle where he had been standing, but Toothless remained at Dean’s side. Though he was no longer touching him, his eyes were darting to the other three alphas, as if trying to decide whether they were still on board the “molest the omega” train. The standoff might have continued for quite some time or escalated into actual violence had Jo not finally reappeared from the kitchen and thrown the brilliant smile she reserved just for Dean his way.

“Dean!” She came to the end of the bar, the huge grin plastered to her face, and then quickly realized what was happening. A brief glance from Sam to Dean to Toothless had her pretty mouth turning down in a scowl and she pulled a shotgun from under the bar to lay across it in front of her, all in a matter of about five seconds. “There a problem here, Floyd?”

Floyd? Had Sam really just saved him from being sexually assaulted by two guys named _Floyd_ and _Clem_?

God, his life _sucked_.

Floyd wisely decided not to take on the petite blonde beta with murder in her eyes, and stammered out, “N-no ma’am. Ain’t n-no problem here, J-Jo.”

“It’s kinda late Floyd,” Jo continued, her tone set in steel. “Your mates are prob’ly gonna be wondering where you are.”

“Yeah…” Floyd agreed, reaching over the booth for his jacket as Clem scrambled to his feet. “Y’know, I wasn’t even payin’ attention to the time, but you’re prob’ly right…”

Jo’s sweet smile returned.

“Probably. So you two should just be gettin’ on home and maybe don’t come back here for a long while. You want to keep the little ladies happy.”

Floyd and Clem practically fell over themselves telling her how right she was, and it didn’t escape Dean’s notice that Sam had finally gone back to his seat at the bar now that Jo clearly had things well in hand. More than that, Ellen had appeared at long last from the back room where Dean suspected she’d been and had noticed with dangerously narrowed eyes that something untoward was going on in her establishment. As she crossed to her daughter and they exchanged a few quiet words, Clem and Floyd took the opportunity to flee outright, banging through the door at practically a run. The three other alphas who had been thinking of getting back in on the action were now thoroughly engrossed in their beers and trying vainly to make themselves as small and anonymous as possible. Dean registered the bitter reality that he would have to thank two beta females and the most irritating alpha he knew - aside from his father - for publicly protecting his honor, and forced a smile onto his face in the hope that Ellen and Jo wouldn’t want to talk about what just happened if he looked like the happy-go-lucky, nothing-bothers-me, groping-is-a-normal-part-of-life-and-rolls-off-my-back-like-water-off-a-duck Dean everyone expected him to be.

As he finally started to move towards the bar for that drink he needed oh so badly the jukebox switched songs, and his trek across the main dining area where most of the patrons were still watching him was suddenly underscored by the opening strains of _Dancing Queen_ , like some deity with a really twisted sense of humor had finally decided on the perfect Dean Winchester theme song. If a rugaru had burst through the door in that instant hungry for some long pig, he wouldn’t have bothered looking for a flamethrower.

And then he realized Sam had taken up one of those two remaining seats he’d been eyeing and he would have to sit next to him if he wanted to enjoy the safe haven of the bar. By that time Jo had turned her “Dean is here!” smile back on, which was the only good thing that had come out of this evening so far. He’d be damned if he’d walk away from that smile, but he wished that anyone other than Sam were sitting there.

Without even asking, Jo plunked a bottle of El Sol down in front of Dean and slid him the bowl of pretzel and peanut mix. Jo was one of his closest friends, and one of the only people outside of his brother, Benny, and his surrogate uncle, Bobby Singer, who respected his skills as a hunter and as a person, with no regard at all for his designation as an omega. Jo also harbored a desperate crush on him, which Dean quietly pretended to be oblivious to, seeing her more like a kid sister than anything else.

And even if he had seen her as anything else, he wasn’t stupid enough to cross her mother to pursue it.

“That was interesting,” Jo said with a smirk. “Looks like we can’t leave you alone for two minutes without you getting into trouble.”

Dean took a swig of his beer and attempted his own smirk at the situation, though it didn’t reach his eyes.

“Looks like it. What’s with all the people in here?”

“Midwest hunters’ convention. Didn’t you get the invite?”

Heh. He could at least take satisfaction that his gut was still on target.

“Nah.” He took another swig and a handful of the pretzels and peanuts. “They must not have my new address now that I’m up in Sioux Falls.”

“Must not,” Jo agreed, though her brown eyes twinkled.

“Can I get you something to eat, Dean?” Ellen asked as Jo got waved down the bar by someone needing a refill. “A man can’t live on bar mix alone.”

“Especially not when it’s stale,” Dean agreed, and his smile was genuine. “Nah, I’m good.”

Ellen regarded him for a moment with an openly concerned expression, one that always made Dean want to crawl through the floorboards. He was never going to be used to the Harvelles caring what happened to him, especially when his own father never had.

“You’re sure?” she pressed, drying a glass with the bar towel she kept over her shoulder. “It’d be on the house, as an apology for whatever that nonsense was you just had to put up with.”

Dean decided to go for breezy nonchalance and succeeded, even as he was acutely aware that Sam Campbell was right at his shoulder and vibrating from stress, as if he were just waiting for both Jo and Ellen to be out of the way before saying whatever crap it was he wanted to say.

“Well, if it’s gonna be like that,” Dean replied with a grin, “it’d be downright rude of me to refuse. Think I could get a double bacon cheeseburger with extra onion rings?”

“Medium well good enough for you?”

“Perfect. Thanks Ellen.”

She gave him one of her genuine, warm smiles, but the concern didn’t entirely leave her eyes. Jo was now stuck at the end of the bar with a couple of knotheads trying to get her number, and Dean soaked up all of Ellen’s motherly vibes before she breezed off into the kitchen with a, “You got it, hon,” and left him by himself with Sam.

Why Dean expected Sam to launch into whatever he was chewing on that kept him clenching and unclenching his jaw he wasn’t sure, but he did. He knew better, of course. Sam was a brooder, and when he was as deeply in a brood as he clearly was now he often needed prompting to say what was on his mind, and man did Dean not want to prompt him, preferring to just wait it out until Ellen or Jo came back. But the tension was just too much, especially after the Mexican standoff at the door, and all too soon he found himself saying, “You got somethin’ to say, you should just say it.”

Sam took a sip of the IPA in his glass and asked, “What makes you think I’ve got anything to say?”

“Maybe because I’ve known you since you were six,” Dean replied. The “duh” didn’t need to be said.

Sam considered this, flexed his jaw again, then nodded and took another sip before turning fully to Dean. Dean cast a sideways glance at him and noticed how the expanse of his chest and shoulders really just did go on for _days_.

“Just because I saved your ass a couple of minutes ago it wasn’t an invitation for you to get your omega stink all up in my space,” Sam said finally.

“Sammy, I get all tingly when you take control like that,” Dean countered, throwing a wink his way.

Sam blanched, then flushed, and Dean had a very hard time suppressing a full body laugh. However, after all the crap he’d been through since he got here ten-ish minutes ago he did not deny himself the Cheshire cat smile of flipping the script on Campbell. Sam was clearly uncomfortable with the idea of Dean flirting with him. Good.

“Don’t get the idea that’s going to be a regular thing,” Sam spat out when he had somewhat recovered. “I’m not your boyfriend.”

“You think that’s why I’m sitting here?”

“It’s not? You didn’t come slinking over here so I can protect you from the next guy who decides to...”

“Sam, do you see any other goddamn place in this bar for me to sit?” Dean demanded, the smile gone from his face as he whipped around to look at the younger man. “And don’t say the booth where those two knotheads were. You wanna go sit in Clem’s bodily fluids be my guest, but your name ain’t on this barstool and I’m not movin’ so I guess you’ll just have to deal with my omega ‘stink.’ And just so we’re clear, I don’t need anyone’s protection.”

“Coulda fooled me.”

“You got another asshole alpha giving you a problem, Dean?” Jo asked, having caught the tail end of the discussion as she returned to shamelessly flirt with him.

“This is none of your business, Jo,” Sam growled.

Jo couldn’t possibly have been less impressed. She actually rolled her eyes so hard Dean thought she must have pulled something.

“Spare me, Sam,” she sighed, sounding very tired. “I deal with you knotheads all the time. You all run around thinkin’ you’re so special because you won some arbitrary biological lottery. Alphas are the poster children for the dangers of handing out participation trophies instead of making kids earn their awards.”

Dean was in the middle of taking a swig and actually snorted, fighting back tears as he struggled between choking and laughing. Sweet Jesus, he loved Jo Harvelle. Sam attempted a witty rejoinder, but in the end just clamped his mouth shut. Jo’s eyes were twinkling again as she turned her attention back to Dean.

“You gonna be okay there Sweetheart?”

“Yeah, Jo, yeah.” Dean was still coughing a bit though, but it was worth it. “Thanks for that, I needed the laugh.”

Jo slid him another El Sol as he finished the last of his first bottle, and Sam pulled out his laptop, determined to ignore them. Dean noticed how Sam stole a glance towards the booth Floyd and Clem had occupied, scrunched his nose in distaste, and decided he was better off staying where he was.

“You just passin’ through or you headed to a job?” she asked.

“Depends,” Dean replied. “Gotta talk to your mom first.”

Jo lowered her voice.

“The thing outside of Laramie?”

Dean wasn’t surprised Ellen had told Jo. The young woman’s father had been a hunter, one that frequently met up with Dean’s dad, and though she’d wanted to go to a beta school for hunters Ellen had been flatly against it. It still didn’t stop Jo from poking around in the browser tabs and newspaper clippings her mom regularly sorted through and once Jo picked up on something Ellen knew better than to deny it. Dean started in on his second beer and gave a quick nod.

“Laramie?” Sam’s voice surprised both Jo and Dean, and they swung around in tandem to look at him. His frown had deepened, and Dean couldn’t read his eyes in the limited light of the Roadhouse, but if he wasn’t mistaken Sam’s scent was no longer simply irritated, but also a mixture of concern and fear. Neither of which made any sense. He lowered his voice so it was just the three of them in the discussion. “Are you talking about the rancher and cattle deaths day before yesterday?”

How the hell did Sam know about that? It wasn’t even up in the FDH alert system yet. Ellen was planning to wait for a text from Dean that he’d found the nest before reporting it so he’d be almost assured of the standard $400 coupon rate a vamp nest brought in. Try as he might to look casual, Dean could feel his face heating up. He didn’t want this to turn into a scene where other hunters might overhear details about the job by denying outright that that’s what they were talking about, but he didn’t want to confirm it either in case he could throw Sam off the trail. He _needed_ that fee.

Apparently he didn’t need to say anything though, because Jo was already pouncing.

“That’s Dean’s hunt,” she hissed quietly, casting glances around the bar to make sure no one heard her. “Your granddad can send you any job you want; leave him this one.”

Sam ignored her and purposely moved into Dean’s space.

“Is your dad meeting you there?” he asked calmly, though Dean could see the tension had ratched up in his shoulders, which had not seemed possible a few moments ago.

“What?” Dean was genuinely confused. “No. Why would my dad be meeting me there? We haven’t hunted together in almost a year.”

“A _year_?” Sam’s eyebrows had leapt up underneath his bangs and Dean couldn’t even see them now. Dean really had no idea what the hell Sam’s problem was, and his scent was too muddled with varying emotions to give the omega any kind of clue. “You’ve been hunting by yourself for a _year_?”

Dean turned to Jo for help, speechless, but Jo looked just as dumbfounded about what Sam was reacting to. And Sam was definitely reacting. He took a long pull on his IPA, closed his laptop, ran his hands into his hair, and leaned forward on the bar. Then he just sat like that, forcing himself to breathe evenly. Dean didn’t want to ask, but he _had_ to know.

“So...is there some reason you look like you’re about to have a stroke, or…”

“You’re an omega, Dean!” Sam exploded, whipping around to look at him and drawing the attention of a sizable portion of the bar again. Sam took a moment to compose himself as Dean felt heat rising up his neck while he tried to tamp down on the fury that was building in the pit of his stomach. “You shouldn’t be hunting alone. It’s too dangerous.”

“That so?” The ice in Dean’s voice surprised even him. He very calmly turned back to his El Sol and took a long, determined drink, then swung back to Sam, his eyes dangerous and dark again. “Tell me something Sammy. You know about this case. Is that cuz you were planning on taking this job?”

“It’s not the same and you know it,” Sam snarled.

“Why is that?” Dean shot back. “Because you popped your knot when you were sixteen and I didn’t?”

“Dean…”

“Listen, I know it can be hard for you trust fund kids to understand what life is like for us normal folk, but some of us have to make money if we wanna eat.”

“You want money?” Sam grabbed his coat and dug into a pocket as Ellen returned with Dean’s food and tried to figure out just what the hell was going on. She approached slowly, like one might do with a rabid raccoon, and flinched when Sam flung a wad of FDH coupons down on the bar. “We both know those signs point to a vampire nest, so there you go - $400 in coupons. Exactly what taking out a nest would pay. Now leave it to me.”

Dean grabbed the coupons and flung them back.

“Go fuck yourself, Sam.”

“Boys.” They snapped around to look at Ellen as she carefully set down Dean’s food. She glanced at her daughter who could do nothing more than stare back with wide eyes and shrug. Jo was totally lost by this point and standing there solely as moral support for Dean if he needed it, which he didn’t seem to at the moment. “Do I need to ask the two of you to go stand in a corner for five minutes until you can calm down and stop acting like a pair of toddlers?”

“He started it!” Dean exclaimed instantly.

“ _What_?” Sam practically shrieked.

“You did, though,” Jo stated, and Sam threw her a murderous glare. “Dude, you did. I know you alphas have this stupid ass thing with keeping omegas in the kitchen but…”

“I don’t…” Sam blanched a second time and looked like he might choke on his indignation. “I absolutely do _not_ think that omegas…”

“Then what’s the big deal with Dean taking this job?” Jo demanded quietly, not wanting to draw attention their way again now that people had turned back to their food, friendly games of pool and darts, and slow dancing to ‘80s tunes ( _Echo and the Bunnymen now, Bring on the Dancing Horses - at least it was a step up from ABBA, but most bands were in Dean’s book_ ).

It looked for a moment like Sam was actually going to grab hold of Jo and throttle her, which had Dean reaching for the Colt in his waistband for the second time tonight. Instead, Sam drew in a deep breath, spread his hands out on the bar, and took a moment to slowly exhale. It had the effect of both making him look larger and smaller at once, and when he finally turned back to Jo it was with the obvious intent of not appearing threatening, but reasonable.

“Look,” he began with deliberate control. “This isn’t personal. Dean’s an omega. You can’t say that he isn’t, since you brought biology into this. You two,” he looked pointedly at Jo and Ellen, “are betas. You have _no idea_ what he smells like. That’s just a fact.” Dean opened his mouth to object, but Sam held up a finger and used his goddamn alpha voice again. “ _Dean, be quiet. Let me finish._ ”

Clearly that didn’t win him any points with Jo, who crossed her arms and glared at him, but Sam simply took another calming breath before continuing.

“I get that you think I’m just being some kind of overbearing knothead, but believe me. An omega’s scent is designed to attract alphas. And alphas are predators. That’s the whole basis to all the stupid, primitive mating and claiming and heat and rut cycles, and I’m telling you, _as a predator_ , that Dean’s scent is going to let those vamps know he’s near their nest before _he_ even knows he’s near their nest. But even without all the alpha/beta/omega crap I just threw out - and honestly a lot of the time I wish I were a beta because it would be easier not to have to fight my instincts just to act like a decent human being - even taking all of that out of the equation, the fact remains that _no one_ should try to take on a vamp nest alone. Without at least two hunters to take on a nest it’s a suicide mission.”

“Just because you couldn’t…” Jo began, but Ellen laid a hand on her arm to quiet her.

“Slow down, Joanna Beth,” she said, her eyes fixed on Sam. “He’s not saying anything that ain’t true. No one should try to take on a nest alone. Who’s your back-up, Dean?”

Dean glared at Ellen, supremely irritated that he was being made to explain himself like some kind of amateur, then turned to Sam and quirked an eyebrow. Sam stared back with a semi-scowl on his face, before realization dawned.

“Oh. Right. Go ahead and answer her,” he ordered sheepishly.

“Jesus,” Dean griped. “For your information I’d planned to call Benny once I got the intel from Ellen. Then I was gonna do some recon while I waited for him to get there.”

The pungent wave of hatred that poured suddenly from Sam was almost enough to force Dean off of his seat and back a few steps. Dean wanted to ignore it, but could see Sam gripping his pint glass as if he were trying to find out if he was actually strong enough to crush it in his palm, and the bottle of El Sol shook slightly as Dean raised it to his mouth.

“Benny Lafitte?” Ellen asked. “I thought he was outta the life.”

“He is,” Dean told her, “but he makes exceptions if I need help on a job.”

“So…” Sam had his hands pressed to the bar again and sounded like he was having a difficult time restraining himself. From what Dean couldn’t guess, but his eyes were wide as he turned to the obviously very upset alpha sitting next to him. “So, your plan was to spend a couple of days _by yourself_ near a vampire nest gathering intel and just...what? _Hope_ Lafitte gets there in time to keep you from becoming a chew toy and isn’t so rusty that you both end up dead or turned?”

Normally Dean would have taken up the challenge, but the anger coloring Sam’s face made him think better of it and he said simply, “The one thing I can say about Benny, he has never let me down.”

The intense aroma of rage mixed with the hatred of Sam’s scent. Dean’s brain couldn’t decide between fight or flight, leaving him frozen in place on his stool. The two people sitting behind Sam cast a sidelong glance at him, threw some money on the bar to cover their tab, and fled. Sam inhaled and exhaled slowly, then cleared his throat. It wasn’t comforting.

“You’re not going to stake out this vamp’s nest by yourself like an appetizer and just wait for Lafitte to show up,” he said at length. “If you’re dead set on doing this job, which you obviously are, then _I’ll_ work it with you. I had a partner lined up for this, but she doesn’t play well with others so I’ll just tell her it was a false lead. This way you get your $400 coupons, no one else dies while you’re waiting on backup, and _I_ don’t have to explain to Adam why I let his idiot big brother ride off alone and get himself killed.”

He fixed his eyes on Dean, and the omega could tell that Sam had dug his heels in and was not going to let this go. It was one of the traits that made him such a good hunter, young as he was, and why there were already whispers in the community that he had the potential to be the best of the best. Once Sam set his mind on something - solving, fixing, having - he kept at it until he solved/fixed/had whatever it was. While Dean would much rather work with Benny on this job, Sam was ready for a fight, and this was not the hill Dean wished to die on. Not today, anyway.

“Okay Sam. We can play it your way.”

“Good. Ellen, you got a pen?”

“Sure thing Sam.”

“Thanks.”

Ellen, Jo, and Dean all waited patiently while Sam grabbed a bar napkin and begin to write in quick, efficient strokes. Then he stood, whipped out his wallet, and casually tossed a $50 bill on the bar before sliding the napkin over to Dean.

“That’s the hotel I’m staying at and my cell number,” he said, making sure he had Dean’s eyes locked on his before he spoke. “When you’ve finished up here and have what you need from Ellen, text me the location and I’ll meet you there.”

“Yeah, right,” Dean scoffed as Sam swept his laptop into the messenger bag he’d had resting against his stool and swung into the brown corduroy jacket that was sitting atop the bag. “And I’m supposed to believe you aren’t gonna just run off to pick up this gig with whoever your partner is?”

Sam slapped his hand on Dean’s shoulder and just left it there for a second, his eyes blue-green as he fixed them on the omega again. For some reason, Dean suddenly believed all that crap Sam had just been spewing about omega scents and predators. He certainly felt like prey at the moment. He knew the redness was creeping into his cheeks and cursed his stupid omega hormones as Sam smiled for the first time since Dean walked in. He tried to school his facial features into something like indifference as his gaze fell from Sam’s eyes to his dimples, settling finally on his mouth, and failed quite miserably.

“Well Dean,” Sam told him, “I guess you’re just gonna have to trust me.”


	4. Most Vampire Lore is Crap

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So how did that hunt go, boys?

Sam had barely finished sashaying his way on out before Jo was up in Dean’s grill while he tried to recover his dignity and eat his cheeseburger.

“You’re not really gonna trust him, are you?” she demanded, her brow furrowed as she scowled.

“Course not,” Dean said around a mouthful of curly fries. “Do I look like a moron?”

“Don’t answer that,” Ellen ordered with a smile.

“Your face is gonna freeze that way, you know,” Dean told Jo, who stomped away petulantly, leaving him to his food. Ellen took her place in front of Dean, pulling her brown hair back into a ponytail as he took a swig of his beer. “What’s her problem with Campbell anyway? Not that I’m a fan, but he’s usually pretty polite to betas. He do something I should know about and break his knees for?”

“Nah,” Ellen replied easily. “Her problem is the same one most of us have. The kid’s swimming in cash, but goes out and takes paying jobs other hunters need. Plus just the size of him. He kinda dominates a room by default. Lots of alphas don’t like that.” She gave him a pointed look. “Especially when there’s an unmated omega in the room.”

Dean groaned.

“Not you too. What, have you been talkin’ to my dad?”

“You lookin’ to get your mouth washed out, boy? You know I don’t talk to John.”

“Bobby then?”

“You know Bobby don’t want to see you mated off to some knothead. Why would you even ask that?”

“It seems to be the theme of the evening.”

Dean slid his empty bottle over to her and she grabbed him a new one.

“That’s your third and your cutoff limit here,” she told him firmly, and he raised a hand in acquiescence. If he and Sam were on the trail of a vamp nest he needed to stay sharp, and drinking himself to sleep tonight wouldn’t exactly help that. “I’m not talkin’ about settling down and becoming some kind of 1950s househusband. I’m talkin’ about your brother.”

“Oh.” Dean laughed without humor. “That.”

“If by ‘that’ you mean he’s scared to death of all these jobs you keep takin’ on by yourself when you _should_ be working with at least a partner, if not a whole crew, then yes, I mean ‘that.’ You know he’s just waiting for you to give up this life and go live with him.”

“And do what, Ellen? Be a civilian? Sit around twiddling my thumbs and baking pies while he’s off at work, waiting for when he finally meets a nice beta to settle down with and she decides she doesn’t want his single, loser, omega brother hanging around the house? I think I’ll pass.”

“You can’t really think that would happen.”

“What else is gonna happen? It ain’t like omegas got a whole lotta options in this world. I start down the path of ‘protect me, little brother,’ things are gonna end up just like they were with Dad. Eventually he’ll get sick of having to fend off every alpha within scenting distance and I’ll be out on my ass.”

“ _You_ walked away from your father, Dean. Not the other way around. That was no small thing after the way he raised you. Don’t you take that away from yourself.”

Dean didn’t have a comeback for that one. He didn’t want to tell her the only reason he’d told his dad he was leaving was because Adam had given him an ultimatum two years ago and he figured if he didn’t strike out on his own soon his brother would follow through with it. That wouldn’t have gone very far towards his argument that he was a big boy who could tie his own shoes and everything.

The fundamental truth of the matter was that omegas were limited in ways that betas simply couldn’t understand, and trying to explain it was kind of like trying to explain the concept of flight to a fish. They were never going to experience the open, government-sanctioned discrimination so they could sympathize but never empathize. Which didn’t mean that Dean wasn’t grateful for the many betas he knew who thought omegas got a really raw deal and wanted to see things change, it was just exhausting always having to explain the many ways the legal system worked against him, and he’d rather spend his time doing just about anything else. This was especially true when you took into account the fact that omegas were an ever shrinking portion of society. There just weren’t enough of them around for the average person to know more than three or four, so how vastly inferior their lives were compared to the general public wasn’t something most people were even aware of or cared about.

Most omegas, for instance, never finished high school because there wasn’t a point in wasting school resources on people who were just going to spend their lives breeding and keeping house for some jealous and possessive alpha who liked having their om on a tight leash. If you were someone like Dean, who had almost made it out of high school, and wanted to either finish school or get your GED there were exactly three places in the whole country that offered such a program: NYU, UCLA, and Georgia State. Adam had bitched so much about Dean moving to North Carolina with him to get his GED that Dean had actually taken the time to look it up, and lo and behold there were no agencies in the state with a GED program for omegas. If his own brother didn't know that, he could be pretty damn sure the general population didn't either.

Between the three universities that did offer the program, none of them took more than twenty omegas every year, and besides needing to be signed off on by an alpha relative or mate they were prohibitively expensive. Even if they hadn’t been, Dean had no desire to move to New York City, Los Angeles, or Atlanta. Sure, big cities tended to have better laws against omega rape than small towns and rural America, but they also had a whole lot more alphas to contend with, and federal law stated that any unmated omega’s pup could be taken by the sire, whether they were a rapist or not. Dean may have been willing to press his luck in Ellen’s bar in the middle of Nebraska. He was far less willing to do so in the middle of downtown Manhattan.

If an omega really wanted something out of life that didn’t involve matehood and a dozen children, they typically had to find creative ways to go about getting it. Dean breaking away from John hadn’t exactly been the straightforward act of saying, “I’m leaving” that Ellen seemed to think it was. First, Dean had had to trick his dad into signing the Impala over by promising he’d give up the life if John put the title in Dean’s name. John had been mostly driving them around in a big, black Sierra Grande for the last couple of years anyway, opting to leave the Chevy at Bobby’s. Cars were one of the few things omegas were allowed to own, though they still had to have an alpha or a beta co-owner, so getting the Impala was possible but challenging. Next, Dean had to convince John that if he signed the car over to him and Adam, instead of keeping himself on the title, then Dean could move in with his brother free and clear without being a burden who was not even able to go out and get a job for lack of transportation. Finally, since Dean wasn’t an idiot he made sure to lay out this plan for John when he’d gotten good and liquored up after a successful hunt, and he made sure to have the paperwork ready for John to fill out and sign.

It had taken another couple of months to get John to actually go to the DMV and transfer the title over, and Dean had only accomplished that by finally allowing himself to get grabbed by a Rawhead. Since gentle prodding hadn’t worked to get the paperwork filed and he didn’t want to escalate to fighting about it and risk John changing his mind, Dean’s one remaining option seemed to be convincing John that he was going to get himself killed any day now. Luckily for Dean it had worked, and he hadn’t _actually_ gotten killed. The minute he had the title and the keys he’d hot wired a car and taken off for Bobby’s, leaving his father in one of his preferred crappy motels about a hundred miles outside of Las Vegas. He’d managed to dodge John for about a year, and meant to keep out of his way for as long as he could. He knew once John caught up to him he really _would_ have to go live with Adam, and he wanted to pretend that he had some choice over how his life went for a couple of years at least.

He didn’t tell Ellen any of this. Instead he said, “Any idea who this partner is that Sam mentioned? The last thing I want is an angry alpha breathing down my neck for cutting in on her territory.”

“All I know is a name,” Ellen replied. “Ruby. Don’t know anything about her, though. She tends to fly under the radar and doesn’t use any of the normal hunting channels.”

“Never heard of her. Course, I don’t really run with the cool, gossipy kids these days,” Dean said, and finally pushed his plate aside. “My compliments to the chef. You wanna give me the lowdown on these vamps?”

The bar was just starting to thin out as Ellen went over the file she had on the ranch killings about fifty miles outside of Laramie, Wyoming. It looked like the vamps had been quite active for a long time. Lots of cattle deaths had been reported over the last six years or so, but no people had been victims so it never made it onto the FDH’s radar. Whoever these vamps were they appeared to have finally foregone their vegan lifestyle. Now there was a dead human - the rancher of the latest herd of dead cows - and once people started dying vamps never stopped on their own. Human blood was just too damn delicious.

Dean had all the information he needed in less than half an hour but lingered at the bar anyway until there were only a handful of patrons left. Ellen had stopped Jo from giving him a fourth El Sol so now he was alternating between water and ginger ale while Jo talked to him about Adam and when his kid brother was going to actually come out and meet them. He’d been a voice on a telephone for a couple of years now and she was curious about putting a name with a face. Dean promised he’d work on it, since he really did like Jo and thought she might hit it off with his brother. Not that he was eager to play Match.com but he agreed with Ellen about discouraging Jo from getting into the life and Adam was very much _out_ of the life. If they did meet and hit it off, great; and if they didn’t that was fine, too, but at least they’d each have a puzzle piece to Dean’s life slotted into place.

Eventually Ash appeared from the back room, flipping his glorious party-in-the-back mullet over his shoulder, and challenged Dean to a couple games of pool. No one mentioned the elephant in the room; that they were giving Dean reasons to stay in the bar and not leave until it was relatively certain he wasn’t going to get jumped in the parking lot. They didn’t want to embarrass him by offering to walk him to his car, but the earlier incident with Sam, Clem, and Floyd still lingered.

Finally around midnight there was a silent agreement that it was safe for Dean to leave without being accosted, and he grabbed the folder of information and the napkin Sam had left for him at the bar a couple of hours ago to shoot him a text about the location of the nest. He swiped a packet of silverware from behind the bar, stuffed the fork and knife into his front pants pocket, and waved to Jo and Ash as he headed out to the parking lot. The night air was cooler than he was expecting and he zipped up his coat. If that had the effect of making it look like he was just trying to stay warm as he walk-ran to his car in the unseasonable cold snap for early August that was supposed to last the rest of the week, so be it.

He’d just slid behind the wheel and locked the doors when his phone rang. He expected it to be his dad and was planning to ignore it, but when he checked it was the number Sam had given him. He started up the Impala to let her warm up as he flipped open his phone and held it to his ear with his shoulder to throw the car into gear.

“Yeah?”

“ _Where are you staying_? ”

“What?”

“ _Where are you staying? We should go over whatever intel you got_.”

“Can’t we just...go over that when we meet up?”

“ _We can…_ ”

Dean sighed, pulling out of the parking lot and heading for the highway. This is why he preferred working alone if he could help it.

“What’s the matter Sam? You don’t trust me?” There was silence on the other end of the line. “Thought so. Goodnight Sam.”

“ _Wait_! _Dean_!”

“What?”

“ _It’s not that I don’t trust you, I just think it would be safer if we traveled together._ ”

“Goodnight. Sam.”

Before Sam could argue, Dean hung up the phone and tossed it into the glove compartment. Man he missed the days of landline phones, where you could slam the receiver down to make a point. Clicking a button on a cell phone and chucking it across your car didn’t really provide the same catharsis. Fucking Sam Campbell, acting like he was Dean’s bodyguard and if they weren’t attached at the hip something terrible was going to befall him. It had been ten years of people treating him like a damsel in distress who couldn’t so much as speak up for himself without breaking a nail. He was officially out of patience when it came to that.

He realized too late that if Sam was asking where he was staying that it _might not_ have meant Sam wanted to come stay where Dean was to play Kevin Costner to his Whitney Houston, but rather he intended to have Dean stay in whatever undoubtedly nicer hotel _he_ had booked. While, again, he resented being treated like a bird who had escaped his gilded cage and needed to be returned to its safety forthwith, Dean didn’t actually _have_ anywhere to sleep tonight. He had planned to grab a room at The Good Life Motel, an old standby he’d stayed at with his dad numerous times just this side of the Wyoming border, but the events at the Roadhouse had spooked him more than he was ever going to admit to anyone and now his plan was just to find somewhere he could pull off and sleep in the Impala. As much as he was still pissed at Sam, he wasn’t the type of alpha to try anything and Dean would have been safe enough sharing a room with him. A nice room at a Marriott or a Hilton, though he wasn’t sure those existed in this part of Nebraska, and he hadn’t paid attention to what hotel Sam wrote down on the napkin. Certainly Sam would have booked something that would be better than the back seat of Dean’s car, much as he loved her. Of course he couldn’t call Sam back and tell him he didn’t actually have a place to stay, because he wasn’t willing to give him the satisfaction of coming to Dean’s rescue a second time in one day, so he sighed and determined he would make it as far as he could on I-80 before his body demanded sleep.

He was actually really proud of himself when he made it to only about an hour from Wyoming before he just couldn’t drive anymore. He pulled off at the rest stop in Sydney, got his phone out of the glove compartment so he could set an alarm for 7am, then climbed into the back seat to curl up under the blanket roll he kept in his car. He bunched up his duffel to use as a pillow, wondered sleepily how many aches and pains he was going to aggravate by not getting a motel room like he’d originally planned, and passed out.

He awoke to a loud pounding on the rear driver’s side window before his alarm had a chance to go off. Jerking awake, he noticed the windows had fogged up, and wondered what asshole was bugging him before 7am on a Tuesday. He was in the correct area for overnight parking, his plates and registration were legit, and last he checked it wasn’t a crime for your windows to fog up overnight. He considered pulling his gun, but decided against it. Monsters didn’t knock on your window, after all.

“What?! Jesus, stop!” he barked, sitting up and wiping part of the window clear.

“Dean?”

Christ, it was Sam. Standing outside his car, holding a cup of coffee, looking completely freaked out. Dean scrubbed his hand across his face and rolled the window down.

“Yeah?” he said, trying to stretch out his neck. “Whattaya want, Sam?”

Sam caught Dean’s scent flooding out of the car, which Dean knew had to be pretty strong after sleeping in it closed up all night. He didn’t take it personally for once when Sam took a step back, and instead took advantage of the space to climb out and stretch his back. Sam just stood there silently with his coffee cup threatening to fall from his hand.

“Did you...sleep here?” Sam asked after a very long time.

“Cheaper than a motel,” Dean replied. “Why? You stalkin’ me?”

“What? No!” Dean didn’t even try to suppress his grin. Man, it was easy to wind Sam up. “I headed out a couple of hours ago and just needed to stop for some coffee. Saw the Impala and thought I’d better check on you.” Dean quirked an eyebrow but didn’t say anything, and Sam actually blushed. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad working with Sam after all if he was going to respond like this to everything. It may not have been very alpha-like, but it was adorable. “Anyway, since we’re both here should we maybe go over the case?”

“Sure.” Dean grabbed Ellen’s folder from the car and held it behind his back. “I’ll trade you the intel for your car keys.”

“What?”

“Gotta make sure you don’t take off while I’m getting coffee, Sammy.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

 _So_ much fun. _So_ much better than the way things went at the Roadhouse last night.

“You don’t wanna give me your keys, you can go get me coffee instead.”

“And how do I know _you_ won’t take off?”

Dean fished his keys out of his pocket and tossed them over to Sam.

“You take my keys.”

“You’re just gonna give me your keys?”

“And you’re gonna give them back when you bring me my coffee. Otherwise I will murder you.” Dean turned on his heel and headed over to the picnic tables near the main building with the folder, shouting back over his shoulder, “It’s called trust, Sam! We’re gonna need it to take on this nest!”

Dean had time to go through all the notes again before Sam made it back with his coffee. His coffee which wasn’t _really_ coffee but some kind of vanilla caramel latte thing. Dean gave it a skeptical smell, pushing the folder across to Sam so he could review the contents. They stayed there until long after Dean’s alarm had gone off, Sam looking everything over carefully, making notes on the various bits of information, and Dean sipping his latte thingy that really wasn’t half bad ( _not that he was going to tell that to Sam_ ). At last Sam said, “Looks pretty straightforward. I’ve got a crossbow and some dead man’s blood we can dip the bolts in so we can incapacitate them before…”

Dean drew his thumb across his neck and nodded. Using dead man’s blood from a distance was a good way to go and the kills would be quick and quiet, so the main issue was finding the vamps. Sam suggested taking his Hummer over to Wyoming and coming back after the job for Dean’s car, but Dean wasn’t leaving Baby in a rest stop and anyway he didn’t want to ride around in Sam’s “blatant overcompensation for his dick size.” To which Sam simply raised an eyebrow and glanced at the Impala. They nearly came to blows.

Since they were only about two hours outside of Laramie it looked like this was going to be a three-day job, max, so long as it didn’t take forever to pin down the location of the nest. “Fifty miles outside of Laramie” was a pretty large and vague area to cover. They finally agreed to caravan to Wyoming, find a hotel, and take Sam’s car out to start the search. Dean was relieved they were traveling separately, since he still needed to call Benny and tell him he could sit this one out and he preferred to do that out of earshot after the way Sam had reacted the night before.

Dean would have liked something a little cheaper and lower profile than the Holiday Inn, but his aching back from a night sleeping in the back seat overruled any objections he wished to voice when Sam pulled into the parking lot and headed for the lobby. He wasn’t too thrilled with the idea of just one room, but he didn’t make too big of a stink about it because logistically it made sense. Sam booked the room through the weekend in case it took longer than expected to find the nest or one of them got hurt, then they changed into more casual clothes to go do some recon.

Posing as a newly mated couple ( _Sam’s idea_ ) who were looking to buy some land ( _Dean’s idea_ ) and interested in the surrounding territory, the two talked to just about anyone willing to give them feedback on this part of the state - which turned out to be a lot of people. The ruse was a good one and got a lot of the locals to open up, but if Dean hadn’t known how much Sam disliked him he would have thought he suggested it just so they would be constantly touching. The whole morning Sam had a hand on the small of Dean’s back or was running his fingers through Dean’s short, spiky hair, or resting his hand gently on the back of Dean’s neck, sometimes giving him a little massage. He seemed to really enjoy playing up the angle of them being in the blissful early stages of matehood. Dean would have pressed the issue but didn’t want to throw off the easy rhythm they’d developed because they were getting a lot of really good information. Plus, he kinda liked the way it felt to have one of Sam’s gigantic hands laying gently on him at all times, which was surprising. By the time lunch rolled around it felt like they’d spoken with half the city and there was so much casual touching they were starting to smell like each other. Definitely time to take a break.

Over lunch at a nice little diner in town they went through the notes from their conversations that morning, though it was really more of a formality than a necessity; something to talk about to pass the time. Everyone they interviewed knew about the rancher and warned against buying land to the northwest near Medicine Bow. Dean would have thought they’d rehearsed it if he wasn’t so good at reading people. The whole city really was just that frightened of whatever was happening up by Medicine Bow. It looked like they’d found where to start looking.

At the end of it all it took them a day and a half to locate the nest, and another day to wipe it out. It was ridiculously easy between the crossbow and the dead man’s blood. The worst thing than happened to either of them was when Sam fell through some rotted floorboards and ended up with a splinter from catching himself. They’d left early to catch the vamps while they were still asleep and were back in Laramie in time to have dinner at an actual restaurant ( _Sam insisted, even after Dean asked if it was a date and caused Sam to blush such a deep red he was nearly purple_ ), and then headed back to the room to fill out the paperwork to get the FDH to certify the kill and deposit the money in their accounts. Sam ordered a pizza because they were both still hungry after the inadequate “actual restaurant” food, and gave a handwave when Dean tried to give him the laptop to enter his hunter number. The pizza arrived, Sam grabbed a slice and flipped on the TV, and that was when the drinking had started.  

Sam was relaxed for the first time in Dean’s presence in...god, _years_. Dean had forgotten how _good_ Sam smelled when he wasn’t all irritated that Dean was in the same room with him; big and strong and gentle and _safe_. And the way he’d looked when Dean choked on a shot and coughed it out all over his shirt, full out laughing even as he asked if Dean was okay, his eyes sparkling blue-green and his dimples so deep. And the memory of how large and strong his hands were when Dean grabbed hold of him to help haul him out of the rotted floor back at the nest, or how he’d kept carressing Dean the whole time they were interviewing witnesses. And how hilarious he’d looked when he took a bite out of the pizza and half the cheese came off but it was too hot to eat it all at once so he had to bite some out onto his plate saying, “Shit, shit, shit” around the rest of the food in his mouth, sauce all over his chin. Dean had never been with an alpha before, hadn’t ever wanted to be with one because they immediately got all possessive and acted like they owned you, but Sam was just so adorable and perfect and attractive and soothing and how was Dean supposed to resist all of that? The short answer: he couldn’t, and when he’d had enough liquid courage that he felt like he could survive the humiliation if Sam rejected his advances, he literally threw himself across the couch and into Sam’s lap.

And _now_ Dean was standing in front of the pharmacist at the South Bald Mountain Pharmacy in Laramie, trying to process what she had just told him.

“I said I’m sorry, Mr. Winchester. You’re going to have to see your own pharmacist in Sioux Falls. You’re simply too far past due for us to fill the script here without a consult from your primary physician.”

That’s what Dean was pretty sure was called “irony.” The overwhelming need to get the money for his suppressants had overridden his better judgement from the minute he walked into the Roadhouse, and now he couldn’t even get them until tomorrow, because Sioux Falls was a nine and a half hour drive and there was no way he’d get there in time to get to a clinic and get a refill for his prescription. Yeah, that was definitely ironic, no matter what Alanis Morissette thought the word meant. Dean didn’t even have words to argue, he just turned and quietly went outside to stand on the street corner and try not to panic.

He had never been off his suppressants since his dad put him on them, and he didn’t really know anything about them because there hadn’t been a way to research without John finding out he was looking up “omega shit,” and John certainly hadn’t told him anything other than, “Take these.” He had no clue what would happen if he was off them for a full week. This whole thing with Sam could have been completely avoided, and he felt a desperate need for a beer as he waited for the traffic to pass so he could shuffle safely to Hal’s Diner across the street without having to run. His stomach seemed to have recovered enough from the tequila to demand breakfast, but he didn’t want to push it. About the only good thing to come out of this mess was he’d learned he _couldn’t_ actually trust Sam Campbell, and what’s more he _wouldn’t_ , ever again.

In fact, if Dean had anything to say about it, he wouldn’t even have to _see_ Sam for the rest of his life.


	5. I Was Ready, I Had a Fork

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We've spent a lot of time with Dean. I wonder how Sam feels about all this? Time for some backstory.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wasn't planning to post again so soon, but I'll be out of town for the weekend and won't get much of a chance to work on this. Enjoy!

Sam Campbell did not lead a charmed life. He was well aware that people thought he did, and he could understand why. His grandfather had a disgusting amount of wealth in numerous bank accounts, several of them outside the country, was one of the highest ranking officials in one of the most secretive government organizations in the States subjected to just about the least amount of oversight, and one day everything Samuel controlled would be passed down to Sam. That amount of money could buy an awful lot of comfort and security, but despite his advantages Sam had never really felt assured of either of those things. In fact, if anyone had asked what he thought about his life, the “c” word he would have chosen to describe it was “cursed.”

Rarely had he felt being cursed more acutely than as he sat in the main front window of Hal’s Diner, unshaven, unshowered, reeking of tequila, and watching Dean Winchester exiting the pharmacy across the street. He winced slightly in the sunlight, sliding sunglasses onto his face, and turned to check both ways as if he were going to cross. Sam unconsciously sucked in a breath and held it as he thought, _Please, god, do not let him come over here._ Of course, because Sam was cursed, Dean started towards the diner as soon as the traffic had passed.

He had fucked up so badly this morning, he just couldn’t deal with this now. He’d been too out of it when he woke up to really know what was going on or where he was, and had mindlessly pulled on a pair of pants and staggered down the hall of the hotel to get some ice for the headache that just might kill him. He was lucky the keycard to the room was still in his pocket since he certainly wasn’t with it enough to remember to grab it. It was when he came back in and heard someone puking in the bathroom that it came rushing back and he panicked.

Dean. He had slept with Dean. He had slept with Dean, and knotted him, and it had been amazing. _Dear. God. No._ He had to get out. Right now. He couldn’t look Dean in the face and pretend last night was nothing, or that either of them had been too drunk to know what they were doing. With the options of fight or flight it was obvious which one he should take.

Sam would have wondered if Dean were following him, but one: Dean had still been clinging to the toilet like a life preserver when Sam snuck his way out of the hotel room in just his pants, carrying the rest of his belongings with him all the way to the car, shirtless and barefoot, so Dean couldn’t have known where he went, especially not when he spent a solid hour in the Walmart bathroom suffering the after-effects of too much tequila; two: he’d left those coupons with the awful note behind with the intention of stopping anything that might threaten to start between them ( _which sure, he immediately regretted that but he needed Dean at arm’s length_ ); and three: Dean Winchester could have anyone he wanted. He certainly wasn’t going to waste his time tracking down someone like Sam.

At first Sam thought he’d gotten a reprieve, for Dean had just about reached the restaurant when he looked up and seemed to have forgotten something. He crossed away and went down the other side of the street, and Sam let out the breath he’d been holding. Then back Dean came a few minutes later, looking at his cell phone. As it became clear that Dean was, in fact, headed towards Hal’s, Sam thought briefly and somewhat hysterically that he could make a run for it out the back. These places always had a back. They had to. Couldn’t get deliveries in through the front. So what if he’d have to force his way into the kitchen and would likely end up getting himself arrested? Absent-mindedly he grabbed his fork and ran his finger up the handle. He could use that if he needed to stab a cook in the hand to get away. It would be better than facing Dean asking why he just left without even saying, “See ya never,” or even worse, Dean’s complete indifference to him.

Of course, there was also the real possibility that the minute Dean walked into the diner Sam wouldn’t be able to control himself, and would haul him into the bathroom, lock the door, and just fuck him until the omega presented his neck and begged Sam to claim him. And Sam didn’t want that; not only because he wasn’t a caveman enslaved to his baser instincts, but because he knew _Dean_ didn’t want that. Sure, last night had happened, and he didn’t think he would ever be able to forget the way Dean looked when he’d launched himself at Sam, capturing his mouth like a man who had just discovered a bottomless well after years crawling through the desert, but they’d been doing shots for a _while_ and Sam wasn’t stupid enough to think that Dean’s sudden interest meant Dean was interested long term. Sam may have been drunk, but he was sober enough to know that the only reason Dean was mauling him was a mixture of alcohol and convenience, and Sam really should have put the brakes on, but…

Well. Dean’s hands were in Sam’s hair, tugging and scratching and holding their faces together so Dean could suck on his tongue and his lower lip. And then Dean’s mouth was _everywhere_ else - his earlobe, his neck, the hollow between his collarbones - sucking and biting and licking. And Dean was _literally_ in Sam’s lap, striping off his shirt, purring and insistent about what he wanted _right now_ and whining about being the only one getting naked. Sam had barely been able to breathe, let alone resist the beautiful omega in his lap _wanting_ him. And yeah, he knew Dean was drunk, but Dean was so clear about not being drunk enough not to know what he was doing, or what he wanted to do, or _who_ he wanted to do or to express those urges clearly and convincingly, and Sam had spent the last two years since Adam’s graduation party yearning for Dean Winchester so badly he couldn’t think when Dean was in the same room.

So sue him if he couldn’t find it within himself to push Dean away or insist that they shouldn’t do this and instead picked Dean up like he weighed nothing in an attempt to get to the bed but only made it to the floor before his hands were down Dean’s pants. Sue him if he couldn’t stop telling Dean how gorgeous he was, how much he wanted him, trying to capture the mewling that came from Dean’s mouth as Sam sunk himself into Dean with a single thrust. Sue him if he let himself forget, for one night, that Dean didn’t want him the way he wanted Dean ( _loved, owned, claimed_ ), would never want him the way he wanted Dean ( _mine, mine, mine_ ), undoubtedly thought of him like a little brother ( _if he thought of him at all_ ), and after last night would despise Sam as the knothead that he allowed himself be, aided mightily by tequila and the honeysuckle smell of Dean’s slick.

Dean was horny and Sam was there. That’s all last night was. He was under no illusions about happily ever afters, but he just couldn’t stick around for the, “Let’s just forget that happened” speech. Not from the most precious and rare creature Sam had ever come across; someone that seemingly everyone wanted, because everyone knew that when you found a unicorn you didn’t just let it go; someone that now _had_ been Sam’s, if only for one stupid, misguided night.

Because if he were really honest with himself, he’d wanted Dean long before the party at his grandfather’s estate, and he just couldn’t take being let down gently.

God, how was he going to tell Adam that he’d slept with Dean? Adam would be furious. As soon as Dean had presented as an omega Adam had gone into overprotective hyperdrive and had yet to come out of that mindset. It had gotten so much worse since he graduated. He saw every alpha as a potential threat to his brother’s physical safety, and even though Adam was only a beta he had graduated at the top of his class and was not to be trifled with. He knew weaponry and hand-to-hand combat as well as any hunter the Academy had ever produced, had told Sam of all the disgusting comments their classmates made every time Dean swung by for his birthday in September, and kept up his training even after enrolling in college out of unapologetic fear of what might befall his brother out on his own. He’d been pushing Dean for years to retire, and since his first year in the nursing program at Duke, Adam had begged his brother to move out to Durham with him, get a GED, and pursue a real career that wouldn’t leave him surrounded by knotheads ninety-five percent of the time. Sam knew every reason Adam didn’t want Dean with an alpha, and he didn’t blame him.

Adam very well might kill Sam when he told him about last night. Well, unless he just _didn’t_ tell him. But that would be worse, because what if Dean said something and Sam hadn’t mentioned it? Then Adam would feel doubly betrayed. No, if Sam hoped to maintain the longest friendship he had, he was going to have to find some way to bring it up without just shooting Adam a text that said, “ _Yeah, so, I slept with your brother, and I’m pretty sure he hates me, and you clearly haven’t noticed but I’ve been crazy about him for years. Any advice_?” That would not go over well.

And it _had_ been years. Sam could barely remember a time when the Winchesters hadn’t existed in his world. He had already been at Actaeon for two years when John dropped Dean and Adam off and walked away, and he felt an almost immediate connection to the younger Winchester. Like Sam, Adam was entering the Academy at a few weeks shy of four years old - the youngest age for enrollment. Like Sam, Adam had been dumped at the Academy having only just grasped his ABC’s. Like Sam, Adam had a last name that was famous, which meant every bully in the elementary grades would be out to prove they were tougher than him. Like Sam, Adam was smarter than most of the kids in his class, and wasn’t afraid to hide his intelligence. And, like Sam, Adam’s mother had never been in his life.

This last point wasn’t exactly identical, but it was certainly close enough for the young boys to bond over the lack of a mother. Sam’s parents had died in a fire when he was only six months old, leaving him to the care of his obsessive and emotionally detached grandfather. Instead of cherishing his only grandchild, Samuel had left the boy’s care entirely to a string of nannies who were free to neglect his needs so long as it didn’t result in any permanent damage. He had overheard some of the bigger kids talking about how his grandfather couldn’t stand another loss after watching his only child burn, and that’s why he kept Sam at such a distance, but Sam understood this only in the abstract way any young child could grasp such a complex subject. What _wasn’t_ hard to grasp was that his grandfather didn’t want him, wasn’t interested in him, and didn’t care what he did so long as it didn’t tarnish the Campbell name.

Adam wasn’t rich, but his dad was John Winchester, and that was important, though Adam didn’t know why. Sam didn’t either, but it was a name he knew, like George Washington or Abraham Lincoln, so he thought Adam’s dad was maybe the president? His grandpa didn’t like John, _that_ Sam knew, and Grandpa worked for the government so odds were good that “President Winchester” was right and Adam was in some kind of witness protection scheme where you got to pretend to be other people _for real_. Adam’s mom was still alive, but he didn’t know who or where she was, or why he’d been taken from her. All he knew was that he _had_ been taken from her, that his father hadn’t claimed her ( _whatever that meant_ ), and because he was an alpha and she was an omega and he hadn’t claimed her it gave him the right to take any pup he sired by her, so he did. Neither Adam nor Sam really had any idea what dogs had to do with the President of the United States, but they were both pretty sure it involved something called sex that adults kept saying they’d explain once they were older.

When you got right down to it, the only thing important the two young boys didn’t have in common was their siblings - or lack thereof. Because Sam had no one outside a couple of cousins who openly disliked him, while Adam had Dean. This was a fact of which Sam was immediately jealous.

Sam had seen Dean when he and Adam were dropped off, and he’d been instantly pulled towards him in a way that was different from Adam. Hell, just about everyone in his class had seen Dean, but if anyone else had been similarly affected Sam didn’t notice. It had been recess, just before lunch, and the sound of John Winchester’s 1967 Chevy Impala had drawn the kids on the playground to the perimeter fence like flies to hamburger past its due date. The gorgeous black car pulled up and idled at the front gate, and out of the back seat popped Dean with his duffel, his blond hair in need of a decent trim and a sullen look on his pale, freckled face. He glanced over at the kids pressed against the fence, then turned around to help his toe headed little brother out of the car. Adam’s duffel was nearly half his size, and Dean took it and slung it over his free shoulder before closing the car door. Dean had barely had a chance to pull Adam back a few steps before the car took off, tires squealing out of the parking lot.

Dean watched their father pull away with an expression that spoke of experience far beyond a ten year old - even a ten year old at the Academy - before turning to put an arm around his much smaller, much younger brother. Clearly Dean had already been through some shit in his young life and had probably had worse things happen than getting dropped off like an unwanted cat outside a barn, but Adam? Well, the almost-four year old was blubbering like a baby, huge tears spilling from his sky blue eyes, getting snot everywhere and wiping his face on his sleeves. Sam immediately felt bad for the kid; for both of them, really, because the longer Dean stood comforting Adam, the more obvious it became just how close he was to crying himself. It didn’t take a psychic to know they didn’t want to be here and hadn’t been asked if they’d like to enroll. Sam could definitely relate.

Dean had leaned in to say something to his little brother, which no one pressed against the fence could hear, but ended up calming the little boy enough that Dean could let Adam go and tussle his hair. Adam gave Dean a half-hearted shove, and Dean abruptly dropped both duffels on the sidewalk and turned to Adam, snarling like a wild animal. Despite himself Adam giggled, and Dean growled louder, flexing his skinny arms like Sam had seen on the pro wrestling shows the older kids put on in the common room on Saturdays. Adam giggled harder and Dean exclaimed, “Come on, I wanna see your game face!” and just like that Adam was growling back and flexing, getting right into Dean’s space until their foreheads were touching and they were snarling and getting spit everywhere, then they were both laughing and Dean scooped the duffels back up as they started for the entrance.

The next time Sam saw them was at dinner in the cafeteria. John had dropped them off in the middle of the day, so they hadn’t made any classes between registration, testing, and room assignments. When the head school counselor ushered them in, they had changed from the thin tee shirts and ragged jeans of their arrival to the Academy’s uniform: a white, short sleeved button down with a red crest on the pocket and matching red shorts ( _they would wear pants in colder months_ ). Despite the fact that everyone looked terrible in the uniform and as a result hated wearing it, the eldest Winchester strode into the cafeteria like he owned the place, allowing the counselor to lead them over to Sam’s table where he was sitting, per usual, alone.

“Sam,” the counselor said to draw his attention away from his meatloaf and wilted salad, “I’d like you to meet Dean and Adam Winchester. Boys, this is Sam Campbell.”

“Hey,” Dean said, waving a hand dismissively.

“I think you’re my roommate,” Adam said.

“Really?” Sam looked at the counselor. “Isn’t Grandpa paying for a private room for me?”

Dean huffed and muttered something under his breath that Sam didn’t catch, but the counselor heard it. Whatever it was made the woman scowl.

“Sam’s grandfather is a very important person, young man,” she scolded, and Dean’s ears turned red, but he didn’t look up. “You’d be wise to watch your tone.”

“Whatever,” Dean replied, sounding bored. “It’s not like we’re going to be here that long anyway.”

The counselor was already ignoring him and turning back to Sam with an explanation.

“Your grandfather did pay for a private room, but with the renovations in the east wing there’s nowhere else Adam can stay for the time being. All the other elementary children have roommates.”

“I told you,” Dean seethed, “that he could stay in my room.”

“As we’ve already said, you’re in secondary school, Dean.” The counselor pinched the bridge of her very long nose as if dealing with this particular ten year old were mentally exhausting. “It wouldn’t be appropriate to have such a young child in your dormitory.”

Having decided that sullen wasn’t going to work, Dean turned on the charm and shot an impish smile the counselor’s way.

“People tell me all the time I’m not appropriate, so what’s one more thing?”

“No, Dean.” Having laid the conversation with Dean to rest, the counselor again returned to Sam. “I’ve got a call in to your grandfather to explain the situation and assure him you’ll be back to your private room as soon as possible, but in the meantime I thought you might like to get to know Adam a little better.”

“O-okay,” Sam said, and smiled, showing off the missing top and bottom tooth at the front of his mouth. “I can show you around after dinner, if you want.”

“That’d be great!” Adam exclaimed, grinning back at Sam.

“Gotta see how late it is after dinner,” Dean said firmly. “You’re going to bed on time for once if we’re gonna start school tomorrow.”

“Aw, Dean!”

The counselor pointed across the cafeteria at the buffet style food as she turned to go and told the two boys, “Food is over there. Take what you’d like.”

“Dinner!” Adam yelled, and took off across the cafeteria.

“Don’t run!” Dean shouted after him, hurrying to catch his brother as Adam obediently slowed down, waiting until Dean caught up with him and threw an arm around his small shoulders.

Sam had never thought much about his status as an only child, but suddenly he desperately wanted a brother. Older, younger, it didn’t matter - just someone to make him feel like he wasn’t completely alone in the world. Someone who would tousle his hair and fight to share a room with him and tell him not to run across the cafeteria. He’d been so starved for any kind of attention since his parents died that these few brief moments with the Winchesters were like a punch to the chest. Sam had wanted a lot of things in his short six years of life, but this want left every other want in the dust.

When Adam and Dean returned their plates were piled high with food from the buffet. Meatloaf, chicken drumsticks, mashed potatoes, mac and cheese, spaghetti - about the only thing neither of them had included were vegetables. Dean even had three pieces of pie; blueberry, apple, and cherry. Sam scooted over quickly to give them room on his side of the table, and Adam dropped down next to him with Dean on Adam’s other side. Adam devoured the mac and cheese like it was his job, while Dean opted for shoveling mashed potatoes into his mouth.

“Oh man,” Dean said after a minute around the food he was chewing, his eyes rolling back in pure bliss. “These are soooo good. Must be real and not from a box.” He elbowed Adam. “How’s the mac and cheese?”

“Yours is better,” Adam said. At least Sam thought that’s what he said. He really couldn’t tell with how full Adam’s mouth was.

“Eat up while we can,” Dean instructed. “Dad’s gonna be back for us soon.”

“Your dad’s coming back?” Sam asked, fascinated by how much food the Winchesters were actually managing to eat. It was like they hadn’t eaten in days.

“Yeah,” Dean replied. “Don’t worry Sammy, you’ll have your private room in no time.”

“Oh I don’t care,” Sam said, and he didn’t, which he could see shocked Dean a little, but he didn’t care about that either. Nor did Adam, who was hyperfocused on his meatloaf. “I’m happy getting a roommate! I’m always alone. Don’t really like it. It’s just that most parents only come around for holidays; Thanksgiving and Christmas, summer break and stuff.” He shrugged. “Not my grandpa, but most parents. Can’t remember one showing up during the school year unless somebody died.”

“Well…” Dean chewed his lower lip, looking briefly uncertain. “Our dad will. He’s just teaching me a lesson cuz I messed up.”

“What’d you do?” Sam asked, and Dean blushed, stabbing violently at his mac and cheese.

“Just...I messed up. I didn’t listen and I messed up. I don’t wanna talk about it.” He shoved a huge forkful of cheddar cheese covered elbows into his mouth. “You’re right Adam, mine is better.”

“Hey, you guys wanna come see my room now?” Sam was practically vibrating with excitement at the idea of having a roommate. Actaeon was a small academy with no grade level having more than eighty students, and Sam was one of the only kids in the whole school who didn’t have a roommate. It made him stick out, because everyone knew, and he felt like a freak. His grandfather throwing money around like that always made him feel that way, but especially when everyone was keenly aware of how much more he had than the average kid at the school. Most kids’ parents were spending every spare penny they had on the tuition; forget getting their kid a private room. “I’ve got a NES and my own TV and my grandpa just sent me a Gameboy!”

“What’s a Gameboy?” Adam asked through a mouthful of spaghetti, his blue eyes bright with interest.

“It’s a gaming system.”

“What’s a gaming system?”

“You play games on it.”

“You mean like poker? Dean’s gonna teach me poker when I’m five!”

Sam really didn’t know what to say to that. Poker was a grown up game that involved chips and stripping, and if you lost you ended up owing people a lot of money. Which he didn’t understand at all. Pringles were tasty, but they didn’t cost a lot at the store, and they certainly weren’t a reason for anyone to have to take off all their clothes and have their knees broken. Dean saw the look on Sam’s face and shot him a rakish grin.

“I said I wasn’t appropriate,” was his only comment before sticking a forkful of pie into his mouth and groaning, cherry pie filling dripping down his chin. “God I _love pie_! Maybe it won’t be so bad if Dad leaves us here a while.”

Adam didn’t look quite as convinced, and gave a half-hearted shrug while picking at the remains of his plate. Dean opened his mouth, still half-full of pie, and pretended that he was going to puke all over Adam’s plate, which sent the youngster into high pitched giggling and protestations for Dean to stop. Dean did, but only after he seemed certain the smile on Adam’s face wasn’t going to disappear for a while, then scooped up all three pieces of pie and got up from the table.

“Come on Sammy,” he declared. “Show us your room.”

“We’re not really supposed to take food out of the cafeteria,” Sam told him, though he was excited to have been so easily accepted by the two other boys.

“I do a lotta things I’m not supposed to do,” Dean replied, his smile now bordering on coquettish. “Ain’t that right, Adam?”

“Oh yeah,” Adam agreed as took a huge bite from a super sized chocolate chip cookie. “A _lot_.”

“So come on Sammy, show us around!” Dean repeated before licking off his fork so he could take it with him without getting cherry all over everything. Sam wasn’t sure what it was about that simple action of Dean running his tongue along the metal tines, but he was immediately transfixed. Dean jammed it into his back pocket, saying by way of explanation, “A man should always have a fork on hand. Never know when you’re gonna need it.”

Then he turned on his heel and headed for the cafeteria doors, pie in his hand, fork in his pocket, and Adam trailing after him. It didn’t seem possible either of them had been upset to the point of tears earlier today - Dean was walking like he’d been here all his life and Adam was following like a miniature version of his brother, right down to Dean’s gait. Heads were starting to turn now as the brothers Winchester passed and everyone began to really notice the older of the two, almost as if they’d never seen anything like him before. Sure, the elementary kids had been curious about the new arrivals, but when the counselor brought them in at the beginning of dinner the students had been too wrapped up in eating to take notice of them. Now they did, and it was obvious everyone was in agreement that Dean was something very rare, and very special. What that was no one would know for another six years, but it was clear from that moment there was _something_.

Yeah, Sam had definitely wanted Dean a lot longer than Adam’s graduation party.


	6. We're Stronger as a Family

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam's room was *awesome*. Adam and Dean spend a lot of time there. *Obviously* they're all going to be best friends forever, right?

Looking back on it as an adult Sam could admit it might seem the main reason he and Adam became such good friends was Sam’s jealous want of what Adam had. The thing was, that jealousy had cut both ways. Sam may have wanted a brother like Adam had, but Adam sure coveted all of Sam’s “stuff” from the minute they got to Sam’s formerly private room. And boy did Sam have a lot of stuff, all of it the newest and best. He had his own computer, TV, wall phone, dual cassette boombox, the Nintendo Entertainment System _and_ Gameboy he’d mentioned to the brothers, a VCR ( _V_ _HS obviously_ ) with a stack of movies, and a whole bookshelf full of model spacecraft from _Star Wars_ , complete with a Millennium Falcon suspended from the ceiling. His double bed had a _Real Ghostbusters_ bedding set and a gigantic toy box at the foot. The large mahogany chest of drawers and desk matched the bed, and a thick, plush, pale blue carpet lay in front of the huge bay window, a Schwinn Aerostar BMX bike with training wheels parked on it.

It was entirely too much for a six year old, but then everything about Samuel Campbell tended to be too much except for the amount of affection he was willing to show his grandson. It certainly made the small twin bed that had been added on the other side of the room where Adam’s duffel had been tossed by the admissions staff seem paltry by comparison. Sam felt extremely self conscious as Adam and Dean stopped in the doorway to take in the wonders of the room, exclaiming quietly in unison, “Whoa.”

“Yeah…” Sam’s face grew hot with the blood rising to his cheekbones. “It’s a lot. Grandpa leaves me here breaks and holidays and just sends stuff instead of coming to visit.”

“Yeah?” Dean was taking in the room, glancing around at all the things Samuel sent to fill up the hole he was willfully leaving in Sam’s life. He dropped the apple and blueberry pie plates onto the desk and took the cherry pie and his fork over to Adam’s bed where he plunked himself down and dug into it again. “That’s shitty.”

Sam’s eyes grew wide.

“You said the ‘s’ word!”

“Dean says grown up words all the time,” Adam laughed. He dropped his voice conspiratorially. “He says the ‘f’ word too.”

“What’s the ‘f’ word?” Sam asked.

“Never mind what the ‘f’ word is.” Dean glared at his younger brother, who shrank in on himself. “You’re not supposed to know that word, Runt.” He shoved a huge forkful of pie into his mouth. “This is a cool room, Sam.”

“It’s okay,” Sam said, but he ducked his head and blushed. He had no idea why, but it really meant something that Dean thought his room was cool.

Dean gestured to the pieces of pie on the desk with his fork before taking another bite of his own.

“You guys aren’t gonna eat that?”

“Can we?” Adam asked, his face lighting up.

“‘Course. I didn’t get all three for me, I’m not a pig or somethin’.”

“Awesome! I call blueberry!”

“But…” Sam objected as Adam dug into the pie with his fingers, “we don’t have any forks.”

“What’d I say, Sammy?” Dean asked with a wink. “Never know when a man’s gonna need a fork.” He finished the last bite of his pie and rose from the bed to go over to Adam at the desk and flung an arm around his shoulder. “You gonna be okay for a while here Runt? Gotta go check out my room.”

Adam was suddenly very worried and looked up from the plate, his mouth and fingers stained purple.

“You gonna come back?”

“Course I’m gonna come back.” Dean smiled gently at his younger brother, then looked up hesitantly at Sam. “I mean, if Sam let’s me.”

“We’re not supposed to have people in our room after lights out,” Sam said, frowning. It wiped the grin off of Dean’s face, and Adam looked up at his big brother with wide, frightened eyes. Sam didn’t know what caused his sudden need to see Dean smile again, but boy did he ever need it. “But it’s okay with me!”

The smile returned and Sam’s heart felt very light in his chest.

“Okay. I’ll be back with my stuff.” Dean ruffled Adam’s hair and took off for the door. “Don’t worry though, it’s not like I’m gonna move in or anything. Just don’t think Adam should spend the first night here by himself, you know?”

Sam didn’t, but nodded anyway. He would have been fine with it if Dean _had_ moved in. They could just switch out Adam’s twin for a bunk bed. There was plenty of room. He’d ask his grandpa about it the next time he called.

Dean was gone for a long time, which was okay because Sam wanted to properly show Adam his room anyway. It turned out they had so many things in common that they got on like a house on fire. Both liked Batman, dinosaurs, and Doctor Who. Both had seen every episode of _Dukes of Hazzard_ in re-run and neither thought Coy and Vance were really Duke boys - they were just too wussy to be taken seriously. Both agreed that Jeanie was prettier than Samantha, Cindy Brady was annoying, and _Thundercats_ was the best cartoon _ever_.  

Sam told Adam about his grandpa, and how he was rich but really mean, and how so far he’d only had Sam come home once in the last two years for some kind of big family reunion thing. He talked about his cousins Christian, Gwen, Mark, Johnny, and Tyler, who were all enrolled at Actaeon, and who he really didn’t like that much. Except for Gwen - she was okay for a girl. They were all a couple of years older and in the middle school and liked to bully Sam, which meant other kids liked to bully Sam as well, since obviously his pack of older cousins weren’t going to stop them. He asked his grandpa to get them to stop, but Grandpa just told him it would build character.  

Adam told Sam a little about his dad, who was gone on business a lot, and how he and Dean spent a lot of time with babysitters and a guy called Pastor Jim who Adam thought was a Cath-a-lick because he always wanted to talk to Dad about something called faith, and Dad never wanted to talk about it. So either Pastor Jim was a Cath-a-lick and they weren’t, or it was the other way around. Dean always asked about someone named Bobby and why they didn’t go to see him anymore, but Dad got mad whenever Dean asked, and Adam didn’t remember staying with a Bobby, so that must’ve been when he was really little or before he was born.

They both talked about their moms, or lack of them, and how Adam’s mom and Dean’s mom weren’t the same mom; that Dean’s mom was dead, and he didn’t talk about it, and Adam’s mom wasn’t dead as far as he knew. Adam was going to find his mom someday, but Sam shouldn’t tell his dad that please, and then maybe she could be Dean’s mom too, because Dean really missed having a mom and really needed one. Sam said someday he was going to figure out how his mom died, and who his dad was, because his grandpa wouldn’t talk about his dad at all and Sam thought he was lying about something.

The sun had long since set and “Lights out!” had been called when Dean finally came back to the room. Sam and Adam had resorted to huddling together with flashlights under Sam’s _Real Ghostbusters_ comforter so the hall monitors wouldn’t notice any light coming from under the door. Sam had locked the door because some of the other kids had come into his room before and taken some of his stuff or pulled some really mean pranks ( _the time they’d saran wrapped him to the bed had not been fun_ ), but he and Adam were too deeply involved with their conversation about _The Neverending Story_ to hear Dean picking the lock. In fact, they had no idea they weren’t alone in the room until Dean flung the comforter off of them, yelling, “Boo!”, his duffel over his shoulder and sporting a freshly split lip.

“Jesus Christ Dean!” Adam exclaimed.

“Hey, language,” Dean snapped.

“How’d you get in here?” Sam asked, shining his flashlight on Dean’s face and reaching out to touch his lip. The smoothness of Dean’s mouth made him feel things he couldn’t understand, and he drew his hand back quickly. “What happened?”

“New roommate and I didn’t get along so good,” he said, then shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. You need a better lock on your door. That one was too easy to pick.”

“You can pick locks?” Sam said, enthralled.

Dean shot him the coquettish smirk again.

“I can do a lot of things, Sammy.” He left the younger boys on the big bed and went over to Adam’s smaller twin, throwing the duffel down on the floor like a pillow and grabbing the duvet. “I’m stealin’ your blanket, Runt. Don’t stay up too late. You’ve got school in the morning.”

“Yes, Dean,” Adam said automatically.

“‘Night guys.”

Dean rolled himself up in the duvet like a sleeping bag, turned his back to them, and went to sleep. Sam couldn’t believe he was just...sleeping on the floor. It wasn’t just that he’d never seen anyone sleep on the floor before; it was that the concept never would have occurred to him. You didn’t sleep on the floor - you slept in a bed. And everybody had a bed to sleep in...didn’t they?

Or maybe this was one of the things you did if you had a sleepover. That would make sense. Not everyone was going to necessarily have a bed if you had a sleepover so someone would have to sleep on the floor, right? Sam didn’t know, since he’d never been to a sleepover, but that seemed logical. It had to be kind of like camping, which he’d never done either, but inside instead of outside in tents, so yeah, obviously there would be at least one person who had to sleep on the floor if you didn’t have enough beds for everyone at a sleepover.

Now Sam was starting to get extremely embarrassed about not knowing the correct protocol for a sleepover, and he should, since they were having one. He _hated_ not knowing basic stuff like this that everyone else seemed to. It made him feel like such a freak.

Adam clearly didn’t notice Sam’s sudden awkwardness as he clicked off his flashlight and said, “Yeah, we should go to bed. ‘Night Sam,” and rolled off the double bed to plod over to his own. He stepped on Dean, who grumbled, “Ow!” but just went back to sleep after Adam muttered “Sorry.” Adam crawled into his bed and under the sheet and blanket, curled up on his side facing Dean with one arm under his pillow, and quickly fell asleep.

Sam watched them for a minute to make sure they were sound enough asleep that he wasn’t going to wake them, then got out of his bed to change into his pajamas and brush his teeth in the adjoining bathroom. Most of the kids at the academy had to use the large, common bathrooms and showers, but when Samuel had set his grandson up in a private room he had insisted on one of the few that had a bathroom attached. It seemed to Sam that his grandfather wanted to do everything within his power to keep him separated from “normal” kids, when Sam wanted nothing more in the world than to be normal.

He wouldn’t learn for a while that if he wanted to be normal he shouldn’t look to the Winchesters as an example.

Over the next month or so, Sam Campbell and Dean and Adam Winchester settled into a comfortable routine. The first full week Dean let himself into their room to sleep on the floor next to Adam’s bed, but after that he seemed to have decided that Adam was safe enough without him right there all the time between the heavy warding on the school and the salt poured into the foundation. Since Adam was in kindergarten and Dean was in fourth grade ( _he’d tested poorly and been held back a year when they enrolled_ ) their classes weren’t on the same schedule, but Dean made sure to eat breakfast with them every morning, pop in for a couple of minutes at recess to scare off any bullies, and then again at lunch, checking to see if Adam had any vegetables on his plate. After school Sam and Adam would head back to the playground or off to their room to play video games while Dean went off to the gym for hand-to-hand training, then they’d all meet up in the cafeteria for dinner, Dean always sporting at least one new bruise. After dinner they’d head back to Sam and Adam’s room and hang out watching TV or playing checkers or trying to teach Adam how to play Uno, and then Dean would head off to bed with an affectionately called, “Smell ya later, losers!”

One night at the very end of September Dean had stayed over again. Adam woke up the next morning happier than usual ( _and he was a pretty happy kid for not ever having had a mom and spending so much time traveling with his dad_ ) and really excited, though he wouldn’t say why. Dean had to tell him to slow down about a dozen times on the way to breakfast, and remind him to brush his teeth, and point out that he had his shoes on the wrong feet, but he did it all with a laugh. By the time recess rolled around, however, Adam was starting to look a little anxious. By lunchtime he was definitely becoming upset about something, but still didn’t want to talk about it, and at dinner he was openly upset, and Dean was scowling and shooting glances his way every couple of minutes or so. After pushing his food around his plate and not really eating anything for half an hour he got up and left, ignoring Sam when he called out to him.

“Just wait here Sammy,” Dean said quietly, grabbing the two trays and heading with them to the garbage. “I’ll go talk to him.”

Sam nodded dumbly, having no other clue what he should do. He was very bothered that Adam was so upset, but he was only six, and outside of hugs and saying, “It’ll be okay,” he really had no other skills when it came to comforting someone. Especially when he didn’t know what was wrong. He gave Dean about a fifteen minute head start and focused on finishing his dinner before heading back to his room.

Sam didn’t really know what to expect, whether they’d be back in his room or Dean’s room or somewhere else. As he came up outside his bedroom door he could hear them inside. Adam was crying brokenly, sniffing and coughing and sounding completely miserable, while Dean was trying to reassure him with words that Sam couldn’t really hear. He did catch, “It’s not bedtime yet,” and “Lost track of time,” but that was about it. After a couple of minutes of standing anxiously in the hall, Sam slowly pushed the door open and went in.

Adam and Dean looked up at him together from where they sat on Adam’s bed, Adam’s shoulders slumped and face tear-streaked while Dean rubbed his back.

“Hey Sam,” Dean said lamely as Adam turned away and cried and sputtered some more.

“Hey,” Sam said before Dean turned his attention back to soothing his brother.

It felt like they stayed that way forever, with Sam standing awkwardly by the door, Adam blubbering, and Dean rubbing Adam’s back, while the sun slowly made its descent outside. It was probably really only a few minutes, though, before the phone rang, startling them all. Adam looked up quickly, Dean snapped his head around, and Sam jumped. Sam immediately headed to answer it while Adam stood up hesitantly, as if he were trying not to hope for something in case he ended up crushed.

“Hello?” Sam said into the receiver. He only ever got phone calls from his grandfather and those were arranged well ahead of time through the office so Sam would be in his room when Samuel called, otherwise the Campbell patriarch might have to call back and lose valuable business time.

The voice on the other end of the phone was a man. Not his grandfather - younger and deep, but with the same kind of authority that his grandfather used.

“ _Adam_? ”

“No, this is Sam.”

“ _Sam_? _Where’s Adam_? ”

“He’s here. I’m his roommate. Who’s this?”

“ _His father. The office gave me this extension for him. Can you please put him on the phone Sam_?”

“Oh. Sure.”  Sam held the receiver out to Adam, noticing that both he and Dean had moved a little closer. “It’s your dad.”

“It is?” Adam’s face lit up and he ran over and snatched the receiver from Sam. “Hi Dad!...Where are you?...Oh...uh huh....yeah...it was good...no, no one made cake...yes sir....yes sir...okay...I miss you Dad...when are you coming back?...Oh...okay...yes sir...he’s here...okay...yes sir...bye Daddy.”

Adam had gone through such a wide range of emotions while he was on the phone that it was impossible to tell what they’d talked about. He’d been happy, excited, quiet, and now bordered on morose as he held the receiver out to Dean.

“He wants to talk to you Dean.”

Sam watched as Dean went white as a sheet and hesitated a moment before coming over to take the phone from his brother. He wiped his hands on his pants before he did so, as if his palms were sweaty or something, but that couldn’t be the case because nothing made Dean sweat. He was the bravest kid Sam knew. Still, he thought he saw Dean’s hand tremble when he took the receiver.

“Hey Dad....I’m okay...Yeah, Adam’s okay...no, they split us up...Good, gotta repeat fourth grade though...Yeah...yeah...hey, Dad?...When are you coming to get us?” Dean’s grip on the phone suddenly tightened, and he turned his back fully to the two younger boys, glancing back over his shoulder at them as he lowered his voice. “What do you mean? Why?...But...but Dad...Dad, I said I was sorry...Dad...Dad! I’m sorry about what happened in Wisconsin, okay?...No I know I shouldn’t have gone out...Dad, I can keep Adam safe!...No, Dad, I _can_!...Well then can’t we go to Uncle Bobby’s?...Dad, I want to be with you...you shouldn’t be alone...You _can_ trust me!...Dad, I promise...Well can you come for Thanksgiving at least?...What about Christmas?...I know how the job is but...Dad, we’re...Can’t you at least take us to Uncle Bobby’s for Christmas?...Then what about Pastor Jim?...Well they’re only far away because you’ve got us in this stupid school on the East Coast!...Dad, I’m _sorry_ , please don’t leave us here!... _Dad_!...Okay...yes sir...yes sir...okay...I’ll tell him...okay...Bye Dad.”

Dean carefully and deliberately returned the receiver to its cradle, his back still to Sam and Adam. Sam didn’t know why he’d assumed Dean never cried, but it genuinely shocked him when he heard Dean’s voice break when he asked if they could go to their Uncle’s for Christmas. He refused to turn to them until his shoulders had stopped shaking and he was no longer sniffling, then wiped his eyes on the sleeve of his shirt and scrubbed at his face with his hands before he’d look at them.

He looked so sad. Sam immediately wanted to hug him, but knew that might be weird. Besides, Adam was right there and he was already walking over to wrap his arms around Dean’s middle.

“Sorry to ruin your birthday, Runt.” His voice was hoarse as he caressed Adam’s hair. “Dad thinks we should...uh...stay here where it’s safe, and where we can...learn to listen better.”

“At least he ‘membered,” Adam said, his voice muffled into Dean’s chest.

“Yeah,” Dean laughed ruefully. “Yeah, he did. So, uh...I’m gonna go brush my teeth and go to bed.”

“You can stay here tonight if you want,” Sam offered. Dean’s roommate was a kid named Gordon Walker, and he was a real jerk who had given Dean the split lip that first night after some stupid argument about vampires. Sam wasn’t sure it would be a good idea for Dean to go back to his own room when he was clearly upset and vulnerable. “We got room.”

“Nah,” Dean said, pressing his palms to his eyes again as a sob caught in his throat. When he took his hands away his big green eyes were watery. “It’s fine. I’ll see you guys tomorrow, okay?”

He dislodged himself from his younger brother, gave them both a nod, and left the room. It was clear he was crying again before he made it out the door, but he stubbornly refused to turn back. Sam had no idea what to say or do to make his friends feel better, so he just didn’t say anything. Adam walked quietly to his bed to sit and stare out the window. Autumn was coming on and the leaves were starting to turn. The air always looked different to Sam this time of year - like the sky was thinner or something. His grandpa had said something about the “veil between the worlds thinning” once right before he dropped Sam off at the academy, and how this was the time when restless and vengeful spirits were most likely to begin causing mischief, but this was the first year that Sam had understood what he was talking about. It seemed to cast everything in a blue-white hue, including Adam, who stayed still for a few more moments.

“Today’s your birthday?” Sam finally asked.

“Yeah,” Adam replied at length. “I’m four now.”

“That why your dad called?”

“Uh huh.”

“Did he sing you Happy Birthday?”

“He doesn’t do that kind of stuff.”

“Oh.”

“You’re lucky your dad is dead. I wish mine was.”

They didn’t talk the rest of the night.

Dean was different after the phone call from his father. He’d always had a kind of bravado, a confidence that he was the most interesting person in the room and everyone was looking at him. Once he’d spoken to his dad he was more reserved and serious, and buckled down on his school work in a way his teachers hadn’t thought possible. Sam had been confused at Dean’s total lack of interest in his homework and classes the first month they were there. Dean was obviously really smart, but it was like he couldn’t be bothered to learn anything the academy wanted to teach him. Now he finished assignments religiously before agreeing to do anything fun at night, though he still complained about how stupid the classes were. He also trained in the workout room even more than he had before, paying serious attention in his combat and basic weaponry courses rather than acting like they were beneath him.

The holidays were a little better. John didn’t come and get them for Thanksgiving or Christmas break, there were only a handful of kids left at the school, most of them Sam’s asshole cousins, and there were no classes or training sessions so Dean relaxed a little. He couldn’t unwind totally, however, because the reality that John wasn’t coming to even visit him and Adam hung heavily in the air. Sam promised the two boys that it would get easier. This was his third holiday season without anyone caring to come get him, and he was starting to train himself not to foolishly want to go somewhere and eat turkey or wait for Santa. They watched _It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!_ , _Frosty the Snowman_ , _Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer_ , _The Year Without Santa Claus_ , and every other Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas special that came on TV. They stayed up too late and sat around in their pajamas, and when the big box of presents arrived from Sam’s grandfather on Christmas Eve, Sam carefully pulled back the wrapping paper on every one of them until he found a My Pet Monster and _Real Ghostbusters_ firehouse he could give to Adam and an Optimus Prime and Megatron he could give to Dean. Sam still had plenty of stuff - new clothes, new videos, new games for his NES, a chemistry set - so it was okay. He had enough stuff to overcompensate for Samuel’s lack of affection already. A few more toys were only going to make the effort seem more inadequate.

Christmas through New Year’s was awesome, due in no small part to Sam’s gifts. Based on the reaction he got from the Winchesters, he’d have been willing to bet this was the first time Adam had ever gotten Christmas presents and the first time in years that Dean had. Adam even declared it the “Best Christmas ever!”, which was saying something since both boys had been so sad about their father not even swinging by the school. Everything looked like it was getting better and the boys were settling in, until Dean got really quiet, withdrawn, and angry towards the end of January. Adam told Sam that Dean’s birthday had come and gone and their dad hadn’t called, and for the first time in his life Sam thought it might actually be better to have a _dead_ dad than a _deadbeat_ dad. Based on how often Dean showed up for breakfast with a black eye it was clear he and Gordon were still butting heads, and he was frequently getting hauled into the principal’s office for fighting with fifth graders, which threatened to undo all the progress he’d made.

Adam was starting to get really concerned that they’d kick Dean out of school if he couldn’t get his act together, so when Sam’s grandfather called in early March to ask what Sam wanted for his birthday, Sam told him he wanted Dean to move into his room. Samuel balked at the idea, but Sam drove a hard bargain. If Samuel didn’t want his grandson to start acting out in class, skipping assignments, and getting himself dragged to the principal’s office, he’d make sure Dean got moved into his room. Eventually Samuel caved, but only for the remainder of the school year. Sam was fine with that, as long as his grandpa fixed it so Dean and Adam could room together from next year on. That was a pretty easy sell, and for the first time in years Sam was excited about what he was getting for his birthday.

Dean was almost as hard to convince to move into Sam’s room as Samuel had been. For one thing, Dean didn’t like the idea of sleeping on the floor, which Sam thought was silly because obviously Dean and Adam could share the double bed and Sam would take Adam’s twin. That didn’t really make Dean feel better, since he figured that would just get Adam teased, but Adam turned on what could only be described as puppy dog eyes and the eldest Winchester brother finally went and got his stuff.

Rooming with Sam and Adam did wonders for getting Dean out of the doldrums, and by the end of the school year he’d caught up to where he should be and was on track to skip fifth grade and go directly to sixth if he enrolled in the summer school program, which he did. Sam was really in awe of the progress Dean made, though he missed how devil-may-care he was when they first met. Dean reminded him of Errol Flynn from _The Adventures of Robin Hood_ , which Sam had caught on television one Saturday afternoon when he was five and immediately became obsessed with. If Adam and Dean had been around then they could have had all kinds of quarterstaff battles and sword fights on the playground, pretending to swing from the jungle gym like the Merry Men in the trees when they captured Sir Guy of Gisborne. Dean would have had fun with that when he first got there. Now Sam wasn’t so sure he’d see the point of having fun.

Summer breaks at Actaeon for the kids who stayed year round involved a lot of special activities and field trips, and they helped distract Adam from the fact that his brother was knee deep in books and training exercises most of the time and wasn’t really around much except for breakfast, dinner, and the time before bed. Dean didn’t talk too much about what he was learning in class, except to say it was a lot of math, English, history, and lore, and that he only really saw the point in learning the lore but it was still super boring. Adam didn’t know what Dean meant by “lore,” which was somehow the first time Sam realized that Adam didn’t know what Actaeon was. He really seemed to think it was just a boarding school their dad sent them to. Dean, by contrast, appeared to have known about all the terrible things lurking in the dark for a very long time, and was trying to keep his younger brother innocent as long as he could. Sam deeply admired the impulse, even if he wasn’t sure it was going to help Adam in the long run. After all, this was an academy to train hunters who would eventually work for the government. Not cluing Adam in on the “joke” was just setting him up for more ridicule farther down the line.

He said as much to Dean one night when neither were able to sleep, while Adam, who was going through a growth spurt, snored quietly beside his older brother in the double bed. Sam loved having both Winchesters rooming with him, but the start of school was coming up and the renovations to the east wing were almost complete. Adam wasn’t going to be his roommate much longer, and he wasn’t entirely convinced that either boy would stay friends with him if they didn’t have to.

“Quit thinkin’ so loud Sammy,” Dean mumbled without malice. “I’m tryin’ to sleep over here.”

“Sorry,” Sam said, though he could do nothing to stop the thoughts running through his head.

Dean was quiet for a minute before he spoke again.

“So what are you thinkin’ so loud about anyway?”

Sam shrugged under the sheet.

“Stuff.”

“Like…?”

“Well…” He sighed, exasperated. He didn’t get to talk to Dean one-on-one much, but he loved doing so when he could. And he didn’t know why he loved doing so, which made him feel like a weirdo. “They’re gonna be done with the east wing soon.”

“Yeah?”

Sam heard Dean turn on his side to look across the room. It was the end of July and even though Sam’s grandfather had paid to have a window air conditioning unit installed in his room, it wasn’t doing a whole lot to help in the heat. As a result, Dean was sleeping in just his pajama bottoms, and when Sam turned to look back at him the moonlight had fallen across his face and bare chest. He was beautiful. Sam suddenly felt very dirty, like the time he’d accidentally walked in on Gwen in her underwear, and looked away.

“Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “They’re probably gonna move Adam out of my room this year. I talked to my grandpa about makin’ sure he gets to room with you but...well…”

“What?” Dean chortled. “You gonna miss us?”

“Yeah, I am.” Sam was looking at Dean again. Crap. He’d meant to play that cool, but it had come out all earnest and sincere. “I just...kinda got used to havin’ you both around.”

“Well it ain’t like we’re goin’ anywhere ‘cept another part of the school. An’ I don’t think Dad’s gonna pull us out this year. He hasn’t even called us since June.”

“That’s good,” Sam said a little too quickly. Dean furrowed his brow, and Sam did his best to recover. “I mean...Adam doesn’t even know what this place _is_ yet. He still thinks the Easter Bunny is real and werewolves aren’t. Why haven’t you told him? That it’s all real? Why hasn’t your dad? He’s a hunter, isn’t he? I mean, when you first got here I thought maybe he was the president, but...he’s a hunter, right?”

Dean looked very serious, and replied quietly, “Yeah, yeah he is.”

“So why not tell Adam how things are? He’s just gonna get picked on even more next year if he still doesn’t know.”

“I dunno Sam…” Dean chewed his lower lip. “I just...my mom...somethin’ bad happened to her when I was four, and Dad...it was just the two of us after, you know? And he was upfront with me about it, wanted me to be prepared and all that but Adam...Dad just kind of took him because he could, and nothin’ bad had happened to his mom, I think Dad just...wanted to have him in our family and I feel kinda like... _I_ have to know, but Adam doesn’t? I kinda just want him to be a kid as long as he can here.”

“No one here’s a kid, Dean,” Sam said softly, and Dean nodded.

“I know, I just...I just want him to believe in Santa Claus instead of wendigos.”

“Yeah. I understand. I won’t say anything.”

“Thanks Sam.” Dean shot him a smile, a genuine one, which was something that Sam had learned was a rare thing. Sam’s heart did a little flip. “And as for us not bein’ friends with you anymore when Adam moves out, that’s just dumb. You ain’t gettin’ rid of us that easy.”

He winked at Sam, then turned over with a “‘Night Sammy” and went to sleep. Sam stayed awake for a long time afterwards though, listening to Dean breathe and watching the moonlight play across his hair. Hearing Dean say they were going to stay friends, no matter what happened, made him feel better about himself and his place in the world than he had in a very long time.


	7. Walk it Off

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone's gotta grow up sometime. Also Benny makes his first appearance.

Unfortunately what happened was the onset of puberty, and it happened to Dean a whole lifetime before it happened to Sam.

All through the second year Adam and Dean were at Actaeon they stayed friends with Sam just like they said they would. Even though they had a room in the newly renovated wing, which felt like they’d moved to a different state, the Winchester boys were hanging out in Sam’s room more often than not. Then Dean turned twelve and entered junior high the following autumn, and _everyone_ began to take second and third looks at him. Boys, girls, it didn’t matter - everyone wanted in on Dean’s dance card, and Sam suddenly felt like if he wanted to stay in Dean’s orbit he was going to have to compete very hard with everyone in grades five to nine.

Dean still made an effort to hang out with Sam and Adam, but it became increasingly obvious that the differences between a twelve year old and an eight year old made maintaining the friendship as it had been a real struggle. And that wasn’t anyone’s fault, that was just reality. Seventh grade was where they really started in hard with the hunter training, and core classes in regular schools fell into the “elective” category. Most kids still took things like English, math, civics, etc., but only so they could pass in society and not because they felt it was really going to be useful. This was exactly the opposite of the way classes ran in the lower grades, and it just kind of happened that Dean seemed to drift away.

On top of that, their dad started showing up at the school again. He still never came at the holidays, and half of the time he forgot one or both of the boys’ birthdays and called them late, but the summer after Dean turned twelve John had clearly decided he was old enough to be on the road again. He showed up about a week after school ended, picked Dean up, and was gone with him until a few days before school started. Adam got left behind of course, and was not at all happy about it, but Dean said that Dad didn’t want him getting rusty, which seemed ridiculous to Sam as the whole _point_ of Actaeon was to raise kids to be sharp on a hunt. Regardless of how stupid it was, John established a pattern that year of taking Dean away every summer right up until Dean left the school for good.

Dean drifted further away when he entered high school and Benny Lafitte showed up. Lafitte was a junior, and Dean was assigned as his “second.” This was standard procedure in the high school, in order to teach all the students how to work closely with another hunter once they graduated. It was so people like Gordon Walker learned to play nice with others, as there were going to be hunts one person couldn’t handle alone and Actaeon’s main goal was to send forth hunters who weren’t immediately going to get themselves killed. As a result, all freshmen were teamed with a junior and went through all field training until the end of sophomore year, when the junior had gone through their senior year and graduated and the sophomore had advanced to being a junior and got their own freshman as a second. It helped networking among hunters post-graduation as well, which in turn helped with the “not graduating kids who were just going to die” goal. Some duos hated each other and suffered through the two-year forced relationship, but not Benny and Dean. While it took a while for Dean to warm to the idea that he was being forced to work with someone not named “Winchester,” once he did warm to Benny it was like they’d been built to hunt together.

Benny Lafitte had presented as an alpha right on his sixteenth birthday, and had seemed to sprout overnight from a pale, slender kid with a warm Cajun drawl into a full fledged man with a thick neck, broad shoulders, and a barrel chest. His combination of creamy skin, sky blue eyes, dark hair, and neatly trimmed beard that apparently took zero effort to grow and maintain were exactly what came to mind when someone said, “He’s an alpha.” And that’s just what he looked like at sixteen. Alphas always grew into their designation, so he was only going to get bigger and stronger as he got older. He was also one of the best fighters in the school. He excelled at hand-to-hand combat and bladework, had mastered firearms and was currently working with crossbows and longbows. Dean was naturally very athletic and had always excelled in the physical training the school provided. Being paired with Benny brought Dean’s skills up to nearly an artform. The two of them won every intra- and inter-school competition between the hunting academies until they were national champions, setting multiple records that were going to be damned hard to beat.

Sam couldn’t stand Benny. Maybe it was stupid, but he knew that a scrawny ten year old kid like him was never going to be able to compete with someone who, on top of all his other awesome qualities, could legally drive. What’s more, Benny seemed to really like Dean, seemed to see beyond the glamor that left the other kids at the school interested in him only on a primal level, and knew who Dean really was. As for Dean, he genuinely enjoyed Benny’s company and trusted him in a way Sam had never seen outside of Dean’s relationship with Adam. That just made the whole thing worse. If Sam were really Dean’s friend, he would have been happy that Dean seemed to have found someone his own age that he could put his faith in, rather than always having to hang out with kids in middle school. Instead, Sam was wildly jealous of how close Dean and Benny were, and subconsciously started counting the days until Benny graduated in a couple of years and was out of the picture.

Then of course a couple of weeks after he turned sixteen Dean had presented as an omega to everyone’s shock, and before Sam was even able to process what had happened Dean was locked in quarantine in the Nurse’s office and Adam was beside himself. The admissions office had instructed him to pack Dean’s belongings so that their father could retrieve him once he had been reached, but Adam wasn’t allowed to see him. For his own safety, Dean would be staying in quarantine for the duration of his heat and however long it took after that for John to come.

It had only taken a couple of days before Gordon started spouting off about how he’d always known there was something “wrong” with Dean, and since Gordon was at the top of the junior class the underclassmen paid attention. Soon others were starting to sneer about how obvious it should have been, that Dean was just too pretty to be an alpha, and damn what they wouldn’t give to knot that ass. Benny got into a lot of fights that week, which just made Sam hate him even more; first, because Benny was big enough to fight the kids making those kinds of comments while Sam wasn’t, and second, because obviously Benny was going to claim Dean as soon as he got out of quarantine. It was only a few months until Benny graduated, and the school had apartments - albeit limited in number - for seniors who had claimed a mate over one of the breaks. It was rare, but it did happen. Benny could easily claim Dean and they could start a nice little family in one of the apartments and Sam would never even have a chance with Dean.

It was the very first time, at the tender age of eleven and a three quarters, that Sam understood what all of his strange, freaky feelings were: he wanted a chance with Dean.

Having no idea how to process this, Sam thought he should probably keep his distance from the object of his very immature and badly misunderstood affections. He’d only gone to the nurse about Dean once, and saw Benny was already there, shouting about how he’d been there “every day” and when were they going to let him see Dean, and turned around without even bothering to talk to anyone. He left the goodbyes up to Adam and Benny when John Winchester finally showed up two weeks later, half-hiding behind a couple of the other students at the fence to watch the proceedings while hopefully staying out of Dean’s sight. Sam heard the Impala before he saw it, and recognized the sound even though he’d only seen it a handful of times in the past six years. John pulled up to the front gate and didn’t even bother to turn off the engine and get out. He just sat there waiting for his son, the sound of the gorgeous classic car a warning to everyone pressed onto the snowy playground that they’d better not breathe wrong.

A minute or so passed until Dean came out, though it felt like much longer. He was an absolute wreck as he emerged from the front gate. His face was pale, eyes sunken, and he looked like he’d lost at least ten pounds, which he probably had. Anyone who hadn’t known what had happened would have thought he’d just gone through a severe illness, and that was pretty close to right. Sam knew enough about heats to have an idea of how intense and extended they could be if an omega didn’t have an alpha to help them out, and Actaeon’s policy for the rare occasion when a student presented as an omega absolutely forbade allowing the alpha students access to one. Actaeon Academy may have been prejudiced as shit against omegas, but that didn’t mean they would allow one to be gang raped on campus. It was about the only good thing Sam could see coming out of the whole experience, because he was about to lose Dean for good.

If anything highlighted for Sam what an awful, selfish piece of shit he was, it was his reaction to Dean getting kicked out of Actaeon. Years later he still thought back on it and hated himself. Rather than accepting he was just a kid feeling a lot of grown up feelings for the very first time and not having anyone who could help him figure them out, he thought if he’d _really_ been a friend he would have swallowed his own emotions and been there with Adam, who was clinging to Dean’s side and sobbing, and Benny, who was stoically carrying Dean’s belongings as they walked him to the car. It was a ridiculous way to feel, but Sam had never been able to shake the guilt from his behavior that day.

Besides even his freckles looking blanched, Dean was limping slightly and his eyes were red rimmed and glassy. When they stopped beside the Impala and Benny opened the back door to put in Dean’s duffels while Adam turned to bury his sobs into his brother’s chest, Sam could see the tears spilling quietly out of Dean and wanted more than anything to run out and throw his arms around the young man he’d considered one of his best friends ever just a few years ago. Maybe it was just as well that Sam wasn’t out there, because Dean was clearly trying to hold it together, and if Sam had been out there it probably would have been worse.

This comforting thought was only able to take hold for a minute or so before Dean had let Adam go so Adam could run back inside to escape the cold and turned to Benny. At which point Dean lost it. His shoulders shook, his face scrunched up, and he just sobbed brokenly. Benny pulled him into a tight hug that dwarfed the omega and held on while Dean cried and cried and cried, Benny’s face a mask of raw pain. It would have moved Sam to tears had he not been a seething ball of jealousy. Benny was saying something in a low voice, attempting to soothe Dean, who was nodding and clinging to him and trying to pull it together but couldn’t. Finally John barked, “Dean! Get in the car!” and they had to let each other go. Dean took a step back but wouldn’t lift his gaze from the ground, pressing his palms to his eyes to try to stop the tears as Benny continued to talk to him, a hand still squeezing Dean’s shoulder. Dean nodded again and drew in a shaky, choked breath.

“ _Dean_! _Car_! _Now_!”

Sam recognized the alpha command, having heard his grandfather use a voice like that more than once, and decided right then and there that he _hated_ John Winchester. His oldest son was having some sort of emotional breakdown after getting kicked out of a school where he was doing really well, and John was ordering him around like a little bitch. Dean was helpless to disobey, shot an embarrassed look at Benny and his classmates who were watching, and climbed quickly and quietly into the front seat, still trying to rub the tears from his eyes.

“Damn,” a voice said behind him, a voice Sam recognized; Gordon. He clenched his fists as John drove away, waiting to hear the rest of whatever shit Gordon was about to spew. “Too bad Winchester couldn’t stick around. That trick would’ve come in handy.”

A bunch of the older kids who had presented, including Mark and Christian Campbell, laughed at the idea of all the things they could have made Dean do by using their alpha voice, and Sam just couldn’t take it. He turned around and launched himself though the crowd at Gordon, getting in a surprise hit that almost laid Gordon out flat before Gordon was able to recover himself and return the favor. Samuel would be very upset to hear that Sam had been involved in a fight at the school, given how badly that would reflect on the family name, but maybe Sam could turn that around and talk his grandfather into getting Gordon kicked out of school. The guy was an obsessive asshole and definitely deserved it.

By the time the teachers stopped the fight Sam’s jaw was broken and both his eyes were swollen shut, and Sam wasn’t even going to need to talk to his grandfather - there was no way Gordon wasn’t getting expelled after beating up a kid five years younger. It wouldn’t even matter that Sam threw the first punch. Gordon was way beyond self defense and exhibiting the kind of lack of self control that got people killed out in the real world. Actaeon was not going to want him as an alumni. It made the eight weeks Sam spent with his jaw wired shut completely worth it.

Sam worried about his friendship with Adam falling apart after Dean left, mostly because Adam took it very hard and pretty much stopped talking to everyone, Sam included. He was ten now, and had never been without Dean outside of the last four summers. Fortunately Dean called him every week to check up on him, and swung by on Adam’s birthday ( _those glimpses of him never long enough for Sam_ ), and the new kid they roomed with Adam was really sweet. His name was Garth Fitzgerald IV, and he was scrawny with a big nose and an “aw, shucks” way about him, but admissions seemed to have put a lot of thought into pairing him up with Adam because he had the exact kind of gentle, considerate nature the younger Winchester brother really needed to draw him back out. Sam couldn’t imagine Garth actually making it as a hunter, but he’d probably be really good at research, and he’d probably get kicked out on his ass the minute he presented as a beta ( _there were bets on how long after his sixteenth birthday that would take_ ). Why they let him in in the first place no one could quite figure out; he wasn’t like Dean, whose father was a dominant alpha, making it seem logical to expect that Dean would be too, but Sam was glad they did because he really did help lift Adam’s spirits.

As if on cue, Garth presented as a beta the day after his birthday and did end up getting booted from the school. Even though Garth had always been a bit soft compared to the other kids, he’d really grown on Sam. It hit Adam very hard when Garth was shown the door, reminding him a lot of what had happened to Dean, and he was irate that Actaeon had let him stay just three months prior when he’d presented as a beta but wouldn’t make the same exception for Garth. The whole thing with Garth made it hard for Sam to play dumb about asking his grandfather to write a check to the admissions office to let Adam finish his education at Actaeon after Adam presented. Adam and Sam were by that time paired up for combat training the way Dean and Benny had been, and Sam hated lying to him when they were supposed to be a team.

Adam had raged against the entire system and considered just leaving to go hunt with Dean and his dad ( _Sam had nearly fallen over to find out that John still had Dean hunting with him - Dean was always alone on his annual visits to the school_ ), but in the end realized he needed a diploma from somewhere if he wanted to get into college, which he did. Sam might have pushed Adam a little not to throw his education away because they shared the same desire to go to college, and he might have pushed a little because he still got to know what Dean was up to, and Dean still came by on Adam’s birthday ( _he was getting taller and stronger and his scent filled Adam’s room for days afterward_ ). He’d even shown up to take Adam hunting for the two summers before he presented, after which John clearly saw no point in Dean going to get his brother anymore. Even if Sam and Dean weren’t ever going to be in each other’s lives in a meaningful way again, that was okay. Sam had by that point spent so many years with Dean as a fantasy that the older Winchester brother could never possibly hold up in reality. Besides, Sam was going to go to Stanford for pre-law just to spite his grandfather so they’d be traveling in completely different worlds. Better to just keep Dean a beautiful if painful memory and move on with his life.

At least, that’s how Sam felt until he decided to throw Adam a graduation party at Grandpa’s Louisiana mansion. It was one of Samuel’s prized pieces of property, one he rarely visited, that he’d bought years ago just so he could say it was his. Mark, Christian, and Tyler used it for throwing parties all the time. Even Johnny and Gwen felt free to ask for the place if they wanted to get a bunch of hunters together for an orgy or whatever that branch of the family did ( _Sam didn’t know, nor did he care_ ); so Sam didn’t even hesitate to tell his grandfather he needed the place for the weekend. He’d dropped out of Stanford a few months prior to return to hunting after something had burned his girlfriend, Jess, to death on the ceiling of her dorm room. They’d only been together about a year, but her family knew who his grandfather was and where he worked, and he’d promised her parents he’d find out what had killed her and return the favor.

Anyway, that left Sam completely available and willing to host Adam’s graduation party when he found out that Adam’s dad hadn’t even made it to commencement, and hadn’t said anything at all about celebrating the event. Adam said more than once that his dad had kind of written him off once he presented as a beta, which was going to make it easier to go to college instead of joining the family business of saving people and hunting things, but left him worried that he was going to lose touch with Dean. He was upfront about wanting to get Dean away from their dad, but because hunting took them around the country he didn’t have much time to actually talk to Dean about it privately. So when Sam told Adam he was getting a party, no ifs, ands, or buts, making sure Dean got invited had seemed the obvious thing to do.

It was a huge mistake. Sam knew that the minute Dean arrived on the property at little after ten at night, pulling up in a two-tone 1969 Buick Special that had seen better days. Sam smelled him through the open car windows before he saw him - his scent a mixture of cherry pie, roses, coffee, and cloves - and immediately wanted to run. His mind flashed back to the days before Dean presented, when Sam kept thinking Dean smelled like honey but dismissed it because that was silly. Now here he was, hosting a party with thirty or so of his and Adam’s classmates, and he was glued to the top step of the veranda as Adam shouted, “Dean!” and ran down to practically tackle his brother as he emerged from the car with his duffel.

The years had been kind to Dean. He was twenty-four now and stunning. His bravado had returned, though somehow it seemed forced, but the smile he gave when Adam launched himself off the steps was genuine and made him look about ten years old again. He was still growing into his omega looks, which meant he was going to end up even more beautiful than he was in his ripped jeans and Led Zeppelin tee shirt, and Sam didn’t think that was possible. His hair was longer than Sam had ever see it - not quite the shaggy length that Sam liked his hair, but still, longer - and looked to have been bleached slightly, probably by the sun, since Dean’s flawless skin was sporting a healthy, glowing tan. As Adam enveloped him in a bear hug the duffel pulled against Dean’s tee shirt and showed the long expanse of his unmarked neck.

Intellectually Sam had known he wouldn’t see anything there. Adam would have mentioned if Dean had found a mate. But somehow seeing his perfect neck in person made it real.

Dean was _still_ unclaimed after eight years.

Sam’s mouth went dry. He couldn’t speak. The year and a half he’d had in college had done a lot for his social skills and self confidence, even with Jess’ horrible death, but now in Dean’s presence he felt awkward and gangly and every bit just a twenty year old kid who shouldn’t even be on the same planet with Dean Winchester. Hell, Dean was probably the only person at the party who could even legally drink. _Why_ had he been so gung-ho on making sure Adam invited his brother?

“Congrats Runt! You’re finally free!”

“I was starting to think you weren’t going to make it.”

“Me, miss a chance to hang out with you and a couple dozen alphas? Why would I skip _that_?”

“Jerk.”

“Bitch.”

“Where’s the Impala?”

“Dad wouldn’t let me bring her. Bobby loaned me this piece of crap. She’s ugly but she’s reliable.”

“Hey,” Sam said with a lame wave from where he stood rooted to the veranda.

Dean looked up and spotted Sam, and was quiet for a minute. He took a very subtle sniff of the air and looked perplexed, like he was trying to work something out. God, Sam wanted to be _anywhere_ else. Inside the house, the bottom of the ocean, Mars - anywhere would have been better than here, being scrutinized by the gorgeous omega who had just showed up in his grandfather’s driveway. The gorgeous omega who also happened to be his best friend’s brother.

Then, at last, Dean said uncertainly, “Sam…?”

“Yeah,” Sam replied, laughing self consciously. “Yeah. Hey Dean.”

“Hey.” Dean approached the veranda cautiously, his eyes inscrutable. Sam tried to smile but it felt as forced as it looked. Dean continued to stare and then nodded. “Well. You got big.”

“Yeah.” Sam’s voice cracked. His voice fucking _cracked_ ( _Lord, take me now_ ). He nodded dumbly as if trying to reinforce that it was, in fact, him. “The alpha hormones do that.”

Shit. That was clearly the wrong thing to say based on the way Dean’s eyes flashed at him. Not a happy, flirty, “My god, Sam grew up all big and strong and I just want to jump his bones” way, but more of a “I am intimately aware of what alpha hormones do to people” way. Shit, shit, shit.

“I don’t know if you have a hotel nearby or something,” he said quickly, trying to save the situation, “but I told Adam that you could both stay over after the party if you want. I’m sure a lot of people are going to crash here anyway and this place has something like fifteen bedrooms.”

“Fifteen bedrooms?” Dean quirked an eyebrow. “Wow. Your grandpa really _is_ rich, isn’t he Sammy?”

“My grandfather is excessive.” That came out a lot more bitter sounding than he meant. Goddammit it, why couldn’t he just _talk_ to Dean like a normal person? “Anyway, come on in, most everyone is out back by the pool.”

“A pool! And me without my trunks. Too bad you invited so many people Sam, we coulda gone skinny dipping.”

Dean had come right up to Sam with a wide grin on his face, but it faded at Sam’s look of horror. Not that Sam meant to look horrified, he had just been preoccupied with forcing his dick to behave since Dean got out of that ugly ass car and if he didn’t get away from Adam’s brother right now something _very_ embarrassing was going to happen. The color drained from Dean’s face and the smile vanished instantly. He looked like he’d been slapped. He stared at Sam for a few seconds longer, and Sam could have sworn he saw hurt flash through the jade green of Dean’s eyes, but Dean had clearly learned to suppress his emotions so his scent wouldn’t give away every little thing he was feeling. Adam, oblivious to the two of them, grabbed Dean’s duffel and said, “Come on, there’s a room upstairs with two twins. I snagged it for us.”

Dean’s eyes finally left Sam’s face and he forced the smile to return as he followed Adam inside.

“Good call, Runt. I’m always into twins!”

“God. Not _everything_ is about sex, Dean.”

“Of _course_ everything is about sex! How are we even related?”

It wasn’t until their voices died away as they went upstairs that Sam felt safe to release the breath he had been holding. He’d been so terrified of making a stupid comment he thought it was safer to just keep everything in, and as he finally exhaled he felt lightheaded. When he inhaled again Dean’s scent hit him like a tsunami and he blushed before hurrying off to one of the bathrooms. He was going to need to take care of the massive erection he had sprouted before anyone spotted his tented shorts. How the hell was he going to survive the night with Dean under the same roof?


	8. He Looked at Me Different

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Remember how much you've heard about Adam's graduation party? Here we go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My apologies in advance. I have a couple of super tight deadlines at work so this is probably the last chapter I'm going to be able to post before the end of the week, but now that Sam and Dean are back in the same building I didn't want to wait with this one.

By the time Sam got his situation taken care of, Dean and Adam had taken up a pair of chaise lounges poolside, and Dean was cracking open his second beer. He had a plate of food piled high from the catered buffet Sam had arranged, and was watching the partygoers laugh and dance and mess around in the pool. Every now and then someone would glance in Dean’s direction, but for the most part they were all being respectful. That allowed Sam to relax a little and made it easier to remember to breathe, and when he did so he realized why everyone was mostly ignoring an omega in the middle of a giant group of alphas. The chlorine from the pool was so strong it was diluting everyone’s scent, and with so many people poolside it was almost impossible to pick Dean out of the mix. Sam noticed the chaise on Adam’s other side was free, grabbed a beer from one of the coolers, and made a beeline for it as casually as he could.

“...your nursing degree you’ll be able to patch me up after a hunt,” Dean was saying, taking a pull from the bottle in his hand. “Guess you going to college isn’t such a waste after all.”

“No it isn’t, Dean,” Adam said evenly, though his tone held a warning.

“I’m just teasing, Runt.” Dean gave him a shove. “You’re gonna have to re-learn all my Dean-isms.”

“That’d be easy to do if you got out of the life and came to North Carolina with me.”

“Adam…”

“I’m serious, Dean. I know how Dad feels about you. You’d be better off with me.”

“What, so _you_ can turn into my bodyguard? Save me from all the assholes out there? No thanks, I can handle myself.” Dean took another swig, a long one, and cast a sideways glance at Sam. “Hey Sam. Startin’ to think you got lost.”

“No,” Sam said, trying not to blush. “Had to take a call from my grandfather.”

Dean snorted, choking on his beer.

“God Sammy,” he said as he recovered. “You’re a terrible liar. It’s okay to admit you can’t stand the way I smell. I won’t hold it against you.”

Now Sam really blushed.

“That’s not…” he started, but Adam held up a hand for him to stop.

“Never mind, Sam,” Adam told him quietly.

“Anyway,” Dean piped up, “I’m glad at least something good came out of me getting us tossed into that place. You’re gonna make a great nurse, Adam. I really mean that. Really.”

“Thanks Dean.” They were quiet for a minute, listening to the opening guitar riff of _Ziggy Stardust_ , before Adam’s brow furrowed and he turned to his brother. “What do you mean you got us tossed into Actaeon?”

A hint of pink rose to Dean’s cheeks, and Sam felt suddenly like an intruder on something very private between the Winchesters, but he’d be damned if he was going to get up off the chaise when Dean looked so perfect and was only about four feet away. Dean pounded the rest of his beer and announced, “I’m empty. Want another Adam?”

“I haven’t even finished this one,” Adam said, wagging his half full bottle at his older brother. “You’re gonna end up getting drunk.”

“Yeah, probably. But I got you as a roomie again so I know I’m safe.” Dean may have smiled, but it didn’t belie how serious he was about feeling safe with his younger brother. “I’ll be right back. Maybe if Sam’s feelin’ really generous he’ll tell us where his gramps keeps the good stuff.”

“Not happening,” Sam replied with a smile, and Dean waved him off as he headed back towards the cooler.

“He’s always snippy like this when he’s been with Dad for too long,” Adam said quietly. “And he drinks too much. He drank himself to sleep almost every day for those two summers he came to get me. Dad makes him feel like such a worthless piece of shit.”

“Why does he stay?” Sam asked, even as he knew he shouldn’t pry. It made him too angry to think of anyone making Dean feel worthless for him not to ask.

“He doesn’t want Dad to be alone,” Adam replied, watching as Dean lingered by the cooler, pretending to assess the different beer choices. It was clear he was simply stalling before rejoining Sam and his brother. “Whatever happened to his mom...I dunno, he’s always felt like he needs to follow Dad around like a good little soldier. I think he’s scared that if they aren’t together Dad will end up dead, too.”

“That doesn’t scare _you_?” Sam said, shocked.

Adam shrugged.

“I barely know the guy. I was...what...four when he dropped us off? And all those summers he took Dean but never came back to get me? I didn’t even know what he _did_ until I found out what Actaeon was for. I only had those two summers hunting with him because Dean talked him into it, then he had the two of us on simple jobs while he was off on real hunts. I think we had all of five conversations. He’s not a dad. He’s just this disembodied voice on the other end of a phone who calls to say happy birthday once a year.”

It was Sam’s turn to shrug. That seemed more than fair. He felt that way about his own grandfather. It was certainly a valid way for both of them to feel after spending their whole lives at a boarding school with more interaction with the teachers than their own family. He shouldn’t have been surprised that Adam felt no attachment to his father, it just seemed weird to see it juxtaposed with Dean’s unwavering loyalty.

“What are you guys talkin’ about?” Dean asked, having returned and already started in on his third beer. “The best styles for braiding each other’s hair?”

Sam found himself laughing. Now that he wasn’t overwhelmed by Dean’s amazing scent sending his hormones wild he could relax around him. It felt good.

“You’re one to talk.” He took a drink. “I haven’t seen your hair this long since the day your dad dropped you off.”

“Yeah, well…” Dean shrugged and sipped. “Tryin’ somethin’ new. Not sure I like it, too much hair to pull, you know?”

So much for relaxing. The innocent statement sent a jolt straight down to Sam’s stomach, and he looked at his feet as he again found himself struggling to control the noncompliant organ between his legs. Dean took it the wrong way, of course, and looked away as he cleared his throat, which struck Sam as funny ( _sad, not ha-ha_ ). It was a good thing he would probably never see Dean again, because the way Sam was fucking this up Dean would never want to talk to him anyway.

“Speaking of the day Dad dropped us off…” How could Adam possibly be oblivious to what was happening? Oh, right. He was a beta. Stressed omega and irritated alpha scents went right past him. He stood up as Dean set his beer on the table next to his chaise. “What do you mean you got us tossed in…”

“You want me to toss you in?” Dean exclaimed, suddenly mischievous. “Okay!”

And he grabbed his brother and flung them both into the pool with a huge splash that soaked Sam’s shoes all the way back where he was sitting. There were a bunch of startled screams and gasps from the people in the pool and right around the perimeter, but it all turned to laughter when Dean and Adam popped back up through the surface and started splashing like they were kids again. After a couple of minutes of quasi-wrestling in the shallow end ( _Dean won_ ), Adam called out, “Come on in, Sam!”

“Thanks,” Sam shouted back, raising up his beer, “but I’m good!”

“Wuss!” Adam replied with a laugh, and he and Dean went back to wrestling.

The truth was that Sam really wanted to jump in the pool with them and just relax and be a young man hanging out with his best friend and his best friend’s brother, but the way Dean looked with his shirt plastered to his chest and his uncharacteristically long hair hanging down over his forehead was too much. He was just too _much_ beauty and charm and everything Sam had ever imagined he’d be. Sam could feel his heart pounding and hear the blood rushing through his ears, and there was no way he could join them when his alpha was shrieking out “ _mate._ ” Adam and Dean stayed in for a while with Sam just watching them, laughing from the safety of his chaise, and by the time they finally climbed out Sam was halfway through his second beer.

The two dripped their way over to their seats like a pair of wet cats, Adam’s white tee shirt translucent and Dean’s soaked jeans leaving very little to the imagination, and plopped themselves down, still giggling. They both dug into Dean’s plate of food, needing to replenish a bit of energy, and an easy silence settled in while Dean started looking for the bottom of his third beer. Adam and Sam both watched him drink it way too fast for a moment, before Sam finally said, “Why _did_ your dad drop you two off at Actaeon?”

Dean drew the bottle away from his perfect lips and sat still in profile for a moment. It was clear he’d hoped they’d forgotten his comment. Sam might have been distracted away from his question by the small, enchanting frown on Dean’s face if he hadn’t caught the scent of distress flow off of him despite the chlorine on his skin, hair, and clothes. Sam’s instincts yelled at him to comfort the omega, but he fought against them to give Dean space.

God. No wonder Benny held him in a death grip when their dad picked him up all those years ago, if Dean had smelled anything like this.

“It...uh…” Dean clenched his jaw and cleared his throat. So. Whatever it was, Dean felt badly enough about it that he had to prepare himself before talking about it. Sam could smell him tamping down his emotions and wished he’d never asked the question. “We were in Fort Douglas, Wisconsin. There was this...thing. A Shtriga. I don’t know if they covered it at school, they hadn’t gotten to it by the time I...”

“They did,” Adam said. “Senior year. Albanian witch. Feeds off the ‘spirit of life.’”

“They prefer children,” Sam added, despite suddenly wanted to change the subject he’d begun. “Once they start in on a family they’ll go through all the kids.”

“Right,” Dean said. “So, Dad was hunting one of these things, had fed off of a couple dozen kids, and he...uh...he left us in this motel for a couple of days to go track it down. Left on a Wednesday, said if he wasn’t back by Sunday to call Pastor Jim.”

“I kinda remember that,” Adam said slowly. “We watched a lot of cartoons and you let me have the last of the Frosted Flakes or something?”

“Lucky Charms,” Dean corrected. “Yeah, so, Dad told me to stay inside with you, but, you know, you were a really annoying kid sometimes Adam…”

“ _What_?”

“It’s true,” Sam added, hoping to lighten the mood a little for Dean. Adam shot him a glare. “Hey, friends are supposed to be honest with one another. You were great, but sometimes you really needed to shut up about He-Man. That’s all I’m sayin’.”

Both Adam and Dean laughed at that, though Dean’s laugh was shaky and he was looking at his hands.

“Anyway, it was Saturday, and I hadn’t heard from Dad, and we’d been stuck in that motel since Wednesday, and you’d fallen asleep, and I just...I needed some air, you know? I just wanted to walk around and, I dunno, there was this video arcade attached to the motel and I figured I could just... _go there_ for maybe an hour or something and then come right back and it would be fine. Except I lost track of time, and I was gone probably more like two or three hours, and when I got back...it was in the room with you.”

Adam went very white. Clearly this was not something he remembered at all.

“Did you kill it?” he asked quietly.

“No.” Dean looked like he wanted to evaporate into nothing. “No, I uh...I grabbed the shotgun Dad left with me but I froze. God, I was so scared! And then Dad came running in and he tried to shoot it, but missed, and it went back out the window and then he just...grabbed us and booked. Dropped us off at Pastor Jim’s about three hours away, but by the time he got back to Fort Douglas the Shtriga had disappeared, it was just gone. He left us with Pastor Jim for about a week - man, I thought he was never coming back - and then he picked us up and drove us to the academy and that was it. When he called for your birthday and I asked when he was coming to get us he said he couldn’t trust me to keep you safe so uh...he was gonna leave us there until I learned how important following orders was.” He looked up at his brother and his eyes were moist. “I’m really sorry, Runt. He gave me an order and I didn’t listen. I almost got you killed.”

“You were just a kid,” Sam said softly, but Dean shook his head.

“Don’t. You and I both know hunters are never kids, Sam. Not really.”

Sam wanted to say something, _anything_ that would make Dean feel better about this, but didn’t have a chance because Adam was _pissed_.

“Are you telling me,” he said, his knuckles white as he gripped the beer bottle, “that Dad left us _alone_ in a motel room with a monster roaming around killing kids? And he didn’t come back for _days_? And then he _blamed you_ when it almost got me?”

“Adam…”

“No, Dean, I want to be sure I’m crystal clear on this. Because if that’s what he did, he’s an _asshole_. You were _ten_! I wasn’t even _four_! We were only a couple of hours from Pastor Jim’s! Why didn’t he just leave us there in the first place? What, was he using us as _bait_?!”

“Adam…”

“I bet he was. I bet that bastard was _using_ us as _bait_!” Adam stood up, his face full of rage, and downed the rest of his beer, slamming the bottle on the table. “You know what, that’s bullshit. That’s all bullshit. _Dad_ is bullshit.”

People were starting to stare, alerted by the smell of a very distressed omega that Adam of course couldn’t scent. He paced for a few seconds while Sam literally sat on his hands to keep from stroking Dean’s face and neck to calm him, then whirled on his brother with the most intent look Sam had ever seen. He was even angrier than when Garth had gotten kicked out of school, and he’d been pretty damned furious then. Adam pressed on.

“This is what’s going to happen, Dean, and I’m not going to argue about it. You don’t want to come with me to North Carolina, that’s fine. I can respect that. But you’re not hunting with Dad anymore. The two of you are done. He’s always treated you like you’re his subordinate, not his son, and I know he’s gotten worse since you presented as an om. Don’t deny it, Bobby got in touch with me after you got expelled, I _know_ what happened, what’s _been_ happening. So either you quit hunting with him on your own or so help me the _minute_ I’m done with Duke I will track you down and drag you back to Durham or wherever I end up by your _hair_. Are we clear?”

Dean had blanched, and Sam couldn’t stop himself. He scooted over to Adam’s chaise, rested a hand on Dean’s arm, and began sweeping his thumb up and down while giving him a little squeeze. Dean must not have minded because he didn’t pull away. It sickened Sam because he was too weak to keep his hands to himself and touching Dean was thrilling.

“We’re clear, Adam,” Dean said quietly, cowed.

“Good,” Adam spat, then turned to Sam. “Where _does_ your grandfather keep the good stuff?”

“It’s…” Sam had never thought a beta would make him feel so flustered and intimidated, but it was happening. He was certain that if Adam hadn’t been his closest friend he would be in full-on alpha protective mode right now from the anxiety rolling off of Dean. Instead he fumbled to his feet, sliding his hand up to Dean’s shoulder, and started fishing into his pocket. “In the library. I have the key. Come on, we’ll all go. Give the audience a chance to disperse.”

“I’ll meet you there.”

Adam snatched the key from Sam’s hand and stormed off as Dean got shakily to his feet, which had the side effect of bringing him fully into Sam’s space. The intimacy was not lost on Sam, however Dean’s whole body was trembling not just from how Adam had laid into him ( _Sam understood omegas were sensitive to that kind of thing, but it was different to actually see it happening_ ) but all the alphas who were fixated on the two of them. Some had started to casually scent the air. This could go south in a hurry if anyone wanted to be a dick.

“You okay?” he asked quietly, moving to make himself a barrier between Dean and the rest of the party.

“Fucking hormones,” Dean replied just as quietly, gently dislodging his shoulder from Sam’s hand.

Sam snorted.

“Tell me about it. Let’s go.”

Adam was already into a brand new bottle of Samuel’s good scotch by the time Dean and Sam caught up with him, which was the first time Sam realized this hadn’t been a good idea. Not necessarily because he didn’t want his friends getting into his grandfather’s liquor, but because Adam was dripping all over the Persian rug. And it wasn’t that Sam cared if the rug got ruined, he was just too fed up with his relationship with his family to deal with Samuel’s inevitable lecture about respecting the value of things. He grabbed Adam’s arm and steered both him and Dean out of the library, saying “Yeah, you guys need some dry clothes.”

Two hours later they were all sitting out by the pool again in dry wife beaters and shorts with the empty scotch bottle, Dean nursing his fifth beer of the evening, as the party really wound down. Sam had expected it to go on into the wee hours of the morning, but it _had_ started around noon the previous day. About half the party-goers had already left, and the rest were starting to disperse now. That was when the night really turned. Apparently Samuel hadn’t told Sam’s cousins that the mansion was off limits for the weekend, or if he had they didn’t care, because as people were peeling off to climb into taxis Christian, Mark, and Tyler showed up and zeroed in pretty quickly on the only omega in the place. That would have been bad enough, but the only omega in the place had not anticipated running into Sam’s knothead cousins and was extremely intoxicated. Dangerously intoxicated. As was his normally overprotective beta brother. The only one of the three who was semi-sober was Sam, since he was the host of the party and thought he probably shouldn’t get shitfaced. Still, he wasn’t functioning at one hundred percent and instantly recognized the threat his three cousins presented.

Normally Sam would have dealt with this by calmly ejecting them from the property at the end of a gun, but he had enough alcohol in his system that he wasn’t able to curb his baser impulses when he saw the way Christian looked at Dean like a starving lion who had spotted a big, juicy steak. His alpha didn’t want to kick them out. His alpha wanted to fight for dominance, preferably until his cousins were covered in their own blood. Adam had all but passed out in his lounge chair, and Dean teasing him about being a lightweight not ten minutes ago was no longer funny. Adam _was_ a lightweight and Sam had limited how many glasses he’d had, so Dean had drunk most of the bottle by himself, plus the five beers. Sam could feel his alpha rising as Christian threw him a huge smile and started over from the house, and Sam slid onto Dean’s chaise.

“Hey there Sam,” Christian called, though his eyes never left the omega. He stopped a few feet from the patio, the smirk on his face telling Sam he was more amused by Sam’s ire than threatened. “You didn’t tell us you were having a party.”

“You weren’t invited,” Sam snarled, and Dean reacted on instinct to Sam’s angry, protective scent, cuddling up against him with his nose in Sam’s neck.

“S’all right, Sammy,” he practically purred. “Don’ get upset.” He hiccuped, which would have made Sam melt any other time, but not now. “You smell so good when yer not mad.”

Sam couldn’t stop his arm from going around Dean to pull him in closer. The drive to protect him was overriding Sam’s ability to be keep his hands to himself. They ended up sandwiched together, hipbones touching and Dean turned inward so they were pressed chest to chest. Having Dean close enough to scent wasn’t doing anything to clamp down on Sam’s primal alpha need to defend him, and every fiber of Sam’s body screamed out “ _mine_ ” in response. He ran his free hand through Dean’s hair and turned his mouth to Dean’s ear so he could speak softly and still be heard.

“Not now, baby.”

 _Baby_? Had Sam’s neanderthal brain really just blurted out a _pet name_ for Dean Winchester? The only thing that saved him from complete humiliation was knowing that Dean almost certainly wasn’t going to remember this in the morning, and Sam wasn’t exactly in control of what came out of his mouth right now. His alpha was in the driver’s seat.

And the omega in Dean responded by giggling. Actually giggling against Sam’s neck. Sam desperately wanted them to be alone _right now_ , and had to make a concerted effort to keep his mouth off of Dean’s...well, everything.

“You called me baby,” Dean snorted, snuggling in even closer to Sam’s side and becoming very handsy. “Tha’s what I call my car.” He laughed brightly, ducking his head under Sam’s chin like he was trying to mold himself to Sam’s chest, then stood up abruptly. “I gotta pee.”

He staggered his way towards the house, but ran into the wall of Campbells, tripping into Christian and Mark. Sam’s eyes burned red with rage as Christian slid his arm around Dean’s back.

“Hey there, Dean,” he cooed. “Never thought we’d see you again.”

“You sure grew up nice,” Mark added, running his fingers across Dean’s jawline. He tipped Dean’s head so he could see his neck. “And still unclaimed. Now that’s practically criminal.”

Sam was about to literally tear their arms off when Dean smacked Mark’s hand away clumsily.

“Fuck off, dickwad,” he slurred. “Not interested. Never will be.”

“Let him go, Christian,” Sam growled, getting a hold of Dean’s arm.

“Sammy!” Dean extricated himself from Christian and pressed himself into Sam’s side again. “You’re still here!” He stayed there, sighing and smiling for a minute, before blinking up at Sam with wide green eyes. He looked from Sam’s eyes to his mouth and breathed heavily for a few moments, eyelashes batting, then jerked away, declaring for the second time, “I gotta pee.”

“I know, this way,” Sam murmured, shooting Christian and Mark a look that dared them to come closer as he led Dean into the house. He could feel them glaring as he practically carried Dean up the back steps and really hoped they’d try something. He was amazed at how quickly the adrenaline and alpha rage combined was sobering him up.

“Hey, Sammy?” Dean said as Sam hauled him to the upstairs bathroom. It seemed safer to get him as far away from the pool as possible, though the struggle up the stairs gave Dean plenty of time to get handsy again. God, when did Dean turn into an octopus? “Why didn’t you ‘n me stay friends?”

“Later Dean,” Sam said gently, helping him get to the toilet. “Focus on peeing, okay?”

“Okay,” Dean replied, dropping his pants unceremoniously and plopping himself down.

Thank god this was about the least romantic situation Sam could think of, otherwise he might be in real trouble being in such a confined space with a half naked Dean. Dean had a loose grip on the hem of Sam’s shorts, not letting him move farther away, and it was really all Sam could do to confine himself to stroking Dean’s face, which resulted in Dean’s eyes fluttering shut as he grinned like a kid who just got a three scoop sundae. Sam closed his eyes and took in a couple of deep breaths through his mouth so as not to become more flustered by the omega scent when Dean leaned into his touch.

“Listen,” he said, “I’m gonna go check on Adam. I want you to lock this door and don’t come out until I come back to get you, okay?”

Dean was starting to fall asleep, sitting on the toilet and leaning over onto the sink, but he snapped up when Sam spoke, which was good. Sam needed him to pay attention, because Adam was basically passed out downstairs and someone needed to make sure he wasn’t dying of alcohol poisoning. Sam couldn’t be in two places at once, and even if Dean was incredibly vulnerable at the moment he _had_ to make sure Adam was okay by himself.

“You’ll come back?”

“I’ll come back. I promise.”

Dean licked his lips lazily, nodding, and Sam really needed to get out of the bathroom.

“‘Kay.”

“I’m gonna stay outside until I hear you lock the door.”

“‘Kay.”

“Don’t open the door until I come back.”

“‘Kay.”

All right, now he was just finding reasons to stay in the bathroom caressing Dean’s face, and he _had_ to get back to Adam, but god it was hard leaving him here like this. Finally he pressed his lips to Dean’s forehead, which had Dean leaning into him again, smiling and sighing, and willed himself out of the room, closing the door behind him with a soft “click.” He stood and waited for Dean to follow and was just starting to think he’d have to go back in when he heard the toilet flush and stumbling feet come over to the door. After a couple of seconds he heard Dean messing with the doorknob, and there came a muffled, “Where’s the fuckin’ lock?”

“It’s a bolt lock,” Sam replied. “Look up.”

There was a pause, then “Oh,” and Sam heard the bolt slide into place. This was good. Dean could listen and follow instructions. He would be fine until Sam got back upstairs.

Only a handful of people were left saying goodbye to Adam by the time Sam got back to the pool. Sam suspected his cousins had taken advantage of his absence to hurry along the breaking up of festivities, the “don’t embarrass the family” mantra being part of their DNA. He was not thrilled about the idea of being alone with them; not because he was afraid of them ( _he hadn’t been since he was nine_ ), but because of what Sam might do to them if not reined in by the guests. He debated calling his grandfather, his cousin Gwen, and even the police, but they weren’t technically trespassing and they hadn’t done anything outside of being their general douchey selves. He wished that were illegal, but it wasn’t.

Christian must have scented his annoyance because he turned from watching the two female alphas hugging a staggering Adam near the deep end of the pool to smile at Sam.

“There you are, cos,” he sneered. “I was startin’ to wonder if you’d taken Dean off and claimed him! I can smell how much you want to.”

“It’s time for you to go, Christian,” Sam ordered, struggling to contain the fury that was building in him again. “You weren’t invited to this party and this isn’t your house.”

“It’s not yours either,” Tyler said from behind the two older alphas.

“Neither is Dean, apparently,” Mark bit out. “You need to learn that if you want something you should go ahead and take it, or someone else will.”

Suddenly everything Sam could see went red, something he’d never experienced before and which surely would have scared the crap out of him had he not been angry enough to rip Mark’s head off with his bare hands. Rather than finding their youngest cousin intimidating as his alpha came out in full force, Christian and Mark laughed, which gave Tyler the confidence to join in with them, albeit a little more weakly. Internally Sam was begging them to keep pushing so he could pound their faces into the patio until they were nothing but a bloody mess, but there was a scream and a splash from the pool. Distracted by the sound, Sam automatically turned to see what had happened, his alpha wanting to know if it was a potential threat. He watched Adam trying to get back up to the surface of the water as one of the women jumped in to help him, the other reaching out from the edge, and that was when one of his cousins ( _he thought he saw Mark moving but didn’t get turned back in time_ ) coldcocked him. His vision went black, his knees buckled, and he fell to the ground in a heap.


	9. These Aren't 'Supplements,' They're Roofies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bad things happen.
> 
> I repeat: Bad. Things. Happen.
> 
> I cannot stress this strongly enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please take a moment to look at the title of this chapter, the summary, and the warning tag applied to this fic. There is nothing graphically depicted, but what happens is *very* clear and cannot be misconstrued as anything other than what it is. If you're afraid this is going to trigger you, I have summarized the chapter in the notes at the end. What takes place is pivotal to much of the rest of the story, so if you don't read at least the notes a lot of character choices won't make sense later on.

It felt like he was out for a very long time before one of the alpha females, a pretty young woman with dark skin, was slapping Sam’s cheek with a wet hand trying to wake him, water from her short, tightly curled black hair dripping all over his face. Opening his eyes just made his head hurt, so he resisted it for as long as he could, but after a couple of moments he couldn’t ignore the woman asking, “Are you okay? Sam!” over and over.

“Ow,” Sam responded, sitting up slowly and touching the back of his head where the pain was coming from. When he pulled his hand away there was blood on it. He felt very foggy and had a hard time focusing on - he thought her name was Tamara - as his stomach did a little nauseated flip. “What happened?”

“You hit your head,” she explained with a crisp British accent. Yes, Tamara. She’d transferred in Sam’s senior year when her parents moved to the States. “Careful, you might have a concussion. I’ve been trying to wake you for a while.”

“How did I hit my head?” Sam asked.

“Dunno,” she said. “Didn’t see what happened to you. Maggie and I were trying to get Adam out of the pool. We were just fooling around and he fell in, we didn’t think he was so sloshed…”

He realized that she was soaking wet and that made him very nervous. He knew how drunk Adam was. That’s why he’d come out here to check on him. But come out here from _where_?

“Is he okay?” Things were slowly slotting into place for Sam as he looked around for Adam. It felt like there was something important just at the tip of his brain but he couldn’t pin it down. “Did you get him out?”

“Yeah,” she said as he spotted Adam with the other woman, Asian with very long hair, at the far end of the pool, where he was coughing and sputtering but seemed to be fine. “Thought we weren’t going to, to be honest. He’s a lot heavier than he looks. Maggie knows CPR so she gave him a couple of breaths and he came right to. He also vomited all over the patio. Sorry.”

“No…” He was missing something _important_. He looked around the pool trying to figure out what it was that was driving him crazy. “No, that’s fine, we’ll buy the pool guy a fruit basket or a Mercedes or something to make up for it.”

Why would he suggest buying the pool guy a Mercedes? Mercedes were overrated in his estimation. Besides, jackholes like his cousin Christian drove them and Christian was…

It hit him like a bull in Pamplona that he couldn’t outrun. Christian, Mark, and Tyler were here. But it was just the four of them at the pool. His cousins were gone. And he’d left Dean alone in the upstairs bathroom to wait for him. The panic that swept over him had Tamara grabbing his arm fiercely in response to the spike of distress in his scent.

“What’s wrong?”

“Where are my cousins?”

“Who?”

“The other three guys. Did you see where they went?”

He struggled to his feet, his head trying to force him to stay down longer, and Tamara held on to steady him.

“You were the only one here when we got out of the pool,” she said, and Sam really felt like he was going to throw up. “What’s _wrong_?”

Sam was pushing her away and launching himself across the patio towards Adam. The kid was clearly still very drunk, but he looked a little steadier after having thrown up some of the alcohol in his stomach. It still felt like it took far too long for Sam to get Adam focused on him.

“Adam. Adam!” he said, shaking him until he was sure Adam recognized him. “You need to get up and come with me right now.”

“Wha…?” Adam didn’t look like he _could_ stand, but Sam hauled him up anyway. “What is it?”

“Christian, Mark, and Tyler are here and I left Dean in the bathroom.”

“You...what?”

Adam wasn’t upset, just confused. It wasn’t comforting. Sam needed not to be alone in this feeling of absolute dread. Turned out he wasn’t.

“Wait…” the other female alpha - Maggie - said as she and Tamara hurried after them. “Adam’s _brother_ Dean?”

“Isn’t he an omega?” Tamara asked. “Someone said that was him you were sitting with but we didn’t think…”

“That an omega would just walk into a party full of drunk alphas?” Sam said ruefully. “He thought he’d be safe with us. My cousins weren’t supposed to be here, I was supposed to have the house to myself for the weekend.”

They’d made it into the house, but the back doors had been locked and they had to go around to the front. Locked as well. Sam considered smashing in the back doors, but Maggie yelled, “Over here!”

The window to the library was open. Sam boosted Tamara, Maggie, and Adam inside before pulling himself through, then bolted for the stairs, taking them two at a time.

“ _Dean_!”

The seriousness of the situation clicked in Adam’s inebriated brain at last, and he was stumbling in the hallway after Sam, Tamara and Maggie helping to keep him from tripping over himself.

“ _Dean_!”

Sam had already made it to the bathroom, finding it empty with the door wide open. The lock was still in one piece, so Dean must have opened it either on his own or because his cousins found him and ordered him to. Sam wouldn’t put it past any of them to use their alpha voice to command him to open the door, or any other number of things. He became dimly aware that he was very close to hyperventilating as Adam and the other alphas caught up to him. Adam looked terrified and on the verge of tears.

“Where is he?” he demanded, but Sam was already off down the hall to the room with the twin beds Adam had picked for him and Dean to stay in overnight. “Sam!”

Dean wasn’t in the room ( _of course he wasn’t, it was stupid to think he’d just let himself out of the bathroom and wandered down the hall to peacefully fall asleep in his own bed, fortune didn’t smile on Sam like that_ ) but his duffel was, and Adam’s bag was, and it didn’t take long for Sam to find Dean’s Colt and Adam’s H&K USP Match. He stuffed Adam’s gun in the back of his pants so he could also grab Dean’s Bowie knife and hurried back to the bathroom where Tamara and Maggie were trying to calm Adam down.

“Take this,” Sam said, holding the Colt out to Tamara, then giving the H&K to Maggie. “I don’t trust myself with a gun right now.”

“Sam…” Adam sobbed.

Sam whirled on him. His alpha was out and in no mood for weak little betas who wanted to cry when Sam’s omega was gone. He grabbed Adam’s shoulders and shook him, rougher than he meant to, until Adam stopped sobbing and held his breath.

“We don’t have time for you to break down,” Sam hissed. “You’re scared, I get it. But we can track Dean down by scent. You’re too drunk for a weapon, so stay behind us. He may need your help when we find him.”

 _May_. He was being kind. He knew his cousins. If Sam and Adam were really lucky, they wouldn’t have taken Dean off the property, but there was no guarantee.

“Calm down,” Maggie ordered. “You’re stinking up the place.”

Sam let go of Adam and forced himself to stop freaking out for a minute. He could see that Tamara had stepped away from them and was scenting the air.

“Roses and cloves,” she said finally. “No wonder you’re acting like a nutter. Follow me.”

Just like that the three alphas and the beta were off through the house, Tamara leading with Sam and Adam in between, Maggie covering the rear. The scents were muddied with so many alphas who had passed through on their exit from the party and it was tough to follow at first, but once they got to the cellar door in the kitchen the omega smell became much stronger. The color drained from Sam’s face as he neared it.

“You all right?” Tamara asked when Sam began to shake with rage again. “Hey, you need to get it together.”

“My grandfather has a room down there,” Sam snarled. “Built out the basement from just a root cellar so he could construct it to the specs he wanted. Uses it for ‘discreet meetings.’”

“Discreet meetings? The kind he doesn’t want people finding out about because it would make him look like a sick fuck?”

“The kind that aren’t always strictly consensual.”

“Shit.”

“Let me go first.”

Tamara nodded, backing off from the door to give Sam access. He could hear something coming from the basement, and again the door had been locked. He couldn’t just kick it down without making a lot of noise, but he didn’t have to worry because Maggie was already moving forward with a bobby pin from her hair to pick it. It took her about half a minute to get it open and move out of Sam’s way so he could slowly swing the door open.

 _Welcome to the Jungle_ mixed with laughter and voices that he recognized as his cousins’ floated up from the basement. Not that he was a fan to begin with, but he was never going to be able to listen to Guns ‘N Roses again. They must have thought Sam was going to be out of it for a while, because they hadn’t even bothered to turn off the overhead light to give them more cover, so as the four crept slowly down the stairs they had a clear view of the thick metal door on the other side of the basement past all the storage boxes and shelving. Tyler was stationed outside on a chair as a lookout, but he was completely absorbed in whatever was playing on his iPod. Apparently he wasn’t a fan of GNR either.

At the bottom of the stairs Sam motioned for the two other alphas to go ahead of him to neutralize Tyler and pulled Adam down at his back. It became readily apparent why Tyler always hung so closely to Mark and Christian. He was worse than useless, and probably could have gotten himself killed stepping out of the shower, never mind on a hunt. He didn’t even realize he wasn’t alone in the basement until Tamara and Maggie were halfway to him with their guns trained on his head, and when he stood up to call out a warning Sam was already close enough that he could close the distance and press Dean’s knife to his throat in about two seconds. Tyler barely got out a squeak.

“Hey Tyler,” Sam snarled quietly, his vision bright red. He could feel his canines descending and was on the verge of losing control completely. “How about you get Mark and Christian to open up and I won’t have to slit your throat? Sound like a plan?”

Tyler nodded, wide-eyed. The stench of fear mixed with feces as the smaller alpha straight up shat himself. Wow, Tyler was pathetic.

“Try to tip them off and you’re getting a bullet to the head,” Maggie warned.

“Two,” Tamara clarified.

Tyler nodded and cleared his throat. Sam allowed him to turn towards the door, but kept an iron grip on his shirt for good measure.

“Hey! Christian!” he called. He did a good job of keeping his voice calm. “Man, open up! I think I hear someone upstairs!”

The voice from within the room was muffled by the door.

“What?”

“I think someone’s upstairs!” Tyler repeated. “Maybe Sam woke up? I dunno know. Let me in! We gotta keep it quiet down here!”

Sam could vaguely hear Mark saying something about the music, and the music shut off abruptly. Sam moved his grip to the back of Tyler’s neck as he heard the tumblers moving in the door lock.

“Goddammit, Tyler…” was all Mark got to say as he cracked the door before Sam, Tamara, Maggie, and Adam, using Tyler as a shield, forced their way into the room.

While Sam had always suspected his grandfather was a sadist, he hadn’t imagined that he would keep an actual space in the basement of one of his most beloved pieces of property for tying people to a bed and doing god knows what to them, but that’s apparently what he did. The room they were in was sparse, with a ceiling fan, a table near the door that had a stereo system on it, a trunk in the corner that was open and displayed an extensive collection of sex toys, and a bed against the far wall with handcuffs built into the headboard.

That’s where Dean was, lying on his stomach, naked and unconscious, his legs spread for the Campbell cousins’ viewing pleasure. Mark was shirtless and holding a camcorder. Christian was looming over Dean with his pants halfway down his thighs, though whether he was just finishing up or had just been getting started it was impossible to tell.

Maggie already had Tyler face down on the floor and Tamara was backing Mark up against the wall with Dean’s gun pressed point blank to his forehead, snatching the camcorder from his hand and letting it fall to the floor. Sam’s knuckles were going white from how much self restraint it was taking to keep from driving the Bowie knife into Christian’s chest over and over until the sheets were stained red.

“Get. Off. Him.”

“Hey Sam.” Christian’s easy smile as he tucked his hard-on back into his boxer briefs and zipped up his pants was in sharp contrast to the worry Sam could smell on him, but apparently the older alpha was just too stupid to take Sam as a serious threat and thought he could talk his way out of this. “Sorry about clocking you earlier. You didn’t seem like you were up for continuing the party. We got him all prepped if you wanna finally stake your claim.”

That was absolutely the wrong thing to say, because Sam snapped. He leapt at Christian with a roar, tackling him off the bed and driving the knife straight through his shoulder and into the floor, pinning him down with the blade. Mark and Tyler shouted various curses at Sam but were silenced by the steel of the gun barrels Tamara and Maggie were pressing into their flesh. Christian was screaming in terror or agony or both and struggling vainly to push Sam off of him, but all that did was anger Sam more. He wrapped his free hand around his cousin’s throat and squeezed. Christian’s eyes went wide as he started turning purple.

“Listen you worthless sack of shit,” Sam hissed, leaning in close so Christian wouldn’t miss a word of what he was about to say. Since his cousin didn’t understand the concept of consent, he opted for something he _would_ understand: ownership. “Dean Winchester is _mine_. You don’t ever touch him again. You don’t ever even _look_ at him again. He walks into a room, you better be walking out of it in t-minus one second. The only reason this knife is through your shoulder and not your throat is so you can tell every alpha you know that Dean is off the market unless _he_ decides otherwise. As far as every goddamn knothead in the community is concerned, Dean belongs to me. I _ever_ see him with a mark on his neck and find out he did not consent to it one hundred and fifty percent and I will _gut_ whoever put it there and string them up by their entrails. That includes you. Do you hear what I’m saying? Am I making myself completely clear?” Christian frantically nodded yes as best he could, though he was on the verge of losing consciousness. “Are there any questions? Anything I need to repeat?” Christian shook his head vigorously, gasping. “You try anything when I pull this knife out and I will kill you without hesitation.” Again Christian nodded, and Sam finally let go of his throat, sneering, “Good talk,” before ripping the knife out of the floor, not giving two shits whether it did further damage to his cousin’s shoulder or not.

Christian shrieked and started bleeding and coughing and quickly passed out. Tamara hadn’t taken her eyes off of Mark, who had managed to school his features into a mask of submission. Tyler was on the floor with Maggie’s knee in his back, muttering, “Oh shit” over and over again. Dean hadn’t moved.

Adam had, though. At some point when Sam was threatening Christian with disembowelment he’d made his way through the chaos to the bed and covered Dean up with the sheet. Now he was sitting beside his brother, holding his hand and stroking his face, choking out an unintelligible string of words as he tried to get Dean to realize he was with him. The sudden lack of any kind of emotion in Dean’s scent snapped Sam out of his fury and he stepped away from Christian at last. Dean was there, but he wasn’t _there_.

Tamara recognized Sam standing down and moved to fill the power void before Mark got any ideas.

“Right,” she snapped. “So what’s going to happen now is you and your literally shitty cousin are going to get that waste of oxygen up off the floor and to hospital. Hunting accident. You know the drill. We’ll escort you out of the building, and if your jaw so much as twitches the maid’s going to be cleaning grey matter out of the carpet tomorrow. Sam will be holding onto that camcorder in case you get any ideas about going to the police to press assault charges. It’s my understanding his granddad doesn’t like bad press attached to the family name.” Mark’s nostrils flared, and his eyes flashed red for a moment, but she cocked the hammer on the gun and he pushed his anger down. She had him by the short and curlies, and he knew it. “You gonna be okay down here for a bit Sam?”

“We’ll be fine.”

“Good. The five of us are going to take a little stroll while you see to Dean.” She gave a jerk of her head towards Christian, who was losing a lot of blood. “Better get him up before he bleeds out and we have to get rid of the witnesses.”

Mark’s jaw clenched, but he didn’t test her. Instead he held his hands up and moved very slowly to haul Christian up off the floor. Maggie got Tyler up by the back of his shirt, and between Tyler and Mark they managed to drag Christian out of the room. It wasn’t until he heard them climb the last step that Sam let go of the knife and fell to his knees beside the pool of Christian’s blood. Blindly he reached out for Dean’s arm. He needed to touch him, make sure he was still there, still warm and alive. He was, but he was also pale and a little clammy, and very, very out of it.

Sam’s overwrought brain couldn’t process what Adam was saying, it was still mostly unintelligible outside of a lot of useless, “I’m so sorry”s, but he was able to numbly realize there was a glass of an amber liquid on the stand by the bed. It was cloudy, not clear like it should have been, and it was almost empty. That’s why Dean wasn’t waking up. They’d drugged him, either to get him down to the basement or after they got him to the basement. His cousins actually walked around with date rape drugs handy. Sam was in serious danger of being sick all over the floor.

“What’re we...what’re we gonna do Sam?” Adam kept trying to get control of himself, but it just resulted in a lot of snuffling and snot all over his face. “We gotta...take him to a hospital or something, right?”

“Yeah, yeah, we uh…” Sam felt the tears coming and didn’t even try to stop them. He’d fucked up so badly leaving Dean in the bathroom, thinking he could keep him safe. “See if you can...find his clothes and...um...I’ll get him up off the bed.”

“Yeah.” Adam sounded like he was four again. “Okay.”

Dean’s pants and boxers were inside out at the foot of the bed, his tank top crumpled in a pile next to the pillows. Adam collected them, sobbing and shaking as Sam turned Dean onto his back to wrap him up in the sheet. He looked like he was in a deep sleep, his face completely calm, no indication whatsoever that he had any idea what had just happened. His chest rose and fell evenly, his mouth hung open slightly, and his hair tousled across his forehead. Sam brushed some of Dean’s hair back and broke down completely, burying his face in Dean’s neck. He knew Dean was going to start to come out of it, probably sooner rather than later, and that he didn’t want Dean to wake up down in his grandfather’s sex dungeon, but he just couldn’t make himself move when Dean was so drugged Sam could barely smell him.

“Sam?” Adam was on the other side of the bed, staring at him with watery eyes that silently overflowed, Dean’s clothes clutched to his chest. “Do you need me to…” A sob broke from his throat, and he had to take a moment to just cry before he could continue. “Do you need me to help carry him upstairs?”

Sam pulled away from Dean, staring at the sheets, vision blurred, and shook his head adamantly.

“No, I got him,” he said, his voice rough. “Grab the camcorder, we need that video as leverage.”

Adam nodded and went to retrieve the camcorder from where Tamara had dropped it, holding it in the bundle of clothes as Sam got his arms under Dean’s lower back and knees. Sam had never really thought much about the advantages that came with being an alpha, but he definitely appreciated the extra strength and how relatively easy it was to get Dean’s dead weight up off the mattress and into a bridal carry. Dean’s head lolled against his shoulder, coming to rest against his neck, and Sam almost broke down again. Dean moaned quietly, the first sound he’d made, which kickstarted Sam into gear. He headed out of the room and for the stairs as quickly as he could, Adam trailing behind him, completely lost.

They were halfway to the front door to load Dean into Sam’s car when Maggie came back inside and stopped in the entryway, Dean’s Colt in one hand and Adam’s H&K in the other.

“What are you doing?” she asked, the smell of her bewilderment and concern filling the hall.

“We...need to get him to a hospital,” Adam choked, having barely gotten a hold of himself.

Maggie’s eyes went wide as she hurried to kick the door closed and came over to block their path.

“You can’t do that. You absolutely cannot.”

“What?”

Sam’s temper was rising. He barely knew this girl. Who was she to tell them what to do with Dean? Maggie smelled the change in his scent, set both guns on the side table near the door, and lifted her hands to show she was not a threat.

“Listen to me, please. My brother is an omega. I’ve done a _lot_ of research into the laws in the southern states because Ed travels them for work. I wanted to make sure I knew how I could protect him if he ever needed my help. I know Louisiana om law backwards and forwards.”

Sam and Adam glanced at each other. They were both still wrecks, but it was clear they were thinking the same thing: they weren’t going to like where this was going.

“And?” Adam asked.

“Louisiana has passed some really bad legislation dealing with omega rape,” she said. “ _Really_ bad. Not that there’s anywhere in the country that has _good_ laws, but we’re not in someplace like Connecticut where those assholes might actually end up in jail for one or two years. Louisiana’s very family oriented, and when it comes to omegas they tend to legislate in terms of keeping oms and pups together.”

“Dean…” Sam was getting confused. “Dean doesn’t have any pups.”

“And he’s been on suppressants since he was sixteen,” Adam added. “He won’t…”

“That doesn’t matter,” Maggie insisted. “About fifteen years ago they passed a law to try to counteract the federal one that lets sires take pups of unclaimed omegas. Louisiana had some of the highest rape statistics at the time, and a lot of omegas were getting attacked and left unclaimed when they were in heat, and when the perp got out of jail - assuming they weren’t just given community service - they would waltz up and take the pup.” Sam glanced at Adam, who had finally stopped crying. His face had gone white with splotches of red, as he seemed to be vacillating between anger and dread. “So the legislature came up with the idea that if you raped an omega, you would _have_ to claim them, whether they got pregnant or not. They were actually trying to be compassionate, to force down the rape rates and keep omegas from losing their children. Why they didn’t just make rape penalties stiffer I couldn’t tell you, but they thought this would be better to keep pups and oms together. Of course humanity is pretty awful, and now instead of being the deterrent they intended it to be it’s just a way for sick fucks to claim an omega that’s not interested in them without facing the legal consequences of a rape charge.”

“They…” Sam thought again that he might be sick. “They _force_ the victim to mate their rapist?”

“Basically, yeah.” Maggie looked like she wanted to just turn around and exit this conversation, but instead she moved closer to them still. “You don’t want to know the numbers of these cases. There have been efforts to change the law, but now Louisiana has some of the lowest rape statistics in the country because situations like this are now considered a civil matter so the legislature won’t touch it. If you take Dean to the hospital obviously drugged out of his mind they’ll run a rape kit on him, and if your cousins did...what we think they did to him the state will try to track them down through DNA for an old fashioned shotgun mating.”

“The hunter database,” Sam said. The FDH kept DNA on file for every hunter licensed through them for the identification of remains when a hunt went bad. Mark, Christian, and Tyler were all in the system. They’d be easy to find. There was the possibility that Samuel would try to shield the family from the disgrace of three Campbells drugging and gang raping an omega on his property, but it was more likely he’d see it as making the boys clean up their own mess and spin it into a political positive about how well the Louisiana law worked. Sam was feeling lightheaded. “We couldn’t legally stop one of them from claiming him.”

“You’re lucky though,” she told him, which made Sam want to throw up and Adam sputter. “You are. Most alphas have no idea what the different laws are state-to-state. Odds are your cousins have no clue they could stake a legal claim to Dean if they walked into a police station and made a statement about tonight.”

“What if they do?” Adam asked in a very small voice. “What if they do know, or someone tells them, and they come back here and try to say that they have a right to him?”

“Tamara is following them right now to make sure they go to the hospital,” Maggie said. “We stripped their car of weapons, and your one cousin is going to need some major work done on his shoulder. They won’t be able to come back here tonight so you have some time. You need to get Dean cleaned up so as much of their scent is off of him as possible, and then you need to mark him.”

This last statement was directed at Sam, whose eyes went wide. He couldn’t even comprehend what she was suggesting. Adam obviously couldn’t either, because he stepped closer in as if to protect Dean while Sam pulled the omega tighter to his chest.

“I can’t…”

“Yeah, you can. Unless you want to risk your two other cousins showing up tomorrow with the cops trying to take him out of here because he doesn’t have a claim mark or another alpha’s scent on him.” She ran her hand over her face as she took in the horrified looks on the two young men in front of her. “Listen. I know I sound like a cold-hearted bitch about this, but I told you. My brother’s an omega. I had to put together a contingency plan for something like this a long time ago. And I know other people who have been in this situation. An omega’s legal standing when something like this happens is dicey at best, no matter where you are. Right now you’ve got whatever video they were shooting, so if they come back tomorrow it will be he-said/he-said, just so long as Dean doesn’t smell like any of them have had access to him. Get him in the shower. Get their scent _off_ him. Then Sam needs to either mark him or sleep with him…” Sam gurgled incredulously. “...and I _just_ mean sleep, to make sure Dean’s covered in his scent. If it were me, I would do both.”

Sam and Adam were frozen to the floor, trying to process what she’d just said. It made sense, logically, but Sam was having a really hard time getting past how terribly he’d be violating Dean if he listened to her.

“Okay,” Adam said firmly, seeming to have zeroed in on what Maggie laid out as the only course of action. Shock appeared to have set in and he looked completely numb. “I’ll get him cleaned off and then Sam can do...whatever he needs to do.”

“Okay, good.” Maggie checked her watch. “I’m gonna leave you to that and see if I can meet up with Tamara at the hospital - make sure your cousins are staying put.”

“Thanks,” Sam said, his voice barely above a whisper.

Maggie nodded and drew in a shaky breath, the events of the evening seeming to hit her at last. She looked at Dean with anguished, glassy eyes, probably imagining her brother in his position.

“We won’t...we won’t tell anyone what happened,” she assured them. “No one needs to know about this unless Dean wants them to. It will just make it harder.” She hesitated a moment, then came forward and threw her arms around the younger Winchester. “Bye Adam.”

“Bye Maggie.”

There was a clear finality to their words. They were probably never going to see her or Tamara again; at least, not by choice. She turned to Sam, looking at him hard, and gave his arm a squeeze.

“You can do this, Sam.”

And she was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sam wakes up after a good 15-20 minutes of being unconscious. Adam almost drowned in the pool but the two female alphas left at the party (Tamara and Maggie) got him out and have him revived. Sam is fuzzy from the blow to the head, but finally realizes that his cousins are gone and he left Dean in the upstairs bathroom. Nobody saw where they went because of what was happening with Adam. Sam, Adam, Tamara and Maggie storm the house but Dean is gone. Sam grabs weapons and the four find the Campbell cousins down in the basement with Dean, who has been drugged and raped. Sam attacks Christian and leaves him alive with instructions that he spread the word that Dean is off limits in the hunting community and Sam will kill anyone that touches him without permission. Tamara and Maggie get the Campbells out of there. Adam and Sam get Dean upstairs and are planning to take him to the hospital when Maggie comes back and tells them that Louisiana's omega rape laws are fucked. up. and allow a rapist to claim their victim if the victim hasn't been mated. She instructs Sam and Adam to get the cousin's scents off of Dean and get Sam's onto him. Sam and Adam are horrified by the prospect but Adam is panicked and quickly agrees it's the only way to protect his brother now. Dean is unconscious for the whole thing.


	10. When Humans Want Something Really, Really Bad...We Lie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alpha and omega dynamics start coming into play and fucking everything up. Some very bad decisions are made.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just wanted to add a reminder before readers start coming after me and the characters with pitchforks:
> 
> Adam is only 18 at this point and Sam is only 20. They are NOT equipped for this situation.

With Maggie’s advice still ringing in their ears, Sam and Adam numbly went to work doing what she’d told them to. Sam led Adam to the downstairs bath, which had an old-fashioned clawfoot tub in it and a hand shower. Adam put Dean’s clothes and the camcorder down on the floor and climbed in first so he could hold onto Dean while he cleaned him off. Sam lowered Dean down to Adam, gently removing the sheet and pulling it out from under him, and did his best to turn Dean on his side between Adam’s legs to give him at least a little bit of privacy. It was a very tight fit in the tub, so Sam turned on the water for Adam and handed him the sprayer once it had reached a nice warm temperature. Then he moved the shampoo and body wash to the floor where Adam could reach down and get them without having to move Dean too much. Adam began to carefully rinse Dean down, starting with his hair, while Sam fixated on the sheet he was still holding. It was covered in bodily fluids. They’d have to burn it.

Dean was starting to make little noises against Adam’s chest, like he was trying to wake up but couldn’t. Sam thought it might be best if he wasn’t there in the event Dean did come to, and left to start re-locking the house. He grabbed Adam’s gun from where Maggie had left it by the front door, tucked Dean’s in his waistband and methodically went around the first floor, throwing the deadbolts on the front door and double checking all the windows. Then he ran downstairs to retrieve the bloody Bowie knife and fitted sheet, turn off the light, and close the door to the awful “discretion” room. He did a quick sweep of the basement itself to make sure nothing got left behind, then hurried back upstairs, clicking the switch to plunge the space into darkness. He left the knife to soak in the kitchen sink, ran to the second floor to put the guns back in the brothers’ duffels, and changed out of his blood spattered clothes. Finally he went to check that the back doors to the pool were still locked ( _he knew they were, but he_ **_had_ ** _to check anyway_ ), where he hesitated. All the lights were still on outside and the music was still playing. The idea that a few hours ago they’d been having a great time celebrating Adam’s graduation seemed like a sick joke. Sam hastened outside to stop his iPod from shuffling through the party playlist and turned off the twinkle lights, pausing just long enough to grab a red Solo cup. If he was going to have to mark Dean he sure as hell wasn’t just going to stand over him and jerk off.

Jerking off right now actually turned out to be a pretty big problem. Sam looked in on the Winchesters when he came back in from outside, then headed for the powder room tucked under the stairs. He undid his pants and slid them down, grabbing his cock and trying to force it to comply, but it stayed limp in his hand, completely unresponsive to his touch; not a problem he’d encountered before. He tried to draw out memories to help himself along ( _Jess naked on top of him, her breasts bouncing as she moaned; the stripper his grandfather paid to take his virginity when he was seventeen; Dean snuggled up in his lap by the pool and breathing against his neck_ ) but just ended up sagging against the sink and crying hopelessly. Dean would never forgive him for this. Adam probably wouldn’t either. Even if they did, _he_ wasn’t ever going to forgive himself. It was a bona fide hat trick of guilt.

Before long Sam simply gave up, tucked himself back into his shorts, washed his hands, tossed the cup in the garbage, and went to check on Adam and Dean. The shower was still running and he could hear Adam talking quietly as he approached. He felt like he was eavesdropping, but Adam still had a lot of alcohol in his system and he didn’t want to leave him alone in there to try to wrangle an unconscious Dean in a bathtub not big enough for two grown-ish men. Besides, he could tell that Adam had started to cry again as well. They were really going to have to work together to get through this.

“...and when I get out of school you’re _going_ to come live with me,” Adam was saying into Dean’s hair. “And I _will_ keep you safe. No alpha is ever going to touch you again, I promise Dean. I’m so sorry I got so drunk…”

Adam was no longer washing Dean down. He was just holding him and rocking a little, the best he could anyway, the sprayer pointed so the water ran down Dean’s back and into the tub. It was awful, Dean still placidly sleeping and Adam trying not to fall into hysterics.

“I’ve got the house locked down,” Sam said quietly, dropping the fitted sheet on top of the one they’d wrapped around Dean. “You want help getting him out of the tub?”

“Yeah…” Adam replied, his voice very young. “Yeah, I think I’ve got him clean enough.”

Dean was starting to make noise again and for the first time since they found him he had started to move, trying to get out of Adam’s arms as Sam turned off the shower.

“Leggo…” he slurred. His eyes fluttered open but couldn’t focus on anything. They fluttered closed just as quickly. “Leggo me…”

The first change to his scent wafted up to Sam, and it was both upsetting and a relief. Dean was deeply distressed and confused, and more than a little afraid, but at least he was feeling something.

“Hey Dean,” Adam said, trying to get his brother’s face around to look at him. “Dean, calm down, it’s just me.”

“Leggo...me…”

It was more earnest this time, more frightened, as he struggled to crawl out of the bathtub as well as from under the deep fog blanketing his mind.

“Dean, it’s Adam! Calm down, you’re gonna hurt yourself…”

Adam tightened his hold, trying to keep Dean from tumbling over and cracking his head open on the floor. It was the wrong thing to do. Dean screamed like a trapped animal, falling into the plumbing fixtures as he caught Adam in the jaw with his elbow. Adam’s head snapped back and he fell to the far end of the tub, nearly knocked unconscious as Dean still tried to blindly scramble out.

The alpha in Sam kicked into gear again, and he was immediately on the floor by the faucet sending out soothing pheromones and touching Dean’s face, shoulders, and arms with gentle, loving strokes.

“Shhh,” he intoned as Dean instantly began to relax in response to Sam’s calming movements. “It’s okay Dean, it’s just Sam and Adam.”

“Ssss...am?” The green eyes honed in on his face, but remained somewhat unfocused. “Don’ feel good…gonna puke...”

“Okay, gimme a sec,” Sam said, and ran to the built in linen closet to grab his grandfather’s terry cloth robe. He rushed back to Dean, who was visibly struggling to keep the contents of his stomach down. He slid Dean’s arms into the robe and then dragged him to his feet and out of the tub. Neither bothered tying the robe as Sam helped Dean stumble to the toilet, where he promptly collapsed and started retching. Sam grabbed a washcloth from the little bar over the sink, ran it under cool water, and came back over to wipe down Dean’s neck. “You’ll be okay.”

Dean continued heaving into the bowl for quite some time, until his stomach was empty and nothing but bile was coming up. Tears were streaming down his face out of sheer misery and maybe some sense that something had happened to him, since his scent was becoming distressed again.

“Why’m I naked?” he asked between bouts of puking.

“You threw up all over yourself in your sleep.”

Sam snapped his head around to where Adam, somewhat recovered from Dean’s elbow, was climbing out of the tub. He quickly tamped down his confusion before Dean could smell it, though he wasn’t really sure Dean would be able to smell anything over his own vomit. Sam opened his mouth to speak, but Adam shot him a warning glare.

“I did?”

“Yeah,” Adam continued. “Told you not to open that second bottle of scotch. You had way too much to drink. Had to get you in the tub to clean you off.”

“Yeah?” Dean nodded into the toilet. “Sound…slike me…”

“You gonna be okay in here for a minute?” Adam scooped up Dean’s clothes, the sheets, and the camcorder from the floor. “I gotta get you some clean clothes and Sam’s gotta strip the sheets off your bed.”

Dean’s arm shot out to grab hold of Sam’s shirt while he shook his head furiously, still face down in the bowl. Sam glanced up at Adam, who was clearly signalling with his eyes that they needed to talk in the hall, so he scooted in close to Dean, running his hand up and down his back and leaning his forehead against Dean’s temple.

“We’ll be right back,” he murmured, doing his best to emit nothing but calm and reassuring emotions.

“Don’ wanna be left…” Dean had to stop and heave, his hand tightening on Sam’s shirt. “Other alphas…”

Adam came over and sat down on the other side of the toilet, running his hand through his brother’s hair.

“No Dean,” Adam said. “We’re the only ones here. The party’s been over a while.”

“Sssssure?”

“Yes Dean, we’re sure,” Sam promised.

“M…’kay,” Dean said, and threw up more bile.

Adam jerked his head towards the door, and Sam reluctantly let Dean go and freed his shirt from his grasp. His alpha screamed at him to stay with the omega, and it took a tremendous amount of effort to force the instinct back down and follow Adam into the hall. Dean’s stomach seemed to be stopping its revolt, but he was still clinging to the toilet seat with both hands. He’d be okay for a minute.

Sam expected to just be stepping out so they could still keep an eye on Dean while they talked, but Adam obviously had other plans and had moved almost all the way to the kitchen door at the far end of the hall. Sam could feel his alpha rising again and had to suppress a growl. He had no idea what Adam planned to say to him, but he was entirely too far away from ( _his_ _mate, mine, mine, mine_!) Dean.

“What?” he demanded, trying his hardest to keep his tone even.

“We’re not telling him,” Adam said flatly, as if there was nothing to discuss. “What happened. In the basement. We’re not telling him.”

“What?” Sam repeated, incredulous that Adam would even suggest such a thing. “Adam, he’s the one it _happened_ to. He has the right to know!”

“Yeah, he does, but we’re still not telling him,” Adam insisted.

“I can’t believe I’m hearing this.”

“Stop, Sam, and just let me talk for a minute, okay?”

“No, I am not keeping this from Dean.”

“Yes, you are. Because if you don’t he will _never_ leave the life. _Never_. He will feel like he has something to prove, that he can protect himself without anyone’s help, he’ll probably never speak to us again…”

“That’s his decision to make. I know _I_ would deserve it if he didn’t. I left him alone in a fucking bathroom, drunk off his ass and told him to just keep the door locked!”

“And I was so drunk I almost drowned while I should have been watching him! Jesus, I’m the one who got into the scotch in the first place! _Neither_ of us helped him when he really needed help, and if he _knows_ we let this happen he is never going to trust us again. He’s never going to trust _me_ again, Sam! He’ll never stop hunting, he’ll never stop trying to show the world he’s just as good as any alpha out there, he probably won’t even live until he’s _thirty_! I don’t even want to think what this would do to his drinking. I can’t...I can’t have this driving him to be even more reckless than he already is. He’s my brother. I can’t lose him, Sam. I can’t. He’s all I’ve got!”

“I can’t lie to him, Adam.”

“So don’t lie! Just be vague about tonight! He got really drunk! He passed out before everyone went home! That’s all true!”

“But it’s only _part_ of the truth. Lies by omission are still lies.”

“ _Please_ Sam! This will kill him. I’m not overreacting, don’t look at me like that. It may not be immediate, it may not even be for years, but it will _kill_ him. If he doesn’t die on the job he’ll drink himself to death. I’m begging you Sam. I’ll answer any questions he has, just don’t contradict me or volunteer information. We can’t tell him what happened. _Please_.”

What Adam was asking of him was so very wrong, and every synapse of the rational portion of Sam’s brain screamed it. “ _This is wrong with a capital W_!” But emotionally he had very little left in the tank to hold himself together, and his alpha was fighting tooth and nail to get back to the omega in the bathroom. He wanted to keep arguing against this, and just didn’t have it in him to do so. He was exhausted. He was terrified for Dean. His head was really starting to fucking hurt. He knew he was going to regret this for the rest of his life. Finally he nodded and said, “This isn’t fair to Dean, but I’ll do my best.”

Adam looked like a tremendous weight had been lifted from him, and his eyes watered as if he were on the verge of hysteria. Clearly Sam wasn’t the only one who was emotionally spent. Adam nodded and huffed out a breath, rubbing the heels of his hands into his eyes as he struggled to pull himself together.

“Thank you,” he said, and clenched his jaw as if forcing down everything that was threatening to come spilling out of him. “I gotta go get Dean some clean clothes.”

“Yeah,” Sam agreed, adding as Adam started past him, “Give me all of that. I’ll find somewhere to stash the camcorder until tomorrow and go burn the sheets and the clothes in the fire pit out back.”

Adam nodded and transferred everything over to Sam before heading upstairs to get Dean something fresh to wear. Everything stank of Mark and Christian, and Sam couldn’t suppress a growl. He hid the camcorder in the breadbox, then took the rest to the brick fire pit east of the pool. A quick squirt of lighter fluid and one zippo later and the evidence from the basement was on its way to oblivion. Well, except that huge puddle of blood on the floor. Fuck it, Samuel could have that cleaned himself. He had a sex dungeon, for Christ’s sake. Couldn’t be the first time he’d had to clean up blood from something.

Sam stayed outside just long enough to make sure the fire was going strong before hurrying back to the bathroom. His alpha was insistent that he go to the vulnerable omega inside _right now_. Adam had changed into dry clothes and was on the floor with Dean against the wall by the toilet. Dean’s bathrobe still hung open, but now he was in a pair of boxers. Adam was having a helluva time convincing Dean to leave the bathroom. Dean seemed to be a little more awake, though his speech was still terribly slurred.

“Sssam,” Dean purred when he came through the door. He reached out with both arms like a toddler that wanted to be picked up. “Tol’ Runt I had to wait. ‘Til you came back.”

“You didn’t have to wait for me Dean,” Sam said, obliging the omega and squatting down so Dean could get his arms around his neck. He stood up, pulling Dean easily to his feet, and Dean’s head fell forward into the crook of Sam’s neck. “You could have gone with your brother.”

“Nnnno.” Dean shook his head lamely, holding tighter to Sam until they were pressed firmly together. His omega was taking over again and responding to the calm Sam was pushing out into the room. “You ssssaid to stay in the bathroom.”

Sam shot Adam a panicked look. Two minutes back in the room and Adam’s plan to hide this from Dean was already threatening to fall apart. Sam just held onto Dean for a moment, breathing in his scent in an effort to center himself, and rubbed his back.

“Well I’m here now, so why don’t we get you to bed, okay? You need some sleep.”

“You sssstay. With me.”

It wasn’t a request. Dean tipped his head back with obvious difficulty so he could look into Sam’s eyes, just a few inches from his. Their noses were touching and the warm puffs of air from Dean’s mouth were terribly distracting. His alpha was demanding Sam do all sorts of things to those lips that left the higher functioning part of his brain absolutely horrified. Adam cleared his throat, standing up against the wall so that he was directly in Sam’s line of sight. He did not look happy at the two of them wrapped up together. Sam swallowed and did the best he could to close himself off from his arousal, but damn it was hard ( _in more than one sense_ ). He remembered what Maggie had said about needing to get his scent on Dean though, so he didn’t pull away.

“Okay Dean, but we’re just gonna sleep, okay?”

“‘Kay.”

He threw Adam what he hoped was an apologetic look, but it may not have been that because Adam didn’t look any happier as Sam helped Dean out of the bathroom. He had never wished more for a beta to be able to understand the dynamic between alphas and omegas, that Dean’s reactions to Sam were at base instinct level, and Sam’s responses to Dean were the same. It didn’t matter that _Sam_ knew Dean was drugged and had just been through something horrific. His _alpha_ demanded that he please the needy omega he was half-carrying to the stairs.

He was almost relieved when Dean swooned ( _it was more than just him passing out, this was real old-school Scarlett-O’Hara-wore-her-corset-too-tight swooning_ ) about halfway up the stairs and Sam could just scoop him up and carry him the rest of the way. Adam was close behind, his eyes boring a hole in Sam’s back that he could actually feel. So now on top of everything else, things were getting awkward between him and Adam, and they were about to get worse because Sam was going to have to figure out how to fit his 6’3” frame into a twin bed with Dean.

Sam was both surprised and apprehensive when, as he went to put Dean down, Adam said, “Wait. We need a room with a bigger bed.”

Sam felt the color draining from his face as his brain battled his cock for control of his emotions.

“What?”

“A bigger bed.” Adam looked really unhappy about what he was saying, but he was insistent. “Both of you won’t fit on a twin and Maggie said he needs to smell like you.”

“Adam…” Sam felt like he was choking. “He won’t be comfortable if he wakes up with me alone…”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Adam!”

“ _It doesn’t_!” Adam was shaking, though whether it was from anger or sadness or a feeling of helplessness Sam couldn’t guess. Betas were so _hard_ to read! “It doesn’t, Sam. It doesn’t matter. If your cousins come back tomorrow and try to legally say he’s theirs and he doesn’t smell like you...I _have_ to protect him, Sam! I couldn’t protect him earlier, and he can’t protect himself right now. So I’m sorry, I know if he knew what we were doing he would never forgive me and I wouldn’t deserve to be forgiven but none of that matters because I _have_ to protect him, do you understand?”

Sam did. He hated it, and he wasn’t sure it was the right thing to do, but he understood what Adam was saying. Moreover, his alpha understood the concept of _protect omega_ without needing further persuasion. _Protect omega_ was written in his DNA. He scooped Dean back up and headed for the next bedroom.

“There’s a full bed in here,” he told Adam, who was trailing behind. “We can sleep in here and you’ll be right in the next room.”

But Adam had spotted a rocking chair in the corner and was crossing to it even as Sam was laying Dean down on the bed.

“I’ll be fine over here.”

“What?” Adam must have cracked under the pressure. It shouldn’t surprise Sam, the kid was only eighteen. The law might consider him an adult but he really, really wasn’t. Hell, _Sam_ didn’t even consider himself an adult, not really. They were in way over their heads. “Adam, you cannot stay in this room with us. If Dean wakes up and sees you he’ll know something is wrong.”

“I don’t care.” Adam plopped himself down in the chair. “You were right, I’m not leaving him in here alone.”

“He’s not going to be alone. I’m going to be with him.”

Adam gave him a pointed look and said nothing. Sam actually took a step back. He couldn’t have imagined this night getting any more terrible, yet here he was, eyes locked with a best friend who clearly didn’t trust him. The thought hurt deeply.

“I’m not...I would never do anything to Dean,” Sam insisted. “You know that, right?”

“I don’t know if I do,” Adam replied evenly. “I’m not saying you’re like your cousins, but you’re an alpha, Sam. I don’t know if you can control yourself around him.”

Adam looked from a stunned Sam to his brother, who was starting to stir. Sam felt like he was getting whiplash. First Adam didn’t care if he was alone with Dean, now he did. He wasn’t sure how much was alcohol and how much was stress. Adam pressed on.

“I don’t know if he can control himself around you, either. The way he’s acting around you...he never behaves like that around alphas. Even when he’s drunk.” He turned his eyes back up to Sam, and they were resigned. “I think he trusts you too much.”

As if to prove the point, Dean stirred and reached out his hand, murmuring, “Sss...am…” before rolling over to try to find him. Sam quickly sat and ran a hand through Dean’s hair to soothe him. Adam was clearly onto something. Sam glanced across the room at him and realized he didn’t look upset anymore, just very sad. Sam smiled weakly and nodded in agreement.

“I’m right here, Dean,” he said, helping Dean sit up to get the bathrobe off of him. “Let’s see if we can get you comfy.”

“M’kay…” Dean cooed, automatically leaning up against Sam to breathe into his neck. “Y’okay? Smell upset…”

“I’m just tired,” Sam told him, stripping the sleeves down from Dean’s arms and tugging until he shifted his butt off of the bottom of the robe. “You’re gonna get cold like this. Here.”

With a fluid motion he swept his t-shirt up over his head, rushing to turn it rightside out as Dean pushed himself closer to Sam’s now bare chest. Dean’s mouth hovered over Sam’s clavicle, and Sam hastened to pull his shirt down over Dean’s head, drawing one arm through at a time. Dean chuckled.

“I’m gonna smell like you Sammy,” he snickered, and fell into a full-on giggle fit as Sam guided him to lay down and got him underneath the sheet.

“Yeah, you probably will,” Sam replied, climbing under the sheet beside him. The minute he was prone, Dean snuggled up with his head on Sam’s chest and their legs tangled together. He was acutely aware of Adam in the chair in the corner and smoothed his shirt down Dean’s back. “Go to sleep Dean.”

“M’kay.”

In all of thirty seconds Dean was snoring softly. Sam glanced over to where Adam was watching them, and closed his eyes in anguish. He didn’t know how either of them were going to sleep, or what they were going to do when they woke up in the morning, but at least for now Dean was safe.

“ _Too little_ ,” Sam’s brain told him, “ _too late_.”

It seemed crying himself to sleep was always going to be an option.

He woke before either Dean or Adam the next morning ( _afternoon_?) with a terrible headache ( _he probably did have a concussion_ ) and a raging hard on. Dean had rolled off of him at some point in the night and was laying on his left side, his back to Sam, his body rising and falling in a steady, even rhythm. Adam was snoring in the chair, his head tipped slightly over the back as he drooled down his chin. Sam grimaced as he slowly slid out of bed, praying the other two stayed asleep while he went to take care of his condition, which was becoming more painful by the second.

Absently he grabbed the bathrobe from where he’d tossed it to the floor and headed for the bathroom at the end of the hall. He slipped inside and bolted the door behind him, hoping he could take care of this quickly. It turned out that wasn’t going to be the issue it had been the night before, because this was the bathroom he’d locked Dean in, and it was filled with his scent. The bathrobe was, too. He pressed the fabric to his face and inhaled, and barely had time to get his pants down and his hand on his cock before he was coming all over the sink. He bit his lip so hard he drew blood in an effort to contain the yelp that tried to escape from his throat as he rode out the orgasm, which seemed to go on forever, then found himself sitting on the toilet as his knees gave out. He felt like a filthy pervert, and had to suppress the urge to cry at how disgusting he was having just jerked off to Dean’s scent after what happened last night. He took a few deep breaths, in and out through the mouth ( _not going to risk getting another stiffy he’d have to take care of_ ), then wiped his palm across the porcelain, getting as much cum into his hand as he could. He used a hand towel to wipe up the rest, then dropped both that and the bathrobe into the hamper by the door.

Dean was starting to stir as Sam came back into the bedroom, and Sam went over and casually rubbed his hand along the back of Dean’s neck, reaching under the neckline of the shirt a little and then running his hand down the back of Dean’s ( _his_ ) shirt. He had to fight back the bile rising in his throat the whole time, but he managed to get Dean marked. Hopefully he could convince Dean to keep the shirt on when he left.

Dean rolled over languidly at the touch and slowly opened his eyes to look at the source. He was able to focus much better than he had when he went to sleep, though he still looked a little dazed.

“Hey Sammy.” His throat sounded hoarse, but his tone was normal. A wave of happiness mixed with the coffee and cherry pie, and Sam wasn’t sure if he was supposed to have caught it or not. Dean had been very guarded with his emotions and what he let slip into his scent yesterday before they started drinking, and while he wasn’t completely sober yet, Sam could smell that he wasn’t drunk either. Sam didn’t want to assume Dean was purposely letting him know how he felt about seeing Sam first thing in the morning if it was something Dean couldn’t control right now. “Whatcha doin’?”

“Just checking on you,” Sam said quietly, sliding his hands into the pockets of his shorts to keep them under control. “You had a really rough night last night.”

“I did?” Dean’s brow furrowed as he thought about the night before. “I don’t really remember it after we opened the scotch...I feel like I got kind of grabby with you…” He blushed, the color highlighting his cheekbones. He looked young and innocent and gorgeous and like nothing bad had ever happened to him. “I didn’t do any embarrassing shit, did I?”

Dean didn’t remember anything. Sam should have been glad for that, but instead found it terribly upsetting. It wasn’t that he suddenly felt Adam was right; he just had no _idea_ how he could even begin a conversation that started with “Good morning” and ended with “you were raped last night.”

“No.” Sam knew he had responded with too much force, so he tried to soften it with a smile as he sat back down next to Dean. “No, you weren’t embarrassing at all.”

“Cuz that’s kind of my thing. I’m sorta a fuck-up.”

Sam wanted to find every last person who had ever made Dean feel like a fuck-up and beat them to death, starting with his father. But clearly that could wait until after he had more practice controlling his emotions, since Dean was misinterpreting the pulse of anger that came off of Sam and withdrawing into himself. It was just about impossible for Sam to deny Dean what he needed when he was being so open, and Sam hastened to run a hand through Dean’s hair. Dean’s eyes closed and he started to purr softly.

“Dean, you didn’t do anything last night to be embarrassed or ashamed about,” he said firmly but gently. “I promise.”

Dean laid there with his eyes closed for a bit, enjoying Sam’s hand in his hair and taking in deep even breaths. After a minute he chuckled and looked up at Sam.

“I smell like you.”

Sam had fully expected that thought to upset Dean, but it didn’t. He just grinned sleepily, like a kitten getting its chin scratched. Sam was rapidly losing his ability to be a decent human being as his alpha became increasingly demanding. An omega was inviting him into his orbit. His alpha was pissed that Sam was even thinking of refusing to go, and his alpha was starting to win. Sam didn’t _want_ to lay down facing Dean so he could brush his bangs back, but he did so anyway because Dean was there and he was basically sober now, his scent becoming clear and unmuddled and sending a tidal wave of want directly at Sam and Sam at that moment was incapable of resistance.

“Well, that’s because you demanded I sleep with you, Handsy McGrabberson.”

Dean chuckled, ducking his head and blushing, which had Sam’s heart practically beating out of his chest. Maybe Dean could hear how it pounded wildly, because he scooched closer, right into Sam’s space, and reached out to hover his hand an inch or so from Sam’s bare chest, like he was afraid to touch him without permission. Sam thanked whatever gods were out there that Dean was under the sheet and he was on top of it.

“Is that all we did?” Dean’s eyes were fixed on Sam’s mouth. “Sleep?”

 _Jesus_. Dean clearly knew exactly what he was doing. He was like something out of a film noir, all breathy voice and suggestive glances. Any second now someone was going to cut away to a train going through a tunnel. Sam never needed a drink of water so badly.

“You were kinda out of it,” he murmured. “And I would _never_ …”

“I know Sammy.” If Sam had to guess, he would have put Dean’s mouth at about 2.3 centimeters from his. Continuing to hold back like this was going to kill him, and it was lining up to be a slow, painful death. “That’s why I like you. Other alphas would.”

Reality came crashing down hard on Sam, bringing with it such self loathing and disgust that he was in serious danger of throwing up. He practically leapt off the bed and backed up to the door. Fuck, what had he just been thinking about _doing_ with Dean? He really needed to work on getting a much better grip on his alpha instincts. Why hadn’t he presented as a beta so it wouldn’t even occur to him to dare touch someone who was assaulted last night and who didn’t even know because Adam made Sam promise not to “volunteer” information?

Shit. He was as sick a fuck as his grandfather and the rest of the Campbells.

Dean was sitting up now, staring at Sam with wide, confused eyes. The wave of hurt and sorrow that flooded off of him almost had Sam going back to kiss and hold and touch and claim, but he steeled himself against it. He would be taking advantage, and he’d meant it when he told Dean he’d never do that. Adam was waking in the chair, and stretched his neck out with a tired, “Ow.” Dean barely registered his presence and looked down quickly at the sheets when he realized Sam wasn’t coming back to the bed.

“I’m gonna go make us something to eat,” Sam said, which was possibly the stupidest thing to ever come out of his mouth because the only thing Sam knew how to cook was toast.

“Okay,” Dean said. His voice was very small.

“Okay,” Sam echoed dumbly, then practically ran from the room.

Sam was busy burning bacon and hating himself when he heard Adam yell, “Dean!” followed by quick footfalls on the stairs and the front door slamming. Sam hurried out of the kitchen to find Adam in the middle of the stairwell and caught the sound of a car starting and peeling out of the driveway. Adam whirled on Sam, then stormed down to him and gave him a powerful shove that almost set Sam on his ass.

“What did you do to him?” he demanded as the smell of an omega in abject misery took Sam’s breath away.

“Nothing…” Sam said, heading for the door. His alpha shouted to go after the omega and that’s what Sam was going to do.

At least, that’s what Sam was going to do until Adam grabbed his shirt, swung him around, and slammed him into the wall.

“ _What did you do to him_?” he roared.

That was a mistake. Sam’s vision went red again and he threw Adam back almost the entire length of the hall.

“I didn’t do anything to him!”

“Then why did he _leave_?!”

“Because _I didn’t do anything to him_!” Sam absently noted the confusion on Adam’s face as he paced the hall, his hands in his hair. This couldn’t be happening. He was going to lose his mind if he had to stay here much longer. “He _wanted_ me Adam! He wanted me to hold him, kiss him, make him feel safe and desired and I _rejected_ him! Do you have any idea what that does to an omega? No, god, of _course_ you don’t! _We_ pursue _them_ , Adam. It’s _never_ the other way around! Outside of a heat cycle omegas do not initiate until they’re mated. _We_ make the advances. _They_ accept them or reject them. They’ll go after betas any day of the week but with an _alpha_ until they feel secure and wanted they _never_ initiate, and he just went against _all_ of his instincts and did and I just... _ignored_ him!”

He was screaming now. He couldn’t help it. He was being torn in two from the inside.

“And I was _disgusted_ with myself, for wanting to give him what _he_ wanted after what happened to him last night, and he could smell it, and I saw the look on his face and he thought I was disgusted with _him_ but I didn’t _say_ anything I just...left the room to make fucking _pancakes_ or some shit that I don’t even know how to make! I just _left_ him there! Because I promised _you_ I wouldn’t tell him, and I couldn’t do any of the things that he _wanted_ when I know and he doesn’t!”

He stopped pacing and squatted down on the floor. He was hyperventilating now and his chest felt like an elephant was sitting on it. He was probably just having a panic attack, but it sure as hell felt like his heart was breaking and he might die.

“God I didn’t think he would bolt. I thought I could calm him down over breakfast.” He swung around towards the front door, using the wall to pull himself to his feet. “I have to find him before he does something stupid like sleeping with half the city…”

Adam was at his shoulder, trying to stop him.

“No, Sam…” he started, but Sam swung around, fangs out, and pinned him to the wall by his throat. Yeah, this was going to damage their friendship. Sam wanted to care about that but just couldn’t. Dean had been gone a couple of minutes now. Any longer and Sam might not be able to catch him. His alpha was roaring to be let out to find the omega.

“ _You do not understand this_!” he bellowed. “ _Do not get in my way_!”

Adam held his hands up to show Sam had won, and Sam released him and headed for the door. He grabbed the keys to his car out of the dish on the end table by the door and registered the smell of burning bacon. He’d be surprised if either of the Winchesters ever spoke to him again.

Sam didn’t find Dean in Shreveport. In fact, he didn’t lay eyes on Dean again for six months. It was the most miserable six months of his two decades of existence, way worse than after Jess died. He survived it only by the grace of Grey Goose.

Adam must have done some research into alpha/omega dynamics, because their friendship did not fracture the way Sam expected. It was still a little frosty, but Adam was clearly making an effort to let the past be the past. Sam wasn’t going try to dredge anything up that Adam was content to leave buried.

Adam even tipped Sam off when Dean was going to be at the mandatory hunter training session on the Shojo, an uncommon alcohol spirit from Japan that had wiped out a brewery stateside before a team of hunters took it down. Sam could only pray that he could get Dean alone to try to fix the mess he’d made, but Dean had shown up with his father glued to his hip. Even if John hadn’t been there, the aggression, irritation, pissiness, and downright hatred Dean had pushed specifically at Sam would have kept him at bay. The desire and happiness was scrubbed from Dean’s scent like he wasn’t actually capable of those emotions. It set Sam on edge, and his alpha responded with such indignation at a mere _omega_ being so openly hostile that Dean literally flinched when he passed Sam on the way out.

And the pattern between them was set. Whenever Sam and Dean saw each other, Sam longed for Dean so hopelessly that Dean’s aggression drove his alpha immediately to anger at being rebuffed until it wasn’t hard at all for Sam to lie by omission about what had happened at Adam’s graduation party, because the odds were good that they were never going to actually have a conversation again; not only because Dean hated him but because Sam couldn’t form a coherent sentence with his upstairs and downstairs brains at constant war. Then a few days ago Sam had come out of the bathroom at the Roadhouse and seen Dean being accosted by those two rednecks and he could think of nothing else besides ripping those men to shreds to protect his omega. Oh, he’d been rude to Dean when he sat down at the bar next to him, because he’d so yearned to smell the roses and cloves again that if he hadn’t tried to put Dean off he would have devoured him. And then he found out Dean was there on a job, and he could not let him hunt it alone, even if Benny Lafitte ( _he had no idea why Benny hadn’t claimed him yet - maybe he was letting Dean get hunting out of his system_ ) was willing to _eventually_ back him up. Once he was in Dean’s presence and sharing a room and a car and pretending to be a happily mated couple he wanted more than anything for it to be _real_ , and because he knew it would never be he needed to push Dean away for good. But now Dean was walking towards Hal’s Diner with the nonchalance he’d always had, and if he spotted Sam when he looked up at the window he surely didn’t acknowledge it, and god, Sam wished he hadn’t made it out of that vampire hunt.


	11. Some People Are Just Born Tortured

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Now we know what happened in the past. Let's go back to the present. Where Dean starts to remember things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Dean has a flashback. It's nothing specific, but may be hard to get through for some.

Dean honestly had the shittiest luck. He must have done something to deserve it, pissed off some pagan god somewhere, or really aggravated a witch, and he just wanted to know what it was he had done so he could try to make amends for it. First it was the news about his suppressants, which he was still freaking the fuck out about, and now, halfway across the street to Hal’s Diner he spotted Sam right there at a booth in the front fucking window. He was in the middle of the street so he couldn’t stop, and he was pretty sure Sam had already seen him so he couldn’t turn around and go back either. The only thing Dean had going for him at the moment were his sunglasses, which made it impossible for Sam to know if he’d been spotted or not.

Dean tried to get a handle on his emotions so that Sam wouldn’t immediately be able to scent how upset he was, but this morning had just been too much. Between the hangover and the note and the pharmacy he was too stressed, and he’d be surprised if he could make it two steps inside the door before bursting into tears. Goddamn hormones! He hated them. He knew that’s what the problem was. He’d been slowly coming to realize that this was exactly the way he’d felt for a couple of days before he presented. Irritated, emotional, irrational, and helpless to do anything about it. He wanted to behave like a reasonable adult. He knew he _wasn’t_ behaving like a reasonable adult. But he was incapable of behaving like a reasonable adult. It was like he was in the passenger seat of a car his omega was driving, shouting, “You’re going too fast for the turn up ahead!” but unable to grab the wheel. He couldn’t go into the diner now, and he couldn’t not go into to the diner, so he did the only thing any self respecting omega would do: he stalled for time.

He really was quite proud of how quickly he made the decision, but Dean had always been a quick decision maker, even when under stress or emotionally overloaded. The decisions weren’t always good ones, but he was definitely someone you could count on to take action in a clinch. So, right before he got to the diner, knowing he was in full view of Sam, he stopped, patted his pockets, and made the universal, “Crap, I forgot something” hand gesture, complete with exasperated sigh. Then he turned around, went back across the street, and walked down to where he’d had to park Baby about half a block away. It wasn’t going to buy him a lot of time, because if he didn’t come back it would be obvious it was all an act, and while he shouldn’t care what Sam thought of him he did, and the idea of running away and letting Sam have Hal’s Diner like some kind of trophy was just too much. The right to eat breakfast at Hal’s was a battle he intended to win.

Fortunately the walk to the car provided him the time he needed to really clamp down on his feelings and their ability to broadcast his mood to the whole diner, and even more fortunately he remembered his cell phone was still in the glove box, so now he had a prop to help sell his little performance. He crossed the street from where he was, figuring it would look more believable that he hadn’t seen Sam if he came up along the sidewalk by the diner instead of going all the way back up to the pharmacy to cross like he was purposely trying to be in full view. That way he could be “casually” checking his phone as he approached, and it would give even more of the appearance that he hadn’t seen Sam and couldn’t have cared less if he did.

Jesus, when did he turn into such an omega?

Whatever shaman, deity, or wizard he’d pissed off must have approved of his little act. As he opened the door to step into Hal’s the opening trumpets of _The Ring of Fire_ blared over the diner’s sound system. It was literally a perfect entrance, like someone saw him coming and queued it up to start the second he entered. Take that, ABBA. The universe had just given him a new theme song, and he couldn’t stop the smile that broke out on his face as he glanced around to decide whether he wanted to sit in the window booths ( _nooooo_ ), the tables dotting the main area ( _eh_ ), or the lunch counter ( _we have a winner_ ). He didn’t fight the swagger in his step as he walked up to the counter to put in an order, knowing that half the patrons had noticed him and appreciated the whole effect. He didn’t even glance in Sam’s direction. Sam Campbell didn’t exist in a world where Johnny Cash announced Dean’s presence in the room. If only he were wearing his cowboy boots this moment would have been complete. He really needed to bring those on more hunts, so he’d been prepared in case something as awesome as this happened again.

It turned his whole morning right around, at least for the two and a half minutes the song was playing. A young waitress chewing on a wad of Juicy Fruit ( _at least that’s what it smelled like_ ) placed a glass of water, menu, and cup of coffee in front of him without even asking, then wandered away looking bored. His head still ached dully, but his stomach really was feeling better and he flipped open the menu to figure out what he wanted for breakfast. He supposed at this point it was probably closer to brunch, which wasn’t good. He needed to eat and get on the road headed back to Sioux Falls ASAP.

That was when his phone rang. The phone he specifically went to the car for, and made a big show of checking right as he had walked past the front window just in case Sam was watching, and he’d forgotten to turn the volume down so it was loud and obnoxious. He’d have to answer it, even if he didn’t want to talk to anyone and just felt like enjoying the afterglow of that fabulous entrance. He _really_ didn’t want to answer it when he saw the name on the screen.

**Dad**

Gripping the coffee cup to try to elicit some kind of support from the caffeine through osmosis, he flipped the phone open, hit the green button to accept the call, and held it to his ear.

“Hey Dad,” he said lowly, trying not to disturb the people around him.

“ _Dean_!” At least John sounded stone cold sober. “ _Where are you_? _Why haven’t you been answering my texts_?”

Stone cold sober and pissed.

“I was on a hunt,” Dean replied, trying to stay calm against his father’s alpha voice. “Kind of hard to answer a text in the middle of a nest.”

“ _I know you were on a hunt, I meant where are you, right now, so I can come and haul your ass back home_!”

“Dad, I haven’t had a ‘back home’ since I was four and a half. You plannin’ to ground me, too? Take away my Lincoln logs?”

“ _I’m not too crazy about this new tone of yours_. _That Campbell’s influence_?”

“What?”

“ _You heard me, Dean. He put all kinds of fairy tale ideas in your head about teamin’ up with him, makin’ you disrespect me like this_?”

“First, I can think for myself. Second, how do you even know about me working with Sam?”

“ _I have an alert set up in the FDH. Any time your name pops up I hear about it._ ”

“You’re _cyberstalking_ me?!”

“ _You’ve been dodging me for a year Dean_. _I had to do something_. _Someone’s gotta try to get you to accept reality before you get yourself killed_! _I’m on my way to Laramie right now, so wherever you are you stay put_. _That’s an order_!”

“Dad, I’m gonna hang up the phone and you’re not gonna call me again until you’ve pulled your head outta your ass.”

“ _Dammit Dean_! _Vampires are nothing to screw around with_! _You’re lucky Campbell didn’t use you as bait_!”

“How do you know he didn’t?”

“ ** _Did_ ** _he_?”

The fury in John’s voice was absurd. After Dean presented, John’s go-to move had been to use him as bait whenever the job required it. The hypocrisy was sickening, and Dean didn’t feel well enough to play nice.

“No, he didn’t. Just because that’s all you ever saw me as don’t mean that’s how other hunters work. You’d know that if you hadn’t pissed off everyone in the Midwest.”

“ _That’s a pretty smart mouth, Dean_.”

“I’m hanging up now.”

“ _Dean, I swear to god, you hang up this phone I’ll take the Impala back the minute I find you._ ”

“You can’t. She’s not yours. She’s mine an’ Adam’s.”

“ _You think I care whose car the DMV says she is_?”

“You’ll care when the cops arrest you for grand theft auto.”

“ _Are you threatening me_?!”

“I’m promising you.”

“ _Dean…_ ”

“Bye Dad.”

“ _DEAN_!”

He clicked the phone shut and tossed it onto the counter, digging his hands into his hair. If he had any self respect he’d ditch the phone and get a new number so John couldn’t contact him. Adam would back that play. But then what would happen if Dad really needed him for something? What if he ditched the phone and his dad ended up getting killed? Dean was pretty sure he was one of maybe three people who would even work with John. He couldn’t just cut him off. Except now he knew John was using the FDH to track him and it was only a matter of time before his dad caught up with him. How the hell was he supposed to keep hunting knowing John was on his tail?

His phone was already ringing again and he was poised to answer it and tell his father clearly and concisely to fuck the hell off, but the screen flashed a different name.

**Benny**

Right. He’d promised to call when the hunt was over. Benny didn’t really know Sam and as a result didn’t trust his skillset. The diners sitting near him were going to think he was a jerk for constantly being on his phone.

“Hey man,” he said as soon as he’d picked it up. “Sorry I didn’t call, long night.”

“ _How’d it go_? _You sprouting any extra rows of teeth or in need of a blood transfusion_?”

“Nah, it was a cakewalk. Just too much celebrating afterwards.”

“ _Uh huh. Campbell behave like a gentleman_?”

Dean winced. He was glad Benny was all the way in Indiana. It was easier to pull off lying to him over the phone.

“Yeah, everything was fine. Gotta get on the road soon to head back home though.”

“ _Okay. Send me a text when you get there so I know you ain’t been sold into the sex trade_.”

Dean chuckled and felt warmth spreading across his chest. He wasn’t sure what he did to get a friend like Benny, but he would forever be glad he’d done it.

“Deal. Later Benny.”

“ _Be good, Dean_.”

He hung up and let out a sigh. He suddenly felt really tired and just wanted to be back in his crappy little apartment over the bar in Sioux Falls. It wasn’t much, but it was all his, and he didn’t have to control what anyone was able to scent about him. It was exhausting being unmated sometimes - like he was a walking aphrodisiac. For the first time in days he didn’t even care about the stupid suppressants. He just wanted to be in his own home where everything smelled safe and warm.

“What’s the matter hon? Lover’s quarrel?”

Dean looked up into the face of the middle-aged waitress standing ready to take his order. She had a kind, motherly aura about her, her long red hair falling in waves around a pretty face with gentle blue eyes. She looked familiar, but he couldn’t place her. His eyes flicked down to her nametag quickly ( _Dolores_ ) before he looked back up and blinked.

“What?” he asked. “No, that was my dad and then just a friend…”

“Not the phone calls, sweetie,” she said, smiling at him. He debated pointing out she had lipstick on her teeth. He wasn’t sure of the protocol when it came to things like that and didn’t know if she’d appreciate it or be embarrassed. It didn’t really matter though, because she just kept right on talking and he wasn’t going to interrupt her. “You and your young man.”

“My what?”

“Your mate.” She gave him a knowing wink. “He’s been over there sulking for the last twenty minutes. Came in here lookin’ like something the cat drug in. Took him ten minutes just to figure out the menu. Right now he’s tryin’ real hard not to look over here.” She glanced over his shoulder in the direction of the window booths. “He ain’t succeedin’ too well though. Trouble in paradise already?”

Dean realized instantly why she looked familiar. They’d talked to her about buying a place in the area. Back when they were posing as a couple. So obviously she thought that he and Sam were mated. He could feel his face heating up and took a long, deliberate sip of his coffee. It would be easy enough to correct her, but he really didn’t have the energy for it.

“That’s one way to put it,” he said. “Can I...uh...can I get some scrambled eggs with a side of oatmeal, plain wheat toast, and some cranberry juice?”

“Sure thing.” She scribbled down his order and then leaned down confidentially. “Whatever he did, don’t keep him in the doghouse too long. Poor boy’s a mess.”

Dean pushed a little smile onto his face and took another sip of his coffee as Dolores went off to put his order in. He was curious just how bad Sam’s hangover had to be if she’d misinterpreted it as him being heartbroken or something of the sort, but he wasn’t about to look. Whatever agony he was in right now he had coming. He’s the one who brought the tequila.

Still, his omega was dying to know what the alpha was going through, despite what curiosity had done to the cat. He couldn’t scent anything from Sam’s direction - the guy had gotten much better at not letting every little emotion mix in with the leather and gunpowder. It was maddening. One tiny whiff of whether he was genuinely miserable, completely irritated, or royally pissed off would have been enough to settle him, but there was nothing. He checked his phone, trying to see if any part of it could be used as a mirror to take a peek at Sam across the diner, but it was useless, and even if it hadn’t been the angle would have been wrong. He played with his sunglasses on the counter, trying to slide them over to get a look, but the problem with the angle was still the same. There was nothing he could do to assess the situation with Sam without flat out turning around and looking. Well, maybe he could run to the bathroom and check on the way back, but that would be too obvious, and what if Sam left while he was in there? Or what if Sam followed him in and wanted to talk? Or yell at him? Or _not_ yell at him? And why did the thought of any of those options bother him _so much_? Why did the only palatable outcome for him and Sam being in the same diner involve kissing and fondling and tongues down throats and lots and _lots_ of nakedness? It made for a particularly uncomfortable wait for his hangover cure-all breakfast, adding another layer onto all of the emotions he was already suppressing. If this was what sex with an alpha did to him, he had obviously made the right decision to swear it off.

After an eternity of listening to Willie Nelson crooning about how the object of his affection was always on his mind, Tammy Wynette standing by her man, and Marty Robbins detailing his death in the West Texas town of El Paso, Dolores returned with Dean’s breakfast just as an alpha in a three piece polyester suit straight out of the 1970s took up the chair next to him. The guy reeked of hair tonic and horse manure, and Dean couldn’t determine if that was his scent or things actually on his person. He tried to ignore the odor as best he could as he tucked into his eggs, but it really was quite strong. He noticed the guy noticing _him_ peripherally, but pretended he didn’t, wanting to just get through his breakfast as quickly as possible without incident, particularly now that he knew that John knew he was on his way to Laramie. But there was that pesky problem of him having pissed off some powerful entity, and after a few moments he felt a hand on his right thigh.

“Well,” the guy drawled, extra long and drawn out. Dean could feel himself being ogled. Clearly he should just not try to eat out in public anymore. “Hello there beautiful. Don’t think I’ve seen you around here before.”

Dean swallowed the eggs and took a sip of cranberry juice, his jaw muscles flexing.

“That’s cuz I ain’t from around here,” he said flatly. “You’re gonna want to remove that hand.”

“Ooo, feisty!” He could hear the guy’s greasy smile in his voice and closed his eyes, reminding himself that he needed his fork for his breakfast and couldn’t just drive it into the alpha’s throat. “Listen sugar, I know it’s early in our relationship, but whattaya say about you an’ me headin’ back to my place?” He gave Dean’s leg a squeeze and started running his hand slowly up towards the omega’s crotch. “Cuz I gotta tell ya - if you were mine I’d keep you all happy and knotted up at home...”

The snap of the alpha’s thumb as Dean wrenched it back and out of its socket was immediately drowned out by the man’s scream. In one fluid movement Dean used the dislocated thumb to twist his arm up behind his back with his right hand and then pinned the guy’s head to the counter with his own forearm across his neck, hearing the guy’s shoulder pop out of its joint as well. He used his left hand to grab his fork and stab it into the counter by the alpha’s face. The entire diner fell into silence as Dean leaned over him, fangs out, and pressed down on his neck to reduce him to a whimpering puddle of tears.

“Now, I know you understand English, cuz that’s the language you were using for your pervy pick-up lines, so I gotta assume that you’re just really stupid and I have to speak slower,” he hissed. “The next time an omega tells you to remove your hand, _remove your fucking hand_.”

“Dean…”

He hadn’t even scented Sam approaching, he was so pissed off and just _done_ with this shit, but suddenly Sam was all he could smell - calm and soothing and gentle. He felt Sam’s hands on both of his shoulders, tenderly trying to pull him away from the blubbering man he still held pinned to the counter. There was nothing demanding about the way Sam tugged on him. It was somehow reassuring, letting Dean know that he wasn’t alone. His omega wanted to just turn into Sam’s chest, scent his neck, and hide, but the angrier part of him that was Dean Motherfucking Winchester refused to do something so weak and needy.

“This knothead needs to learn some manners, Sam,” he growled, tightening his grip on the alpha’s thumb, eliciting a yelp from the man.

Quite to his surprise, Sam moved around to his side and snaked an arm around his waist, pulling Dean insistently and protectively to him. Even more surprising was that Dean went willingly. If Sam had tried this at the Roadhouse, Dean would have hauled off and decked him. Now, however, he felt a wave of relief at being pressed up against Sam, like he was _owned_ or something.

No, not owned. _Claimed_. He’d always hated that word, but how it felt was so different from what he’d imagined that his grip on the douchebag’s thumb automatically began to relax.

Undoubtedly for the benefit of the people in the room who had met them as a couple, Sam murmured, “Not now, baby,” right into his ear.

 _Not now, baby_. Dean had heard Sam say that before. But when? Last night? No, it hadn’t been last night. Sam had said a lot of things last night, but that wasn’t one of them, he was sure of it. The _not now, baby_ memory was more vague and harder to grasp even than the events of last night’s alcohol fueled copulating, and brought with it the strong odor of chlorine. The Holiday Inn had a pool, but despite Dean suggesting they go for a swim two nights in a row, Sam had been staunchly against it, so it must be from some other time the two of them were together. What other time had they been together near a pool?

Adam’s graduation party. Dean didn’t really remember a lot of it, because he’d polished off two bottles of scotch ( _well, probably more like one and a half, Adam had said he opened a second bottle but not how much he drank_ ), but he _did_ kind of remember sharing a chaise lounge with Sam at one point, so he was probably remembering that. It was all hazy, though. Why would Sam have called him “baby”? That was a particularly intimate pet name one didn’t just go around giving ex-friends from grade school that one never spoke with again. And if it _was_ from the party, why was it filling Dean with such abject terror, distress, and dread? Had Sam done something to Dean there? No, as big of a jerk as Sam could be, he was not the sort of guy to take advantage. Yeah, there had been last night, but drunk as he was Dean had known what he was doing and had repeatedly consented. Besides, if Sam had done something to him, Adam would never have stayed friends with him, and Adam would have _told_ Dean. So why did Dean suddenly want to be sick all over the floor of Hal’s Diner?

It took a minute for Dean to realize that Sam now had him cradled against his chest, and was caressing his face and saying things like, “Dean” and “Look at me,” and “What’s wrong” and “ _Dean_!” They were on the floor and hair tonic and manure had escaped the diner. Well, obviously they were on the floor, since his knees had buckled, which he was starting to dimly recall as he feebly grabbed onto Sam’s shirt. He seemed to be hyperventilating, but he couldn’t really tell, because it kept going dark at the edges of his vision, like his mind was trying to shut down or something before anything more of the recollection of the party had a chance to solidify for him. It was all very confusing.

Sam was either a really, really good actor or he was genuinely worried about what was happening, because all Dean could smell was Sam’s fear. The scent helped to ground him and give him something to hold onto to pull himself out of whatever this was. He turned his face to Sam’s neck and just breathed for a moment, which steadied him somewhat and caused Sam to tighten his grip.

“Is he okay?” Dolores was asking, and Dean realized for the first time that they’d drawn quite the crowd of concerned diners. “I can call an ambulance…”

“No,” Sam said quickly at the spike of distress in Dean’s scent. “He’ll be fine he just...that happens a lot. People taking liberties. He can handle it but it stresses him.”

“Oh, I know how that is,” Dolores replied. Dean was beginning to feel like he could breathe normally again. “Ray’s one of our regulars. If I had a nickel for every time he swatted my ass I’d be a rich woman. Get him on over to your booth and I’ll bring his breakfast.”

“Thanks Dolores,” Sam said.

Dean felt Sam pulling him to his feet. This was familiar, too, and reinforced the “ _something very bad has happened_ ” feeling. Dean couldn’t take it. He was going to lose the three bites of scrambled egg he’d eaten and bolted for the bathroom. He barely made it into one of the stalls before he was on his knees, heaving into the bowl. Apparently today was just for puking whenever a bathroom was nearby. He really regretted that he hadn’t died in the hotel room this morning.

The bathroom door clicked quietly behind him and he heard footsteps approaching the stall as his stomach settled a little. At least he hadn’t had enough to eat yet for this to be a prolonged vomiting session. He was already trying not to think about the fact that he was kneeling on the floor of a public restroom with his face in a public toilet. He gave himself another minute just to be sure his stomach was done, then sat back on his heels and flushed.

Wordlessly, Sam got his hands under Dean’s arms and helped him to his feet, then over to the sink where he could wash his hands, rinse his mouth, and splash some water on his face. His knees threatened to buckle again, but Sam was quick to grab him and hold Dean tightly to his chest. He didn’t even care that he was openly clinging to Sam now, or that his whole body had started trembling. He went along easily as Sam led him out of the bathroom and over to the booth by the window, and didn’t object when Sam got him down on the bench seat and then slid in beside him, making himself a barrier between Dean and everyone else in the diner. Dean turned into Sam’s side and breathed in his scent again, while one of Sam’s hands swept up and down his back and the other smoothed through his hair.

“You okay?” Sam asked softly when Dean’s breathing had returned somewhat to normal. Sam still smelled of fear and worry and something else that Dean couldn’t place. Dolores had already brought over his breakfast, phone, and sunglasses. “What happened?”

“I dunno.” Dean wanted to pull away from Sam but couldn’t. His omega still needed desperately to feel protected and safe. It was humiliating. “Something...a memory...I dunno. I couldn’t place it.”

“A memory?”

“You an’ me. At a pool, or something. It didn’t make sense.” Dean felt Sam go rigid, and his scent became anxious. It was easy to pull back then. “What?”

“The two of us at a pool?” Sam looked very pale. He _knew_ what Dean was talking about. Dean didn’t know why that scared him, but it did. “What did you remember?”

“Ah, so this is what you ditched me for, Sam.”

Dean jolted into the corner of the booth and smacked against the window as the young, pretty blonde with cold blue-grey eyes slid into the bench seat across from them. She wore a dark printed t-shirt, black leather jacket, and irritated expression. The smell of rotten eggs and raw meat filled the booth. Dean’s dislike of her was immediate.

Sam’s scent changed from concerned to nervous, and he put a good foot of distance between him and Dean.

“Ruby! Hey. I told you I’d hook up with you later.”

 _This_ was Ruby? How could Sam stand to work with someone who smelled so disgusting? Maybe she didn’t smell disgusting to him, though. He had no idea what alphas smelled like to each other.

“Yeah,” she sneered. “I can see you were in a real hurry to debrief me. I take it this is Dean?”

“Yeah...uh...yes.” Sam was seriously flustered, and not like he’d been when Dean asked if dinner last night was a date. That had been cute. Nothing about this situation was cute. “Dean, this is Ruby, my associate. Ruby, this is Dean.”

“Charmed,” she said, snagging a piece of bacon from Sam’s plate without even asking. “You find anything interesting in the vamp nest or…”

“No,” Sam interjected. Dean got the distinct impression she was asking about something specific and Sam didn’t want him to know what it was. “It was just a routine hunt.”

Ruby slid her gaze to Dean and pinned him to the seat with a glare.

“I’ll bet.”

“Look, we were kind of in the middle of something Ruby…”

A sneer curled her lips and her eyes stayed on Dean.

“I’ll bet.”

“Could you just...give us a minute please?”

“Sure.” She swung around to look at Sam and stole another piece of bacon. “Though I never pegged you for a minute-man, Sam. Let’s get Dean’s opinion on that.”

Ah. So Sam was fucking her. Or wanted to fuck her. Or she wanted to fuck him. Maybe. Probably. Dean didn’t know. He was such a moron for caring.

“Ruby…”

“It’s okay,” Dean said, his voice returning to him at long last. He grabbed his phone and his sunglasses and pushed against Sam to be let out. “It’s okay, you guys can talk, I gotta get going anyway.”

“You didn’t eat your breakfast,” Sam objected, though he was allowing Dean to get past him.

“I’m not really hungry,” Dean told him, digging into his wallet for the coupons Sam had left him this morning. God, he needed to get out of here before the overwhelming sadness constricting his chest burst out into his scent. “I’ll grab something on the way home.”

“You don’t have to pay, Dean,” Sam said. “I got it.”

“No, it’s fine.” Dean clenched his jaw, pulling out a $20 coupon. “I came into some money this morning. Got paid for something I’m really good at.” If he’d been looking at Sam he would have seen the hurt flash across his face, but Dean was too busy jamming his sunglasses back on. “Later Sam.”

“Dean, wait…”

But Dean was already halfway out the door, the opening strains of _I Fall to Pieces_ echoing through Hal’s behind him. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans and walked doggedly down the street to cross to the Impala, half listening for Sam’s footsteps behind him. He didn’t know why he was listening, or why it was so disappointing when he didn’t hear anything, but he managed to hold it together until he got into the safety of his Baby. He didn’t even know why he was so upset, it wasn’t as if Sam _meant_ anything to him, or that last night had been anything other than a release after a hunt gone particularly well, but he still had to sit there with the engine idling for what felt like a very long time, his arms crossed over the steering wheel and his forehead resting on them as he just straight-up sobbed.

It was like the morning after Adam’s party, which he _did_ remember, and hadn’t thought about in a long time because it really hurt just too damn much to think about. Maybe he’d go to Bobby’s again like he’d done after that awful day in Shreveport when he’d practically thrown himself at Sam and been completely rebuffed. Hopefully he wouldn’t spend another week a bawling, inconsolable mess, because he had stuff to do and that had seriously scared Bobby last time. He really should focus on getting into a clinic and picking up his suppressants, but at this point what could a couple more days of skipping them do? He thought of calling Adam and asking if he could come for a visit, but Adam would want to know why and Dean obviously could not tell him what had happened with Sam. Adam hated the thought of alphas anywhere near Dean. He might be really upset right now, but it wouldn’t be fair to ruin their friendship when Dean had been the one to instigate things last night.

When he finally felt himself reasonably under control he threw the Impala into gear and headed out of town. Sam and Ruby were still sitting in the front window of Hal’s, and if he spotted Sam getting to his feet while he drove past - well, he didn’t care. If anything, the last twelve hours had proven the Benny was literally the only good, trustworthy alpha on the planet, and it was a lesson Dean didn’t intend to forget again.


	12. The Guy Feels Guilty Surfing the Internet for Porn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The plot thickens. Also BOBBY!!!

If Sam knew how to kill a demon, he’d have gutted Ruby before Dean even made it to the door. As it was, exorcism was the only effective method of getting rid of demons that he’d come across, which didn’t kill them but only sent them back to Hell. At the moment he really did need her around, even if he couldn’t stand her and doubted he could trust her, but after what she’d just pulled he was definitely ganking her the minute she ceased to be useful.

“You gonna say something Sam or just sit there looking like you sucked on a lemon?” she asked as she grabbed Dean’s plate and started eating his toast. She grimaced when she realized it was plain and pushed the whole plate away.

“I told you -” Sam struggled to keep his tone even. He really was furious. “That I was going to hook up with you later.”

“Please.” She’d gone back to devouring his bacon. “The way you two were snuggled up you wouldn’t be hooking up with me until after the honeymoon.”

“Can I get you somethin’?”

Dolores had come over to the table and was eyeing Ruby with open hostility. She shot a cold look to Sam, having apparently seen Dean’s hasty retreat from the diner the minute the demon had shown up. Great. Now the locals would think Sam was some kind of unfaithful asshole to his brand new mate who had just collapsed in front of them all, and that thought shouldn’t bother him because it’s not like they were really mated or ever coming back here again but goddammit, he wanted to scream that it wasn’t like that and Ruby was just a means to an end.

Ruby shot Dolores a grin that was laced with a threat and said, “Sure, Do-lo-res. I’ll have some bacon with a side of bacon. And some extra bacon for Sam here, since I’ve eaten all of his.”

Somehow she managed to make eating all of Sam’s bacon sound sexual. It did not win Dolores over to her side, but Sam guessed that was the point.

“You got it,” the waitress said smoothly, shooting Sam one more death glare before heading to put Ruby’s order in.

“So tell me truly Sam.” She smiled at him like the cat that got the cream. “How is pretty Dean in the sack? Worth the wait?”

“We haven’t…”

“Please. His scent is all over you. Not that I _really_ care, I just like seeing you squirm. So. Much. Guilt.”

“What do you want, Ruby?”

Sam was getting impatient. No matter what bullshit he’d written on that note this morning, the only thing he wanted right now - that he could ever think of wanting again - was to go after Dean and make sure he was okay. He didn’t know what had happened after Dean took down that alpha at the counter, but it seemed like he’d remembered something about Adam’s party and him practically fainting, then hyperventilating and throwing up scared the shit out of Sam. He needed to get rid of Ruby so he could call Adam and tell him what had happened.

Everything that had happened.

Fortunately for Sam demons got bored very quickly with human drama and angst, and Ruby didn’t have a problem letting the subject go. Her knee bounced, vibrating the table as she waited for her bacon to arrive.

“The Colt, Sam,” she said. “I want the Colt.”

“So do I,” Sam replied. “Especially if it will kill the fucker that murdered Jess.”

“Then where is it?” she demanded. “I had it on good authority that those vamps took it from the rancher they killed. He wasn’t just some retired cowboy you know.”

“Yeah, I know.” Sam and Ruby shut up as Dolores returned with plenty of bacon. She gave Sam a third disapproving look and disappeared again. “But I’m telling you, it wasn’t there.”

“You think Dean took it?” she asked as she dug in. Sam had asked her once why she bothered to eat when she didn’t need to, and she’d told him one of the best things about being a demon was getting to indulge. It still kind of grossed him out to think she was walking around in basically a corpse stuffing it full of processed pork products. “Did you check his bag?”

“Dean didn’t take it,” Sam said. “We were together pretty much the whole time. And he’s not the type to find something cool without saying ‘hey come look at this cool thing I just found.’ It wasn’t there.”

“But you checked his bag.”

“I went _in_ his bag for other reasons, and it wasn’t there.”

“What about a cavity search?” She was smiling again wickedly. Sam wanted to punch her. “Did you perform a good, thorough, cavity search?”

“Fuck you, Ruby.”

“Sorry, you’ve confused me with Dean.”

He glared at her for a long minute, but she just laughed. He couldn’t wait until he was done with her. If only he hadn’t promised Jess’ parents to track down the thing that killed her, and if only the thing that killed her hadn’t been some kind of high-up-the-food-chain yellow-eyed demon named Azazel, and if only it were possible to kill Azazel without the need of some mythic Colt crafted by Samuel Colt himself that could stop just about any supernatural being on the planet.

“The vamps didn’t have it, and I couldn’t exactly search the Elkins ranch without Dean wanting to know what the hell I was doing, so it’s probably there,” he finally said.

“Nope, I checked,” she told him. “First thing I did when you booted me off the hunt. His place was warded against demons before the vamps broke in and made a meal out of him, but after I had no problem getting in. It’s not there.”

“Well then someone else has it,” Sam snapped.

“Who?”

“How the fuck should I know? _You’re_ the demon! You tell me who else Azazel may have pissed off that would want it.”

“Lots of fucking people, Sam. He’s a Prince of Hell.”

“Okay, so how about you see if you can figure out who has it and we can go get it from them!” He stood up to toss down some money on the table just as Dean drove past the diner. Shit! This was like Shreveport all over again. He should have stayed in bed with Dean this morning, not run away like a coward, and certainly not written that awful note. “I gotta go.”

“Fine,” Ruby sighed after him as he ran out of Hal’s to where his car was parked up the block.

He was starting to wish he’d never learned what killed Jess. He could deal with chasing an unknown entity to keep him going as a hunter, motivated without becoming a zealot. Knowing what it was seemed worse, as there was a finish line in sight but it seemed to keep moving farther off all the time. He recognized that he was beginning to chase that as the goal more than ending the thing that burned his girlfriend on the ceiling. He wanted this chapter of his life to be over.

It wasn’t that he hadn’t cared about Jess. He had, he really had, and maybe if she’d lived they could have been happy together long term. But she was his first real relationship, and as first relationships went they’d had a really good run, and it just felt like it was a lot to expect of him that he would give over the rest of his life to chasing down this Azazel when they’d only been together for a year. A year was nothing in the grand scheme of things, and while Jess’ death had been awful, a lot things that seemed much worse than her death had happened since to kind of make it pale in comparison. He realized it was terrible and shallow, but he was starting to feel more like sure, if this Azazel crossed his path he’d kill him, but hunting him down on purpose was a lot more trouble than it was worth. It wasn’t as if Jess had been the love of his life.

Besides, he’d done some research into the Princes of Hell and Azazel, and this demon was not someone to be trifled with. Why he’d gone after Jess remained a mystery, one Sam was beginning to feel was more important to solve than the location of this mythical gun that seemed about as real at this point as the Fountain of Youth. This was the fifth hunt where Ruby told him they’d find the Colt and the fifth time they came up empty. He was starting to think the damn thing didn’t exist and she was just stringing him along. Maybe next time she came calling he’d tell her to shove it.

By nightfall he was in South Dakota, so he didn’t see in the local Laramie news that Dolores Weatherton, 52, had been found with her neck slit open after her shift ended at Hal’s Diner and the police were looking for anyone with information to help them solve the case. The police were withholding the fact that at least a pint of blood was missing from the body and that trace amounts of sulfur were found on her clothes. It was a strange case that wouldn’t pop up on the FDH’s radar for a couple of weeks, and certainly not in time for Sam to put two and two together and realize that there were either other demons in town or Ruby was not what she appeared to be.

Right now though his chief concern was finding Dean, and at least confirming he’d made it home safe. Not that he had any idea where Dean’s home was. He knew he lived in or around Sioux Falls because he’d said so at the Roadhouse, so it was possible he lived with Bobby Singer.

Adam had told him a little about Bobby after Dean was expelled. Singer Salvage Yard was apparently the first stop John made when he picked Dean up and that had Bobby making a frantic phone call to check on Adam, who he hadn’t seen since the boy was about two years old. Bobby had called routinely after that to update Adam on what his dad and brother were up to, but Sam had gotten to know Bobby on his own the last couple of years. He was one of the most respected resources for hunters in the midwest, even if he was least likely to make it through the day without downing a twelve pack, and if you had any kind of question about any kind of monster you called Bobby first. He’d been a damn fine hunter himself back in the day if the stories about him were true, and he still went out on some of the easier cases, but since he hit forty he’d taken a step back from field work and opted for a support role. Apparently he never thought he’d live that long, and having done so was curious if he’d make it to fifty, which he had a few years back.

Sam and Bobby got on well enough, though Bobby sure as hell didn’t like Sam’s grandfather. That was okay, few people did, and Sam had resigned himself to always having to live down to Samuel’s name in the hunting world. Bobby at least respected that Sam wanted to do the job because it was important, and not because he wanted to take money out of the hands of hunters who really needed it. In fact, all of the information Sam had learned about the Princes of Hell had come from Bobby’s library. Sam knew from Adam that Bobby had always been very close to Dean, so Dean might be there, or he might know where Dean lived. Asking Samuel to check the FDH database for his address was out of the question, and Sam’s laptop wasn’t powerful enough to crack the department’s encryptions. Singer Salvage seemed the most reasonable place to start.

Unless Sam just manned up and called Adam to ask where Dean lived, but frankly he was putting off that conversation as long as he possibly could. The initial panic from the incident at the diner had subsided somewhat, and while he knew that talking with Adam was inevitable he wasn’t there just yet. His alpha was shouting loud and clear that once he found the omega he was claiming him so he couldn’t run away again. He didn’t want their conversation about Sam and Dean’s antics at the Holiday Inn to overshadow Sam’s worry that Dean had some kind of PTSD flashback, and he didn’t think he could separate the two incidents right now to focus on the one that was more important.

It was about eight o'clock when he pulled up Bobby’s long driveway and set his mangy old dog Rumsfeld off to barking. Sam knew Bobby had plenty of early warning systems on the property, but Rumsfeld certainly acted like he was the only one that mattered. Sam didn’t see the Impala anywhere as he pulled up to a stop a safe distance from where the dog was going nuts, and exited his SUV slowly just in case Bobby met him on the porch with a shotgun.

Instinctively Sam scented the air for Dean, but Bobby was burning something out back ( _smelled like tires_ ) and whatever it was would have masked anyone’s scent. He headed slowly for the front door, but barely made it a couple of steps before Bobby showed up in the doorway, shouting at Rumsfeld to shut up and go to sleep. To Sam’s relief he was holding a beer and not a shotgun. He only opened the inside door, though, and left the screen door closed. Bobby obviously wanted there to be a clear boundary between where Sam was welcome and where he wasn’t, and “wasn’t” was inside the house.

“Heya Sam,” the old hunter said evenly, adjusting his weathered trucker’s cap so the shadow fell across his eyes in the dying summer light. “You come to return those books on demons I leant you a while back?”

“Hey Bobby. No, I uh...I still need those for a little bit,” Sam replied. He suddenly felt really stupid, like a kid coming to ask a girl’s father if he could take her to prom, and shifted uncomfortably where he stood. “I was wondering if Dean was here? Maybe?”

“Nope.” Bobby took a long pull on his beer, leaving Sam there in quiet agony. “Was here about twenty minutes ago though. Seemed pretty upset about somethin’. You got any idea what that might be?”

Sam didn’t need to see Bobby’s eyes to know they were hard and zeroed in right on him. Clearly the man knew he didn’t always need his shotgun to be intimidating. Sam was pinned down where he stood by the unseen glare and growing increasingly uncomfortable.

“I might,” Sam croaked.

Bobby nodded and had another drink.

“Feel like sharin’ with the class?”

“It’s…” Sam was starting to sweat. He could deal with alphas any day. Give him an unreadable beta and he was just plain out of his depth. He ran a hand through his hair and paused to rub the back of his neck. “It’s...complicated?”

“Uh huh.”

“Could you...could you maybe give me his address, or…”

“Ain’t you got his phone number? I hear tell the two of you just finished up a hunt together in Laramie.”

Bobby’s tone was pointed, and Sam thought he caught a flash of anger in his clear blue eyes. So. Dean had told him something, but probably not everything, and it honestly wasn’t just that Sam couldn’t stand Bobby’s judgement, he legitimately did not want to kiss and tell. Dean had a right to privacy without Sam blabbing everywhere that they’d slept together.

“I uh...I tried calling on my way north, but he didn’t answer his phone.”

That was a bald faced lie. He’d _thought_ about calling Dean, about a hundred times on the nine hour plus drive, but he’d chickened out every single time he picked up his cell. He didn’t know what he would say if Dean picked up the phone, and he didn’t know what he would do if he didn’t. If Bobby knew differently he didn’t say so and let the matter drop.

“Well then, I guess he don’t wanna talk to you.” He gave Sam a little nod. “You should take that as a sign. Don’t forget to get me back those books when you have a chance.”

The last statement was thrown back casually over his shoulder as he closed the inside door. Sam would have called out to him if he thought it would do any good, but it was clear Bobby had put the subject to bed. He’d hoped for a little more sympathy from the man, even if he knew it was stupid to expect Bobby to realize how miserable he was or to care, particularly when he was so close to Dean. It looked like his options were down to calling Adam and begging to know where Dean lived or getting a hotel room and staying until he ran into him in the grocery store. The population of the greater Sioux Falls metropolitan area was only about a quarter of a million people. It was totally possible that he could just randomly stumble across Dean, right?

It took a while for him to stop standing in the middle of Bobby’s driveway like an idiot and climb back into his Hummer, and even longer for him to pull out the phone to dial Adam’s number. The sun had fully set by then and Rumsfeld had gone back to snoring in his doghouse. He was starting to think the decision to follow Dean had been a really bad one. He didn’t want to broadcast the fact that they’d slept together to Dean’s closest friends and family, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to tell anyone about his cousins assaulting him, and it seemed like both of those pieces of information were critical to getting anyone to understand why he _had_ to find out where Dean lived and make sure he was okay. The thing was, Adam already had one of those pieces of information, and no matter how pissed off he was going to be about the other, he was Sam’s only hope, even if it resulted in the end of their friendship.

Summoning up as much courage as he had left after the way the day had gone, he pressed Adam’s number in his phone and waited for him to pick up. He was only an hour behind in Durham. Adam at least couldn’t get pissed off that he was calling late.

It rang four times before Adam picked up, just as Sam was hoping it was going to go to voicemail.

“ _Hey Sam_ ,” he said. “ _Long time no talk_. _What’s up_?”

“Hey Adam,” Sam said, running a hand over his mouth. He was already starting to shake, anticipating the explosion. “I was wondering if you had Dean’s address?”

Adam laughed on the other end. It made Sam feel worse.

“ _Why_? _You wanna be pen pals with him or something_?”

“No, no, I uh…” He cleared his throat. “We’ve been working a job in Laramie the last couple of days and he left kind of sudden and I just wanted to check up on him.”

“ _Why don’t you just call him_?” Adam sounded confused. “ _If you were working a job you gotta have his number_.”

“I...I don’t think he’d answer the phone if I called him.”

There was a long pause on the other end of the line. Too long of a pause. Sam felt his stomach sink.

“ _Why_? _What happened in Laramie_?”

It was Sam’s turn to pause. He had no idea how to respond without sounding like an asshole. When Adam spoke again his voice was cold.

“ _Sam_. _What happened in Laramie_? _What did you do to my brother_?”

“I didn’t do anything to him. I mean...nothing he didn’t want...”

“ _I’m hanging up Sam_.”

“No, wait, Adam, let me explain…”

“ _I don’t want to hear it…_ ”

“Adam, please…”

“ _Not in the mood to listen to you brag about your conquests with my brother, dude_.”

“It wasn’t like that!”

“ _Really_? _Then what was it like_? _What, you trying to find out where he lives so you can fill his apartment with flowers and profess your undying love or some such shit_?”

“Adam…”

“ _I can’t believe this. I knew I couldn’t trust you_.”

“Adam, _he_ came on to _me_!”

“ ** _Sure_ ** _he did Sam_! _He’s never looked twice at an alpha, but for you he’ll make an exception_? _What’d you do, drug him up like your cousins_?”

“ _Jesus_ Adam! Who the fuck do you think I am?!”

“ _I think you’re the guy that wanted to fuck my brother the day after he was raped_.”

“That’s not fair. _I_ wanted to tell him. If he’d known, nothing that morning would have ever happened. He probably wouldn’t have let me touch him!”

“ _That’s the problem Sam._ **_You_ ** _knew and you fucking touched him anyway_.”

“He was distressed! Touch calms omegas! You’re in school for nursing, how can you not know this?”

“ _That’s why you were all over him in the bathroom right after, right_? _Calming him_? _Makes me wonder what you were doing while I was asleep_.”

“We weren’t doing _anything_ while you were asleep! That’s why he _left_!”

“ _Yeah, well obviously_ **_something_ ** _happened in Laramie, didn’t it Sam_? _Did you knot him real good_?”

“He _wanted_ me Adam. His scent was cl...”

“ _I swear Sam, if you try pulling that alpha and omega shit again I will track you down and kill you in your sleep_.”

God, this was going _so_ much worse than Sam had imagined. He wasn’t explaining any of this right, Adam was threatening him, and that was just pissing Sam’s alpha right the hell off. He knew he should feel terrible about the total destruction of their friendship, but he hadn’t even been able to get to the part where Dean had collapsed at the diner and that was a really fucking necessary detail.

“I’m sorry that you can’t understand all that ‘alpha and omega shit’ but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a big part of this.”

“ _Oh I know it is. I get how you knotheads react to an omega. I saw the tape._ ”

Sam gripped the steering wheel so tightly he was afraid he was going to bend it. Adam had taken the camcorder because after everything that happened to Dean they’d both been pretty paranoid about Sam’s cousins trying to steal it back, and they knew where Sam lived. Adam wasn’t going to work for the FDH, so his address wouldn’t be in the system, plus he’d be living in a dorm on a campus with fifteen thousand other people. Trying to get the camcorder from him seemed at the time like it would have been a lot more challenging, so Adam was going to take it in case Mark, Christian, and Tyler started something in the future and they needed to blackmail Samuel into getting them to back off. But they’d agreed never to watch it. If Dean ever remembered anything it was up to him whether anyone saw what had gone on in the basement, including his brother. Now Sam was furious.

“You’re giving me shit for doing something with Dean that he _wanted_ when you watched…”

“ _You want me to tell you what happened before we got there_?”

“No, Adam, I don’t.”

“ _You sure_? _Not interested in which one made him blow them before he passed out, who climbed on top first…_ ”

“Stop talking!”

“ _Why_? _Does it upset you that I know now how alphas treat omegas_?”

“I upsets me because you had no right!”

“ _I had every right_! _I had every right to know what they did to him_!”

“ _No_ , Adam, you _didn’t_! Just like you didn’t have any right to decide we weren’t going to tell him what happened!”

“ _So you’re blaming me because you can’t keep your dick in your pants around my brother_?”

“Who’s blaming anyone here? I’m trying to tell you what happened between us last night and you’re basically calling me a rapist!”

“ _How drunk was he_?”

The question set Sam back on his heels. He suddenly didn’t care if he and Adam ever spoke again after this moment.

“What?”

“ _I think I enunciated pretty fucking well_.”

“You think I would purposely get him drunk…”

“ _You are an alpha_.”

And there it was. The thing that had been hanging over them ever since Dean ran from his grandfather’s mansion and disappeared on Sam for six months. Adam hadn’t trusted him then and clearly never would, no matter how it had seemed afterwards. Sam suddenly wondered if Adam had tipped him off to the Shojo meeting because he knew how much Dean had loathed Sam at that point and it would be an easy way to get Sam to stay away from his brother. The way this conversation was going Sam wouldn’t put it past him.

But Sam hadn’t gotten Dean drunk so he could fuck him. They’d had a great hunt, were getting along better than they had in years, and for once in the longest time their conversations were light and fun. The only semi-serious argument they got in was in that rest stop over which car to take; every other disagreement had been more flirty than angry. All he’d wanted when he suggested the drinking game was to keep them both relaxed so they’d finish out the hunt on an amicable note and maybe not butt heads so much in the future. The way Dean had reacted to him had come as a complete, if welcome, shock. If Adam wasn’t going to believe that, wasn’t even willing to _listen_ to that, then his friendship obviously wasn’t anything worth losing.

“You know what, fuck you Adam. It wasn’t just about me knotting someone and Dean knew exactly what he was doing.”

“ _Is that why you won’t tell me how drunk he was_?”

“No, it’s because he was _very_ clear about what he wanted and I wasn’t going to make _another_ goddamned decision for him that he had every right to make for himself.”

“ _What you did was take advantage of the fact that you know what your cousins did to him and he doesn’t_. ”

“ _Because you insisted on us keeping it from him_! I _told_ you it was wrong! I _told_ you! And now that two years have passed, how the fuck was I supposed to bring that up, huh? Hey Dean, I know you’re pretty well adjusted and really want me to fuck you right now but let me tell you about the time that my cousins drugged you and dragged you down into my grandfather’s basement?”

“ _How about just showing some fucking restraint_? _What happened to all that talk about being disgusted with yourself for wanting him_? _Two years go by and you just couldn’t resist him anymore_?”

“ _No_ , Adam, I _couldn’t_. And even if I could have, I didn’t want to! We’d _both_ been drinking. He wanted me. I wanted him. We were on equal footing.”

“ _Oh my_ **_god_ ** _Sam, do you even hear yourself_? _He doesn’t know what he wants_!”

“That’s funny coming from someone who didn’t even give him a _choice_ , who never even _asked_ if he remembered anything but just _decided_ he didn’t need to know! So now he _doesn’t_ know and he acted like it never happened to him because he doesn’t know it did, and you’re pissed off at _me_ for not throwing him off because you still don’t want him making his own decisions!”

“ _You’ve just been_ ** _waiting_** _, haven’t you_? _You’ve just been_ ** _waiting_** _for the chance_ _to get between his legs._ ”

“Be honest, would you be this pissed off if we’d told him right after, two years ago, and he still slept with me last night? Have you been pissed off about all the betas he’s been with since then? Or is it because I’m an alpha that this is such a problem?”

“ _It’s because you_ **_know_ ** _what happened to him_.”

“So that means I should treat him like a leper? That I should treat him like Dean-who-was-raped-and-can’t-decide-what-he-wants instead of just Dean? You really think that would be _better_? Cuz it hasn’t worked out very well the last two years!”

“ _You’re the one who said lies of omission are still lies_.”

“Don’t you _dare_ throw that back in my face.”

“ _Why_? _Because you’re such a decent guy_? _Because you care about my brother_ **_so much_ ** _and just wanted to make him happy_? _Spare me the white picket fence speech_.”

“Because I asked if he was sure more than once and he was! Has it occurred to you that some part of him _knows_ what happened and that’s why he acts this way around me?”

“ _What the fuck are you talking about_?”

“I make him feel _safe_ , Adam. This whole hunt I could smell it on him because he wasn’t busy hating my guts and suppressing his scent. You asked if I thought he’d make an exception for me? Apparently he fucking will.”

“ _My god, you are so_ **_full_ ** _of yourself_.”

“What do you think is going to happen when he _really_ remembers and knows we’ve been keeping this from him for _years_?”

“ _He’s not going to remember because I’m not going to tell him and you’re not going near him again_.”

“You think it’s going to be that simple? He remembered something _today_ and had some kind of anxiety attack! I don’t even know what set him off, but it was scary as hell! That’s why I’m trying to find him, to make sure he’s okay!”

There was a very long pause on the other end of the phone, so long that Sam had to check to make sure his battery hadn’t died or Adam hadn’t hung up. It was pitch black outside and the windows in his car had fogged up. The only thing he could see besides the glow of his phone was the faint outline of the windows of Bobby’s house where the lights shone through. Rumsfeld gave a half hearted “woof,” probably in his sleep as he dreamt of chasing rabbits.

“Adam?”

Silence.

“Please give me Dean’s address.”

Silence. Then:

“ _Lose my number, Sam. And stay away from my brother_. _Or I really will kill you_.”

Adam’s end of the call clicked off, leaving Sam alone in the dark. He leaned his head forward onto the steering wheel and just sat there until he started to think Bobby might come out to shoo him off the property and figured it was time to go. He wouldn’t go into Sioux Falls - tracking Dean down would come dangerously close to stalking - and he wouldn’t bother Adam again. Clearly he needed to forget the whole thing in Laramie, and anything else having to do with Dean. It was a good thing he had the Colt to look for, and a Prince of Hell to kill, because he needed some reason not to drive into the Missouri River on the way home to St. Louis. It looked like he was going to be spending a whole lot of time with his good friend, Grey Goose, until he found a way to work the Winchesters out of his system.


	13. This is the Dumbest Thing You've Ever Done

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I wonder why Bobby was burning those tires...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is probably going to be my last update for the weekend. Sorry to leave you guys on a cliffhanger, but I've got laundry to do and a house to clean while my husband tries to replace the bearings on his truck.

Between the speeding and the crying, Dean was honestly surprised he made it to Bobby’s in one piece. He knew he should just shake last night and this morning off, chalk it up to a learning experience, and move on, but he couldn’t help feeling thoroughly and utterly used. He couldn’t even really blame this feeling on whatever hormone fluxuations were going on with him right now. He’d been stupid enough to let his guard down with an alpha after ten years of literally fighting them off everywhere he went: close calls in bus station bathrooms; near assaults in dark alleys; attempts to drug him in bars before he stopped drinking beverages that came in a glass instead of a bottle; that one time he’d had a woman break into his motel room while he was sleeping and Dad was still out drinking and he’d lost a chunk of hair when he threw her out through the window; the truck driver not even six months ago who stopped to “help” him when he was pulled off on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere changing a flat tire, and boy was he lucky he had the tire iron right in his hand at the time. He’d still let Sam right on into his space, and it wasn’t the tequila’s fault. Dean was just a stupid son of a bitch. Actaeon had clearly been right to kick him out. There was no point wasting time teaching an omega when omegas were too dumb to retain anything.

Rumsfeld was so used to the sound of the Impala that he didn’t make a peep when Dean came up the drive around seven thirty at night and pulled straight around to the back of the house. He hoped Bobby was still in the middle of dinner and not off listening to his “Teach Yourself Japanese” tapes to keep his fluency in the language from getting rusty, or down in the basement working on his panic room. The last thing he wanted after all the other painful crap he’d dealt with today was a backside blasted full of rock salt.

He could see Bobby at the sink through the kitchen window when he put Baby into park, turned off the engine, and climbed out to get his duffel from the back seat. It looked like he was setting something down ( _probably his shotgun_ ) as Dean closed up the car and headed to the back stoop. Good thing it was still daylight or it might be a very unwelcome welcoming. As it was Bobby was drying his hands on a dish towel when he met Dean at the door.

“Hey Dean,” he said, letting the young man into the kitchen. Dean could feel Bobby’s assessing gaze as he headed for the fridge to grab a beer, keeping his eyes more or less pointed towards the floor. “Wasn’t expecting ya. How’re things?”

“Hey Bobby,” he replied thickly, hating how hoarse his voice sounded. As close as he was to Bobby, he’d normally never just walk right in and help himself to a drink without at least a few minutes of small talk. It was bound to raise Bobby’s suspicions, but he didn’t really want to talk to anyone about anything ever, ever again. “Things are good. Mind if I crash in the guest room for a couple of days?”

“Course not son. You’re always welcome here, you know that.” Bobby tone was soft and careful, as if he had summed up the situation minus some details and wanted to be careful about prying too much. Dean checked out the various types of beer in the fridge amongst the cold cuts and condiments. “Somethin’ wrong with your apartment?”

“No, just...just not in the mood for all the noise from the bar tonight,” he lied badly.

“Keep tellin’ you to move on outta there.” Bobby was still analyzing the situation as Dean finally just grabbed a twelve pack of Budweiser. “Want somethin’ to eat? I just finished dinner, could heat somethin’ up for ya real quick.”

“Just a...uh...just a sandwich would be fine.” Jesus, he was being such a dick. “You know what, I can make one, it’s not a big deal, just go back to doin' whatever you were doin’...”

He swung around to put the beer on the table and then went back to the fridge to get out the bread, meat, cheese, and mayo. Bobby hadn’t moved from where he stood by the door.

“Well, I _was_ doin’ the dishes, but now that you’re here think I’d best set a coupla tires on fire out back,” he said evenly. “Your daddy’s been stoppin’ by unannounced lately tryin’ to track you down. Wouldn’t want him drivin’ up and scentin’ you.”

“Yeah, that...that’s probably a good idea,” Dean agreed as he moved mechanically to retrieve a plate and knife to take over to the table for his sandwich. Bobby was standing very still, like if he moved at all it would spook the omega and he’d bolt. “He’s been keepin’ tabs on my hunts, apparently. Not really looking forward to when he finally catches up, you know?”

Dammit. His voice was starting to shake and his vision was getting blurry. He couldn’t even keep himself together long enough to make a stupid sandwich and go upstairs to wallow in private. He saw a drop of salty water fall from roughly the area of his eyes and splash on to the table and sniffed, working faster on his food. If only he had grabbed an onion he’d have something to blame for the shaky breaths he was drawing in and having to pause his sandwich making to swipe at his eyes every couple of seconds.

“Why don’t you let me finish that and head on upstairs?” Bobby asked gently. “I’ll bring it up soon as I got the tires goin’ good. You gotta be tired after drivin’ up from Laramie.”

“How’d you know I was in Laramie?”

His voice broke and he quickly swallowed and cleared his throat. He was trying to push everything back down but it just kept bubbling up. He really needed to get a grip on this. He was about five seconds from asking Bobby for a hug. Stupid omega needs.

“FDH feed. Report of a vamp’s nest was up for about twelve hours yesterday and then it was listed as cleared by you an’ Sam Campbell.”

Dean laughed mirthlessly and stopped even attempting to finish making his food. That damn FDH feed. At least he was mostly done and just needed lettuce or something to give it a little crunch. Maybe. He didn’t actually care. He really was starting to crack and needed to get out of the room, his throat constricted and chest aching.

“Yeah, guess I am kinda tired,” he said, grabbing for his duffel and the twelve pack. “I’ll pick you up some more beer tomorrow.”

“It’s fine. Don’t need you encouragin’ my functional alcoholism.” That earned Bobby a snicker, but Dean still couldn’t look up at him as he headed for the entryway from the kitchen to the rest of the house. “The hunt went okay then?”

“Yeah,” Dean insisted, swinging around in the doorway and dragging his eyes up off the floor at last. He nodded his head a little too vigorously at the open concern in Bobby’s eyes. “Routine hunt. Everything was fine.”

“Things okay between you and Sam?”

“Sure. Same old same old.”

“Anything you wanna talk about?”

Dean had to draw in a breath on that and stared back at the floor. He had a lot he wanted to talk about but he sure as hell wasn’t going to. If there was one thing his dad had drilled into him over the years it was that all talking about how you felt got you was a kick in the teeth. He was damn good at knowing when it was safe to share and when it wasn’t, and while he _probably_ could have told Bobby all about what happened in Laramie and gotten the old hunter’s sympathy there was no guarantee he wouldn’t get a “Boo hoo, princess” instead. Best not to leave himself vulnerable again today and just lock it down. He had lots of practice processing his emotions on his own and trying to work through them without help. He didn’t need a speech about how no one cared about his feelings.

After a few moments he shook his head and said, “Nope.”

“Cuz you look like crap.”

Dean laughed again and wound up crying, but Bobby stayed by the door, clearly unwilling to intrude on Dean’s space unless he specifically asked. It was at least obvious now that he wasn’t going to get lectured about no chick flick moments allowed in the house, but he still wasn’t up for a discussion and just wanted to go upstairs and start working his way through the twelve pack.

“Too much tequila,” he choked, his voice high and broken. “Thanks Bobby.”

He caught Bobby’s nod out of the corner of his eye and heard the back door swing open and shut as he made his way up the stairs to the guest bedroom that was unofficially _his_ room. Bobby’s house had five bedrooms, four upstairs and one down, and though he did occasionally have hunters in need of a good patch job staying the night he did his best to keep them out of the front bedroom on the east side of the house. It looked out over the drive so Dean could see who was arriving if someone showed up while he was staying there and was attached to the first of two bathrooms off the hall, which could be locked from the inside to make it a private bathroom just for that bedroom. It gave Dean sort of his own little suite that could stay clear of the smell of various alphas that always lingered in the rest of the house.

Bobby may have been a beta, but after moving in a world where the wrong scent could set off a fight to the death he’d learned that smells were very important to the other two designations. He’d done a bunch of research into omegas when Dean presented and as a result the front bedroom was the only space in the house that was devoid of a clutter of books, cobwebs, and a semi-permanent coating of dust. Dean had often wondered if Bobby kept the room that way in an effort to convince Dean to move in with him, since that was something neither would ever ask outright. And it wasn’t that Dean hadn’t considered it, it was just that Bobby’s house wasn’t really the sort of place an omega could truly feel comfortable outside of that one room.

It wasn’t that Bobby was a slob, he simply had so many books, tools, weapons, spell ingredients, and other implements for hunting monsters it was straight up difficult to keep anything outside the kitchen clean, and there were books and odds and ends _everywhere_. Most of the stuff he’d collected was old, so “new” items often arrived with their own thin layer of grime. Dean had spent a large portion of his childhood and a decade of his adult life bouncing from disgusting motel room to disgusting motel room, having to squelch the urge to run whenever he spotted a new, strange stain on a comforter or carpet, and just the thought of living in a house as cluttered as Bobby’s gave him agita. He kept his own apartment spotless and rather sparse, but appreciated the extra pillows and soft blankets Bobby had added to the guest room to make him feel more at home when he was there. He hated the stereotype of omegas surrounded by scatter cushions and cashmere throws that were used in magazine and TV ads, but stereotypes came from somewhere and when it came to feeling better when surrounded by an excessive amount of creature comforts Dean was absolutely stereotypical.

Unfortunately no amount of pillows and blankets were going to help him get himself under control at this particular moment. He turned on the light, got the door to the room closed, dropped his duffel, and slid down to the floor bawling pathetically. It took a couple of minutes for him to calm down enough to be able to open one of the beers and start drinking himself to sleep, having developed the hiccups by then. He was glad he’d pulled back on his drinking since he got away from John, otherwise a twelve pack would have barely been enough to take the edge off. But after a year of limiting himself to no more than four beers a night ( _three if he was drinking at the Roadhouse, Ellen was strict_ ) his tolerance had actually dropped a bit and he was going to be able to get himself good and wasted tonight in the safety of Bobby’s house.

If he had to guess, about fifteen minutes had passed when he heard what sounded like a very loud truck pull into the drive and Rumsfeld went absolutely bonkers. He had pounded the first beer and was halfway through a second one and he froze, wondering if it was his father. It was highly likely that John had just foregone checking Laramie after Dean hung up on him and decided to come straight to Sioux Falls to interrogate Bobby. He could smell the tires burning out back and just hoped they had been going long enough to wipe his scent, regardless of whether or not it was John, but especially if it was. The rush of fear and adrenaline did a lot to kick his self pity in the ass, and he hurried to the window, staying crouched down, to see who it was.

To say he was surprised when he saw Sam’s Hummer would have been an understatement. It was good he was already on the floor, or he might have fallen over. Why had Sam driven to Bobby’s all the way from Wyoming? Did he want to make sure Dean knew better than to try throwing himself at him again? Because if so, that message had come through loud and clear; no need to chase him to another state just to repeat it. It had to be something like that, despite how well he’d taken care of Dean in the diner. Alphas reacted on instinct to a distressed omega. He certainly couldn’t take Sam’s actions personally; he’d have done that for anyone. So he’d obviously come to tell Dean off again. There wasn’t any other reason for him to be here.

Except that he could see Sam’s posture from where his room was, and Sam didn’t look like he’d driven here all brash and hot under the collar to let Dean know he was a pest and not wanted and last night had meant less than nothing to him. Though he couldn’t see Sam’s face, the younger man looked almost...sheepish. Bobby hadn’t come out of the house, and Sam wasn’t going up on the porch, so whatever they were talking about the old hunter had clearly drawn a line Sam didn’t dare cross. They only talked for a couple of minutes before Dean heard the downstairs door close, and then Sam just stood there in the driveway like he’d grown roots. Dean watched him stare off at nothing and found himself straightening to stand square in the middle of the window.

The longer Sam stood there, the louder a large, traitorous portion of Dean's brain began to think, “ _Look up_.” It was making him crazy, the way Sam appeared to be in no rush to leave Bobby’s driveway. After another couple of minutes Dean crossed his arms over his chest and tucked his hands under his armpits, squeezing his shirt in an effort to keep from sending Sam a, “ _Look up, Samantha_ ” text. This really had to be hormones, how could he _possibly_ still want to talk to Sam after today? Did he honestly hate himself enough to want Sam to stay and beat him up emotionally some more?

The answer of course was yes. When it came to self-loathing, Dean had the market pretty much cornered. Those two years when he and Benny were the rock stars of the school, setting records left and right, hadn’t been enough to counteract the early years on the road with John, or the years abandoned at Acteon, or the decade since when John seemed to be doing everything he could to purposely drive Dean into the waiting arms of the first alpha that walked by. John hadn’t even wanted the trophies Dean won in his combat competitions, and they’d only survived because Bobby had called to give the school his address to forward them. Dean learned at a young age that what he wanted didn’t matter to anyone, but oh he so wanted Sam to see him there and...what...storm the proverbial castle?

Absolutely. That’s exactly what he wanted. He even pulled the curtain aside so Sam would be able to clearly see him if he’d just fucking _look up_ from the driveway. He was such a glutton for punishment. He stayed and waited for Sam to realize he was there so he could come up and tell Dean how despised he was. At least then he could take comfort in the knowledge that Sam felt _something_ other than total disinterest in him. He’d learned from his father that at least if someone hated you it meant they felt something, and something was better than nothing.

When Sam had gotten into his car Dean had nearly run downstairs to tell him to stop, and just might have if Sam had left immediately. As it was Sam again didn’t move, sitting there in his Hummer until close to nine o'clock before he finally pulled away. Dean hoped against hope that he was just out there trying to work up the nerve to pound on the door and demand entrance, but in the end that hadn’t happened, and Dean’s courage had given out by the time Sam started up the car.

Then Bobby was knocking on the door so he couldn’t go downstairs anyway without looking like the sad sap that he was.

“Dean?” he asked quietly. “Got your dinner.”

“Yeah, come on in Bobby,” Dean said. Sam was just pulling away as Bobby handed him the plate. “Thanks.”

“Feel like tellin’ me why Sam Campbell just showed up askin’ after you like he ran over your puppy?” Bobby said, putting a hand on Dean’s shoulder as the young man looked down at the sandwich, which now had a bowl of soup, a pickle, and some crackers to accompany it.  

“It’s complicated,” Dean replied, going to the bed to sit down with his plate. He wasn’t really hungry at all but knew he should eat, so he picked at the chips.

“That’s the answer he gave me, too. You two rehearse that?”

Dean quirked a smile and chuckled a little. For some reason whenever he stayed with Bobby he always felt about eight years old, the age he was when John stopped taking him to stay there. He half recalled them fighting about Bobby wanting John to leave the boys with him permanently, and Christ, he wished Dad had done that. Yeah, Bobby had a temper sometimes and drank too much, but nothing like his father did and maybe neither of those traits would have been so bad if Dean and Adam had been living with him. Things could be so much different now.

“I’ll be okay Bobby. I promise.”

Bobby didn’t press the issue and just nodded.

“All right. Don’t stay up too late, ya idjit.”

He gave Dean’s hair an affectionate tousle and got a smile in return. Dean nodded in agreement and Bobby left him to his sandwich and beer.

Dean only made it through six of the twelve cans before he could barely keep his eyes open. He took the rest back downstairs to return to the fridge so they wouldn’t get warm, still feeling like he’d been stomped on. Bobby had fallen asleep in his recliner in front of the television, which was now playing an infomercial for the George Foreman grill. Dean clicked off the TV and covered Bobby with the blanket from the couch, then turned off the light on his way back upstairs. He had vivid dreams of Sam, so real he could smell him, and woke the next morning to a tear soaked pillow and painfully hard morning wood.

He stayed with Bobby three more days before heading back to his apartment over Marge’s Bar, which gave him plenty of time to take his growing anger at the events of the last few days out on some of the wrecks Bobby needed chopped up for parts. Bobby’s property may have bordered on being a junkyard, but it was a good place to work out aggression and a better place for stashing the bodies of dead monsters. The parts side business was an honest way to make a living without having to bring in FDH coupons all the time, and if anyone had really asked him, when he thought about the possibility of retiring from the life it always involved helping Bobby out in the yard.

Adam called him out of the blue on the road from Bobby’s house up to the city. He was always happy to hear from his younger brother, but this call was strange and had him wondering what the hell was wrong. Adam sounded very tense and said something about Dean coming to visit, and how it would be cool if he drove on out this week, because school would be starting shortly and he hadn’t seen Dean in a while and he’d really like to see him. That was disturbingly weird, when Dean had just been thinking about that a couple of days ago. Dean wondered if maybe Adam had started doing drugs, and promised he would come out sometime soon, maybe for Halloween. That seemed to satisfy the younger Winchester, but still when they hung up the phone Dean got the distinct impression that Adam didn’t want to let him go just yet.

Before heading to his apartment Dean needed to stop by the omega clinic to take care of the formalities necessary to refill his prescription for his suppressants. He hated the place. It wasn’t like hospitals, which always set him on edge; it was worse. While hospitals were sterile, scary places that you took people, sometimes to die, when a hunt went really bad, omega clinics were cold and detached, more like a veterinarian’s office than a place that was supposed to help people. That wasn’t quite right either. At least at veterinarian’s offices you got the feeling that the doctors cared about their patients. Om clinic staff gave off the distinct impression that their clientele were just dollar signs, which made sense since the government paid well for the reproductive care of omegas, but you’d better not have questions about your health or you’d get an annoyed sigh and told to “wait here” in a plain white room in your plain white paper gown while someone went and got a real doctor to help. And wait you would, sometimes for forty-five minutes, until an annoyed doctor would finally appear and condescend to you with the clear implication that you should be smart enough to Google this shit for yourself.

Dean waited an hour past his appointment time in the uninviting brown lobby with industrial carpeting with three female omegas and their mates. Two of them were obviously carrying. All of them were on edge. The alphas all scented him, but the beta receptionist wasn’t up for any nonsense and made it clear that any harassment would result in the alphas being immediately ejected from the premises. Well, at least that was something. Bored, Dean picked up one of the waiting room books to read and put it back down quickly when he realized it was a copy of _Your Heat Cycle and You_. If he had any say in it, he was going to his grave only having had the one, so he was not particularly motivated to acquaint himself with them. Finally his name was called and he went into the exam room to change and wait for the physician’s assistant.

Even with all the things he had encountered as a hunter, few matched the humiliation of twiddling his thumbs in a paper gown, his clothes folded into a neat pile on the chair beside the exam table, naked and waiting for someone to come stick a cold speculum up his rectum to check the health of his omega channel, prostate, and the gland that produced slick ( _he refused to learn the name of it_ ). He normally was able to talk his way out of it by fluttering his eyelashes at the doctor ( _almost always an alpha_ ), but being past the renewal date of his script by a week and a half there was no way he was getting by without one. After an interminable wait, which was probably only really about ten minutes, an actual doctor came in, much to his surprise, clipboard in hand, her eyes fixed on the chart in front of her. She didn’t even glance up at him.

“Good morning Mr. Winchester - may I call you Dean?”

“Sure.”

Huh. Doctors rarely showed omegas common courtesy. She must be new to the clinic, all fresh faced and unjaded. She did look young - big brown eyes and dark red hair pulled back in a bun. Maybe this appointment wouldn’t be so bad.

“My name is Dr. Milton. I see in your chart that your prescription ran out eleven days ago and you’re here to refill it,” she said crisply.

“That’s right,” Dean replied. “I was traveling and couldn’t get to a pharmacy right away.”

“Ah.” She made a note on the chart. “Well, I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do for you until after your next heat cycle. Any more than three days off of your suppressants and we need to wait for your body to reset itself, if you will, otherwise you risk serious complications like blood clots, stroke, and even death. The typical heat comes on four to six weeks after suppressants are stopped, so we’ll make an appointment for you to come back at that point for your exam and new prescription. Though I do have to warn you, you’ve been on these for quite some time and the longer you’re on them the more negative side effects you’re likely to have, so I would recommend that you not go back on them for at least a year. Otherwise your heats may never become regular again and there is the risk that you’ll eventually become infertile. Do you have any questions?”

It was the first time she had looked at him to realize that all the color had drained from his face and he was about to pass out because he’d forgotten how to breathe. She went to the door and calmly called for a nurse, then came back to lightly slap his hands and try to get him breathing again. It took a moment, but he finally sucked in a huge gulp of air and she immediately had to stop him from hyperventilating.

The nurse came in wordlessly and Dr. Milton said, “Smelling salts, please.” The nurse nodded and returned shortly with two little sticks, which she handed the doctor before disappearing again. Dean was beginning to calm down, but she held onto the smelling salts just in case.

“Are you feeling all right, Dean? I’m sorry, you clearly weren’t expecting this news.”

“Yeah, I…” Dean sucked in another breath and willed himself to calm the fuck down right now. “I just...I don’t know a lot about these things. That probably sounds stupid but my dad just kinda shoved the pills at me when I presented.”

“That’s a lot more common than you think, especially when a male omega presents,” she told him. “I take it there was no one around for you to ask? Your mother was obviously an omega.”

He shook his head more fiercely than he meant. She was very close to a landmine and he didn’t want her to step on it.

“My mom passed a while ago.”

She actually gave him a gentle smile.

“Then this talk is long overdue. Do you have any questions for me?”

“My...uh...my next heat…” He struggled to get the word out. It was ridiculous. He was a grown man who’d had a lot of ( _beta_ ) sex. He knew the practical ins and outs of what part went in which hole, it wasn’t like he didn’t know vaguely about the birds and the bees; but the fact that his knowledge was only “vague” was supremely embarrassing. “You said it would happen in six to eight weeks?”

“Four to six weeks,” she corrected. “And it’s likely to be intense after a decade on suppressants. I would have at least three alphas lined up to help you.”

“Actual...alphas?” His skin turned crimson. “Don’t unmated oms usually get through them with...toys?”

“Oms who haven’t been on suppressants, yes. But with what you’re in for, there’s no way sex toys will be sufficient.”

God help him, he was in serious danger of being sick.

“Can...can anything else delay a heat? My job is very stressful, I’ve heard sometimes stress can throw off your..uh...cycle.”

He hadn’t actually heard that but he was going to toss it out there, just in case.

“No,” Dr. Milton told him. “That’s an old wives tale. Omega heats are actually extremely regular if not suppressed by medication. The only thing that would stop your heat at this point is if you’ve recently been knotted. Then pregnancy is always an option.”

Dean went from bright red back to ashen again in about two seconds flat.

“Wh...what?”

“Your father really didn’t tell you anything, did he?” She wheeled over to the sink counter and pulled a pamphlet out of the top drawer, then came back over to show Dean how his body actually worked. If he’d thought he felt embarrassed before he was wrong. This - this was what being embarrassed felt like. “Normally omegas go through a three month preparation cycle, where the uterus gets ready for implantation. Heats typically last five to seven days, during which time the omega will become pregnant with a ninety-eight percent likelihood if he or she has access to an alpha and condoms aren’t used. Oh - you should be sure everyone uses condoms when this heat hits unless you’re prepared for pups. If you don’t catch during your heat you’ll have two to three days of shedding the uterine lining, when I would recommend staying indoors - it’s just easier to clean up - then it all repeats. As I already mentioned, once this rhythm is established by your body it will run like clockwork. Three months of prep time, a brief window for impregnation, either you catch or you shed, three more months of prep time, and so on. When you’re on suppressants _all_ of that stops, which to be frank confuses the hell out of your reproductive system, so when you skip or miss your suppressants your body essentially goes into overdrive. You’ve probably been noticing some excessive moodiness and irritability from the hormone surge for the last week, and alphas have probably been a lot more aggressive. That’s because the time to your heat is cut by one half to two thirds, but your fertility spikes within three days. Basically any time from three days after you’ve taken your last suppressant to the time when you come into heat your likelihood of becoming pregnant if knotted hovers around eighty percent.”

And now Dean _was_ sick. At least he made it to the garbage can before he lost his breakfast, but that didn’t make it any better that he was kneeling on the cold clinic floor, bare-assed and shaking in front of a total stranger.

“I take it you’ve been recently knotted,” she said, and he nodded, squeezing his eyes tightly shut as if that was going to make this go away. “That’s okay. There’s medication we can give you to stop any pregnancy from catching. We’re technically only supposed to offer it when the knotting was non-consensual, but..frankly male omegas are rare enough as it is, it would be very difficult for you to have any quality of life as an unmated one. Unless the alpha is willing to claim you in the event that you are...”

“No.” He didn’t want her to say the word ‘pregnant’ or ‘carrying’ or ‘in the motherly way’, and he sure as hell didn’t want to think about Sam rejecting him _again_. Twice was enough. “No, he’s not interested. Can you get me these meds?”

“As long as it’s been less than forty-eight hours, yes. Any longer than that and I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do but wait.”

“It was almost four days ago,” Dean told her thickly. He had no idea what to do. “Can’t I start the suppressants now and just…”

“That would be incredibly dangerous. As I said, you’d already be at a heightened risk of serious complications. Taking suppressants while carrying could cause your uterus to rupture.”

That definitely sounded worse than being pregnant. He managed to get up and go back to the exam table, holding the gown closed behind him.

“How long until I can...pee on a stick? That’s what you do, right? Pee on a stick when you think you’re…”

He couldn’t even say it.

“Unfortunately, because of how the suppressants throw your system off your hormones are too badly in flux for any kind of test to determine accurately whether or not you’re carrying at this point.” She gave him an honest to goodness sympathetic look. “I’m sorry Dean. You’re going to have to wait the full six week window to see if you come into heat.”

“Okay,” was all he could manage, his voice trembling.

“I’m going to give you some literature to read,” she said. “Everything from the way heats work all the way through pregnancy and whelping, including alternative methods to avoiding pregnancy that don’t involve constant suppressants, such as the use of sex toys instead of alphas once your cycle is back to being regular. And I want you to read it - all of it. This is your body we’re talking about. You really should have an understanding of how it works.”

“Okay,” he repeated.

“I’ll leave you to get dressed. The literature will be at the checkout. Good luck Dean.”

He heard the door click closed behind her and just sat in shock on the table for a while. This is not how he had expected the day to go; not at all. He just wanted his damned suppressants, not a lecture about the facts of life and the revelation that oh yeah, the odds were really good that he was knocked up because his body sucked. At least now he knew why his emotions had been all over the place and why every alpha within a two block radius had been after him, more so than usual. He was “super fertile.” That was just great.

Well. It made sense why Sam had been unusually nice to him and why he hadn’t thrown Dean off of him in the hotel and why he’d chased him up to Bobby’s. He’d reacted to Dean’s hormones. Nothing more.

He didn’t remember getting dressed, or stopping by the receptionist for the literature, or getting in his car and driving to his apartment, but apparently he’d done all of those things because now here he was, standing in his open doorway listening to the jukebox downstairs twanging away. Marge’s was open but not terribly busy, since it was still the afternoon, and he strongly considered heading on down and drinking himself into oblivion. Everyone at Marge’s knew and liked Dean, and would watch out for him if anyone got too familiar. Then he realized that he probably shouldn’t be drinking just in case he was...that way...and threw himself down on his Salvation Army couch to stare at the TV, which wasn’t even on. He stayed there until the sounds from downstairs grew louder with the start of happy hour, and figured he should probably eat something.

The fridge was empty, but he still had an unopened box of Corn Chex in the cupboard. No milk to go with it, but at least it was something. Tomorrow he’d go grocery shopping, pick up some healthier shit to eat in case he was...that way...and after just a few handfuls of the dry cereal he was in the bathroom heaving again. At some point he had started to cry. He had felt miserable, scared, and alone a lot in his life, but nothing was as bad as this.

He was probably pregnant, and he couldn’t really tell anyone, because Sam hadn’t claimed him and that meant if he wanted he could up and take the baby. Just like Adam had been taken from his mother. Not that Dean really thought Sam would outright steal a child from him, but his grandfather was a very powerful man and could probably get the baby taken without too much trouble. Dean didn’t have a stable job or income, hell, he didn’t even have a high school diploma, and he was at the very least a problem drinker, not to mention the numerous psychological problems he probably had from being three steps ahead of a violent and bloody death since he was four years old. It wasn’t that he’d _wanted_ a baby ( _now that it was possible he was carrying one it didn’t seem right to think of it as a pup_ ), but if he _had_ a baby he sure as hell didn’t want some asshole coming to take it away from him just because they could.

How the hell had this become his life?

The sun was going down when he finally made his way out of the bathroom back to the living room, wiping a towel across his face to try to sop up some of the cold sweat that had broken out while he was puking his guts out. Suddenly he caught the smell of dirt, blood, vinyl, and stale air. There was an alpha in his apartment. He stopped and grabbed the shotgun he kept in the broom closet by the kitchen and slowly made his way to the living room, where he spotted the man staring out his window. He was dressed in a fine suit, standing a little shorter than Dean, with dark hair and a profile that could cut glass. Dean leveled the gun on him and pumped the action to make his presence known.

“Oh Dean,” the man said. He sounded tired. “You have no idea how sad it makes me to know that your father brought you up to be an unthinking, unwashed ape.”

“That’s funny coming from a guy who smells like he hasn’t showered in a week,” Dean snapped. “Who the hell are you?”

Slowly the man turned to him, the sunset lighting his face up in golden hues. He regarded Dean for a moment with light blue eyes and then smiled.

“I’m very sorry. Where are my manners? Of course you wouldn’t know me.” He took a few steps towards Dean and held his hand out. “I’m your grandfather, Henry Winchester. And we need to talk.”


	14. There's Not Much Difference Between Madness and Devotion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I wonder what Henry wants? Also BENNY!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I lied. I got a lot written today. Here's another chapter. But this is REALLY it for a couple of days.

Dean had a really hard time believing that the guy standing in his living room who was clearly only about ten to fifteen years older than him was his grandfather, but he routinely killed things that ate people’s organs, so he supposed anything was possible. He did know his grandfather’s name was Henry but he’d never met him, since he and John had broken off contact some time before Dean was born. Henry was involved with the Men of Letters, an organization that studied the supernatural but didn’t ever get their hands dirty. Dean didn’t know much about them but certainly thought they were a bunch of cowards. They occasionally worked with the feds but when it came to your average everyday hunter they maintained a strictly hands off policy, even when they had information that could help on a job.

If this really was his grandfather Dean doubted he was in any kind of real danger. The guy didn’t look or smell threatening, and obviously had never been a hunter. He didn’t have the posture, for one thing, and his hands looked way too soft. No, if Dean had to guess this guy spent his entire life around books, like some kind of office worker, and didn’t have the training to deal with anything worse than a paper cut. He lowered the gun, but kept his distance.

“My grandfather, huh?” he asked. Whoever this guy was he needed to get his game face on and act like he hadn’t just been crying and puking because he was probably carrying around Sam’s illegitimate love child like some sad heroine from a Jane Austin novel who was going to die of tuberculosis halfway through the book. He had six whole weeks to freak out about that, now was not the time. “What’s with the young face? You got a nasty picture stashed in your attic?”

The man smiled, clearly surprised.

“You’ve read Oscar Wilde?” he said.

“I suppose you’re surprised I can read,” Dean snapped. “What we me being an unthinking, unwashed ape.”

“My apologies. You did go to Actaeon, and they do have an exceptional core curriculum before they start focusing on turning all the students into blunt little instruments. It’s my understanding you were getting excellent grades until they expelled you.”

Dean gave him a sarcastic little smile. This guy clearly knew a lot about him. As far as Dean knew they’d sealed his records when he left. He’d called a couple of times to try to get his transcripts and was told they would only be released to an accredited institution where he was enrolled in a GED program. He wasn’t allowed to have a copy himself just to prove he was smart.

“Thanks for reminding me. If you really didn’t want me becoming an ape you should’ve offered me a spot with the Men of Stationery.”

“Men of Letters,” Henry said with a smile. “But you knew that. That was a test. You aren’t sure I am who I claim to be.”

“Can you blame me?” Dean asked. “No offense, but for a guy who should be pushing eighty you’re lookin’ pretty damn good.”

“We have spells to maintain our youth,” Henry explained. “Our organizational numbers have been dwindling for decades. Those of us that are left thought it best if we stuck around for a while.”

“Ah.”

“If you’d feel better calling your father to confirm who I am, I’ll understand.”

“I think I’m good. If you’re not who you say you are I’m just gonna have to throw you out the window anyway, so it’s fine.”

Surprisingly, that got a smile out of the guy. And he looked a lot like John did on the rare occasions when he smiled. Okay, Dean could buy that this guy was probably his long lost grandfather.

“You must be hungry,” Henry said, moving towards the sofa. For the first time Dean noticed there was food on the coffee table; specifically an array of Chinese food in a variety of containers. Even though he’d just been throwing up a few minutes ago his mouth watered. He needed real food and this was a definite upgrade from dry Corn Chex. “I know you’ve been on back-to-back hunts and thought you probably wouldn’t have anything to eat, so I brought dinner. I had no idea what you like and got several options.” He sat and began to open the cartons, listing off the contents as he did so. “We have sweet and sour chicken, pepper steak, pork lo mein, and Kung Pao chicken, each with fried rice. I thought it best to stay away from the seafood options. And I have egg rolls and wonton soup.” He pulled the last two out of a brown paper bag and laid out plastic ware, chopsticks, and napkins. “Not my usual fare, but one meal won’t kill me.” He smiled up at Dean - a genuine smile that made Dean suspicious because he did not come from a family that smiled genuinely - and raised a pair of chopsticks over a carton of fried rice. “Sit down Dean. I don’t bite.”

“I’m just supposed to trust that none of this is drugged or poisoned?” Dean asked, staying where he was by the kitchen.

“I could taste test all of it for you if you like,” Henry suggested. “Though I may have spent years building up an immunity to iocane powder. You never know.”

Had he...had he just referenced _The Princess Bride_? Dean didn’t know what to do with that, though he did finally put down the shotgun. Henry just sat there, smiling at him and digging into the pepper steak. Today was shaping up to be very, very strange.

“I’ll have the lo mein, I guess,” Dean finally said, and went to sit in the armchair at the end of the coffee table so they wouldn’t be sharing the couch. It was close enough to the side table with his one lamp that he could reach it if he needed to use it for a weapon. Henry slid the lo mein, a fork, and a pair of chopsticks over and Dean hesitantly picked them up, still waiting for the trap to spring. “Seriously, if your ‘organizational numbers are dwindling,’ why didn’t I get an invitation to join when Actaeon kicked me out? I’m sure it would’ve done a lot towards fixin’ your relationship with Dad if you got me out of hunting.”

“Unfortunately the Men of Letters has a strict policy of admitting only alphas,” Henry told him. “Mmm. This is quite good.”

“So...” Dean said around a mouthful of lo mein. He was right. It _was_ good. “Change the policy.”

“It isn’t up to me, I’m afraid. Policy changes of that nature require a quorum of the membership, and there are no longer enough of us to constitute a quorum.”

“Figures,” Dean said ruefully. “You guys control all the other power roles on the planet. Not sure why I expected the Men of Letters to be different.”

“I’m sorry Dean.” He looked it, too. Dean could feel his anger rising and focused on eating his food. “I understand how hard life must be for you…”

That was a joke, and one that wasn’t particularly funny right at this moment, not after the day he’d had. Dean set down his lo mein and tossed the chopsticks onto the table to turn a glare towards this guy claiming to be his grandfather, demanding, “Do you? Do you really? Cuz I find that kind of hard to believe. You aren’t outnumbered four to one everywhere you go by people who want to knot you up and leave you sitting at home naked except for a claim mark and a collar. You get to vote. You get to own a house. You got to finish school. You can get any job you want. You knew no matter what happened you’d get to keep your kid. You want to buy a car you can go out and just _buy_ it. You can inherit money from a relative without your mate having to sign off on it. You don’t have to fight some asshole off in your kitchen with a dish towel because you called the cable company to hook up your service and the tech who came out wanted to provide you with other services you didn’t sign up for. You don’t sit around year after year watching all those concerned, sympathetic betas, who make up _half_ the population, _say_ they want to protect the ten percent of us that are omega and then continue to vote alphas into office because even betas recognize the strength of an alpha, and by golly, they want _strong_ people in charge, even if they make laws that basically keep omegas barefoot and pregnant, or renew laws that should have been scrapped about the time you were in diapers but just keep getting revised and tweaked instead. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, and if it is broke, you just have to bang around the edges a little to get it fixed and maybe throw some more money at it, right? We’re the ruling class of alphas and we don’t ever throw out laws, not even ones that make life shitty for an entire designation of people!” He was on his feet by now, his eyes glowing gold and his teeth descended. “Spare me your sympathy Henry. I’ve got ten years of sympathy that ain’t keepin’ me warm at night or payin’ my bills. Sympathy ain’t gettin’ me access to my high school transcripts, or buildin’ a program where I can get my GED online, or makin’ it safe for me to blow a fan belt on the highway without a gun at my back and a knife in my boot. I got sympathy coming outta my ass. So say what you came here to say, but please don’t insult me by telling me you understand _anything_ about my life.”

Henry regarded his grandson for a moment, slowly chewing his pepper steak, then set down his fork and dabbed at the corners of his mouth with a napkin. Dean could smell his irritation at being spoken to that way but honestly didn’t care. He meant it when he said he’d throw Henry out the window, and truthfully Hendry didn’t doubt he would or that he could. Finally he folded his hands in his lap and leaned back on the couch.

“Your father is chasing a very dangerous demon,” Henry said at last. “I need you to stop him.”

“Demons aren’t real,” Dean stated flatly.

“On the contrary, demons are very real and very dangerous,”  Henry retorted. “If you don’t believe me I invite you to ask your friend Bobby about what happened to his wife, Karen. Demons are real, and I need you to convince your father to stop chasing this one,”

“What makes you think Dad will listen to me?”

“Because you’re his son.”

That actually made Dean laugh. A _real_ laugh, the first one that had burst out of him in days. Whoever this guy was, and Dean _had_ all but decided he was Grandpa Henry, he was nuts.

“I think that sounded different in your head than it does out loud,” he finally said. “Cuz out loud it sounds ridiculous.”

But Henry was in fact dead serious. He stood up and took a few steps into Dean’s bubble, though he kept a respectable distance when Dean backed up.

“You’re his _son_ , Dean. I’m asking you to make an emotional appeal to him.”

“Wow. You _really_ don’t know what life is like for an omega, do you? Alphas like my dad don’t listen to us.”

“ _Then make him listen_.”

Dean had a hard time believing this conversation was taking place. For someone claiming to be a Man of Letters, Grandpa Henry was not a very bright man. He sat back down, over his anger from a few moments ago and now amused by Henry trying to use his alpha voice on him. It would have pissed Dean off if the attempt hadn’t been so pathetic. He calmly grabbed the lo mein and his chopsticks and went back to eating.

“Sorry Henry,” he said around a mouthful of food. “I’m gonna need something more than that if you expect me to pick up the phone and call John for _anything_.”

Henry sighed in exasperation.

“It’s complicated, Dean.”

“Oh,” Dean chuckled, “I understand complicated. Believe me.”

The room was silent for quite a while as Dean ate and Henry paced. Henry had severely misjudged his grandson if he thought he’d crack and agree to whatever Henry wanted if he just didn’t say anything. Henry was in Dean’s apartment, where Dean was completely comfortable, and Henry had brought him food. Dean could sit here in the quiet of his home and eat for hours without needing conversation from an absentee grandfather he just met. Henry seemed to have dug his heels in and plopped down to sit on the couch with his arms folded across his chest like a kid who wasn’t getting his way. Dean _really_ saw the family resemblance now. John sulked in the same manner if someone pushed back against any of his plans and prevailed. Dean was settling in for a nice, cozy evening of Chinese food and faint jukebox music from Marge’s when his cell phone rang. Henry shot him a disapproving glare, as if daring him to answer it, which of course he did.

“Dean Winchester,” he said, staring straight at the alpha on his couch and challenging him to object to Dean answering his own goddamned phone in his own goddamned apartment.

“ _Oh good, no one sold you into the sex trade_.”

Shit. He was supposed to shoot Benny a text when he made it home. He’d completely forgotten.

“Fuck. Sorry Benny, it’s been...an interesting couple of days.”

“ _Hopefully not involving you escaping from the sex trade_.”

“No, nothing like that. Other stuff, though.”

“ _Anything you wanna talk about_?”

Dammit, he’d been doing really well shoving all the sleeping with Sam and pregnancy crap aside while he dealt with Henry, and now it was all rising back to the surface of his brain to be distracting, confusing, and upsetting. He got up from the chair, grabbed a couple containers of the Chinese food, and headed into the kitchen.

“Yeah, um, actually,” he said, his voice low, “but...not with you. Is Lisa around?”

“ _Naw, she’s got a late class tonight. Won’t be home until about nine. You want me to have her call you_?”

“If she can, yeah. I’d really appreciate it.”

“ _Omega stuff_?”

“Yeah.”

“ _I do know a little bit about omega stuff, Dean_.”

“I know, it’s just...more a thing where I need to talk to someone who’s _lived_ it and not just lived _with_ it.”

“ _Al_ _l right. You wanna talk to Ben for a minute_? _He’s yankin’ on my shirt_. _Ow_! _No pinchin’ Ben_! _Mama’s gonna be real upset when she gets home and I tell her you’ve been pinchin’ again_.”

Dean could hear the six year old in the background obnoxiously apologizing and demanding to talk to him. He smiled, remembering how challenging Adam was at that age. It had driven him nuts at the time, but now he missed it, and how relatively easy it had been to be a kid. Being an adult sucked.

“Sure. Put him on the phone.”

He heard the receiver being handed off and then a high pitched voice asked, “ _Dean_?”

“Yeah buddy, what’s up?”

“ _Tell Daddy I want a dog, not a baby sister_!”

Dean heard Benny snicker on the other end of the call and had to suppress a laugh.

“I think that ship has sailed, Ben.”

“ _Pleeeeeease Dean_?”

“Okay pal, tell him to put me on speaker phone and we’ll ask together, okay?”

“ _Okay_.”

He heard Ben set the phone down and a far away “ _Dean says put it on speaker phone_ ” and then Benny was back.

“ _Hey Dean_.” He could hear the echo in the background and the amusement in Benny’s voice. “ _Ben says you wanna talk to me_?”

“Yeah Benny. See, the thing is, Ben wants a dog and not a baby sister.”

“ _Well now Dean I’m sorry, but it’s a little late for that_.”

“That’s what I told him.”

Ben piped up in the background.

“ _Deeeean_!”

“Sorry kiddo, I tried.”

“ _Can I at_ **_least_ ** _have a baby brother then_?”

“ _No can do, pal_.”

“ _But_ **_whyyyyy_**?”

And now Ben was bawling. Dean snorted as Benny took the phone off speaker.

“ _See what you did_?” he scolded, but there was no heat behind it. “ _Now I’m gonna have to let him watch Spongebob to get him to calm down_.”

“Just give him a pack of Oreos. That’ll do the trick.”

“ _You are never babysitting for us again_.”

“Big giant bag of M&Ms?”

“ _Goodbye Dean. I’ll tell Lisa to call you_.”

“Thanks. Be good Benny.”

The call clicked off on the other end and he set the cell down on the counter so he could run his hands through his hair. He should have thought to call Lisa when he got home from the clinic. She’d gone off her suppressants to have Ben and now this new baby that was due in a few months, and while he hated prying he didn’t think she’d mind if he asked how quickly she and Benny had been successful after they started trying. If it took a while he might be okay. If it was right off the bat that was a different story.

He’d completely forgotten that Henry was there, so when he turned around to find him standing at the breakfast bar separating the kitchen from the living room he jumped.

“Jesus,” he hissed, trying to get his heart down out of his throat. “You ever come back here again I’m makin’ you wear a bell.”

“I really do need you to talk to your father,” Henry insisted.

“Well, since you were eavesdropping you heard me trying to convince an alpha of something and failing, so there you go,” Dean snapped. “Proof positive I can’t get any alpha to do anything they don’t want to do. And Benny _likes_ me.”

“John will listen, Dean.”

“Henry, I’m sorry, but I need a lot more to go on than a dangerous demon. Dad’s been chasin’ danger my whole life. How is this different?”

For a while Dean thought they were going back to playing mute chicken and was glad he’d brought the food into the kitchen with him. Then Henry ran a hand through his hair and scrubbed it down across his face ( _heh, so that’s where Dean got it from_ ), and sat on one of the stools at the counter. He laid his palms down flat and spread his fingers, as if gathering strength from the formica, then after a few moments looked back up to meet Dean’s eyes.

“What do you remember about your mother?” he asked. Well. This was not what Dean was expecting. Everyone who knew Dean knew that at the top of his short list of hard and fast rules was ‘do not ask about his mother.’ Henry clearly didn’t know this rule, or simply didn’t care to follow it. “Do you remember anything about her at all?”

“I don’t…” Dean cleared his throat. “I don’t talk about my mom.”

It was meant to be the final word on the subject. Henry did not take it as such.

“But you must remember something about her. Surely John…”

“No,” Dean cut in. “No, Dad doesn’t talk about her either. Didn’t. Hasn’t.” He swallowed. “Won’t.” By the look on Henry’s face Dean could tell he wasn’t going to let this go. He felt his hands beginning to tremble and shoved them in the pockets of his jeans. Better to just get this over with. “Her...uh...her name was Millie. Midred, it was her grandma’s name, she hated it, wouldn’t answer to anything other than Millie and...uh...before she met my dad she was a singer.” He smiled as a memory, one of the few really clear ones he had of her, came to mind. “She used to sing me Elvis to get me to sleep. _Don’t_ ; _I Want You, I Need You, I Love You_...she really loved Elvis.” The songs spun through his head, the sound of his mother’s voice, devoid of a face, the feel of her weight on the edge of his bed with the airplane mobile hanging from the ceiling and spinning. “She looked like the mom from _E.T._ I don’t know if you ever...no, you probably didn’t, anyway, people used to always stop us and ask if she was Elliott’s mom and she’d say…”

He shouldn’t be talking about this. Too many things had happened today, he shouldn’t be talking about this, it would be too hard to keep himself under control, and Henry definitely was _not_ safe to be vulnerable with. He could already feel his eyes beginning to water and the shaking had spread from his hands to the rest of his body.

“What would she say?” Henry asked.

Dean stared at him hard, his eyes glassy, trying to wall off the intense stab of pain he was feeling in his chest; the broken heart of a four and a half year old boy that was never going to heal throbbing as he cleared his throat.

“No, I’m Dean’s mom.”

His eyes stung, and the pain spread up to his throat, out to his lungs, and down to his stomach, until the whole core of his being just _hurt_. He clenched his jaw to attempt to physically lock down the emotions trying to drown him and broke away from Henry’s gaze.

“How did she die?”

“A rakshasa got her. We were alone. Dad was on a business trip. He didn’t hunt back then. She told me to lock myself in my room and not come out. So I didn’t until Dad came back two days later. It killed her and my cat...” _That’s_ what was going to make him break down? The _cat_? Yeah, apparently it was. “Mr. Bootsy.”

Dean kept a picture in his wallet of him and his mom in front of the Christmas tree the year he got Mr. Bootsy, just before he turned four. Dean was grinning at the camera as he held out the little tuxedo kitten with a gigantic red bow around his neck, the poor thing looking terrified, while his mom sat on the couch in the background, slightly blurry but smiling contentedly and looking at him with unabashed warmth and affection. Every now and then he took it out and looked at it, just to make sure it was there; usually when he was really drunk and in need of a long, private crying session to let out the trauma of whatever awful thing had happened to him that day. But this was neither the time nor the place for a crying session. He got himself under control quickly and swiped at his eyes.

“John wasn’t on a business trip,” Henry corrected. “And it wasn’t a rakshasa.”

That was an odd thing to say. It was the worst moment of Dean’s life, and pretty clearly burned into his memory. The fact that Henry was contradicting something Dean had known to be true his whole life made him feel terribly uneasy. By the look on Henry’s face it was clear he was dead serious. Dean wished he hadn’t left the living room so he’d have a place to sit down.

“What...what was it then?” he asked.

“A demon,” Henry replied. “Named Meg. One of Azazel’s children.”

“What the hell is an Azazel?”

“A Prince of Hell.” Henry must have realized Dean was shaky on his feet, because he stood and went back into the living room to sit on the couch, giving Dean an opportunity to follow back to the armchair. “There are various hierarchies in Hell. There are Knights, Grand Dukes, Princes...Knights were created by Cain. Yes, I mean the Cain and Abel Cain. Princes were created by Lucifer himself.”

“Why…” Dean felt as if his whole understanding of the world was coming undone, like a knitted sweater with a loose thread that Henry was pulling. He didn’t understand any of this. “Why would a demon kill my mother?”

“Because before your father met your mother he was in love with another omega, but her father wouldn’t give John his consent to claim her,” Henry explained. “So the other omega made a deal with a demon. Azazel would ensure that John never loved again, and in exchange he would come back in ten years and she would give him whatever he asked.”

“Isn’t that the plot to half of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales? I feel like you shoulda started that with ‘once upon a time.’”

“Where do you think those stories came from in the first place? A long, long time ago they were called cautionary tales, not fairy tales.”

“I don’t see how this involved my mother. You said she wasn’t the one to make the deal.”

“She wasn’t, no, but when your father claimed her he didn’t love her. However, you were already a bun in the oven and he _liked_ her too much to just leave her to the fate of an unmated omega.” Henry raised an eyebrow. “I think you might agree it wouldn’t have been the easiest life for you.”

Dean was fully willing to concede the point, even if it left him reeling. His father had been left a broken man when his mother died. They couldn’t rebuild their lives because without her there was nothing _worth_ rebuilding. Of all the emotions John had kept buried from Dean over the years, his devastation at his mother’s death had never been among them. The idea that they hadn’t been wildly in love from the start just didn’t fit in the slideshow of Dean’s life. Henry was already continuing his bedtime story, having felt his grandson had had enough time to process this earth shattering news.

“The other omega, however, had never really let John go. Once your mother was in John’s life he stopped seeing her, but he wrote her all the time. They kept up their correspondence until you were about four and a half years old, when your mother found the letters. She demanded John cut off all contact with this woman or she was taking you and leaving. Which was when your father realized he’d grown to truly love her. He asked the other omega to meet him so he could return the letters, and while he was gone Azazel told Meg to keep up his end of the bargain. It’s taken John a long time to put all the pieces together, but now that he has he’s on a suicide mission to kill Azazel.”

This time when Henry stopped speaking he waited quietly while Dean took in everything he’d just been told. It was the most ridiculous story he’d ever heard. Princes of Hell, demon deals, love letters, and a woman scorned? It was like something from a bad young adult novel and yet it sounded completely plausible. People did this sort of thing all the time; not necessarily with demons, but certainly one of the biggest problems witches presented was all the stupid civilians who wanted love spells. He knew from personal experience how insane it could drive an omega to be rejected by an alpha they desired. It explained why Dad’s number one rule was “Don’t talk about Mom” beyond just the pain of being a widower at a young age with a young child. He felt guilty because he hadn’t loved her until the very end, and then he’d lost her.

So maybe just Henry’s delivery had been like a bad young adult novel. The story itself was practically Shakespearean.

When Dean was able to find his voice again, he asked, “You seem to have put this all together a lot sooner than my dad. How long have you known what killed my mom?”

Henry looked at his hands, his shoulders slumped slightly.

“A while. We have particularly effective methods of scrying.”

“So if this Prince of Hell and his daughter, or whatever, killed my mom, why would I ever want to stop Dad from ganking him?”

“Because it will kill him.” Henry stood restlessly and went to the window, looking out across the city. The sun was making its last desperate attempts to hold on to the horizon. When did it get so late? “Your father is an excellent hunter, Dean, but he’s also reckless and obsessive. He’ll do whatever it takes to kill Azazel, even if it means he dies in the process.” He stopped, smoothing his hand down across his face again. “I don’t want my son to die, Dean, but he won’t listen to me and I can’t blame him. My station with the Men of Letters required me to leave him too young. He’s never forgiven me for that. Which is fine, I’ve never forgiven myself.” He turned his intense blue eyes on his grandson, who was sitting numbly in the armchair. “Will you speak with him, Dean?”

“Yeah,” Dean said. His mouth was very dry. “Okay.”

“Thank you.” Henry gave him a nod, then headed to the door, where he’d apparently hung an overcoat up on the hook when he entered. Dean hadn’t even noticed it - too preoccupied with everything that had happened. He’d need to work on staying sharp, no matter what his stupid hormones or emotions or whatever were up to. His grandfather threw the coat over his arm, and then looked back at Dean and smiled. “And congratulations. No one will confuse you with the mom from _E.T._ ”

Jesus, Dean needed a drink.


	15. It Wasn't Perfect Until After She Died

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John shows up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I said I wasn't going to post another chapter, but I'm a lying liar who lies. Strap in, this is going to be rough.
> 
> WARNING: There is are two graphic deaths on this chapter. One of them is a cat. It is after the fact and not the actual event. Please do not send PETA to my house, I have three cats whom I love dearly and my only girl is a tuxedo.

John Winchester was a terrible father. He was also a terrible mate. And his job involved killing things; sometimes people, but mostly things, and often too late to save the people _those_ things had killed. Wherever John went, death followed. So it seemed that when you got right down to it, he was basically an all-around terrible human being. John knew this, which is why he drank most nights.

But it wasn’t why he was drinking now. He was drinking now because his oldest son had called him and wanted to talk about what happened to his mom. Someone claiming to be Henry Winchester - and by the description Dean gave, John figured it was indeed his long lost father - had showed up at Dean’s apartment, told Dean that John was hunting a big, bad demon, and taken an axe to the carefully constructed facade of the happy home life he’d tried so carefully to preserve for Dean after his mother’s death. Lord knows he hadn’t been able to preserve anything else for the kid. The least he could have done was let him think things between him and Millie had always been roses and sunshine and that there had never been, _would_ never be, anyone else for him.

The conversation had not gone well. Dean wanted to know if what Henry told him was true, who the other omega was, and why John was willing to kill himself tracking down this demon if mom wasn’t the love of his life. John, being the ever thick headed alpha, bristled instinctively at having to explain _anything_ to an omega, and it had all gone downhill from there. He regretted the way things had ended between him and Dean, especially when it didn’t do anything to help his efforts to get Dean out of the life, but John was a stubborn son of a bitch and certainly wasn’t going to call his son back and apologize, or fill in any more of the missing pieces to the story Henry had spun.

There were many reasons for this; reasons that were complex and hard to understand outside the moment, and could so easily be taken out of context. What Dean wanted to know was also deeply, deeply painful, and John didn’t deal with pain by talking - not when alcohol could just make him forget for a while. John had an awful lot he needed to forget, most of it centered around Millie, but just as much centered around Mary. Dean didn’t know Mary existed ( _well, he kind of did now, but she was still just a faceless ‘other woman’_ ) and John intended to keep it that way. He didn’t want Dean mixed up with the Campbells, and if he knew about John’s first attempt to claim a mate John didn’t know how he could keep Dean from getting involved.

Mary Campbell was already a hunter when John met her, fresh out of Vietnam, and he’d immediately been smitten. He knew what hunters were because his father left to join the Men of Letters when he was fifteen and had explained that there were two branches of people who dealt with supernatural beings in the country. The Men of Letters were the scholars, and as Henry’s son John would be a legacy member, one Henry hoped would join him when he graduated from high school. The other were hunters, and they served more as the infantry to battle all the evils of the world. It was brains vs. brawn and Henry desperately wanted his son to join the brains.

Henry hadn’t anticipated what abandoning his mate and teenage son would do, however, and after watching his omega mother struggle to keep the house and the car and give John some stability through the rest of high school he had been drafted into the military and off he went to war half a world away. He made it through his first tour unscathed, but had been so changed by the horrors he saw over in the jungle that he found it impossible to acclimate back to civilian life. He went back for a second tour, and right before he came home his mother died of a particularly aggressive form of ovarian cancer. He landed just in time to attend her funeral, where he’d seen his father for the first, and last, time in years. John knew enough about the Men of Letters to suspect Henry had access to spells that could have saved her and instead he left her to die a horrible, painful death all alone. After the fistfight at the cemetery John had kicked his father out of his life and gone on to try to build something out of the tatters of his world.

He’d thought for sure that “something” would involved Mary Campbell, who saved him from a Woman in White. He was shocked to learn that the beautiful blonde omega was a hunter, but it turned out she came from a very long line of hunters and her designation had been no excuse for her to try to dodge the family business. Her father, Samuel, was rich and powerful and completely unimpressed by the mechanic not even from Lawrence who came to seek his permission to claim Samuel’s only child after a very short courtship. John supposed he could have just claimed Mary without asking, but knew the odds were good that he would disappear into an unmarked grave if he did so. It left him little choice but to accept Samuel’s decision and to try to change his mind.

Thus John had gotten into hunting, and proved he was a quick learner and efficient killer. He teamed up with some of the more well known and respected hunters early on -  Rufus Turner out of Vermont, Bobby Singer in South Dakota, Martin Creaser in Illinois, and Jim Murphy in Wisconsin - and built himself a reputation for being damn good quite quickly. It was with some surprise and a good deal of consternation that John learned nothing he had done was impacting Samuel’s opinion of him. Though he called Mary every week and set up a rendezvous with her any time he was near Kansas, Samuel refused to budge. It seemed they’d have to wait until something took him out on a hunt or he had a stroke or had some other such ill befall him before they’d be free to be together.

That’s when John had met Millie Baker. She’d been a revelation. She was a lounge singer at The Purple Room in Tempe, Arizona, and was so confident, easygoing, and charming he was drawn immediately into her orbit. It wasn’t the instant want he felt for Mary, who still retained her hold on his heart, but Millie was nice to be around and so very fun, smart, vibrant, and witty that they fell rapidly into a casual relationship and became very good friends. The fact that she had the same name as his mother certainly didn’t hurt matters any.

Millie’s father was an alpha with very progressive ideas about what she wanted for her daughter, while her mother was a bit more of a traditionalist and hated the idea of his baby girl off on her own, unmated, singing in some seedy bar in the middle of the desert. But Dorothy Baker had a successful stage career when she was young and no matter how her mate James felt, she was adamant that Millie have a chance at her own piece of stardom, regardless of her designation. Besides, James was quite the typical omega and a worry wart. Dorothy loved him, but she didn’t want Millie to be limited by his fears.

So Millie and John met, and whenever he was in Arizona he’d swing by to see her. That’s how he’d ended up helping her through a particularly bad heat in late April of 1978, and one broken condom later Dean was on the way. Henry hadn’t lied about the way things started off for them. John did not love her. But she was his friend; a good friend, one of the only ones he had outside of the hunting community. She was so bright and vivacious and sweet that he couldn’t leave her on her own to raise a baby, not after watching his own mother struggle for just a few years without his father, and he would never dream of taking the pup from her once it was born. It seemed the only honorable thing to do was to claim her, move her to his hometown of Lebanon, Kansas and give up hunting.

Mary had been devastated, even as John continued to profess his love for her and promise she would be the only one he ever truly wanted. The year or so he’d known Millie meant nothing compared to the five years he and Mary had been pining for each other, just waiting for Samuel to either give them his consent or have the decency to die. Mary begged John to run away with her and leave everything behind, but John staunchly refused. This wasn’t the way either of them wanted it to be, but he was going to be a father soon and things were different now. He couldn’t, and wouldn’t, walk away from his child or his child’s mother. That’s just not the kind of person he was back then.

Instead they poured all their love and longing into letters that each of them kept in a shoebox hidden carefully inside their homes. Dean had arrived on a snowy Sunday in late January, and one of the first things John had done after leaving Millie and the baby overnight at the hospital for them to recover was write Mary all about his brand new baby boy. How his eyes were green and he had a full head of dark blond hair, that he was pale and tall and had a serious set of lungs on him. How he wished that he was _their_ son, and would send a picture as soon as he could. Mary had responded with enthusiasm, though he knew it must have hurt her deeply to know John had a child with another omega.

In retrospect, John had been such an unbelievable, pigheaded ass when it came to the whole thing with Millie and Mary. A real knothead, as the kids called douchebag alphas these days. Dean’s first year of life he was so busy chronicling every aspect of parenting for Mary and lamenting how it wasn’t the two of them in it together that he didn’t consciously register how wonderful of a mother Millie was. Dean was what one might call a “hold me” baby, and she never hastened to pick him up to soothe or caress him when he demanded it. Sure, it meant she was holding him _most_ of the time, but Dean clearly thrived on touch. John had objected at one point that she was going to make a sissy out of his little alpha, and she had simply replied, “Even alphas need to be held sometimes, John.”

She was there to kiss every boo-boo, dry every tear, calm every nightmare, and mend every hurt, from the first time he fell learning how to walk to when he went head-first off the rocking chair into the windowsill and got a gigantic goose-egg on his forehead, to when the older boys up the street didn’t want to play with him because he was only three and “still a baby.” She baked pies and sang to him and cut the crusts off the corners off his sandwiches, telling him stories about his grandfather’s greatest roles back in the day, from Hedda Gabler to Lady Macbeth, and how she’d given it all up when she met Dean’s grandmother, because that’s what an alpha did when they truly loved an omega - they’d give anything to make their mate happy. She taught him more as an omega about the proper way an alpha should behave than John ever had, and he wished a lot more alphas had been raised with the basic understanding of alpha and omega dynamics that Millie provided Dean from a very young age.

Millie was the one who convinced John to get Dean that damn kitten, Mr. Bootsy, whom John missed to this day even if he would never admit it. That cat had been the cutest, sweetest little thing he’d ever seen, and finding him gutted on the bed next to Millie haunted him still. Dean had been begging for a kitten ever since the next door neighbor had a litter that summer, but John had never been much of a cat person and refused. Millie wore him down throughout the fall and by the time Christmas rolled around he had finally caved. It was worth it to see the look on Dean’s face when he opened the box with holes in it after hearing the little meows coming from inside, and John had raced to get the camera to capture the moment.

He should have spent more time with that camera and less time writing to Mary, he realized far too late. He had very few pictures of Millie. When he’d moved Dean out of the house after her death he had only grabbed a single photo album, and it was only half full. It hadn’t seemed possible that just two weeks before Millie had discovered his box of letters from Mary and thrown them at him the minute he’d walked in from the garage he co-owned. Millie was an expert at masking her emotions in her scent, and when he smelled the anger and the pain pouring off of her it had almost knocked him backwards. She’d sent Dean to the neighbor’s house overnight, so she didn’t have to hold anything back.

She’d demanded to know who “Mary” was and whether he was fucking her or just writing her. She felt she was owed that much after she’d raised his child, kept his house, and put up with his borderline-excessive drinking. She hadn’t wanted to hear his apologies, all that mattered was how he felt about this omega. She knew they hadn’t started out on the best of terms, but she’d been under the apparently mistaken impression that they were trying to build a life together. If that wasn’t the case then there was no reason for her or Dean to stay. He could go be with this omega and have pups with _her_ instead. She and Dean would manage just fine without him.

His alpha’s response to her outburst knocked him over like a freight train. He had imagined this moment many times, when he and Millie were finally over and he would be free to be with Mary. Even though Samuel had finally mated her off to some guy named Steven who apparently came from an “appropriate” family line, she had staunchly refused to give up her unmated name in anticipation of the day she could become Mary Winchester. He always thought he would tell Millie how sorry he was, but he and Mary belonged together and she couldn’t stop true love, and he’d obviously send her money to support their son. That wasn’t at all what happened.

Instead, John felt his chest collapse at the idea of Millie leaving him. He was terrified of her taking Dean, but the thought of _her_ leaving went beyond fear. His vision swam, his knees went weak, he couldn’t breathe, and his heart _literally_ hurt, as if something heavy and spiked were pressing on it. He simply couldn’t imagine his life without her in it. She was his mate, the mother of his son, his everything. He loved her, deeply, and didn’t want to ever come home to a house that smelled like her but was void of her presence. He couldn’t believe it had taken him this long to realize it. He _loved_ her, was _devoted_ to her, would do _anything_ for her.

He fell over himself to convince her Mary meant nothing to him, that she was a dream from long ago that he hadn’t been able to let go of, but if it meant he would lose Millie he would return the letters to her tomorrow and never contact her again. He could see that he had been blind for clinging to a fantasy when the reality of their life together was everything he’d ever wanted, he’d do anything, _anything_ she asked to get her to stay. He’d cried and begged and kissed her and held her and taken her upstairs to their bedroom to make love to her and claim her again, and the next morning at Millie’s insistence he’d contacted Mary and asked if they could meet, because she doubted the omega who wrote those letters would accept it was over between them if he didn’t tell her in person.

John tried calling Mary’s house first. She’d given him the number in case he ever wanted to see her, but he’d never dared use it; too afraid her father would catch wind of his calls, or Millie, or her new mate. But the maid answered the phone and it was easy enough to play off being a random member of the community who needed her input on a case. The maid only knew that she was in Utah and couldn’t be of any further assistance. A few phone calls to some of his old contacts and John discovered Mary was on a job, staying at a place called the Starlight Motel, about a day’s drive away. It surprised him since she’d written just a few months ago that she and Steven now had a baby boy of their own, whom she’d named after her father.

It seemed awfully fast for her to be back out on a case, and he was suddenly very glad Millie was Dean’s mother instead of Mary. The love he’d felt for her had clearly blinded him to the fact that she had no maternal instincts whatsoever. He couldn’t imagine having a child with her now. He’d packed an overnight suitcase, picked Dean up from the neighbors, thrown the letters and bag into the back of the Impala, kissed Millie deeply on their front steps and whispered, “I love you,” before driving off to end things once and for all with Mary.

When he returned home mid-morning two days later, after an exhausting conversation with Mary - who had begged and wept and pleaded for him not to end things - and an even more exhausting drive back to Kansas, he found the house eerily silent and all he had been able to smell was the blood. For the first time in the five years since he left hunting he regretted not having a gun or at least a knife on him. The best he could do was grab the baseball bat in the coat closet by the front door before racing up the stairs after the odor trail, shouting, “Millie! Dean!”

He could hear a four year old’s tear-filed voice call out, “Daddy!” from the bedroom at the end of the hall, but didn’t make it there. The master bedroom was right off the landing and that’s where the smell was coming from. Millie was there, splayed out on the bedspread soaked in her own blood. Her eyes were open and staring unseeing at the ceiling and her skin was grey. Her throat was slashed and there was a large, wide gash down the center of her torso. Her white nightgown had turned red almost all the way to the hem. The cat was next to her, his intestines pulled out and laid to the side and his skin, which had been removed, turned over to look like a second cat next to him.

John froze in horror and grief. He couldn’t decide whether to go to her and hold her or throw up. He was only faintly aware that he was saying “No” over and over again, or that he had started to cry, or that the bat had fallen from his hand. He may have stood there for hours if Dean’s sobbing hadn’t snapped him out of it.

He ran to the end of the hall to check on his son, who was pounding on the door now and screaming “Daddy” repeatedly. The thirty seconds it took to convince Dean that it was really him and he could unlock the door seemed like an eternity. When the door finally opened he was bowled over by the smell of feces and urine. Dean was in a pair of soiled underwear and a shirt that said, “I Wuv Hugz” with a teddy bear on the front. He had apparently been using a toy bucket that Millie bought him so they could garden together as a toilet, which meant he hadn’t left the room. John dropped to his knees to run his hands over Dean’s face, arms, legs, everywhere to make sure he was okay before sweeping him into his arms.

“I had a accident,” Dean sobbed as John hurried with him back down the hallway, making sure to block his view of their bedroom.

“That’s okay buddy,” John told him, struggling desperately to keep his voice from breaking. “We’re gonna go to Mrs. Wilbert’s for a minute, okay?”

“Where’s Mama?”

John expected the pain in his chest would kill him at the question.

“She’s tired honey, she’s just laying down for a little bit.”

When the police arrived twenty minutes later they were sitting on Mrs. Wilbert’s porch, Dean in a pair of clean underwear courtesy of her six year old daughter and both of them wrapped in blankets as the crime team made their preliminary assessment of the scene. A pair of officers kept trying to ask John questions, but he didn’t have much to tell them, and was too deeply in shock to make much sense anyway. Mrs. Wilbert was able to confirm that she’d seen John drive off three days ago and he hadn’t returned until this morning. No other cars had come or gone from the house. Dean said that Daddy wasn’t home when Mommy told him to lock his door, and kept asking if anyone had seen Mr. Bootsy. The officers wanted to know if anyone had a grudge against his wife, but Millie had been loved by everyone. The neighbors would talk for years about that poor omega who was murdered while her alpha was away, and it took a long time before they stopped worrying about some crazed killer prowling their streets.

John knew better. He’d seen enough in his years as a hunter to spot a monster kill when he saw one. He just couldn’t stay there, not with the smell of his dead mate clinging to the master bedroom, and not when whatever it might be could come back for their son. He waited until Millie had been buried, then grabbed Dean, some of their belongings, and ran. When he heard several months later that Mary and Steven had been killed in a fire that destroyed their home and spared only their son he felt nothing. He was already well on his way to becoming obsessed with finding out what cut up his mate and killing anything supernatural he encountered on his quest for vengeance.

He would have had to be blind not to see what this lifestyle was doing to his son. He hadn’t been able to lie to Dean about what happened to his mother, though he’d spared him the gorier details and pulled the guilty monster out of thin air. Much as he wanted to preserve Dean’s innocence he couldn’t take the risk of allowing him to just be a little boy anymore. If whatever slaughtered Millie was after them too, he needed Dean to be prepared to fight for his life.

John’s fear for his first born son extended eventually to his second born son, and he ended up doing something he never thought he would; he took a pup from its mother. Adam’s mother had been a nurse at a hospital in Minnesota. John had come in to get patched up after a hunt, and she’d prepped him for his stitches. She was nice enough, and reminded him a little of Millie, and he’d dropped Dean off with Jim ( _who was now a pastor of all things_ ) for the winter while he kept Kate Milligan warm. He should have tried harder to stay sober when she came into her heat, and when she called in early October to proudly declare him a father and ask if he would come back to claim her he knew what he had to do. He’d never told Kate what his job was, so she was completely in the dark about all of the terrible things that could come after their child. It was obvious he would have to file the paperwork to take Adam away from her so he could keep him safe as well.

He’d worried Dean would be jealous of a new baby, especially when John knew he was going to have to keep leaving them behind more frequently until Dean was old enough to watch Adam without having John there all the time. Bobby Singer of all people was more than willing to step up and watch an almost-seven-year-old and an infant for weeks at a time, which backfired when Dean was eight and Adam was almost two and Bobby wanted John to leave them with him permanently to give them some kind of stability. The fight over the boys had been violent, and Bobby had thrown John off the property and told him not to come back unless he wanted to be filled so full of rock salt he’d be crapping margaritas for a week. Eventually John had no choice but to leave the boys at Actaeon when Dean almost got Adam killed. He’d even reached out to his father, the _only_ time they had spoken since the cemetery, to ensure they got in even though he clearly couldn’t afford the place. What good was having a father in a secret organization if he wasn’t willing to threaten some administrators to get his grandsons into a good school? He was surprised at how much easier it was to hunt when he wasn’t constantly worried about his children getting killed.

That had all changed when Dean presented as an omega, which John didn’t handle well at all. He had been noticing on their summer hunting trips how much the boy was starting to look like Millie, how much of her personality he had inherited. The confidence, easy swagger, and ability to command a room just by being in it were all Millie Baker. John may be respected as the biggest, baddest alpha in the county, but Dean had something more like star power. John had never wished harder that he hadn’t raised Dean in the life. Things were tough for an omega in civilian life, but he still would have had avenues open to him even without a high school diploma.

He tried to dump him with Bobby in an attempt to give him that alternative life, but Bobby had demanded John keep Dean with him. The beta could see how badly Dean needed to feel like nothing had changed between him and his father, that John still trusted him to have his back, but of course things had changed. Now in addition to worrying that a werewolf was going to eat his son’s heart or a djinn would drag him into a perfect dream world he could never escape, he lived in constant fear of a gang of alphas overpowering him and just taking Dean off somewhere to be raped and claimed against his will. John knew he’d never survive something like that happening to his beautiful boy; his heart couldn’t take that. He’d tried clumsily to push Dean into the arms of a couple of alphas he thought might be trustworthy, had even started using him as bait to try to get him so tired of the life that he’d just quit, but instead Dean had tricked him out of the Impala and gone off hunting on his own. John thought of reaching out to Adam for help in getting Dean to retire, but Adam hadn’t returned his calls in years.

And somewhere in the middle of all of that, John had managed to put together all the puzzle pieces of what had happened to his mate. Mary had made a deal with a demon, and gotten both Millie and herself killed. Now Dean knew about the whole thing and wanted him to give up trying to kill it, when he finally had his hand on a gun that could end the son of a bitch. Dean had begged him to give it up, said he knew they had their differences but he didn’t want John to die, and maybe he’d have felt differently if he knew exactly how badly his mother had been torn apart but John did not talk about Millie. So instead he’d tried to cow Dean into dropping the subject by spouting out some crap about how he didn’t expect an omega to understand how he felt, and if John had been worried before that Dean was going to start living off the grid and covering his tracks so well John would never find him, he was now pretty certain of it.

It would have been so easy to just stop with the lies and the secrets and be honest with Dean about _everything_ , but - well, John was a terrible father. And it was easier to just open up a second bottle of whiskey than to open up to his son.

“Drowning your sorrows John? I’d have thought my little present would set your heart all aflutter.”

The smell of sulfur filled John’s motel room and he turned to look at the short demon with closely cropped brown hair, an impeccably styled suit, and a crisp British accent. John regarded him for a moment before turning back to his glass and his bottle.

“It’s not that I don’t appreciate it, Crowley,” John said, taking a long drink from the glass. “I’m just waitin’ for the catch.”

Crowley made his way over to pour himself a drink, giving John his best, most winning smile.

“All in good time, my besotted frenemy,” Crowley said. “All in good time.”


	16. You Do Want to Conspire, Don't You?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The plot gets a whole lot thicker.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Crowley was not going to be in this story. But he pounded and pounded and said it was intolerable that I would write a story about Squirrel without him and because I love him I let him in. I'm really glad he wanted to be included.

Fergus MacLeod had been a little nothing of a man. Born to a natural witch who hated and eventually abandoned him, unlike his mother he wasn’t remarkable at all. He never loved anyone, abandoned his own child, and spent all of his money on drink. Eventually he traded his soul to a demon named Lilith, and in exchange got three extra inches tacked onto his less than impressive penis. When the hellhound came to claim him ten years later, he hadn’t even bothered to run. He was glad his miserable existence had finally come to an end.

Sadly, Fergus hadn’t thought much about Hell and what it might be like to be stuck there for all eternity until long after he had condemned his puny little soul. He of course knew the hysterical cries of “eternal damnation in the fiery pit,” but that had never been something he had taken literally. Turned out, it _was_ literal. At least for Fergus. It seemed the reality was that everyone got their own private version of Hell based on what would be the most effective method of torture, and Fergus had always been afraid of fire so there you go.

Besides being roasted alive on a spit over a bottomless cavern of white-hot flames day after day, it turned out that time worked differently in Hell. A month on the spit was more like a decade. And for the first month no one came. He was alone in a cell with a cavern of white-hot flame feeling his skin melt, his muscles cook, his organs liquify, and his bones turn to dust while he screamed as long as his voice held out, and then longer inside his head until his brain had dripped out of his mouth. Then finally the door opened and a tall, thin demon with a narrow face and gleeful grin stepped in and snapped his fingers. He wore a black suit and a tri-corner hat, and Fergus wondered if he’d been a pirate in the land of the living.

The flame subsided and the spit stopped turning, and though a large portion of Fergus’ skin was already gone he gasped with relief, turning to thank his savior. His tongue was so swollen he couldn’t do anything more than mumble.

“I’m sorry, what was that?” The demon had a strange voice; somewhere between a tenor and a baritone and annoyingly nasal. This wasn’t the kind of voice one would expect of Hell’s best torturer, but that was okay. The way he moved across the floor like an asp, a black inner lid rolling down over his eyes, worked just fine. “Cat got your tongue?”

Fergus tried to speak again and ended up weeping, at least as much as he could weep with his tear ducts burned off. It filled the demon with glee.

“Something tells me you want down off this spit,” he said. “Am I right?”

Fergus nodded his head so vigorously he tore a half-cooked muscle in the back of his neck and shrieked in agony. The demon smiled, watching him suffer for quite some time, before snapping his fingers and changing the room into a plain brick cell with no spit and no fire and no half roasted Fergus. Instead, the Scotsman with the eight inch penis was back in one piece and dressed in simple black trousers and a long black overshirt. It was no worse than what he’d worn in the workhouse, and at least it didn’t smell like smoke.

“Thank you,” Fergus said in a thick Scottish brogue. The demon shook his head.

“No, no that won’t do at all,” he tsked. “You’ll have to lose the accent if you want to get anywhere around here. _Nobody_ respects the Scottish. You’re only a step or two above the Welsh, and they’re the dregs of humanity. I’d recommend working on a nice, clipped British if I were you.”

“What do you mean if I want to get anywhere around here?” the Scotsman asked, not stupid enough to express his offense at the suggestion that he learn how to speak like a bloody Englishman.

“I presume you want to move up the food chain,” the demon replied, and with the snap of his fingers a chair appeared for him to sit on. “You did say you wanted off the spit.”

“Yes, yes I do.”

“Well Fergus, the only way out of being tortured is to become the torturer.” The demon drummed his fingers together, studying the puny soul in front of him. “You do the job well enough, and eventually you’ll make progress. We work on the merit system here in Hell. The harder you work, the higher you’ll climb. Maybe if you really keep your nose to the grindstone you’ll climb all the way to the top. Does that sound like something you’d be interested in?”

“Yes.” _Anything_ to stay off of that spit. “Yes it does. Thank you for the opportunity…”

The demon snapped his fingers and Fergus’ mouth was instantly sewn shut. He tried not to panic, but he didn’t do a very good job.

“Don’t grovel. It’s unbecoming of a demon trying to climb the ranks.” He stood and waved his hand to dematerialize the chair, then headed for the door of the cell. “Oh, and you’re going to need a better name than Fergus. Spend some time thinking about it. I’ll be back soon to start your lessons.”

He left Fergus’ mouth sewn shut as he exited the cell.

“Soon” turned out to be a month ( _decade_ ) later, by which point Fergus had nearly gone mad from trying to scream through lips that had grown together over the time between when the demon left him and when he returned. Fergus presumed there was a point to the exercise; perhaps teaching him about different forms of torture. Whatever it was, he imagined many more such lessons in his future. It didn’t matter. Anything was better than the spit.

The demon wore the same black suit and hat when he entered the cell, snapping his fingers to give Fergus back the use of his mouth. He watched as Fergus gasped for air - pointless for a soul, but old habits died hard - and smiled that same slithery smile.

“Have you thought of a name?” he asked, watching his pupil choke a bit from breathing too quickly after too long of not doing so.

“Crowley,” Fergus told him, his voice having taken on a gravelly quality from a decade of disuse. “Worst foreman I ever worked for.”

The demon seemed amused.

“I know the fellow,” he said. “We’ll start with him for your training. By the way, I’m Alistair.”

It was one hundred and fifty years before Crowley was good enough at what he did to earn a spot among the crossroads demons that would allow him to go topside. The travel of time for demons was in sync with the world of the living, and the world Crowley stepped into was vastly different from the one he’d left. There was a new country called the United States of America where the colonies had been. It had fought off the British twice and gone through a civil war. Machines called locomotives carried masses of people from one city to the next and connected many places in the countryside. Electricity had been discovered. Something called the telegraph carried messages from far off locales, even across the ocean between America and Europe. Within a few years the telephone would be invented, then the automobile, then the airplane. Motion pictures were invented. Radio was invented. The Titanic would be built and sink on her maiden voyage. World War I would kill millions of people. The Spanish flu would wipe out up to fifty million people worldwide. Women would win the right to vote. Television would be invented. The stock market would crash, creating a worldwide economic depression. World War II would kill millions more people. The blue death of 1958 would decimate the omega population, wiping out ninety percent of them before a vaccine was discovered in 1965. And all the while there were little wars here and there - the Korean War, the Indonesian National Revolution, the Greek Civil War, the Malayan Emergency, Vietnam - and on and on. It was a great time to be a crossroads demon and Crowley was walking the earth for all of it.

He had enjoyed his time torturing souls, learning how to find the various pressure points necessary to get the maximum value out of every punishment, but where he truly shone was as a salesman. He convinced James Dean and Marilyn Monroe to trade their souls for fame. Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, and Bob Marley all made deals with the proverbial Devil. He’d even made a play for Elvis, but the man was too naturally talented and good looking to need any help; besides which he was too devout to bite when Crowley threw out the lure. He had his own hellhound whom he had named Juliet, and she was a beautiful bitch that he wished the souls she reaped could truly appreciate. By the time he was tasked with contacting John Winchester for a little deal not in line with the usual contracts he sat at Lilith’s left hand. The only demon closer to Lilith was Ruby, and my, how he hated Ruby. Not only did Ruby think she was above the sales aspect of the job, she had been a witch in life, and Crowley hated witches.

He especially hated when they sat down next to him in his favorite club in Las Vegas and wanted to talk shop while he was working on chatting up three go-go dancers and a bouncer who were intrigued by the idea of an orgy. He had one of the dancers in his lap when Ruby sauntered on past his guards standing at the entrance to his private back room, swung a chair around to sit and declared, “Out.”

None of the humans took her seriously until she fluttered her black lids, at which point they couldn’t get out of the room quickly enough. Crowley rolled his eyes and sighed, exasperated.

“Was that really necessary?” he asked in the clipped British accent Alistair had recommended he take all those years ago. “One of them was sort of a virgin.”

“There’s no such thing as sort of a virgin,” Ruby sniped, and Crowley quirked an eyebrow.

“Depends on whether or not you count fifth base. Whatever do you want?”

“I heard about Lilith’s little job for you,” she said, grabbing his glass to finish off his scotch. “I want in.”

“Sorry sweetheart.” He gave her his winningest smile. “I’m not in need of a Gal Friday. But if I ever feel like posting a Craigslist ad I’ll keep you in mind.”

“It’s cute that you think I’m asking instead of telling,” she snarled. “You forget who sits at Lillth’s right hand.”

“Clearly whatever her right hand has been doing has left her...unsatisfied.”

He poured himself another glass of Glencraig and enjoyed the annoyed look she gave him.

“She’s making a play against Azazel.” Ruby fixed her steely gaze on him, as if she expected the name to strike terror into the ashy black remnants of Crowley’s heart. “You really got balls big enough to take on a Prince of Hell?”

“Oh, but I won’t be taking him on. John Winchester will. I’ll just be a little bug in his ear.” He stood and buttoned his suit coat, flashing red eyes at her along with a smile. “Sort of his Jiminy Cricket. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a little Hell to raise.”

She didn’t follow him out of the club, which he knew only meant that she’d be trying to cut her own deals to fulfill Lilith’s request. She undoubtedly knew the story behind the feud if she knew about finding the Colt and getting it to that patsy, Winchester, so she’d soon be approaching one of the Campbells to try to get them on board as an alternate assassin. If John was supposed to be the Lee Harvey Oswald, Ruby would make sure one of the Campbell’s was positioned on the grassy knoll.

And she’d likely have a good shot at roping one of them in. Mary Campbell had been the one to cut the deal that had Lilith up in arms. Her relationship with Azazel was strained from the eons he’d kept her under lock and key before she made her escape, and demon deals were her department. A Prince of Hell mucking around in the trade was bad for business. Nothing was more illustrative of this than the fact that he’d approached one of the highest profile hunting families there was to sell a bill of goods long on promises and short on specifics to the only omega in the clan and then drawn a lot of attention to himself by roasting her alive on the ceiling of her son’s nursery. Lilith had let it go at the time, but when he’d done the same thing to the son’s girlfriend it was officially beyond her tolerance level. Prince of Hell or not, Azazel had overstepped his bounds. Demonkind had managed to keep a very low profile since the Reformation and were generally not on anyone’s radar but a handful of priests that most of the Church laughed off as nutjobs. The kind of flashy killings Azazel and his children had been committing were going to raise an alarm that demons were not only real, but very active. Lilith had her own plans, and they didn’t involve ending up on the FDH’s daily feed of open hunts.

Crowley was the perfect demon to handle this kind of situation, as he valued discretion when conducting business. Ruby was all splash and short fuses, utterly lacking in panache. It made sense to Crowley when he heard that she’d made contact with Sam Campbell. The boy had stupidly promised his dead girlfriend’s parents he’d find out what killed her, was young and harbored enough of his mother’s obsessive streak to make him the obvious choice to approach over a bitter old man collecting Social Security. Crowley had passed by Mary’s cell on more than one occasion and all she did was ask when John was coming. Even in eternal damnation she refused to let go of him. If her son had inherited that tendency toward devotion he would make for an excellent stooge.

Headstrong as Sam was, he was also a huge risk for Ruby to place her bets on. He may have lost his mother and his girlfriend to Azazel, but he’d never known his mother and it was up in the air just how much his girlfriend had meant to him. When it came to having a horse in this race, Crowley would take John Winchester any day. His wife had been ripped apart by one of Azazel’s children, and his life with his young son had been destroyed. If you wanted someone to go on a suicidal quest for revenge, John was clearly your man.

Plus, he’d already been filling in the crossword about what happened to his wife for a very long time. Unlike Ruby, who showed up on Sam’s doorstep and blurted out the whole thing about Azazel like a badly trained Jehovah’s Witness, Crowley simply filled in a few extra letters and let John solve it himself. A man like him needed to feel he’d put the puzzle together on his own. All it took to get John on the team was a little finesse.

He had it on good authority that every year on Millie’s birthday John visited The Purple Room where they’d met. It seemed the opportune time to approach him, when he would be too deep in the bottle and his memories to put up much resistance. The only downside was that it meant Crowley would have to travel to Arizona, a state he did his best to avoid. In his mind there was no point in condemning anyone to eternal torture who was already purposely living in such a dreadful place.

John was well into a bottle of Jim Beam that he’d bought outright when Crowley sidled up to him and asked, “Rough night?”

Never one for small talk, John grunted simply, “You could say that.”

“It’s dreadful losing a spouse,” Crowley surmised. “I don’t speak from experience of course, but I _have_ seen _Deathwish_. All five volumes. They should have stopped at two, in my opinion.”

“Do I know you?” John asked, turning on his stool to face the newcomer.

“Not yet, but I know you.” The bartender stopped in front of him, a tall, handsome blond with a body builder’s figure, and Crowley said, “Nothing for me, thank you.”

“Yeah?” John sized him up as best he could that far into his bourbon. “And who am I?”

“The outlaw, Josey Wales,” Crowley replied. John’s brow creased in confusion and Crowley thought perhaps approaching him when he was drinking hadn’t been a solid plan after all. “Clint Eastwood. Nineteen-seventy-two. Josey Wales has his family murdered by Union militants, spends the movie running from the law, in the end gets revenge on the man that butchered his wife and son.” John stared at him and blinked, which led Crowley to demand, “How do you not know this film? It’s a classic! It has a ninety-five percent ‘fresh’ rating on Rotten Tomatoes!”

“I think you have me confused with someone,” John replied.

“You’re John Winchester,” Crowley said, “and you’re here drinking yourself into a stupor over your poor, dead wife Millie. And I’m here to give you the tool you need to kill the thing that killed _her_.” At the last second he threw in, “For a price.”

It was a snap judgment, a last minute decision based on the intense look of interest on John’s face. He knew a bit about the Winchester line; they were quite famous as well, though more in the nearly defunct research world once dominated by the Men of Letters. It was rumored the Men of Letters had a lot of interesting things in their archives. Maybe if Crowley did a little more homework he’d find they had something of value to him that John could get, as anything having to do with the Men of Letters was heavily warded. It was definitely worth leaving things open ended with John.

“Who are you?” John demanded, his voice low and threatening.

Crowley allowed his eyes to roll over red, and replied, “Someone who can make all your dreams come true.”

John, of course, hadn’t taken that well, and and had nearly caused a shootout in the bar until Crowley had been able to convince him that one, bullets would be useless; two, he would certainly be banned from The Purple Lady for life, and three; Crowley was not interested in anything particularly nefarious, but was just looking for a favor to be returned at a future date, which would not involve John selling his soul, or his children’s souls, or his children’s children’s souls. He had an item he could offer John that would kill the demon who killed John’s wife, and all he asked was that at some point John retrieve an item for him.

If he had tossed out the hook earlier John never would have bitten, but Crowley had spent the better part of a year dropping off the bread crumbs for the hunter to follow right up to Azazel’s doorstep. As it was, he could tell how intrigued John was by the idea despite his better instincts, and all Crowley had to do was reel him in. The explanation of the gun that could kill almost anything was the clincher.

The Colt had been easy enough to find. The hunter who had it was an alcoholic ( _as most of them were_ ) named Elkins who lived secluded on a ranch but had a certain favorite watering hole in the nearest town that he visited like clockwork every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Getting a lackey to chat him up a few of those nights had been all it took to confirm he still had it, and then a neat stack of thousand dollar bills to the two bartenders was all he needed to fund his own little remake of _The Sting._ That there was a local nest of vampires that took out Elkins’ cattle as well as Elkins the same day the bartenders swiped the Colt was nothing short of serendipity. It was easy enough to show up in John’s hotel room and present him with the fabled weapon while Ruby was running Sam all around the country chasing false leads. The deal was all tied up, until the underling he had tracking John reported he had been buying half a liquor store and his reserve appeared to be faltering. And so Crowley found himself in John’s seedy motel room outside of Cedar City trying to keep his horse in the race.

“You say ‘all in good time’ like I’m just supposed to trust you,” John was saying as Crowley attempted to keep his temper in check.

“Good god, don’t,” Crowley replied. “Never trust anyone.”

“That’s quite a sales pitch you’ve got there,” John said with a laugh. “You sure you’re the top crossroads demon they’ve got?”

“What can I say? I have a winning personality.”

“What are you doing here Crowley? You have a location on Azazel?”

“Not exactly.”

“Then what is it? We agreed we’d keep our conversations to a bare minimum.” He took a long pull on his drink. “I don’t need word getting out that I’m dealing with a demon. Lots of hunters wouldn’t take that news so well.”

“You seem upset, John. Anything I can help you with?”

“I think you helping me with this one thing is enough.” John sat quietly for a moment, drinking his bourbon, while Crowley regarded him and patiently waited for him to burst. John wanted to talk about whatever it was that had spooked him. The demon’s ability to read human nature and wait for them to hang themselves was one of the things that made him so good at his job. “My son called.”

“Florence Nightingale or Hannie Caulder?” Crowley asked. John looked at him blankly. “Racquel Welch. Nineteen-seventy-one. Have you _never_ seen a film before?”

“My older son,” John replied. “Dean.”

“Ah. The pretty one.” John gave Crowley a warning glare, complete with growl, and the demon held up his hands. “Strictly an observation, not an expression of interest.”

“Yeah, well…” He looked at his glass, which was getting close to empty, and poured himself another drink. “He knows the truth about what killed his mom. Wants me to stop this before I end up dead.”

“I see.” Damn. Crowley hadn’t anticipated John’s sons getting involved. Adam he knew wouldn’t care, but Dean was a wild card. “Well, you can if you like. That’s actually why I stopped by.”

This was clearly not what John was expecting to hear. With narrowed eyes he asked, “What do you mean?”

“I wanted to let you know an associate of mine is also looking for the Colt, and she’s got her own gunslinger.” He suppressed a smile in anticipation. “Sam Campbell. I think you know of him?”

The scowl on John’s face did not disappoint. Mary’s son would be the last person John wanted after the yellow-eyed demon. John had spent the last twenty years on a hunt for revenge. There was no way he’d let some kid steal his kill.

“Why does Sam want in on this?” The scowl in his voice matched the one on his face. “It’s been my understanding that Samuel’s always been tight lipped about what happened to Mary.”

“And you would be correct,” Crowley informed him. “Not that anyone can blame him. Your dead daughter who is currently roasting in Hellfire doesn’t exactly fall under the category of polite dinner conversation. No, Azazel killed little Sam’s girlfriend and he’s out for revenge. Sound familiar?”

John blinked.

“Mary’s in Hell?”

“Obviously. Not exactly roasting though, more like pining for you and pissing off her neighbors because she won’t shut up.” He allowed himself to smile as John gripped his glass hard and looked away. “What do you think happens when you make deals with demons?”

“I’m going to Hell then?” John asked.

“Heavens no,” Crowley replied. “Well, maybe. Your life hasn’t been all tallied up yet, but as far as I know you’re still on the upstairs’ roster. What we have isn’t really a deal, you understand. More an exchange of favors.”

“Glad you cleared that up.”

Crowley could tell he was swinging John back towards the plan, but needed to be sure he didn’t sway again. Humans were truly exhausting.

“Does it bother you that Mary’s in Hell?” John looked back at him, his eyes cold. If looks could kill. “You don’t have to tell me, just making conversation. I am interested, though, what it’s like knowing that your former lover who inadvertently murdered your wife got a one way ticket to the pit.”

“She can rot, for all I care.” John drained his glass and poured himself another. “Don’t contact me again until you know where Azazel is so I can kill the son of a bitch.”

This is why he was the best at what he did. Whatever had been bothering John a few moments ago was forgotten and Crowley had his full focus back on the job.

“Until later then,” he said, vanishing with a snap of his fingers.

Yes sir, a little finesse went a long, long way.


	17. What Are You Gonna Tell Me Next?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam gets some surprising news.

It had been three weeks since Sam had driven away from Bobby’s property in South Dakota, and he hadn’t really stopped driving since. He’d taken on a shapeshifter shortly after he got back home to St. Louis, then moved on to a wraith on Colorado, a rugaru in Tennessee, and a pair of vetalas in Dodge City. He really should have had a partner for the vetalas, but he was rapidly getting to a point where he didn’t care what happened to him. Surviving on too much vodka and not enough sleep had that effect. Well, that and desperately missing Dean; his eyes, his skin, the sound of his voice. Jesus, it was pathetic how he could think of practically nothing else. He’d almost driven back to Bobby’s after the Colorado job to beg him for Dean’s address, but his last conversation with Adam still rang in his ears and he’d begun to question whether maybe he _had_ taken advantage of Dean at the Holiday Inn.

How drunk had Dean really been? Had he really known what he was doing? Wasn’t he, as the alpha, responsible for protecting an omega, even from themselves? And if the answer was “yes,” then shouldn’t he have tried harder ( _or at all, period, let’s be honest_ ) to stop things before they went too far? Especially when he was keeping a huge secret from Dean, one that may very well have had a major impact on how things went down that night? He was drowning in the guilt of it all.

He really had intended to try to put the whole thing behind him and move on with his life, but when he’d gotten back to his apartment in St. Louis and unpacked his gear from the Wyoming hunt he discovered he’d grabbed one of Dean’s shirts by mistake when rushing to get out while Dean was in the bathroom. He should have thrown it out or washed it or given it to a thrift shop or handed it off to some homeless guy, he knew that. He certainly shouldn’t be carrying it around in the bottom of his duffel on these jobs so that all of his clothes smelled faintly of Dean. It was creepy and obsessive and pitiful, and he _needed_ that shirt with him so he could smell the coffee and cloves and not feel utterly alone while he got drunk in his hotel room night after night. He hadn’t jerked off so much in all the years since hitting puberty as he did those three weeks, and was starting to think the old warning that “it will fall off’ might just turn out to be true. At the very least he had to start buying much better lotion.

Every day he swore to himself he’d get rid of the shirt, and every night before he went to sleep he’d hold it to his face so he could scent Dean in absentia. He slept better with the illusion of the omega next to him, but always woke feeling worse in the morning when the bubble inevitably burst. Adam had accused him of just wanting to knot his brother, of just reacting to his scent, but the way Sam felt when he woke up and Dean was never there went way beyond pheromones. Having Dean for one night made clear how empty Sam’s life was without him. It was like being half of a person. It was agony.

Maybe this is what love did to you. He didn’t know, having never been exposed to a loving, mated relationship. If it was, love was for the birds, that was for damn sure. He didn’t need or want this feeling. It made him irritable and cranky and feel like he wanted to just lock himself in a dark room and listen to The Smiths and The Cure until he died of dehydration, or maybe cirrhosis of the liver. He hadn’t decided yet whether he would bring alcohol in the dark room with him. To be honest, he probably would. It was the only thing keeping him relatively sane at this point.

A case hunting a bloody bones in Nebraska eventually brought him to the Roadhouse, where he spent the afternoon attempting to avoid Jo’s pointed looks and control his drinking so as not to be so obviously bordering on alcoholism while he listened to the Police trying to encourage Roxanne not to put on the red light. Jo would have been easier to ignore if he’d sat at a table instead of the bar, but he retained enough courtesy in his spiraling state not to take up space someone else could use and deny Jo the tips. Granted the place was all but empty so it didn’t really matter, but still, he didn’t want to be _that guy_ when he already worried that she might have spit in his food. Fortunately she was holding her tongue and just glaring at him darkly every now and then.

He was on his fourth beer and picking morosely at his cold French fries when Ash came out of the backroom with his custom-built laptop and a can of PBR.

“Sam,” he said as he plunked himself down next to the alpha at the bar. “Need to talk about that algorhythm you got me runnin’.”

Sam had contacted him about seven months ago when Ruby first showed up to see if he could come up with a computer program that would scan for demonic activity in the hopes of pinning down Azazel’s location. Ash was a genius who’d been kicked out of MIT and the obvious person to go to for Sam’s needs. Up until now the program hadn’t shown any hits, so Sam should have been a lot more excited about whatever Ash wanted to show him. In reality he had all but forgotten about the whole tracking-down-the-thing-that-killed-his-girlfriend quest he’d had going on for over two years. It seemed so trivial compared to the other things occupying his thoughts these days.

He wasn’t going to tell that to Ash, though. Ash very well might beat him with a pool cue after all the trouble he’d gone through at Sam’s request. He put on his best gameface and swung around.

“Sure,” he said. “What have you got?”

“Maybe nothin’, maybe somethin’.” Ash turned the computer towards Sam for him to look at. On the screen was a map of the United States with a handful of dots on it. Sam studied it, his eyes growing wide. “Thought you might find it interesting, though.”

“This is every city I’ve been in in the last month,” Sam said. Ash was right. He suddenly felt very interested.

“What are you lookin’ at?” Jo asked, wandering over. Apparently if Ash was involved she’d be willing to lower herself to speaking to Sam.

“Sam’s got me running a program looking for demonic activity,” Ash replied. When the hunters over by the door glanced their way he lowered his voice. “Mass cattle mutilations, freak weather incidents, abnormal astrological events, that sort of thing.”

“You’re hunting demons?” Jo said quietly to Sam. If he didn’t know better he’d think he had just earned some grudging respect from her.

“One demon, actually.” He clicked on the first dot over Laramie to blow up the information. “Waitress found dead with her throat slit and drained of a pint of blood…” His eyes widened when he saw the date and the details. “I know her. Dean and I interviewed her for the vampire case we were on. We saw her the morning she died. How have I missed this?”

“Dunno,” Ash said. “It’s been up on the FDH list of open cases for about two weeks.”

“You think Sam checks the site?” Jo scoffed. “He probably gets handwritten lists of the best cases from his grandpa.”

“Shut up Jo,” Sam muttered, clicking on the rest of the dots. “She was a nice lady.” A _real_ nice lady. Sam was surprised at how upset he was that Dolores the waitress was dead. “There’s a case like this in each of the cities I’ve been to on the day that I’ve left. Why has no one put this together yet?”

“How many people do you think keep tabs on you?” Ash asked. “It ain’t like you’re that popular. I mean sure, I have a tracker on your phone and it only took me about a minute to georeference your travels against the FDH job board, but Dean’s the only hunter I know who even notices you in a room.” He paused a second to give his statement time to land before adding, “Every time.”

Ash’s comment took Sam right out of the case. He forgot completely what he was looking at and just stared at Ash, wide eyed and blinking.

“What…?”

Ash squirted a glob of ketchup onto Sam’s plate and dragged one of his fries through it, shrugging.

“You’re like Harry and Sally. Obviously you’re Harry, and he’s Sally. Except for the food thing. You drive the servers around here nuts. He’s easy when it comes to food.” Sam stared at him, dumbfounded as he stole another fry. “Probably easier for me to spot as a beta. According to my molecular biology classes those pheromones make things way more complicated than necessary when an alpha wants an omega.” He pointed at Sam’s head and made a little twirl with his finger. “Fries your wirin’. ‘Specially if you got an omega that’s good at suppressin’ their emotions.”

“ _Sam_?” Jo burst out, barely containing her laughter. “Wants _Dean_?” She broke into high pitched gales that brought her mother out of the kitchen. “Shit, no _wonder_ you’re such an ass to him! I can’t wait ‘til the next time he comes in here so I can tell him.”

Sam just about lost his mind. He could imagine few things worse than Dean hearing Sam wanted him from a third party. He’d probably think Sam had been going around the country blabbing about the Holiday Inn and then Dean would _really_ never speak to him again.

“What’s goin’ on out here?” Ellen asked, drying her hands on the dish towel she carried with her. “You behavin’ yourself Joanna?”

“God, mom, _yes_.” Jo threw in an eyeroll just to make sure her exasperation was clear. She looked about thirteen. “We were just talking about Sam’s unrequited love for Dean and vice versa.”

“What?” Ellen looked at Sam, who was blushing deeply and wanted to melt through the floor. He was never coming to the Roadhouse again. “That true, Sam?”

Oddly enough Ellen didn’t seem amused by the situation. In fact, neither did Ash. Jo was the only one laughing. It wasn’t enough to get Sam to open up, though.

“It’s…it’s complicated,” he said lamely, and tried to change the subject. “Ash, can we get back to what your program pulled up?”

“Sure Sam,” Ash replied, grabbing his laptop to punch in a random string of letters and numbers on the keyboard, undoubtedly about to show Sam something really cool.

He didn’t have a chance, because Jo asked, “If you want to know about demons, why don’t you just ask your dad?”

“Cuz I ain’t talked to that sonofabitch in years,” Ash replied, and Jo hit him upside the head with her order pad. “Ow!”

“Not _your_ dad, idiot,” she snapped. “Sam’s dad.”

“Joanna Beth!” Ellen exclaimed. “That’s enough outta you!”

“Mom, his dad has the biggest collection of demon lore outside of Bobby Singer…” Jo started, but clammed up at the warning glare her mother gave her.

Everything seemed to go very still in the bar as Sam turned to look from Jo to Ellen. Why would Jo bring up his father when his father was dead? Had been for over twenty years?

“What are you talking about?” he asked, dread spreading through his chest and a cold sweat trickling down his back.

Ellen glanced over at the hunters near the door, then grabbed hold of Sam’s arm and started dragging him towards her office at the back of the kitchen.

“Have a smoke, Tiny,” she said to the gigantic beta manning the grill. Tiny shrugged, set down his spatula, and pulled a cigarette from behind his ear as he headed for the back door. Ellen pushed Sam into the office ahead of her, closed the door and pulled the shades. “I’m real sorry about that, Sam. Jo was talkin’ out of turn.”

“She said my dad has the biggest collection of demon lore outside of Bobby’s,” Sam said. “‘Has.’ Present tense.” He was afraid to ask the question but he had to know. “Ellen, is my dad alive?”

She drew in a deep breath, running her hands through her hair, before fixing her eyes on him, so dark brown they almost looked black.

“Yeah Sam, he is. Your grandfather paid him off after your mama died to stay the hell on outta your life. Jo probably thinks it’s been so long that it doesn’t matter, but she don’t know your grandpa.”

Sam felt the sudden urge to sit, aided greatly by the way his knees were giving out on him. He groped around and found a chair behind him, sinking into it as Ellen came over to grab his arm and keep him from falling over. He felt really lightheaded and eventually had to bend over to put his head between his knees and breathe. Ellen ran her hand along his back as he struggled to stay conscious. It would be decidedly un-alphalike for him to pass out in Ellen’s office.

“You okay there Sam?” she asked after a few minutes.

“What’s his name?” Sam choked out. “Where is he?”

“Twin Lakes, Colorado,” she told him. “Name’s Steven Wandell. I’ve got his address here somewhere.” She looked around her desk until she found a journal and began to flip through it. “He’s on the paranoid side, house is all wired up with cameras and motion detection lights. I’d expect he’ll greet you at the other end of a rifle. You should go in prepared.” She’d found his information and tore it out, extending it to him across the desk. “I can’t guarantee he’ll be happy to see you, Sam.”

“That’s okay.” Sam got shakily to his feet and took the sheet of paper from her. “I can’t guarantee I’ll be happy to see him, either.”

“I’m real sorry I’ve been keeping this from you. It’s what he wanted.”

“It’s fine, Ellen, really.” It wasn’t, but so much anger was building towards his grandfather and this Wandell ( _he wouldn’t think of him as his father_ ) that he didn’t have any to spare for her. “I know how intimidating Samuel can be. I really appreciate you telling me about him.”

“I wish Jo had used a little more tact about it.” Ellen gave him a small smile. He imagined she said that a lot. “That other thing she was bein’ tactless about - you and Dean…”

He could feel his face heating up and looked down at the paper in her hands. He knew Ellen, just not terribly well, and it was strange to have her trying to...what, mother him? The concept of that was completely foreign to him. He instinctively bristled against it.

“It’s…”

“I heard you,” she cut in. “It’s complicated. But I got news for you Sam. Life is complicated. And shorter than you realize. If I were you I’d figure out how to make things simple sooner rather than later. That boy’s somethin’ special.”

He looked up from the paper with Steven’s address to discover that her eyes were filled with warmth and sadness. He nodded stiffly.

“I know he is.”

“Don’t worry about Jo. I’ll make sure she keeps her mouth shut the next time he comes in.”

He gave her a small smile, supremely grateful, and headed back through the kitchen, dropping a fifty dollar bill on the bar on the way out without speaking to Jo or Ash. He headed back to his hotel room to sober up and get a good night’s sleep before heading for Colorado.

Twin Lakes was an almost seven hour drive from the Roadhouse, which gave Sam plenty of time to think about what he wanted to ask the man who had abandoned him as a baby for a quick cash payout. That probably wasn’t fair, knowing how his grandfather could have just as easily paid someone the same amount of money to make Steven Wandell disappear, but he didn’t care about fairness at this point. He cared about all the birthdays spent alone at a boarding school getting exactly what he asked for from his grandfather because his grandfather didn’t know him well enough to surprise him with a gift he just _knew_ Sam would love. He cared about all the summer camping trips he didn’t get to go on because there was no one to get him out of school to visit the Grand Canyon or Mt. Rushmore. He cared about all the Thanksgivings he spent with canned cranberry sauce and turkey casserole because there weren’t enough students at the school to make a whole turkey. He cared about having to learn how to ride the BMX that sat in his room for over a year from his best friend’s older brother because the teachers at Actaeon didn’t get paid to teach bicycle riding and he didn’t have any other friends who knew how to ride a two wheeler.

There were an awful lot of things Sam cared about, and fairness wasn’t even in the top ten.

He thought it best not to try to surprise Wandell after dark, so he booked a room at the Leadville Motor Lodge and decided to track him down in the morning. There were less than two hundred people in Twin Lakes, barely qualifying it as a town, and Wandell’s house was easy enough to find after talking to some of the locals. Apparently he made an impression, and not in a good way. He was a bit of a snob and a recluse, and had just about everything delivered to his home rather than venturing out to rub elbows with common folk. At the Leadville post office they told him the guy ordered a lot of ammo through the mail, and while it was none of their business they suspected he might be one of those survivalist types, and if Sam knew what was good for him he’d stay the hell away.

His interviews led to a private drive off of Route 82 that lead up into the woods and wound for a very long time. At length the trees opened to a lawn that had obviously been clear cut long ago to provide enough sunlight for grass to grow, and in the center was a beautiful white farmhouse reminiscent of a horse ranch. It was two stories with a wrap-around porch and a front door with a frosted glass window and matching panels of the same width on either side. As Ellen had indicated, there were cameras stationed on poles all around the property with motion detecting lights bolted above them, the cables running back to the house to provide its owner with surveillance. A classic Volkswagon Beetle sat in the driveway alongside a brand new Ford F350 Super Duty XLT. An older model Ford Bronco with a plow attached was parked farther off, obviously for maintaining the long driveway in the winter. The entire property was immaculately maintained, and must have included fifty acres easily just surrounding the house and drive. It looked like Steven had spent the Campbell money well.

As Sam came to a stop behind the Volkswagon a cacophony of barking erupted from the house. If he’d had any thoughts of approaching the house unarmed, the sound of the dogs laid them to rest. He grabbed his Taurus 92 and tucked it in the back of his waistband before climbing out of the Hummer.

He hadn’t even gotten two steps when the front door opened and an alpha about his height and build stepped out with a shotgun trained on him. Two gigantic white dogs careened off the porch but didn’t advance on him. They just stood barking and growling, keeping Sam at bay. The alpha had hazel eyes, short, thick, dark brown hair streaked with grey, and about two day’s worth of stubble on his chin. He smelled of pine trees, campfires, and rum and regarded Sam for a very long time, waiting for his scent to waft across the drive. Finally he lowered the shotgun and called to the dogs.

“Orion! Apollo! House!”

The dogs refused to obey. They stayed barking and growling and eventually ended up in a fight on the porch. The alpha sighed in frustration.

“ _Boys_! _House_! _Now_!” he ordered, and they broke apart and ran back inside. He gave Sam a look he couldn’t decipher and set the shotgun down fully. “Great Pyrenees. Fantastic guard dogs. A fart from a butterfly will set ‘em off. Don’t listen to commands for shit, though. What can I do for you, Sam?”

Well. So far this wasn’t going at all like Sam expected.

“You...know who I am?” he asked.

“Course I do. Man doesn’t forget the smell of his own pup. Make it quick, I got things to do.”

“I’m sorry…” This _really_ wasn’t going like Sam expected. “You want me to make it _quick_?”

“That’s what I said, isn’t it?” Wandell looked bored. “You tracked me down for something, so out with it. I’m in the middle of researching a case and I’d like to get back to it.”

Sam’s alpha was rising and he didn’t know how to stop it. This man had left him behind like a forgotten toothbrush at a motel and now he wanted Sam to _make it quick_? His vision was slowly going red. He didn’t even know where to begin.

“Jo Harvelle said you could help me track a demon,” he finally managed. “Said you’ve got the best collection of lore outside of Bobby Singer.”

“I can,” Steven replied warily. “What do you want to track a demon for?”

“That’s my business.”

“If you’re thinking of going after the demon that killed your mother, I’d suggest you don’t.” The anger coloring Sam’s face apparently made Steven rethink his approach, and he wiped a hand across his mouth. “Why don’t you come inside? I have a few minutes.”

Oh, he had a few minutes. Sam was glad to at least know what he was worth. It was clear Steven had taken the money and completely written him off. He didn’t even wait for Sam to move or respond and headed back inside, leaving the door open behind him. Sam really didn’t have any other choice but to follow him, even though this trip had clearly been a gigantic waste of time already.

The inside of the house was an impressive as the outside, with dark hardwood floors throughout and wainscotting in all of the rooms. It was tastefully painted in whites and pale greens and gave off the impression of an older, simpler time. The furniture looked to be all solid walnut, and a wide staircase with a heavy, intricate bannister and rail aligned with the front entry. The two dogs were laying in two separate doorways; the larger one between the entry and what appeared to be a parlor to the left, while the smaller dog was at the far end of the hall guarding what was obviously the kitchen. Both launched into fits of barking again, their voices powerful and deep, when Sam entered.

“ _Boys_. _Stop_. _Or you’re going in your crates_.”

Steven came out of a room farther down the hall to the right, about halfway to the kitchen, and regarded the two hounds sternly. They gave a few pitiful woofs and then laid back down with loud sighs conveying their discontent at being stopped from doing their job. When he was sure they weren’t going to keep trying to scare off the newcomer he waved Sam over to him.

“Come on in Sam. Have a seat,” he said, and vanished through the door.

Sam followed and found himself in a large office with a wide bay window looking out over the grounds. There were sliding doors against one wall that appeared to be some kind of built-in closet that were locked. A large ebony desk stood opposite them with three separate computer monitors and towers whirling away. The other three walls of the room were lined with books, not a one looking new. This is probably what Bobby’s house would look like if he were independently wealthy and had the time to just sit around and catalogue without having to work.

Steven was standing behind the desk, waiting, with two shoe boxes stacked one on top of the other in his hands. He gave a nod to the chair across from him and Sam took it.

“Let’s get the family reunion part of this out of the way, since that’s what you came for, and then we can get down to the more important parts about this demon,” he said, and tossed both boxes down onto the desk. “I don’t know what you were hoping for by coming here, but the fact of the matter is your grandfather paid me to mate your mother because she was hung up on a no account hunter by the name of John Winchester and Samuel wanted an heir.” If Steven noticed the way Sam flinched when he said John’s name he didn’t show it, and instead took a seat in the desk chair and gestured to the boxes. “Those are their letters, you can read for yourself how your mother felt about the man. Even after he took a mate and had a pup she wouldn’t change her mind about him. Samuel got tired of waiting for her to come to her senses, and that’s where I came in.” He regarded Sam with utter indifference. “Sorry to have to be the bearer of bad news, but you were just a business transaction.”

That might have made Sam angry if it hadn’t felt so sick. He reached for the boxes and drew them into his lap, sliding aside the lid to take a look at the contents. He’d read them later, maybe, or burn them; he couldn’t decide right now. On the one hand this was the first tangible thing he’d ever had of his mother’s. On the other hand he wasn’t sure he was that interested in seeing her relationship with Dean’s dad laid out for him in black and white. Well at least his grandfather’s indifference to him made sense now. He was just like any other deal Samuel had struck. Steven was still talking though, which drew Sam out of his thoughts.

“As for the demon, if it’s the one that killed Mary you need to understand she had it coming. I know John broke things off with her when you were about three months old, and right after that his wife was killed. I’ve been in this business too long to believe in that kind of coincidence. Your mom got deep into the bottle one night after it all happened and wouldn’t shut up about it, but she was drunk so I didn’t understand most of it. I don’t know the specifics, outside of his name: Azazel. She’d made a deal and he was coming to collect when her ten years were up. I do know it had something to do with you.” His gaze shifted from indifferent to concerned. Sam didn’t take it personally. Steven undoubtedly would have looked at any young kid hunting a Prince of Hell that way. “It was just a couple of weeks before you hit the six month mark and it really had her spooked. I think that night when she went into your nursery she interrupted something, but I don’t know what. I just came in, saw her on the ceiling engulfed flames, grabbed you from your crib and ran. And I’d advise _you_ to run as far and as fast as you can from any demon that crosses your path, but I doubt you’ll listen to me. I’m just your sire, not your father.” He stood and gave Sam a nod. “Wait here while I make up some hex bags to help keep you off of demon radar and then you can be on your way. My wife and daughter should be back from Leadville soon and they don’t know about you.”

Sam was dumbfounded.

“I have a sister?” he asked.

“No, _I_ have a daughter,” Steven replied evenly. On his way out of the room he stopped at one of the bookshelves by the door and grabbed a small volume, handing it to Sam. “Keep that with you. Goes into detail on the different levels of demons, shows you how to draw a seal of Solomon - also called a Devil’s Trap - and has several exorcism rituals. Also has a drawing for an anti-possession symbol. I’d recommend getting yourself inked with one sooner rather than later. You’ve probably read most of it in Bobby’s literature but he likes his books returned and that one you can keep.”

He headed towards the kitchen, calling the dogs to him, and Sam heard the slow clacking of claws on the hardwoods as the boys decided whether they should _really_ leave Sam unattended in the office. He wished Jo had never said anything. He could deal with a father shrouded in mystery whose name he didn’t even know much better than one alive, well, breathing, and with another child he didn’t want to know of Sam’s existence. He wondered if his mother had even wanted him and for the first time was glad she was dead so he couldn’t ask the question.

After about ten minutes Steven returned with two hex bags and ushered Sam to the door. He was to keep one on his person and the other in his car at all times. He told Sam a quicker way to get back to Leadville and wished him luck, then closed the door firmly in his face. Two hex bags, two boxes of old love letters, and a book on demons that had the same information he’d probably read in Bobby’s books were the extent of everything he was ever going to get from his father. He got in his car and drove back to St. Louis.

Over the course of the next few days he researched the people on the FDH jobs list that matched the map Ash had shown him, got an anti-possession tattoo on his chest, and poured through the letters his mother had written Dean’s father. The early ones were what he would have expected, all about how desperately they loved each other and missed each other and couldn’t wait to be together. Stories about hunts they’d been on, open expressions of longing to feel the other one pressed against them in the dark, some were downright pornographic. Then he got to the letter where John told his mother he was going to claim his friend Millie. An accidental pregnancy prompted the action, and he wouldn’t leave her unmated with a pup. The idea that John had ever been a decent human being hadn’t occurred to Sam, but then of course he wasn’t _really_ a decent human being because all of his letters about his new son were filled with the desire that he had been theirs instead of his and Millie’s. But it was obvious from those letters that he loved his little boy, and as Sam began to read between the lines it became clear that he loved Millie, too. His mother’s letters grew increasingly desperate and explicit after Dean’s birth, as if she could sense John was starting to drift away and she needed to rope him back in with the only weapon in her arsenal; sex. But Steven said John had broken things off, so it hadn’t worked.

Mary only mentioned Sam once in all of her letters. It was two short lines about how she’d just gotten home from the hospital with her new son, and couldn’t wait for the four of them to be a real family. Outside of that no one would have known Sam existed. He had his answer as to whether or not she even loved him, it seemed.

Reading about Dean as a little boy did nothing to help him get over the omega. He couldn’t have imagined Dean that sweet and innocent; learning to walk, having nightmares, being obsessed with airplanes and fire trucks. He didn’t know why he’d felt that Dean had sprung fully-formed from his mother’s womb as the fearless, cocky, confident boy who got dropped off with his kid brother at Actaeon, but somehow reading about how he constantly wanted his mother to hold him when he was an infant flipped his understanding of the omega on its head.

Why had he fought so hard for so long against touching Dean? Years before either of them presented, he had seemed to know that Dean needed to be touched and held and caressed, that he was starving for it. How stupid had Sam been to ignore his instincts when his instincts clearly understood what would make Dean happy? Ellen was right. Life was short and he needed to at least tell Dean how he felt. Hell, he needed to tell Dean _everything_. After talking with Adam it was clear he was never going to tell Dean about the graduation party, and Sam couldn’t keep it from him anymore.

He just hoped the omega would answer the phone when he called.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pyrs are wonderful dogs. I highly recommend anyone who wants their house permanently covered in gobs of fluffy white fur get at least one (two is better, they like to tag-team). Yes, this is my attempt to get Dyson to hire me as a spokesperson for their vacuums. "Look at all the dog hair it you can pick up in one pass!"
> 
> Seriously though, they're a fantastic breed, not for the faint of heart.


	18. Just Try to Relax

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean decides to pick up a pregnancy test. Also, hormones are a genuine bitch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: Dean has another flashback. It is worse than the one in Hal's. If that one upset you, this one really will.

Dean was pretty sure that you weren’t supposed to be dismantling cars for parts if you were pregnant, but he’d basically moved in with Bobby, and he hadn’t given a reason, and he wasn’t just going to sit around on his ass all day like a freeloader. Besides, it had only been five weeks since he stopped his suppressants, and if he did have a passenger on board he was pretty sure nothing he did at this point could hurt it. At least, he hoped it couldn’t. He’d read the literature the doctor at the clinic had sent home with him, stowing it away under his mattress with his porno mags, and it had said no lifting of anything heavier than twenty-five pounds, but that seemed a ridiculous limitation given his build. It also seemed that a lot of the literature ran towards the alarmist, worst-case-scenario end of the spectrum, and it was all put out by the government anyway so he tended not to trust everything it said. He’d have to do some independent research at the library or something the next time he went into town.

He was never going to admit that he was quietly avoiding going into town. As an unmated omega he’d always needed to be on his guard against alphas looking for a good time, but lately just the idea of going out in public on his own left him genuinely afraid for his safety. He figured it was just hormones, but that didn’t help him to stop feeling that way. He was glad Bobby was a beta and couldn’t smell the change in his scent. Even the arrival of the mailman sent him running for his room these days. He was doubling up on scent blocker and applying it multiple times during the day in case anyone swung by Bobby’s to do some research or borrow a weapon or book, and he had several piles of tires ready to be burned out back if he really felt he needed to block his scent completely.

Bobby knew something was up, too. He may not be able to scent Dean, but he wasn’t stupid. He’d noticed how Dean’s eating habits had changed, how different smells made him turn green, and it hadn’t escaped his attention that he was looking a little fuller through the chest. Not the kind of fuller doing push-ups got you, either; the kind of fuller from glands starting to expand and fat starting to collect. He sure as hell wasn’t going to bring it up until Dean wanted to, but something told him it was only a matter of time before the two of them were going to be having a very awkward conversation that involved due dates, whelping, and diaper duty.

Well, at least now he had an idea of why Dean had been so upset all those weeks ago when he landed on his doorstep after the Laramie job, and why Sam had looked so un-Sam-like. He wondered if Sam even knew, since the boy hadn’t been back or tried to contact Dean that he knew of, but it was none of his business. Whatever Dean had decided to share with or withhold from Sam he probably had a very good reason for it. Unless he was just being an idjit. That was always a possibility too.

He tried not to peek that Thursday Dean got a phone call while breaking down an old Chevy truck, but he was damn curious as to who had Dean looking at his cell and hurrying away from the yard before answering. Maybe he’d ask later. If Dean was in for a nine month stay with him they couldn’t keep pussy-footing around each other like this anyway.

Dean caught Bobby trying not to be obviously interested in who was calling when his phone rang and he looked down to see it was Benny’s number. He knew he was going to have to come clean about what was going on with the old hunter sooner rather than later, but it was still a week from when he was supposed to buy a stick to piss on. He didn’t want Bobby picking out nursery colors when there might not even be a kid. He tried not to be obvious about noticing Bobby’s feigned disinterest and headed to the far end of the junkyard.

“Hey Benny,” he said when he was sure he was out of earshot.

“ _Actually it’s Lisa_ ,” replied the female omega on the other end. “ _Sorry it’s taken so long to call you back. Things here have been crazy prepping for the new baby and Ben just started first grade. Somehow he got the idea that Uncle Dean thinks a puppy is better than a baby. That’s been fun, so thanks for that. Benny said you had some ‘omega stuff’ you wanted to ask me_?”

“Yeah…” He moved even farther away from Bobby and hid behind an old Dodge Charger that had fallen tragically into disrepair. “I...uh...I wanted to ask you some stuff about...heats? If that’s okay?”

“ _Oh_.” She tried to mask the surprise in her voice but didn’t succeed. “ _Oh_. _Yeah, that’s totally fine_. _I thought you were staying on suppressants until - what was it - the end of time_?”

She laughed, which gave him room to laugh, and was a nice little distraction from his suddenly sweaty palms.

“Yeah, that _was_ the plan but uh...something came up.”

“ _Something came up_? _Like what_? _Did you fall madly in love with a tall, dark, and handsome alpha and now you’re thinking of motherhood_?”

It was Dean’s turn to laugh, but it came off as incredibly forced because of course it was. He often wondered if Benny had found himself a psychic for a mate and it was because of moments like this. Once she’d gotten past the idea that Benny was pining desperately for Dean, and understood that the pair of hunters just really loved each other but it never had been and never would be _that_ way, she had made it her mission to get to know her mate’s best friend and had succeeded surprisingly well. She knew how to scale Dean’s walls and dismantle his carefully constructed bravado and sometimes he really felt like she could just see straight into his soul. He reminded Benny all the time that he’d chosen well and was a lucky man, and never begrudged his friend getting out of the life immediately after claiming her.

“You read too many romance novels,” he told her, though he was pretty sure the tremor in his voice gave him away.

“ _An om’s gotta do something to keep herself occupied when she gets too big to see her feet and has to sit around most of the time with her ankles elevated._ ” She paused, and when she spoke again her tone was dead serious. “ _So if you’re not madly in love, why would you even think of going off your suppressants_?”

“It wasn’t...it wasn’t a conscious decision.”

“ _What do you mean_?”

“My script ran out and I only had about a hundred dollars to my name so I couldn’t refill it.”

“ _What_?!” Dean wanted to point out that yelling was probably not good for the baby Lisa was due to deliver in about a month, but he didn’t dare speak. “ _Why didn’t you call me_?! _I’d have put money in your account_!”

“Because it’s embarrassing, Lis! It’s embarrassing that I’m a grown ass adult and can’t afford basic shit!”

“ _Dean, you can’t just stop taking those_! _You’ll end up pregnant if an alpha_ **_breathes_ ** _on you_!” The fact that he said nothing in response was apparently all he needed to say. “ _How far along are you_?”

“I don’t know if I am yet,” he said. “The doctor at the clinic said I needed to wait six weeks to see if I went into heat. I’ve got a week left.”

“ _Well, most om doctors are alphas and they only know what they’re taught in school. Take it from a pregnant lady. If you were past the three day mark you better grab a test from the pharmacy and start picking out names._ ” She gave him a minute to process before she started in again. “ _I’m assuming the alpha isn’t around. He - or she…_ "

“He,” Dean admitted. “Tall, dark, and handsome.”

“ _He’d have been able to smell the change in your scent and you wouldn’t need to call me_.”

“He…” Shit. That wasn’t in any of the pamphlets. “He would?”

“ _He’d have been able to tell a couple of weeks ago. Any alpha should be able to scent you by now_.” Well. That’s why he’d felt so paranoid about leaving Bobby’s house. “ _Was it at least your choice_ ? _No one…_ ”

“ _No_. God no. Nothing like that. He isn’t...he’s not that kind of guy.”

“ _I take it he’s someone from the community_?”

“Yeah.”

“ _Anyone I’ve heard of_?’

“Sam Campbell.”

“ _The guy you did the Laramie job with_?”

“Yeah. We were hanging out drinking after the hunt and things kind of progressed...”

“ _And you were off your suppressants and didn’t realize_ …”

“Pretty much.”

“ _Benny hasn’t told me much about him, except he didn’t trust him to keep you from getting killed_.”

“He wouldn’t. Sam was still a kid when Benny graduated. They never really knew each other.”

“ _Obviously he’s not a kid anymore_.”

Dean squeezed his eyes shut at the unbidden memory of Sam’s hands running up his chest and neck and into his hair and the feel of his lips against the hollow of Dean’s throat. He’d been doing a really good job not thinking about Sam this last month. The only time he showed up now was in Dean’s dreams, and whenever he dreamt of Sam it always ruined his morning.

“No. No he’s not.”

There was a long pause on her end, giving him plenty of time to wallow in his feelings of longing and utter stupidity.

“ _Have you told him_?”

Dean swallowed. Talking about him with Lisa was turning out to be physically painful, like his omega was wasting away without the alpha.

“No. I don’t plan to. He’s not...he’s not interested in me like that.”

“ _How do you know if you haven’t told him_?”

“Jesus Lis!” He could feel his throat tightening as tears sprang to his eyes. “I don’t want to be some kind of pity claim. Not everyone gets to have something like you and Benny.”

“ _Why on earth would you think you’d be some kind of pity claim_?”

He knew he’d get into some kind of discussion like this with Lisa. When she hadn’t called right back after he talked with Benny he had secretly hoped she’d just forgotten he wanted to talk to her, and he wasn’t going to press the issue, no matter how nervous he was about his current situation. She was always soft with him in a way that he needed, even though she wouldn’t put up with any of his shit. It was one of the things that made her such a good mom to Ben and perfect for Benny. He swiped his hand across his eyes to try to clear his blurry vision.

“Cuz you take away my badass car and winning smile and I’m basically ninety percent crap.”

“ _Oh honey…_ ” Great. Now he was sobbing quietly, his free arm wrapped tightly around his ribs like he could hold it all in if he was just strong enough. “ _You’re the only one who thinks that_.”

“Don’t tell Benny, okay?” he begged, feeling like he was sixteen again and getting kicked out of school.

“ _You think he’s gonna finally give up on you or something because you went and got yourself ‘with child’_?”

“I don’t know, I just...I just don’t want him to know.”

“ _He’s gonna figure it out when you come out for Christmas wearing maternity pants_.” Clearly she’d been hoping to lighten the mood, but it only made him cry harder. “ _Dean. Sweetie. It’ll be okay. I promise. Get to the pharmacy and get yourself a test._ ”

“Okay.”

" _And you need to reconsider telling Sam. It’s very hard for an omega to carry for nine months without an alpha. They aren’t just good for opening pickle jars. Just their presence in the same room is soothing_.”

“Okay.”

“ _And call me! For anything! As long as it’s before nine o’clock, because that’s when I typically fall asleep on Benny’s shoulder on the couch and you do_ **_not_ ** _want to wake up a super pregnant omega_.”

That finally earned her the genuine laugh she was going for, and Dean started to get himself under control.

“Okay. Thanks Lisa.”

“ _We love you Dean. All three of us_.”

“I know.”

“ _Keep me posted_.”

“I will. Bye.”

“ _Bye Dean_.”

He heard her end of the call click off and flipped his cell phone closed as he got his crazy emotions under control. He’d really known deep down what she was going to tell him - just the fact that he turned into a blubbering mess simply thinking about telling Sam was enough of a clue - but it was still hard to accept. He’d been looking forward to one more week of denial before he had to welcome reality into his world, and he probably still could just push this whole thing to the back of his mind if he really tried, but it was all becoming very exhausting. He wiped his sleeve over his face to clear away the tear streaks and leaned down to see how he looked in the Charger’s cracked side mirror. Well, the tears were gone but he’d ended up getting dirt all over his cheeks. That wasn’t going to look suspicious at all. He rubbed at his cheeks with his palms to try to clean off the dirt and only made it worse, adding more dirt and reddening his face until it looked like he was blushing. Why couldn’t anything be _easy_ for him?

He had just started back across the yard to where Bobby was still working on the truck when his phone rang again. He checked the display and felt his heart stop and then start again, thumping wildly. He looked for something to sit down on while he decided whether or not to answer it and had to settle for the hood of the Charger.

**Sam**

His omega screamed at him to answer the goddamned phone right this fucking minute, but the fact of the matter was that Dean was suddenly very lightheaded and didn’t think he could do so without passing out. This was the fifth day in a row Sam had called. His heart was racing and he was nearly hyperventilating at the mere thought of hearing Sam’s voice. This was probably hormones too, but he had been gradually learning that he couldn’t control those little fuckers at all and he didn’t trust himself to be able to carry on a coherent conversation. He waited what seemed like an eternity until the call finally went to voicemail.

Once his legs felt steady beneath him again he headed back to where Bobby was sitting patiently on the bed of the Chevy, his tools set aside and arms folded across his chest.

“We gonna talk about that thing we ain’t been talkin’ about?” he asked, causing Dean to blush a deep crimson.

“I uh…” The omega cleared his throat, running his hand across the back of his neck. “I need to pick something up from the pharmacy. Think you could come with?”

“Do I need to bring my bat to beat all the alphas away with?”

Dean could tell he was only half joking and managed a weak smile.

“Maybe…?”

Bobby climbed down off the back of the truck with a bit of difficulty and adjusted his hat and his flannel. He wanted to tell Dean to go wash up before they headed out, but thought they might have a better shot at making it through the pharmacy without attracting too much unwanted attention if he had a good layer of grime on him. He thought about calling Sam and telling him he needed those books on demons back ASAP and he should swing by to drop them off the first chance he got, but he didn’t want to stick his nose too much into Dean’s business. The last thing he needed was Dean running off with a pup on the way and getting himself into a whole heap of trouble. Plus he suspected Sam would kill him if he lost track of the mother of his child.

Dean looked a little peaked after talking to whoever had been on the phone, so Bobby decided he’d better drive and they climbed into his old, beat up Chevelle for the trek into Beresford. It was slightly closer than the city itself and the town pharmacy would have what Dean needed. Bobby didn’t think there was any need to subject Dean to the hustle and bustle of a giant CVS when Elmer’s Drugs carried the same brand of pregnancy tests as the big chain stores. They pulled up into the dusty parking lot and Bobby was relieved to see it was mostly empty. If he wasn’t mistaken ( _and he rarely was when it came to his boy_ ) Dean was relieved as well. He killed the engine, grabbed his axe handle out of the back seat to lay across the front, and opened his door to get out.

He noticed Dean was just sitting there, staring at the axe handle like his butt and the passenger seat had formed a deep and meaningful relationship and refused to be separated. He leaned down, feeling his back pop, and caught the young man’s eye.

“That’s just in case we have to make a run for it,” he said. “Come on, it’s gonna be fine.”

Dean nodded, though his eyes were wide and panicked. Bobby had never seen him like this before, but suspected it was typical for a pregnant omega. Oms were vulnerable enough as it was. Walking around unmated with a bun in the oven was bound to attract an awful lot of unwanted attention, no matter how much scent blocker he was wearing.

There were only a handful of people in the store when the little bell over the door announced their entrance. Old man Elmer, a well known, white-haired beta was manning the pharmacy; an alpha husband and his beta wife were over by the coolers arguing over beer; a teenage beta with a spray of acne across her forehead was running the cash register, looking bored; and a female alpha was roaming the first aid aisle. The two alphas looked up when Dean and Bobby walked in and sniffed the air, which had the omega ducking his head and pressing into Bobby’s side as Bobby slid an arm around his back. The alpha by the cooler got a hard smack upside the back of his head from his wife, while the female in the first aid aisle tracked them carefully over to the omega hygiene and family planning section. She didn’t move from her spot, but the way she watched them was unnerving. _Close to You_ was playing on the radio near the front that served as the store’s sound system and gave the whole situation a very surreal quality.

Dean was now on high alert and trying to keep track of where everyone was in the store, leaving Bobby on his own to pick out the best pregnancy test among the bunch. Clear Blue Om and RAPID Response both had regular television ads, so he compared the disclaimers on the back and decided to just get them both. He shoved them into Dean’s hands, which made him jump, and grabbed a bottle of prenatal supplements as well.

“All right, let’s go,” he said quietly, sliding his arm back around Dean to lead him up to the counter. He noticed with concern that the omega had started to tremble.

Dean put the tests on the counter and shoved his hands into his pockets as Bobby plunked down the supplements and reached for his wallet. Normally Dean would never let him pay, but he was too busy paying attention to where everyone was and didn’t think he could get his debit card out without shaking like a leaf. He could smell the interest of the two alphas in the store, particularly the female. She was shorter than him, only about 5’9”, but that didn’t always mean he could take her in a fight if she was really amped up; at least not in his current state with his hormones so badly in flux.

Bobby noticed how terribly his body was shaking and laid a hand on his arm while the bored teenage beta went to ring up their purchases.

“Calm down,” he said as quietly and gently as he could. “We’ll be outta here in just a minute.”

“I know,” Dean whispered back, squeezing his eyes shut in terror as the scanner malfunctioned and the bell on the door jingled. “I’ll be okay.”

But he wouldn’t be. Because two things happened at the exact same time that resulted in the omega nearly wetting himself.

First, the beta yelled all the way to the back of the store, “Elmer! Scanner’s not working! How much is a Clear Blue Om test?”

Second, Dean caught the smell of gun oil, sandalwood, tar, and dirt roads that made up his father’s scent. John had been the one jingling the bell on the door.

Time seemed to stop for everyone but the cashier, who was repeating her request to Elmer in the back because Elmer was half deaf and forgot to put his hearing aids in that morning. The female and the mated alpha stopped and looked over to the checkout aisle at the spike of distressed omega scent in the shop. The mated alpha’s beta wife stared at the new alpha who had just entered and was glaring at the omega and beta by the counter. Bobby wished more than anything he’d brought that axe handle in with him, and Dean reverted to about five years old. Everyone seemed to be waiting for someone else to move first, and John was the one to rise to the challenge.

He stormed across the store, grabbed Dean by his arms, and pulled him in close so he could take a long, deep inhale of his neck. When he’d pulled back his teeth had descended and his eyes were fully red. Bobby had only seen him like this during their fight over the boys when Dean was eight and Adam was two, and he’d had to pull a gun on John to keep from being killed. Dean’s face was a panicked mask and he whimpered as his father shook him, hard.

“Who did this?” John growled, and pulled him in to scent his neck again. “Who _did this_ Dean?!”

“Dad…” Dean cried, his voice high and frightened.

Bobby tried to insert himself between them, throwing his arms across John’s in an attempt to push them apart.

“Let him go John,” he ordered calmly, trying to keep the situation from escalating. The other two alphas were starting to react instinctively to John’s aggression, their hackles raised. John needed to back off, and quickly. “Let him go and let’s go outside to talk.”

“Not until he tells me who,” John snarled, and Dean let out a whine at how tightly his father was squeezing his arms.

“Dad…”

Dean was on the verge of tears and Bobby was officially out of patience. He pushed harder against John’s chest and leaned in to him, shouting, “Get! Off! Him!”

It was like Dean was back at Hal’s Diner, only so much worse. He could hear Sam’s voice - “ _Get. Off. Him._ ” - but it was attached to a feeling like being underwater and trying to get to the surface but being so turned around he kept swimming to the bottom. He could smell burnt steaks mixed with old shoes and wet dogs, then a second scent, mildew, sewage and gasoline, and someone was holding him down, someone was…

He broke free of his father, whose alpha anger had vanished the second he scented his son’s panic, and pushed his way out through the door to throw up in the parking lot. John and Bobby looked at each other just long enough to confirm neither of them knew what the hell had just happened, and then they were out the door after him. Dean had fallen to his knees before throwing up again and had managed to crawl halfway to the car in hysterics. Bobby froze just outside the store, at an utter loss of what the hell to do and John had begun to tremble as he approached his son, terrified by the anguish and fright in Dean’s scent.

Dean was only vaguely aware of either of them. He had to get out from under the water, to get his head up before he drowned. He could taste something bitter and slick at the back of his throat and vomited a third time, though there wasn’t much left in his stomach at that point. He still felt like he was being pressed down into something soft and smooth, and the weight of someone else on top of him, inside of him. When John grabbed his shoulders to try to stop him he screamed and fell back onto the car before curling up into a fetal position and sobbing.

John had never been so scared in his entire life. He stroked his son’s hair and shoulders, trying desperately to undo whatever had been done to him. It took a long time before Dean could look up at him, and even longer before he could focus. John was crying by then, completely beside himself.

“Dean…” he choked, running a hand down Dean’s face over and over as he sent out as many soothing pheromones as he could manage. It wasn’t a lot, but he could see it helping. “Dean, what’s wrong?”

“I think…” His voice was numb, his face void of emotion as giant tears rolled down from the green pools of his eyes. “I think someone…” Everything broke from his forehead down to his chest as a sob burst from his throat. “I can smell them, Dad, I can smell them all over me…”

“It’s okay Dean,” John said, though of course it wasn’t. He was on the verge of collapsing into a bawling mess, and that wouldn’t help anyone. Dean was crying helplessly, and John pulled him against his neck, rubbing his back in long, smooth strokes. “Just breathe, okay?” He felt Dean nod against his shoulder and grab the front of his shirt, taking big, deep breaths of his father’s scent. Dean suddenly seemed so small, like the little boy locked in his room wearing the “I Wuv Hugz” tee shirt and wondering where his cat was. The distress didn’t dissipate, but gradually his breathing slowed down, as did the tears. “Was it...was it the baby’s sire?”

Dean shook his head vigorously and his breathing picked up. John quickly stroked his hair and the side of his face, helping to calm him back down before he started hyperventilating and passed out or something.

“I think he stopped it…” he said thickly, but the declaration brought on a fresh bout of sobbing. “I don’t know why he wouldn’t tell me if he did…”

John looked back to Bobby, who was now at the front of a small crowd of everyone from the store wiping at his face to try to get the tears to stop coming. Old man Elmer was holding out the pregnancy tests to Bobby, free of charge. The alphas were sufficiently cowed. The beta wife was holding the pimply teenage cashier, who was sobbing; probably thinking this all happened because she had yelled for a price check. Bobby had never needed a drink worse in his life. All of them were completely horrified.

“It’ll be okay Dean,” John said again. “We’ll figure it out. It’ll be okay.”

He knew a parent shouldn’t lie to his kids, but in this instance he needed the lie just as badly as his son. It certainly felt in this moment like nothing was ever going to be okay again.


	19. Details Are Everything

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John and Bobby try to figure out what happened.

It had been almost twenty years since the last time John Winchester sat in Bobby Singer’s kitchen, back when he had two small children to try to keep alive and too much pride to accept there might be someone out there who could do a better job at it than him. He’d stopped by to drop Dean off after the whole mess at the academy but he hadn’t gone inside. He figured at the time it would be easier for both him and Dean if he didn’t get his scent inside the house. With Dean having presented as an omega things like that were going to matter to him much more. Alphas might scent each other and bristle for a few minutes, but unless a mate was involved they settled down pretty quickly and just ignored the foreign smells. But while alphas smelled scents as fixed, for omegas they were mutable and entirely dependent on how the omega felt towards whoever it was. An omega who smelled like casseroles and summer breezes would smell like casseroles and summer breezes to every alpha who caught their scent. An alpha who smelled of cinnamon and musk to one omega might smell like swamp gas to another. The last thing any omega wanted was to have the odor of an unwanted alpha stinking up their home.

That was then and this was now. Now his boy was pregnant, unclaimed, and apparently recalling repressed memories of being raped by at least two alphas. Thank god it wasn’t the baby’s sire. John was having enough trouble processing this as it was. He didn’t think he could take it if Dean had to deal with a baby that was forced on him. Still, whoever the alpha was that had knocked up his boy was nowhere to be seen, and Dean wouldn’t even say who the guy was. If the baby’s sire wasn’t going to step up and provide Dean with the sense of safety and protection his omega instinctively needed, John sure as hell would. The rest of the psychological damage they could figure out how to deal with later.

Bobby sat across from John with the bottle of rotgut and the pregnancy tests and supplements between them, clenching and unclenching the hand around his glass as he fought the urge to go upstairs and check on Dean. They’d gotten home an hour ago and between the two of them managed to get him up and into bed. By that time the young man was so spent from the events in the pharmacy parking lot that he could barely walk. John left his flannel and jacket in with Dean so he’d have something to scent while the two of them went downstairs, and they hadn’t heard a peep since. Bobby wished to god now that he hadn’t insisted John keep Dean with him after he presented. He didn’t know if other hunters had done this for sure, but there were an awful lot of alphas in the community with very blurry lines between right and wrong and no respect for anyone that wasn’t an alpha as well. At the time it had seemed so clear that it would be more damaging for Dean to feel like his dad thought he suddenly wasn’t good enough to hunt with anymore. Obviously Bobby had misjudged what would be more damaging. He took a long drink from his glass as John picked up the Clear Blue Om box and regarded it absently.

“I take it you know who it is,” he said, tossing the box onto the table. He had never felt as much shame as he did about his behavior at the pharmacy that had started all of this.

“I have a pretty good idea,” Bobby replied.

“You know how to contact him?”

“Got him in my book.”

“Has Dean told him?”

“Dean hadn’t even really told _me_ until today.”

“Then we won’t tell him either. Not until Dean wants him to know.”

John reached forward to grab the whiskey and refill his glass. How had today gone so wrong? It had started out simply enough - a plan to swing by Bobby’s to see if he had an idea of where Dean was, since Dean didn’t answer his calls anymore, and then stopping at that little pharmacy to pick up some aspirin because he was getting a headache and he was out. Before he’d even entered he saw Dean at the counter and then when he opened the door he’d immediately smelled the change to his scent and just reacted. He took a long drink and set his glass down, looking to Bobby’s wall of telephones with various agency names written by them.

“One of those have a speakerphone?” he asked.

“The FBI one,” Bobby replied, and went to pull it down off the wall to set it on the table between them. He grabbed his address book from the telephone stand by the back door and flipped to the “C”s. Sam’s name and number were on the first page. He hit the speaker button, filling the kitchen with the long droning of a dial tone and then punched in the digits. Both men worried for a minute that they were going to have to leave a voicemail, but then the line picked up.

“ _Hello_?”

Sam sounded drunk. In the middle of the day. Bobby didn’t like the implications of that.

“Hey Sam, it’s Bobby Singer,” the old hunter said. John’s eyebrows shot up at “Sam” and Bobby didn’t need to be an alpha to see Dean’s dad was pretty unhappy that Sam Campbell was his grandchild’s sire. “How’re you doin’ son?”

“ _Couldn’t be better Bobby_.” He burped. Definitely not like Sam. “ _You callin’ cuz you need your books back or is this social_?”

“Kinda neither,” Bobby replied. “You been drinkin’ Sam?”

“ _Yeah_? _So_? _Stupid_.”

Bobby gave John a small shrug to express his doubt that Sam was going to be particularly helpful in his current state. John opened his mouth to enter the conversation, but Bobby held up a hand to quiet him. He didn’t like the look in John’s eye and wasn’t sure the call would go well if he jumped in right now.

“Sam, I got some things I wanted to ask you about Dean.”

The young alpha laughed mirthlessly and to the surprise of both men it sounded like he pretty immediately started to cry. Now they were really stumped. Sam just blubbered on the other end of the phone for a minute or so before he drew in a shaky breath and seemed to struggle to get himself together.

“ _Not sure I can help you with anything there Bobby. I don’t know where he lives and he won’t answer my calls, so...yeah. Might wanna try someone like Benny who he’s willing to talk to_.”

“I don’t think Benny’s gonna be able to help us with this, Sam,” Bobby said, and John had officially run out of patience.

“Sam, this is Dean’s father,” John said sternly, which elicited wild laughter from the other end of the line.

“ _That’s great_! _That’s just fuckin’ great. You calling cuz you want your letters back_?”

The conversation had just swung off course like a compass that lost its magnetic north. Bobby raised an eyebrow at John, who looked genuinely shaken.

“What are you talking about, Sam?” he asked.

“ _Your letters_! _The ones you wrote my mom_. _Got ‘em from my father. Oops - I mean my sire_. _He made it pretty clear he doesn’t think of me as his son_.”

“Sam,” Bobby started, uncertain of how to proceed. “Your father died when you were a baby.”

“ _No he didn’t_!” Sam sounded triumphant to know something they didn’t. “ _No, see, my grandfather just paid him to stay away and he did, because they’re both dicks._ ”

“Sam…” John felt the desperate need to get control over the conversation again before Sam spun off on a tangent of apparently justifiable self pity. “Something happened to Dean and we need your help understanding what it was.”

There was a brief silence on the other end of the call. When Sam spoke again his voice was filled with fear.

“ _Is he okay_? _Is he hurt_?”

“If bein’ curled up in a parking lot havin’ a panic attack constitutes ‘okay,’ then he’s just ducky,” Bobby replied.

“ _God_.” The word was said so softly they almost didn’t catch it. “ _Can I talk to him_?”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea Sam.”

“ _Bobby, please_ …”

“We’re callin’ you,” John interjected, “because Dean seems to think you know who raped him.”

The silence this time was prolonged, and when he finally came back on the line he sounded stricken.

“ _He remembered_?” he asked quietly. “ _Everything or just some stuff_?”

John gripped the table so tightly Bobby was afraid for a minute he was going to split the wood.

“Well we don’t know,” John snarled. “Why don’t you tell us everything that happened and we’ll see what lines up with the flashback we just sat through with my son?”

“ _I don’t know what happened_. _I wasn’t there until after_.”

John’s eyes flashed red, and Bobby tried to raise a hand to warn him to calm down but it didn’t work.

“Bull. Shit.”

“ _I wasn’t._ ” Sam clearly didn’t appreciate the tone or feel even slightly threatened by the alpha sitting in Bobby’s kitchen. “ _I wish to god I had been, but I wasn’t. If you don’t believe me, ask your fucking son_.”

“ _I’m asking you_!” John roared, standing and slamming his hand down on the table. A long crack extended up the center but it didn’t break. Bobby flinched in spite of himself. That table was solid oak. “Dean isn’t exactly in any condition to carry on a conversation right now!”

“ _Not Dean, you asshole. Your other son. You have two, remember_?”

John looked up at Bobby and blinked, immediately snapped out of his rage. He obviously wasn’t going to find his voice anytime soon, so Bobby asked, “You mean Adam was there?”

“ _Yes, Adam was fucking there, and he knows everything that happened because he watched the fucking tape_.”

“There’s a…” John felt sick. “There’s a tape?”

“ _Yeah, see, I come from this great big rich family, and when you’re great big and rich sometimes you grow up without a conscience. Apparently some of my cousins think they can do whatever the fuck they want and that it’s fun to make home movies while they’re at it, so yeah, there’s a fucking tape. Adam took it in case we needed leverage against them. Great big rich families understand blackmail. I’ve never seen it. But Adam...well at some point he decided to break out the popcorn._ ”

“Son,” Bobby said as calmly as he could, “you’d better start explainin’ real fast.”

“ _Not much to explain Bobby. I threw Adam’s graduation party. Dean got really drunk. Adam got really_ **_really_ ** _drunk. My cousins showed up unexpected and I couldn’t be in two places at once_.” His voice broke, as hard as he was trying to keep this story matter-of-fact. “ _And we couldn’t get to Dean in time. The end._ ”

John remembered Adam’s graduation party two years ago. Dean had made a really big stink about the kid getting out of school and how they ought to do something for him, but by that point John barely even knew the boy anymore. He was too embarrassed to admit that though, so he made up something about not being able to get out of a hunt. Then one of Adam’s friends ( _he now knew it was Sam_ ) had sprung for one anyway, and Dean didn’t care what John said, he was going. He’d stayed at Bobby’s for about a week afterwards, but when he’d come back to hunting he hadn’t seemed that different. Angry, maybe a little sad, but nothing to indicate anything like having been raped.

Bobby was remembering the same thing. Dean hadn’t acted like he’d been assaulted when he’d shown up on Bobby’s doorstep with the Chevelle and cried and drank for a week. Not that everyone he’d ever known that something like that happened to - and in this life he knew far too many - reacted the same way, but he was sure then and was still sure now that Dean hadn’t been traumatized. If anything he acted more lovesick; kind of like he had when he showed up a month ago. His behavior then had struck Bobby as just like what had happened after Shreveport, and that had obviously been because of Sam so maybe two years ago it was as well. But whatever had happened between him and Sam back then was clearly not the same thing that had caused the episode in the parking lot.

Bobby’s head hurt. Heart did, too, because Sam was back to crying on the other end of the phone.

“Why didn’t you tell Dean?” he asked, and listened as Sam drew in a really shaky breath.

“ _Look_ ,” he choked, “ _I can’t help you. I really can’t. I_ **_wanted_ ** _to tell Dean. You wanna know what happened and why we didn’t tell him, you’re gonna have to talk to Adam_.” He tone was laced with ice when he said the youngest Winchester’s name. “ _And when you do talk to him, make sure to let him know I can’t even get Dean to answer the phone. It should make him real happy_.”

“Sam…”

“ _Bobby, I just need to forget about Dean, okay_?”

Sam sounded like a lonely, lost little kid. The call clicked off, leaving Bobby and John staring at each other as they listened to the dial tone droning again. Bobby hit the button to take it off speaker phone and drained his glass. Despite everything he’d dealt with in his life he was starting to feel very out of his depth. Dean he knew; had known him for eight years before his dad stopped bringing him around. And then he’d gotten to know him again as a teenager and young man. Adam he’d only really seen when he was a baby and then gotten to know over the phone in the eight years he was alone at school. He doubted he even had a recent snapshot of John’s youngest son. Trying to figure out why Sam Campbell was insisting they call Adam had him feeling very uneasy.

He could tell by the look on John’s face that he wasn’t faring much better. John’s relationship with Adam had always been strained, and John had never blamed Adam for it after he really straight-up stole him from his mother, but he couldn’t imagine a scenario where something so violent would have happened to Dean and Adam would have not only _known_ about it but _kept_ it from his brother. Dean had basically raised Adam. They were very close. How bad _was_ this exactly?

John definitely wasn’t in the right frame of mind to call his younger son, so he announced, “I need to take a walk,” and Bobby nodded. He wanted to check on Dean anyway. John grabbed one of Bobby’s jackets, not wanting to take his back from his son just yet, and headed out the back door.

Left alone in his house with a bottle of whiskey and his surrogate son, it took Bobby a bit to gather the willpower necessary to leave the former and check in on the latter. He was worried that as a beta he wouldn’t be able to provide the sense of safety he knew the omega needed right now, but he was more worried about leaving Dean upstairs to wallow in his thoughts for too long. And he was still troubled by the phone call with Sam. Dean was always so cautious, and such a strong fighter, and Sam was not the sort of alpha who would leave a “really drunk” omega on his own. Something must have gone terribly wrong at the party if Sam and Adam got separated from Dean and if Adam, apparently, had convinced Sam not to tell him what went on.

He could hear the shower running as he climbed the stairs, which made him slightly uneasy, though he couldn’t really pinpoint why. Maybe it was all the television shows and movies he’d seen where a running shower equated with slit wrists. Or maybe it was because it signaled a degree of vulnerability for the person on the other side of the door, and the last thing he wanted to do was make Dean feel vulnerable. He hesitated in case the shower stopped before he had to knock, and finally bit the bullet to rap his knuckles against the wood.

“Dean?” he called gently. “Are you okay in there?”

There was a pause from within and then the shower stopped. Bobby heard Dean moving inside, padding quietly around the room and then eventually across the floor until the footsteps came to rest on the other side of the door. Bobby waited patiently, practically holding his breath, until at last the door cracked open and he could see Dean’s pale face and red rimmed eyes.

“Hey Bobby,” he said quietly. He seemed unusually calm. Bobby thought he was probably in shock. “Sorry if I used all the hot water.”

It seemed a ridiculous thing to say, but Bobby sure as hell wasn’t going to point that out. For some reason Dean was worried about how much water he used, so Bobby would let him.

“I take morning showers anyway.” He tried to size up how Dean was fairing, but there wasn’t a lot to glean from how numb he currently appeared. “You feelin’ like you might be up for having’ somethin’ to eat? I can make you a sandwich or some soup, maybe?”  

“Soup would be good, I think.”

He didn’t sound very certain about that. In fact he sounded kind of dazed. And he was having a hard time looking Bobby in the eye. But at least he moved to come out of the bathroom, having pulled on a pair of jeans and several layers of shirts. That didn’t go unnoticed by the older hunter. Typically Dean’s wardrobe consisted of a tee shirt with maybe a flannel if it was chilly. Now he could see the shoulder line of an undershirt, the tee shirt, a Henley, and John’s flannel. It was like he was attempting to bury himself beneath fabric, or create some kind of armor out of everyday clothing. He moved quietly past Bobby and towards the stairs, shrugging his shoulders down and inward as if trying to make himself small.

Dean wanted so badly to act like things were normal, that he hadn’t sort of remembered what he had sort of remembered in the pharmacy parking lot, but he’d spent forty-five minutes in the shower trying to scrub the alpha smell off his skin before accepting that it was all in his head and he might never be able to smell anything else. Every atom in his body was vibrating with tension, alert for the possibility of an attack. Rationally he understood this to be ridiculous. He was at Bobby’s house. Bobby and his dad were there. Nothing was going to happen to him. He could relax.

Except that he’d figured out whatever had happened must have happened at Adam’s graduation party, because the feeling in the parking lot was like what happened at the diner hyped up on steroids, and what happened at the diner had definitely been a memory from the party. And both Sam and Adam had been at the party, had been specifically watching out for him at the party, but something very bad had still occurred. He couldn’t rely on anyone else to protect him, and he sure as hell didn’t feel like he could rely on himself right now. How could he possibly think he was ever going to be safe anywhere ever again?

He could feel his heart starting to race and his breath starting to come in short gasps, and he wasn’t even halfway down the stairs. He needed to lock this shit down. He wasn’t going to be any good to anyone like this, and he certainly wouldn’t be able to hunt if he was constantly paranoid that someone was going to jump out and drag him off into the bushes. He was Dean Winchester. Dean Winchester did not hyperventilate at the thought of going downstairs to eat some soup.

He wasn’t aware that he had stopped until he felt Bobby’s hand on his shoulder, which gave him such a scare that he wondered for a second if he was going to collapse against the railing. Bobby didn’t move any farther forward, but let Dean set the pace down the stairs. Dean counted to fifteen and by the time he was done he was feeling like he could make it to the kitchen without pissing himself. So maybe that’s what he would just have to do from now on. If something startled him he’d just count until he could move. It would be terribly impractical out in the field, but hey, if it could get him downstairs in Bobby’s house that was at least a start.

The sight of the pregnancy tests on the kitchen table froze him in his tracks. Right. That’s why they’d gone to the pharmacy in the first place. Which reminded him that Sam had called him earlier. Which reminded him that Sam had been keeping a big fucking secret from him about whatever had happened ( _and god, he just wanted to_ **_know_** _; it would be so much easier if he just_ **_knew_ ** _instead of having random sensations disconnected from anything tangible that allowed his imagination to run wild_ ). He suddenly lost his appetite. Bobby stopped behind him again, watching and waiting as Dean appeared to be on the verge of another breakdown, but instead Dean just stood there and counted again. So fine, this time he had to count to thirty-seven, and his vision went a little black around the edges and he had to instruct himself to breathe, but this counting thing could ( _maybe_ ) work. He took both boxes of tests off the table with shaking hands and stared at them for a moment, before declaring, “Well, let’s get this over with,” and striding off with as much confidence as he could muster to the downstairs bathroom. Bobby prayed to whatever gods were listening that John came back from his walk soon.

John, however, wasn’t taking a walk. While his son was peeing on four different pregnancy test sticks just so he could be sure, John was in the middle of a summoning ritual off behind some of the stacks of tires Dean had piled up throughout the weeks he’d been with Bobby so that when he lit the candles and set the ingredients in the bowl atop the sigil aflame the fire wouldn’t be seen from the house. He spoke the Latin incantation - _Et ad congregadum...eos corum me_ \- and waited. It was only a few moments before he heard from across the yard, “We’ve got to stop meeting like this.”

“I need your help,” John said, as Crowley walked towards the candles, buttoning his overcoat.

“You seem upset, John,” Crowley said. “I take it you finally watched _Hannie Caulder_?”

“You know what happened to my son?”

“I know everything that every hell-bound soul has done. And those three boys -” He raised his eyebrows. “Let’s just say they have quite a number of non-consensual notches on their bed posts.”

“I want names,” John growled. “I’ll give you anything you want.”

Crowley scowled and tsked, wagging his finger at the Winchester patriarch.

“ _Never_ lead with ‘I’ll give you anything you want,” he scolded. “Have I taught you nothing?”

“I don’t care, Crowley,” John insisted. “I need to know who they are.”

“Sam wasn’t willing to give up his cousins then? Surprising. There’s no love lost between them.”

“Which ones?”

“First things first, John.” Crowley pulled a pen and a contract out of his inside coat pocket and unrolled it. It seemed to unroll for days. He flashed a smile at Dean’s father, and asked innocently, “Shall we discuss terms?”

John quirked an eyebrow and gave the demon a long, hard look. They’d been doing business for a while now and this was the first time it went beyond a quid pro quo and into contracts. He was going to have to decide, and quickly, what he’d be willing to trade for help getting the alphas who had raped his son. He was sure he could figure out which of Sam’s cousins it was on his own. The problem was more trying to go up against the Campbells. Samuel might be old, but he still wielded a lot of power. If he caught wind of John hunting some of his family members he’d retaliate; especially since it was John. And John had an awful lot to lose.

After a few minutes he held his hand out and waved for Crowley to give the contract over, snapping, “Lemme see that thing.”

“Of course.” For the first time since they’d met at The Purple Room John could believe that Crowley was Hell’s top salesman. He certainly had the easy confidence and smooth delivery down pat. “It’s just a standard rider. Given our previous agreement I’ve struck anything having to do with anyone’s soul, but I left in the clauses requiring an even trade for services rendered.”

“What would you consider an even trade?”

“Depends.” Crowley gave him a noncommittal shrug. “Do you just want names or would you like me to take care of it?” He held his hand up, fingers together, and smirked. “You say the word, I snap my fingers, they die a nasty, bloody, agonizing death.”

John was taking a long, serious look at the contract as he absorbed what the demon had just offered him. The wording and clauses certainly seemed straightforward enough. He was no lawyer, but he couldn’t find anything that would put him or his sons in danger - in this life or the next. While the idea of Crowley taking care of whoever had hurt Dean without John having to expose himself to the Campbells was tempting, he wasn’t going to agree to play _Strangers on a Train_ without more specifics.

“What would you consider an even trade for snapping your fingers?” he asked at length.

“There’s a gentleman - a Man of Letters - who sold his soul to me decades ago and has been using his unique set of talents to dodge me ever since,” Crowley replied. “His account is overdrawn by about fifty years and I intend to collect with interest.”

John blanched and said, “It’s not my…”

Crowley feigned distress, covering his heart with his hand as he pouted, “Whatever must you think of me John? I would never ask you to kill your own father. It’s his partner, Cuthbert Sinclair. Bugger has built the two of them a fortress somewhere and even my Juliet can’t find it.”

“Juliet?”

“That’s right. You haven’t met my bitch.”

Crowley whistled, loud and long, and then stood quietly, looking at John with an impish grin. Within a few moments John heard a low growling and something moving among the trucks; something very, very large. Rumsfeld went nuts in his house and the vicious snarls of what sounded like a gigantic dog echoed in response. The noise grew closer until John watched as something brushed up against the demon, moving his coat. Crowley looked down with an expression another person might have taken for affection and patted his hand on something invisible and solid.

“That’s daddy’s good girl,” he cooed. “John, meet Juliet.”

There was more snarling from whatever it was that was standing beside the demon and John instinctively pulled his gun. The snarling grew louder and closer.

“ _Down girl_ ,” Crowley ordered, and the snarling backed away. He gave Juliet a scratch along her muzzle. “Back to your crate like a good doggie.”

The hellhound continued growling, but the growling grew fainter as John heard her moving back through the junkyard the way she’d come. Rumsfeld eventually quieted down. His heart was racing and sweat was pouring from his forehead and down his back. What was he getting himself into?

“So you want me to find this Sinclair and kill him?”

“And steal all my puppy’s fun? Perish the thought!” Crowley retrieved the contract from John’s trembling hands. “No, I just need him out of his hidey-hole.”

Something told John it wasn’t going to be quite as simple as Crowley was making it sound, but it seemed like a reasonable trade. John wasn’t a big fan of the Men of Letters as it was, and he thought he could probably use his father as a way in to get at Sinclair. This was probably the way people paved their roads to Hell.

“You’ve got a deal,” he said, holding out his hand for the pen.

“Smart man.” Crowley half extended the pen and then paused, holding it back. “One more thing. I understand that young Dean is in a delicate way right now; physically and emotionally. Hunting down Azazel must take precedent to that. No taking a leave of absence to tend to your son until you’ve put a bullet between Azazel’s eyes.”

“Dean _needs_ me,” John objected, aghast at the thought he should just abandon him after what had happened today.

“Sorry John.” He didn’t look it, the bastard. “Them’s the rules.”

John considered this, but it didn’t take long for him to decide. He didn’t know how to help Dean without _being there_ for him, and being there for Dean was simply outside his skillset. Seeing to it the alphas who had terrorized him died bloody - that was something he was comfortable with. He grabbed the pen from Crowley and scrawled his name at the bottom of the contract. The demon smiled at him.

“Brilliant. Typically I’d seal these kinds of deals with a kiss, but I feel that would be inappropriate given the circumstances.” He gave a fluid snap of his wrist and the contract rolled up into his hand so he could tuck it back inside his coat. “Time to get back on the road John. Chop chop.”

And he was gone. John cleaned up the elements from the ritual, dragged his foot over the sigil to erase it from the dirt, and headed back to the house.


	20. I Stopped Being Your Father

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bobby tries to help Dean as best he can.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're going camping for the weekend so I'm very sorry but it's going to be several days before another update.

When John entered the kitchen he was greeted by Bobby’s shotgun in his face and quickly threw up his hands. Bobby’s eyes were wide and frightened, and he let out a deep breath when he saw it was only John.

“ _Jesus_! You just about gave me a damned heart attack!” he hissed. “What was Rumsfeld barkin’ at? Did you see anything?”

“What?” John’s heart was racing as well and it took him a minute to work through the question after almost getting his head blown off. Right, Rumsfeld hadn’t liked Juliet. “No, there was nothin’ out there. He must’ve seen a squirrel or something.” Bobby was already putting the shotgun down and moving away out of the kitchen towards the coat closet behind the stairs. “Where’s Dean?”

In answer to his question, Bobby knocked on the closet door and said softly, “It’s just your dad. There wasn’t anyone outside. Rumsfeld was just bein’ Rumsfeld.”

Dean had to count to seventy-two before he was able to open the door and take in Bobby’s anxious eyes. He felt like the only thing holding him together was duct tape and spit. MacGyver would be very disappointed at his ability to use what was on hand to keep himself from shattering to pieces. He couldn’t stop the terrible trembling that had started throughout his body as he stared out at Bobby and his dad from the back of the closet.

“Hey Dean,” John said quietly, advancing slowly on the closet. Shit. How did Crowley expect John to be able to just walk away when Dean was hiding in closets?

“Hey Dad,” Dean whispered in response. He couldn’t even make his voice work. This was really humiliating.

John held out a hand to his son.

“You wanna come out here with us?”

Dean appeared to be fighting his own body to make himself reach out and take John’s hand. He squeezed his eyes tightly shut as he slid his palm into his father’s and allowed himself to be pulled out from among the coats and against John’s chest. Being enveloped in his dad’s scent helped tremendously, and John was able to get him back to the kitchen with relative ease. That’s where John spotted the pregnancy tests laid out on the table on a paper towel.

The two Clear Blue Om tests had little plus signs and the RAPID Response each had a double line. Well. That settled it. He cleared his throat, unable to tear his eyes away from the first solid evidence of Dean’s baby.

“We...uh...we talked to Sam,” he said at last. “He couldn’t tell us much. Said we should talk to your brother.” He picked up one of the tests with the plus sign and stared at it, before holding it out to Dean. “How do you feel about this?”

“I don’t know,” Dean replied numbly. “Don’t know how I feel about much of anything right now.” He took the test from his father and looked at it for a while before turning to John and blinking his big, wide eyes. “Adam was there?”

“According to Sam.” Dean was clearly struggling to work this new information in among the pieces he had of what had happened, and John asked, “You want to call him and ask?”

“No.” The response was instant, despite how unnerved Dean looked. “No, we can...we can call him later.” A thought suddenly struck him and he whirled on John. “Could we go see him? Ask him face to face? He’s...he’s been askin’ me to come visit.”

The spike of hope in Dean’s scent left John feeling like the biggest asshole on the planet. Unless Crowley dropped in in the next five seconds and said a little road trip to Durham wasn’t outside the scope of the contract there was no way John could agree to drive Dean all the way to visit Adam. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so unworkable if they could fly, but Dean was terrified of planes. Not that John blamed him. Besides the idea of being dependent on someone else to get him from point “A” to point “B,” they still served drinks on flights to loosen everyone up and it was an enclosed environment with recirculated air. There only had to be one knothead on board and suddenly the possibility was very real that he’d be dragged into the restroom to join the Mile High Club. Nothing about air travel was safe for an unmated omega.

“I…” John could see Dean’s face starting to fall at the hesitance in his voice. “I can’t, Dean. I’m on a job.”

“What?” Dean and Bobby asked at once.

“I was just swingin’ by Bobby’s to see if he’d talked to you,” he said as Dean’s eyes grew moist and Bobby’s face turned red with fury. “I’m in the middle of a job. I can’t stay…”

“So drop the job,” Bobby demanded, since Dean couldn’t say anything and was just sitting there looking hurt. “Drop the damn job, John. Let someone else pick it up.”

“I...I can’t,” John told him helplessly.

Bobby was on him in two seconds, grabbing him by the shirt and turning to slam him into the refrigerator. Magnets scattered everywhere and a half-empty bottle of tequila fell to the floor and broke. Dean couldn’t stand the smell of it. His stomach turned and he ran for the bathroom.

“ _You selfish son of a bitch_!” Bobby roared. “Your son _needs_ you! More than he has since his mama died! And you’re gonna walk away from him because of some _hunt_?”

“It’s not that simple Bobby,” John said. His alpha wanted out, but he wasn’t going to fight back against the beta, not when he knew how right Bobby was. “I don’t have a choice.”

“Of _course_ you have a choice!” Bobby bellowed. “You’ve _always_ had a choice! You just keep makin’ the wrong ones! What’s it gonna take for you to put your son _first_ for once?”

“I _am_ putting him first, Bobby,” John insisted, but the other hunter didn’t want to hear it, letting go of his shirt and walking away across the kitchen.

“Go on and get out then!” Bobby was having a real hard time not going for his shotgun as John just stood there staring at him from in front of the fridge. “Me an’ Dean’ll manage without you! I don’t know how, but I’ll get him through this _on my own_. Get on out if the job means that much to you! And if you go, don’t you ever come back!”

“I’m sorry,” John said weakly.

“I ain’t the one you gotta apologize to,” the beta snapped, his nostrils flaring as he watched John turn and head silently out the front door.

As John’s truck started and pulled out of the driveway Bobby couldn’t contain his anger anymore. With a roar he flipped the kitchen table, fully breaking it along the crack John had put in it earlier, the pregnancy tests, supplements, and nearly empty bottle of whiskey flying around the room. He whipped his hat off of his head and flung it against the back door before dropping onto one of the kitchen chairs, his hands in his thinning auburn hair. How the hell was he supposed to help Dean without John around? The boy needed an alpha, badly, one that he could trust so that the house would smell _safe_. He doubted right now that Sam fit the bill, though he should have been the obvious choice. But from what he’d said on the phone, Dean hadn’t been answering his calls _before_ this morning happened. If Dean hadn’t wanted to talk to him then, he doubted he’d want to talk to Sam now after learning about the huge damn secret that had been kept from him. He thought of calling Benny, but Benny and Lisa had a new baby on the way in less than a month and besides, Bobby couldn’t imagine spreading around Dean’s business when Dean was still half in the dark himself.

He wasn’t proud of how long he had to sit there calming down before he could go check on Dean, but he didn’t want to go get him all hot under the collar and make things worse. He may not set Dean off with any kind of angry scent, but he knew that body language and tonal pitch could upset an omega as well. He had to get himself locked down before trying to fix whatever he could without a road map or a steering wheel.

Dean had only half-closed the door to the downstairs bath when he ran in to throw up, and Bobby could see his feet sticking straight out in front of the toilet, pointing towards the hall. Those cliched images of slit wrists ( _or worse, pill bottles_ ) running through his mind again, he pushed the door slowly open to find Dean sitting with his back against the far wall, quiet tears spilling out of him. It froze the old man in his tracks. He was _terrible_ at all this touchy-feely stuff.

“You okay kid?” he asked quietly, and Dean shook his head.

“I shouldn’t have locked the door,” the omega replied.

“What door?” Bobby said, confused.

“When mom told me to go to my room and lock the door.” His face fell and he broke into sobs, collapsing in on himself and pulling his knees up to his chest. “I shouldn’t have locked it. It would have been better.”

While it may have been true that alphas were the only ones who literally saw red, betas sure saw red figuratively, and Bobby certainly was seeing red now. He knew it was the wrong response, but he wasn’t going to ever accept that kind of talk from his kid. He was across the room and kneeling in front of Dean as fast as his old hips would allow, and took hold of Dean’s face in both his hands to make him look up.

“Now you listen here, dammit,” he snapped, the anger in his voice making Dean clam up instantly and hold his breath. “You don’t ever talk like that again, you got me? Your daddy took you away from me once and there weren’t nothin’ I could do to stop it, but I’ll be _damned_ if I’m gonna let _you_ take you away from me too! You hear me Dean?”

Dean blubbered and sputtered and nodded and keened like a little kid, and Bobby ran a hand down the side of his face. Dean instinctively leaned into his hand, desperate for a soothing touch, and Bobby pulled Dean into a tight hug and let him cry for a solid ten minutes. Finally Dean seemed to have exhausted all the tears he had in him, at least for the time being, and Bobby was able to get them both to their feet.

He sent Dean off to his room while he cleaned up the tequila ( _he remembered Dean’s comment about “too much tequila” when he came home after Laramie_ ) and made the soup he’d suggested before Rumsfeld erupted into barking and everything really went to shit. He desperately wanted to call Sam and get him out there on the next plane, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to take away Dean’s authority over the matter. He would, however, pick up the phone to tell Adam they were coming for a visit. Not right away, Dean would have to go to the clinic next week to confirm he was carrying and start setting up appointments, none of which he planned to tell Adam, and they’d have to figure out how to _get_ Dean there since Bobby couldn’t leave the scrap yard that long and Dean sure as hell wasn’t in any condition to be driving to North Carolina by himself. It was a full twenty four hour drive, which meant it would probably be at least two or three days, which meant motel rooms or sleeping in the Impala by himself. That just wasn’t a realistic expectation at this point.

After getting Dean his soup and putting him down for a nap like a three year old, Bobby grabbed a beer and sat himself down in front of the TV to put his thinking cap on. For a while he felt a bit like Winnie the Pooh, telling himself to “think think think,” but after stewing for about half an hour it hit him - Ellen and Jo. Ellen had been trying to convince Jo to go to school for a while now. Maybe she’d be willing to take both Dean and her daughter out to Duke under the premise of getting Jo into the college spirit. He’d have to tell Ellen at least a little bit of what was going on, but Jo could be kept in the dark. She was a good kid but her mouth had a hair trigger. The less she knew about the situation the better.

It was eight o’clock and way past dinner time when Bobby thought he’d better go wake Dean up to feed him something and go over the plan he’d come up with to see if Dean would be okay with it. Dean was in a bit of a fog after the events of the day, which actually worked to help Bobby get him downstairs, a blue chenille blanket wrapped around his shoulders like a cape. The omega stood staring at the broken table in the kitchen in confusion for a moment before Bobby could swing him around and get him to sit on the couch behind a TV tray with spaghetti and meatballs on it. They watched a _Highway to Heaven_ rerun that neither of them paid much attention to, and after Dean had eaten as much as he was going to, which was only a couple of bites, Bobby turned the volume down.

“I was thinkin’,” he said after clearing his throat, “that I could drive you down to the Roadhouse and maybe Ellen and Jo could take you out to see Adam. After you’ve had whatever appointments you need for your…” He waved his hand in Dean’s general direction, not sure what to call it right now. He’d always felt strange using the term “pup,” but Dean might not want to call it a baby just yet. “...situation.”

“Would we…” Dean had blanched, but not rejected the idea outright. That was good. “Would we have to tell them? Everything…?”

“No Dean,” Bobby was quick to reply. “No. I think we gotta tell Ellen some, but she don’t need to know everything. And all Jo needs to know is you wanted to visit your brother and her mom thought she might like to tag along and see what a real university was like so she wanted to make it a road trip.”

Dean still looked very pale but seemed to be seriously considering the idea. It didn’t seem possible to Bobby that just this morning they’d been tearing apart that Chevy without a care in the world beyond them both suspecting Dean was carrying and refusing to be the first one to bring it up. Finally he nodded and said, “Okay. We can call them tomorrow. It’ll give me time to figure out what to say. How much I want Ellen to know.”

He seemed to drift away inside himself and turned back to the TV to stare blankly at Michael Landon and Victor French. _East of Eden_ came on right after it, but Dean only made it to the ferris wheel kiss between James Dean and Julie Harris before he fell asleep. Bobby considered waking him, but thought better of it and instead went up to Dean’s room to retrieve John’s jacket and shirt to lay across him so he could scent his father while he slept. Of course Dean woke frightened and disoriented in the middle of the night, but Bobby’s bedroom was on the ground floor so he was able to get to him quickly to calm him and then help him up the stairs to his own bed.

It seemed to Dean that they spent the entirety of the next day on the phone. Or rather, that Bobby did. Granted, his sense of time seemed strangely skewed. Everything seemed to take a lot longer than it actually did or a lot shorter than it actually did. Dean had heard of out-of-body experiences and wondered if maybe he were having one, but didn’t have the energy or sustained interest necessary to look it up. So it was best to leave the phone calls up to Bobby, even if it was exhausting having to answer the questions Bobby threw his way every now and then.

They needed to make an appointment with the clinic for the next week to go in for an official pregnancy test, then a second appointment was tentatively scheduled for two weeks after that. It would be canceled if the test came back negative, but the receptionist doubted that would happen. Then they called Ellen and explained in rough outline with limited details and no mention of Dean being in the family way what they needed her help with and why they needed to see Adam. Ellen was a broad-stroke kind of woman anyway so she didn’t need the nitty gritty. Had she been a painter she definitely would have been a Monet and not a Rembrandt.

Then they called Adam and asked if three weeks would be a good time for Dean to come for a visit. It would be be about a week before midterms, but Adam assured them that was all right. He was thrilled that Dean was finally coming to see Durham and raved about all the places he was going to show him. Dean would fall in love with it, he promised, and would never want to leave. His excitement may have been lessened if they’d told him the reason Dean was coming out was because he remembered something from Adam’s party, but if there’s one thing Dean had learned as a hunter it was not to give someone time to fabricate a story. He’d rather catch Adam off guard, because he’d be more likely to get the truth.

He hadn’t originally wanted to go this route with Adam. He’d initially seemed to be more upset with Sam, but Bobby told him about the tape and something had shifted for Dean. The idea that there was a tape of whatever horrible things had happened to him, and that Adam had it, and Adam had _watched_ it seemed to snap something inside him and he shut right down. It was actually a relief, no matter how betrayed he knew he was eventually going to feel. For the first time since the pharmacy he was just comfortably numb. He’d never been a huge Pink Floyd fan, but he definitely appreciated that song from their catalogue now.

Finally they called Sam, which Bobby felt was only right because he’d been such a mess the day before, even though Dean felt little sympathy for him. They got his voicemail, so Bobby just left a quick message letting him know that Dean was okay and thanking him for his concern. He used the FBI line so he could put it on speakerphone in case Dean decided he wanted to say something, which was a mistake. Hearing Sam’s voice asking them to leave a message had broken through the numbness and reduced Dean to a puddle. Bobby knew this was going to take time, but lord, he hoped the crying would subside soon. He was rapidly running out of Kleenex for one thing, but much more importantly he didn’t think this kind of constant emotional upheaval was any good for Dean or the baby.

A week came and went and Dean did not go into heat, so they trekked into Sioux Falls and had Dean pee in a cup to verify what the four sticks he peed on already told them. He got the same doctor he’d seen the time before - Dr. Milton - who was glad to see him back and quizzed him on the literature she’d given him to make sure he had been reading it. When she noticed his significant change in demeanor and that he refused to be seen without Bobby ( _who was about as comfortable as a toad on a cactus_ ) she asked if something had happened that she should know about, and after a bit of prodding Dean agreed to let Bobby give her the same highlights he’d given to Ellen the week before. Dr. Milton offered the services of a rape counselor who could attend his prenatal appointments if it would make him more comfortable, and strongly recommended that he contact the pup’s sire to see if he would attend them as well. Dean bristled at the idea, but she was insistent: having the alpha with him would make things easier and reduce his level of stress. The farther along the pregnancy went the more he was going to need to keep his stress down. Dean agreed to think about it before the next appointment, without having any intention of contacting Sam. He and Bobby were getting along just fine without an alpha in the house.

Except that they really weren’t. Bobby thought they were, because he couldn’t scent Dean’s constant fear and distress, and Dean was getting better at wearing an everything-is-normal-and life-is-fine mask. He’d heard the phrase “fake it til you make it” and it seemed to be a good strategy to go with for the time being. Sure he was a ball of anxiety and had no appetite and was growing increasingly afraid of leaving the house to go see Adam, and he _really_ just wanted to drink himself into oblivion most days, but he had a baby to think about now and while he wasn’t going to pretend he was thrilled about it, he’d been raised to protect people that were smaller and weaker, and he certainly figured his kid qualified as both.

A couple of days before his second appointment at the clinic he broke down and told Bobby to call Sam and see if he could come up and maybe hold his hand. He felt ridiculous and weak, but his omega was demanding the presence of the alpha and continuing to fight against it was exhausting. Bobby grabbed the FBI phone again so that he could talk to Sam if Dean lost his nerve, but when they tried the number it had been disconnected. Dean went to absolute pieces at suddenly having no way to get in touch with Sam, and was barely able to get himself together in time for his appointment.

The rape counselor was there, a nice woman named Jody Mills who gave Dean her card, but her presence only took the edge off for him. She encouraged him to call any time if he needed to speak with her, and after confirming the pregnancy was not a result of the rape reasserted what everyone had already been telling Dean: he should get Sam involved as soon as possible. Dean managed not to sob the whole way through the appointment, but just barely. Bobby thought for sure they were going to have to call Adam and reschedule, but the night before they’d planned to leave for Ellen’s Dean determinedly packed a bag and put it in the Impala. He made sure to include plenty of clothes so that he could layer up, and brought the new jeans they’d had to buy him so he could sit down. He didn’t have anything like a bump yet, and probably wouldn’t for several more months, since Dr. Milton had explained that with his build and muscle tone his abdominal wall would not be flexible enough for the kind of pup pouch typically seen with an omega on his or her second or third pup until he was much farther along. Still, his middle had thickened all the way around; not really becoming fatty, just wider as his ribs started to expand to make room for the way his organs would gradually become rearranged as the baby grew and his uterus needed more space. It was freaky as hell, and all Bobby really got out of it was that Dean needed pants with a slightly larger waistband, so they’d stopped at Walmart on the way home.

It was a good thing it was early October by now, otherwise Dean would have looked really weird in his baggy pants, three shirts, and hoodie. The hoodie alone was probably going to tip Adam off to something being wrong. Dean never wore them, went on whole diatribes about how badly designed they were ( _“Why would you give a bad guy a_ **_hood_ ** _to grab you by? An alpha came up with that, that’s for damn sure”_ ), and despised looking like some preppy college kid, but for one thing they did wonders to hide an expanding middle and for another thing he could zip it all the way up and and hide the fact that there wasn’t a claim mark on his neck. In another month he’d have scarves as an option, but right now the only clothing choice besides hoodies were turtlenecks, and when it came to wearing turtlenecks he’d rather die.

Bobby considered trying to talk Dean out of bringing two handguns, a sawed off, a couple of boot knives and his Bowie knife with him on the trip but decided against it. Adam didn’t live on campus anymore so Dean wouldn’t have to worry about getting picked up by security with a gun in his belt ( _wouldn’t_ **_that_ ** _be as fun as a theme park ride?_ ), and if going in heavily armed made Dean feel better, Bobby wasn’t going to say anything. It was hard enough watching Dean try to imitate pre-parking-lot Dean Winchester as it was. Ellen and Jo were going to be an interesting test to see how well his current, forced swagger matched the easy confidence he’d had a couple of weeks ago.

They left Sioux Falls around lunch time and got to the Roadhouse in time for dinner. Jo and Ellen were already ready to go in a rust red Wagoneer with a white roof. They stood by the driver’s side as Bobby pulled the Impala up alongside them and got out. Dean was busy counting to fifty-three while Bobby walked around to give Ellen a hug and give Jo grief about the scowl on her face. He could do this. He would be okay. He didn’t trust Ellen and Jo to protect him from a bee sting at this point, but he had his Colt and his Bowie and boot knives and he was pretty sure he figured out how to move with something that kinda sorta looked like confidence in the right light. And if he got too nervous the hoodie had pockets right in the front and he could jam his hands into them until they stopped shaking, which they were now. Dammit. He bit the bullet and swung the car door open to climb out, forcing himself to smile and hoping it just looked strained and didn’t cross the line into crazed.

Ellen smiled at him gently, her eyes looking pained and like the sight of him hurt deeply. He swung quickly to look at Jo, who was oblivious and just barely managed to smirk.

“I hear I got you to thank for this road trip?” she asked, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Sorry,” he said. “Promised Adam I’d come see him but uh...I haven’t been feelin’ that well lately. Didn’t want to drive myself.”

That was easier than he thought it would be after having barely talked to anyone besides Bobby for close to a month. Of course, none of it was a lie. If he had to come up with a lie on the spur of the moment that was going to be a lot harder.

“You do kinda look like shit,” Jo said, crossing over to assess him. He struggled to keep up the everything-is-fine-don’t-look-too-closely-at-the-cracks mask he’d been practicing in the mirror so that he could pass outside the house as someone who wasn’t losing his mind half the time. She reached out to rub his arm and he successfully managed to suppress a flinch. Little victories, he reminded himself. “What happened, you forget your hair gel?”

She knew him too well not to have noticed that he’d stopped styling his hair and just kind of combed it and left it to do what it wanted. It left him looking like he’d just rolled out of bed with it kind of half-matted down over his forehead and sticking up along the side. It was very much not like him. Crap. He’d forgotten when practicing his “normal” face that there were other aspects of his appearance that should be tended to as well to complete the facade. He gave her a little smirk and a shrug, growing increasingly uncomfortable under her assessing gaze.

“Runnin’ low on funds,” he replied. Okay, lying was still doable on-the-fly. “It was either scent blockers or pomade.”

Jo gave him her hundred watt smile and a small shove. It made his stomach lurch dangerously but he just shoved his shaking hands into his pockets and gave her a shoulder bump, hoping she didn’t notice how badly his whole body was trembling. She didn’t.

“Let’s get your stuff into the car Dean,” Ellen said as she and Bobby watched the interaction carefully. “We’ll swing by the house to have dinner and stay there for the night, then we can head out in the morning.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Dean replied with a small smile.

He fumbled with the back door handle of the Impala so he could grab his duffel and haul it out and over his shoulder, cursing his stupid emotions at how much of an effort it took just to do normal things without collapsing into hysterics. He felt very exposed out in the parking lot, even though he knew Bobby was carrying a gun and he knew Ellen would be, too. He schooled his features back into the calm, cool, and collected mask and went back to throw his stuff into the back seat and climb in. If Jo, Ellen, or Bobby noticed him immediately lock the back doors they didn’t show it. After a few minutes of goodbyes with Bobby, Ellen and Jo climbed in and the old hunter leaned down to give Dean a reassuring smile. He mouthed the words, “ _You got this_ ,” then walked back over to the Impala.

Dean didn’t have it. He very much did not have it. But he was damn determined to fake it until he did.


	21. I'm Not All Right, Not At All, But Neither Are You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean visits Adam.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I lied, one more before camping.

Adam couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this excited and frightened at the same time. Probably when his acceptance letter offering him a full ride arrived from Duke University and he couldn’t make himself open it for three days in case they were rejecting him. Duke was his top choice for a school, and if he hadn’t gotten in it would have felt like the end of his world. Looking back on it now it had been so incredibly naive of him to think a stupid letter could have held so much sway over his emotions when there were things far worse than not getting in to the school at the top of his list.

One of those far worse things was the main reason he was frightened, despite really wanting to see his big brother, who hadn’t come to visit since he ditched their dad in Las Vegas and drove all the way out to get Adam’s signature on the title to the Impala and celebrate that she was finally his. Dean had beamed and they’d gone out drinking, and for the first time in a long time since leaving Actaeon Dean hadn’t gotten drunk. It was like having the freedom to go wherever he wanted whenever he wanted had set him free and there was no need to use beer to forget about the deep, dark cell his father had him trapped in. He’d hung around for a couple of days, flirting with Adam’s beta friends and wooing a couple of them ( _one girl, Elka, still talked about how he was the best sex she’d ever had a full year later_ ), then took off in his Baby. Adam had literally never seen him so happy.

Adam, of course, hadn’t had anything to drink the entire time Dean was visiting. He hadn’t had anything to drink practically since his graduation party. The friends that he’d made freshman year all thought he was some kind of prude or teetotaler, and he’d made up a story about how his dad was an abusive alcoholic who’d beat him as a kid. It’s not like it was _too_ far off. John drank too much and was distant, though he’d never actually raised a hand to either of them; at least not as far as Adam knew. He personally had never felt the back of John’s hand, and though the way John ignored Dean’s emotional needs qualified as abusive, especially for an omega, Dean had never complained of being hit. So he’d told everyone that he didn’t want to fall into that trap, and they’d accepted it, even if they did keep trying to press him to loosen up and just have a beer or two.

It struck him as really odd, the way people treated alcohol. Crackheads didn’t continually pressure you to try crack after you’d said “No thanks.” No one doing cocaine insisted that you just do one line so you could lighten up. And all the potheads he knew basically responded with “Okay, cool” when you said you didn’t want a hit. Why everyone seemed to think it was normal to continue to push a mind-altering substance at him that he’d repeatedly refused as if somehow _he_ was the one behaving inappropriately really raised his hackles sometimes.

They probably would have stopped if they’d known why he wouldn’t touch the stuff. That he’d gotten blind stinking drunk one night after graduation and left his omega brother vulnerable and it had ended with his former best friend needing to wipe his jizz on his brother’s skin in order to keep a trio of assholes from coming to drag him away into a forced matehood in the stupid, backwards state of Louisiana. He never should have watched the tape of that night after winter finals his sophomore year, but his girlfriend Claire had dumped him and he’d gotten wasted for the first time since the party. She was his first girlfriend, his first sexual experience, and she was a cold hearted bitch. They’d been together over a year and he’d twisted himself into a pretzel for her. When she’d dumped him for an alpha she’d called him a weak little beta and said she needed a real man. It brought up a lot of the shit he’d buried since that night in Shreveport, and he’d decided fuck it and figured out how to hook the camcorder up to his television.

He’d been fantasizing off and on of tracking down Christian, Mark, and Tyler and just straight up slitting their throats while they slept, but he had so much to lose now, and he had been out of hunting for what felt like a lifetime. He figured watching the tape might spur him into taking revenge for what they’d done to Dean, since he obviously wasn’t strong willed enough to follow through without prompting. He’d kept up his fighting skills from Actaeon but still worried that college was making him soft. He’d thought he was adjusting just fine to civilian life, but every now and then the bloodlust of the hunt demanded a target, and he had three of them. He was just ( _by Claire’s assessment_ ) too chicken shit to do anything about it.

So he’d watched the tape, drunk off his ass, thinking it would light a fire under him and he’d finally use his winter break to hunt down the bastards that had hurt his brother. It was such a mistake. Such a terrible, horrible, awful, undoable mistake. He couldn’t even make it all the way through. Hell, he could barely watch most of it, and sat through what he could get through with his eyes cast down to the floor, just listening for the most part. He could hardly think of Dean now without images of what had been done to him flashing through his mind. It was a good thing the nursing program was almost universally made up of betas, because he could barely control himself in the presence of an alpha now. He’d been so glad that he and Sam didn’t really see each other anymore. He could maintain a friendship with an alpha if they were just a voice on the other end of the phone. Had Sam still existed in Adam’s physical world he wouldn’t have been able to look at him without wanting to beat his face in.

His roommate, Becky, had just about needed to physically restrain him after the phone call with Sam almost two months ago now when Sam had told him about Laramie. She’d tried to convince him it was no big deal, that they were grown-ups who could make their own decisions, and yeah, she’d be upset if her best friend slept with her brother too but it wasn’t worth killing someone over. Becky of course did not understand anything about the situation, or that Adam literally meant to kill Sam, and Adam made a mental note to find himself another roommate for his senior year. He didn’t doubt her opinion was heavily influenced by the photo Adam had taped to the fridge of him and Sam at Adam’s graduation. She’d mentioned how “firm” Sam looked more than once. When he took the photo off the fridge and went to tear it up she’d asked if she could have it, and while he definitely thought it was weird he’d tossed it at her. As long as she didn’t put it back up on the fridge he didn’t care what she did with it.

It should have mollified him when he talked to Dean a few days later and his brother sounded fine, but it didn’t. Something had cracked in Adam the night of the party, and no matter how he’d tried to act like everything would be fine if Dean never found out what had happened to him he knew deep down in a box he’d buried and wouldn’t open ever if he could help it that it wasn’t in any way true. He’d studied enough in the nursing program to understand muscle memory, and knew that Sam had probably been right to say on some level Dean was probably aware something had happened to him. Still, it was easier to cling to the idea that someday soon, maybe right after he graduated, he’d be able to convince Dean to come live with him, and they’d get an apartment with a security system and a bunch of guns and a big ass Rottweiler, and Adam would never let any knothead near his brother again, than it was to accept the reality that life, as a rule, was fraught with danger and Adam could no more protect Dean from every alpha on the planet than he could stop the earth from revolving around the sun.

When Bobby and Dean called to say that Dean was thinking of coming for a visit and was going to bring along his friend Jo and her mom so Jo could look at the college Adam had gone into cleaning mode and driven Becky nuts. Adam knew Jo and Ellen were from the Roadhouse but had never met either of them, so he wanted to make a good impression, plus he knew how much of a stickler Dean was for cleanliness. It was the first time that Dean had actively tried to meld the hunting world with Adam’s academic world, and he desperately hoped that meant Dean was thinking of getting out of the life. He didn’t expect he’d cut everyone off that he knew when he retired, and Adam liked Jo and Ellen, at least from the conversations he’d had with them. He’d make this weekend so great that Dean wouldn’t be able to imagine going back to a life filled with literal monsters and economic instability and he could finally start to give his brother the nice, safe life he deserved. However, he couldn’t shake the gnawing feeling that something was about to go horribly wrong.

He hadn’t known what he was expecting when Ellen and Jo called to say they were only about ten minutes away from his apartment in Old West Durham, but it wasn’t a brunette beta with steely eyes and her tough-as-nails daughter whose handshake was as firm as any man’s. There was a frontier quality to both of them that he liked immediately. These were the kind of women who, a hundred and fifty years ago, would have given birth to a child in the morning and then gone to help raise a barn in the afternoon. He didn’t expect Duke would be a particularly good fit for Jo, but he could see why Ellen wanted her daughter away from hunting. She was smart, tough, and attractive. There was no reason for her to commit herself to a violent life and potential early death. He felt the same way about Dean.

If he hadn’t been so distracted by the two betas he might have really noticed that Dean hadn’t gotten out of the car yet, but his brain only registered it absently, figuring he must be going through his things before getting out. It took to the count of twenty-seven for Dean to exit the back seat, carrying his duffel over his shoulder, and Adam broke away from Jo’s questions about the house they lived in and how far it was from campus and exclaimed, “Dean!”

“Hey Runt,” Dean said as Adam enveloped him in a hug. “How’re things?”

“Better now that you’re here.” He pulled away to look at Dean with a smile, and noticed that his brother’s smile looked strained. Also, Dean hadn’t done his hair and he was looking ashen, with slight dark circles under his eyes. In addition to that he had stiffened slightly at the hug and was wearing very un-Dean-like clothing. It raised his alarm bells immediately and he ran a hand along his brother’s arm. “You okay? You don’t look very good.”

“It’s been a long trip,” Ellen broke in, coming down to maneuver Adam casually away from Dean. “Why don’t you show us around? I’ve been tryin’ to convince Jo of the wonders of college for a while now.”

“My mother, who lives to embarrass me,” Jo said with an eye roll. “I’ll grab our stuff and be right up.”

“Okay,” Adam said. “Apartment three, second floor.”

Ellen steered him away and into the house, and almost had him through the entryway into the front hall before Adam was able to see Dean’s full body flinch as a guy rode by on his bike, wolf whistling at Jo as she was getting their bags out of the back of the car. He saw Dean reach for the back of his waistband, almost like he was carrying, but Dean would have no reason to bring a gun to Adam’s apartment. They were ten minutes from campus. The worst thing he was going to encounter out here were soccer moms who hadn’t had their second cappuccino this morning and were counting the minutes until wine o’clock. He might have gone back if Ellen hadn’t been chattering at him about having an apartment in a house instead of on campus and strong-arming him inside. He just barely caught Jo stopping to check on Dean before the door closed, and he noticed that she looked really worried. That made him wonder if he should be really worried, too.

Becky was waiting for them in the living room, bursting out with how _excited_ she was to finally meet some friends of Adam’s from his “old life,” even though Adam had just met Ellen three minutes ago. Apparently Adam hadn’t made a huge secret about being part of a hunting family, and of course he never lied when asked where he’d gone to high school, but still. Becky seemed to think that hunting was just the sexiest profession ever, which brought a thin-lipped smile from Ellen. When Dean made his way into the apartment with Jo, she sized him up and declared, “You’re...not what I pictured.” It was clearly time to get her out of the house.

“Becky, why don’t you go run to the store on the corner and get us some beer?” Adam suggested, manhandling her towards the door.

“But you don’t drink,” Becky objected, trying not to be ushered out when there were new and interesting people in her living room. “Hey! Do you guys know Sam Campbell?”

Dean blanched and Ellen reached out quickly to grab his arm in support, but Jo snorted and said, “Yeah, we know Sam. Real knothead that one.”

She’d meant it as a deterrent, but it seemed to just make Becky more interested.

“Really?” she squealed, and Adam went back to shoving her towards the door.

“Beer Becky,” he snapped. “Now. Dean, what do you want? El Sol?”

“Nothing for me, thanks.” Dean’s voice sounded forced as he dropped his duffel on the floor. Adam looked back at him and thought he looked worse than he had downstairs. What the hell was going on? Was Dean sick and no one was telling him? “I gotta use the bathroom.”

“Past the kitchen,” he said, pointing to a doorway that led off to the bathroom and bedrooms. “All the way at the end of the hall.”

Dean nodded and hurried off down the hall as Becky continued to object to being booted from the apartment.

“What’s the scariest thing you’ve ever hunted?” she asked Ellen, at which point Adam shoved her out the door. “Hey! Adam! I don’t have my keys!”

“I’ll let you in when you get back,” he informed her, and she stomped her foot and stormed off. “Sorry about that. She seemed fine when I found her on roommates.com. References checked out and everything.”

“They probably wanted to make sure she didn’t come back to live with them,” Jo snarked, and he laughed.

“I didn’t think of that.” He gave her a smile and headed into the kitchen. “You guys hungry? I think I’ve got a frozen pizza in here and I know we have some snack-type stuff. Crackers, chips, carrots and hummus. Unless you want to go out and grab something to eat before Becky gets back. I have a feeling we’re going to be stuck with her all night if we don’t get rid of her now.”

“Sounds good to me,” Jo said. “Not to make any snap judgments, but I don’t know how you can live with that.”

“I think we’ll wait for Dean to get back out to decide,” Ellen said politely but firmly. “Like I said, it’s been a long trip.”

“Maybe his stomach’s feeling better now though,” Jo suggested before turning to Adam. “He’s barely eaten the whole ride out. Keeps getting nauseous halfway through his meal.”

“Nauseated,” Adam corrected, finding this bit of news disconcerting. She raised an eyebrow at him and he smiled. “Sorry, force of habit. They’re adamant about using the correct terms in my biology classes. He’s been like this how long?”

“Just a couple of days,” Ellen interjected smoothly. “Bobby said he ate something that disagreed with him when we met up.”

“Still,” Adam said. “Food poisoning only usually lasts two to three days. Maybe we should take him to the hospital on campus…”

“I think it’s probably just that and our car. Dean’s not used to sittin’ in the back and we ain’t got the best suspension. No need for a hospital visit.” She hooked her arm through Jo’s and smiled at him. “You know what, why don’t we go grab somethin’ to eat and bring it back? I noticed a diner down the street, we’ll just go get some burgers or somethin’. Give you two a chance to catch up? We can waylay Becky on the way back if we see her.”

Adam laughed at the thought of his obnoxious roommate being waylaid.

“Yeah, that’s a great idea. Thanks Ellen.”

“Sure thing.” She swung her daughter around towards the door. “Come on Joanna Beth.”

Jo was thoroughly confused.

“Mom…” she sputtered. “We just got here…”

“And we’ll be gettin’ right back. Come on.”

Jo shot Adam an apologetic look, which got her a smile from Dean’s younger brother, and they vanished out the door. Adam had already decided that he really liked Ellen and Jo and that this weekend was indeed going to be awesome, and headed down the hall to check on his brother, who had been in the bathroom a really long time by this point.  

“Hey Dean, what happened?” he called. “Did you fall in?”

The door to the bathroom was closed, and as Adam approached the hairs on the back of his neck began to stand up. It sounded distinctly like Dean was in there crying. Why would Dean be crying? Was he really feeling that sick? He knocked softly on the door.

“Dean? You okay?”

The crying stopped and the water ran in the sink for a minute, then after a few more moments Dean opened the door and walked past Adam towards the living room, not even looking at him. Something settled in the pit of Adam’s stomach that felt very much like fear, and he broke out into a cold sweat as he followed his brother back down the hall. Dean sat down on the couch, spreading his hands on the coffee table to stop them from trembling ( _how long had Dean’s hands been trembling_?) while he looked at his feet. Adam was really frightened now, though his conscious mind didn’t understand why. His subconscious, however, already knew the general direction this was going.

“Dean? Talk to me.”

Dean picked up a text book that was sitting on the coffee table - _Designation Delusions: The Overemphasis on Pheromone Importance in Alphas and Omegas_. He opened it to the Table of Contents and then flipped to the foreword before reading aloud.

“It has long been held as fact that alphas are the dominant designation, betas the neutral, and omegas the submissive,” he said. “But what if we’ve all been sold a bill of goods? What if pheromones have far less to do with behavior and thought patterns than cultural assumptions about designation? In this book we will attempt to unpack the differences between the three designations, showing omega brains are not hardwired for empathy and alpha brains are not hardwired for aggression, but instead that both designations’ stereotypical behavior usually excused as being because they were ‘born that way’ are in fact mutable and can be changed significantly by environmental factors, and that pheromones have almost no impact on the way the designations relate.” He closed the front cover and tossed it back down on the coffee table. “Guess it’s easy to tell which books around here were written by betas.”

“It’s actually a very interesting theory with a lot of academic research to back it up,” Adam told him. “Several thousand college students volunteered for one study at Harvard alone…”

“Several thousand, huh?” Dean raised an eyebrow at him. “How many of those several thousand were omegas?”

That was an odd question, one Adam had never thought to ask.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Some, I would think.”

“Really? At Harvard? When your average omega doesn’t even graduate high school? You think there were ‘some’ out of ‘several thousand’ and that makes it interesting...what did you call it...academic research?” He picked up the book and tossed it across the floor. “You takin’ that for your nursing degree?”

“No.” Adam picked it up and set it on the kitchen counter. “It’s an elective. Designation Studies and the Impact of Society on the Omega.”

“Huh.” Dean scratched his chin. “So the professor teaching that’s an omega?”

“No…” Adam was really getting confused. “Professor Harrington is a beta.”

“Right. And Professor Harrington teaches these kinds of things based on personal experience? That the designations are a ‘social construct’ and alphas and omegas are just usin’ biology as an excuse for the way they behave around each other?” Adam stared at him, blinking. “Don’t look so surprised that I understood that crap, Runt. I did _almost_ graduate from high school.”

“I know Dean, it’s just…” Adam laughed. He was completely baffled by the conversation. “I’m not sure why we’re discussing my designation class.”

“I just find it interesting,” Dean told him. “There’s all this talk about how alphas are the ones keeping omegas down all by themselves, but what I’m seeing here are a bunch of betas standin’ around discussin’ us with no actual input from the boots on the ground and makin’ decisions about who we are and what we need without even botherin’ to ask how we feel.”

“Dean, what…”

“Cuz I’ll tell you, Adam, your Designation Theories professor may have a bunch of degrees and done a bunch of ‘academic research,’ but that don’t change the way I _feel_ right now.” Adam could see Dean had started to shake, but had no idea what to do to make him stop. “And the way I feel right now is like someone’s gonna bust down the door and drag me off into your bedroom or maybe into the kitchen or maybe pin me down right here and just rape the shit out of me, and god, I _just want_ a big, strong alpha that I know I can trust to curl up against and scent so they can keep me safe. I know that it’s stupid and needy and weak and it’s humiliating and it isn’t really gonna make anything better but it’s the _only_ thing I fuckin’ want. It’s the _only_ thing I can think about, that could possibly make me stop being pants shittin’ scared for more than five minutes. Problem is, Adam, I don’t know any big strong alphas that I can trust outside of Benny, and he’s expectin’ his second kid any day now, so I can’t exactly move in with him and his mate and ask him to chase away the bogeyman.” Dean’s eyes were big and wide and watery, but he didn’t stop. “Now, there _used_ to be another big strong alpha that I thought I could trust, but it turns out he’s been keepin’ a really big secret from me, and from what he says he’s been keepin’ it because you told him to. I haven’t actually _talked_ to him, though, because he changed his number and I’m too afraid of leavin’ Bobby’s house to track him down, so I figured the next best thing was to come here with my two beta bodyguards who don’t in any way make me feel protected, even though I’d never tell them that because they mean well and they’re doin’ all they can, and talk to you.”

Adam was trembling almost as badly as Dean now. Fuck. Dean knew about the basement. Adam didn’t know how to respond, outside of saying weakly, “I can explain…”

“I don’t want an explanation.” Dean interjected calmly. He didn’t seem to care how pale Adam had become. “I understand you’ve got a porno with me in the starring role. I’d very much like to see it.”

“Dean…”

“I’m not askin’, Adam. I’m tellin’. I’d like you to go downstairs and keep Ellen and Jo and your weird roommate out of here while I find out somethin’ I should have known about a couple of years ago.”

“How did you…” Adam’s mouth went dry as his eyes grew moist. “Did Sam…”

“I just told you, Sam didn’t tell me shit,” Dean replied calmly. Too calmly. “Don’t make me say it again, Adam.”

Adam felt the world tipping off its axis. He couldn’t let Dean watch that tape. Dean didn’t know how bad it was. Adam _had_ to protect him from what he was asking to see.   

“Dean…” He took a step towards the couch. “You don’t want to see it.”

Dean was on him before he could blink. Adam had never known omegas could be so fast or so strong. Logically he should have known, because it was Dean, and Dean was not a normal omega, but he was still in shock as he looked at his brother’s shining golden eyes and descended canines. The only time Adam had ever seen him like this was at the beginning of the tape, and it was wildly different in person. It seemed to click for him for the first time in his life that omegas were not simply betas with a heightened sense of smell and a lower sense of self worth. Dean had him on the ground, pinned beneath him, with his massive left forearm pressing down on Adam’s throat and his boot knife in his right hand. He slammed the blade into the floor beside Adam’s head. Adam thought somewhat hysterically that his brother might actually kill him.

“ _Don’t tell me what I want_!” Dean roared, a tear sliding out of his left eye and down the bridge of his nose to splash on Adam’s face. Another one from his right eye followed immediately after. “ _You don’t get to decide what I want_! _No one gets to decide that but me_! _Get me the fucking tape and get out of here_!”

Adam nodded, struggling desperately to breathe, and Dean rolled off of him and went back to perch on the couch, his body tightly coiled and ready to pounce again if necessary. Adam coughed and rolled away, standing up with difficulty. He turned and regarded Dean for a moment, before heading off to his bedroom to find the camcorder and cables to hook it up to the television. He paused in the entry to the hall and looked at his brother, his heart racing.

“Do you want me to hook it up…” he asked quietly. “I can…”

“I got it.” Dean didn’t look at him. “Put it down and get out.”

“Dean…”

Dean shot to his feet and fixed a cold, hard stare on Adam, daring him to finish the sentence. Gone was the uncharacteristically timid Dean who had startled when the biker passed. This was the Dean who still held the majority of Section 1 Hunter Qualification - Alpha Division records at the national level, who had been hunting professionally since he was twelve, and who was possibly the best hunter there was, even if no one would ever admit it. Adam could feel the tears running down his face and wiped them away. He set the camcorder and connecting cords on the coffee table before heading down to the front stoop to wait for everyone else to come back.


	22. Bad Crap Happens to Good People

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean watches the tape.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I cannot *possibly* stress strongly enough the trigger warning on this chapter. I'm not kidding. I will also summarize at the end for anyone who doesn't feel they can read it at all.
> 
> Seriously people. This is not a joke. I am strongly considering changing the rating on this piece to "E," even though it's not graphic, just to avoid people coming here and telling me that the story should be rated "E" because of this chapter. Do not read this if you don't think you can take it.

The instant the door shut behind his brother Dean collapsed to the couch, shaking all over. He was surprised that his knees had held out on him until Adam was gone, but he was continuing to accept the little victories. Still, no matter how his anger had just fueled him he was now feeling spent, and he needed to find the reserves to hook up the camcorder. Part of him, a large part, was shouting that there was time to abandon this plan, that he didn’t really have to watch the tape, but he pushed those thoughts away. He’d spent weeks imagining the worst possible scenarios his traumatized brain could dream up, some of them very, _very_ bad, and while he may very well see that much of that had happened, he couldn’t see a way forward if he didn’t _know_. He’d built his entire life around _knowing_ what he was fighting, no matter how horrible. He didn’t know how he was supposed to fight something that hadn’t been defined in concrete terms. He went back to the bathroom to grab the trash can just in case he needed it to throw up in, then started hooking up the camcorder.

It only took a couple of tries to get the cords hooked up the correct way and get the recording from the camcorder to display on the screen. He told himself over and over that this was just like watching a scary movie. If it got to be too much he would just close his eyes and wait until it was over. That was better than most of the horrors he dealt with in his daily life. After two years he’d only remembered bits and pieces of this, whereas he could recall in vivid detail no fewer than five hunts where he’d almost died that still woke him from his sleep drenched in sweat. These were just going to be images on a screen, and he would be able to look away if he needed to without dying. He was sure he’d be able to tell what was going on by the sound for any parts he couldn’t watch, and it would still give him the confirmation he was looking for. He picked up the trash can to hold in his lap and pushed “Play.”

The quality of the video was sharp, and full color. Dean noted the room the video was being taken in. It looked to be made of cement block and was windowless. The camera was jiggling, which meant someone was holding it instead of using a tripod, and it was trained on a large bed with no comforter but only sheets. The handcuffs built into the headboard did not escape his notice.

Tyler Campbell was the first person in the frame, looking past the camera and laughing. He was holding a glass of cloudy amber liquid.

“ _Come over here Dean_ ,” he commanded using his alpha voice. “ _Have a drink_.”

Dean watched himself stumble into frame. He was unsteady on his feet, but his expression was murderous. Wordlessly he took the glass from Tyler and took a sip.

“ _Drink it all_ ,” Tyler ordered, and Dean, too drunk to resist a command from an alpha, did.

“ _Have a seat on the bed_.”

It was a different voice; Mark Campbell. Dean was glaring off camera, his eyes glowing gold as his canines descended in rage, but he obeyed.

“ _Put your teeth away._ ”

Dean watched his canines retreat on command as Mark walked into the frame and grabbed his jaw, tipping his face up to look him square in the eye. A third voice came from behind the camera; Christian Campbell.

“Tyler go keep watch outside.”

Tyler actually pouted.

“You guys are gonna leave time for me, right?” he whined. “The roaches only last about twenty minutes.”

“Go outside,” Christian snarled, and Tyler stomped off screen like an angry toddler.

“You look like you wanna say something, Dean,” Mark was saying. “ _Speak, bitch_.”

Dean’s speech was terribly slurred, but he knew exactly what he wanted to say.

“I’m gonna cut off yer dick an’ feed it to you,” he hissed, and Mark grabbed his face violently, squeezing his jaw.

“ _Stop talking and open your mouth, Dean_ ,” he ordered, stripping off his shirt and dropping his pants.

Dean watched in horror until Mark rubbed his rock hard cock against his cheek, and then he closed his eyes tight and told himself that he didn’t have to look, no one was going to make him look, nothing would kill him if he _didn’t_ look, he just needed to know roughly what happened, that didn’t mean he had to see it. The comments Mark was making now were too much, vile and dirty and suggestive, and he covered his ears as well. He could still hear Mark and Christian’s muffled commentary, and didn’t look again until they sounded annoyed. He opened his eyes to see what was happening and discovered that he was now looking at himself unconscious sideways on the bed. Mark apparently hadn’t finished with his mouth, because he was extremely irritated.

“That’s easy for you to say, you got off!” Mark snapped at the camera.

Jesus, Christian had jerked off to whatever Mark had been doing. Dean leaned into the garbage can and threw up, tears springing to his eyes.

“Well he’s passed out, so get his clothes off and take him for a ride!” Christian snapped. “Don’t know what you’re so pissed about. He’s gonna be easier to handle this way anyway. No risk of getting bit.”

“Fine,” Mark grumbled, and started to strip off Dean’s shirt, which he dropped by the pillow before pulling down his shorts and boxers.

Dean covered his ears and closed his eyes again as Christian and Mark started in with more commentary, even more disgusting than before. He could still hear enough to know exactly what was happening, and began to hum to himself desperately to try to drown it out. The humming wasn’t enough though - he could still hear too much - so he reached back into his head for something soothing that could help him just get through this. Millie charged forward to protect him.

“ _Pardon me if I'm sentimental when we say goodbye_

_Don't be angry with me should I cry_

_Now when you're gone, yet I'll dream a little dream as years go by_

_Now and then, there's a fool such as I_ ”

Mark was grunting and shouting in the background and Dean could feel himself starting to hyperventilate in response. He rocked himself as he tried to make the music in his head playback louder, tried to remember all of his mother’s inflections when she crooned him to sleep, the way her hands played through his hair, and sang along with the memory of her to keep himself breathing.

“ _Now and then, there's a fool such as I am over you_

_You taught me how to love and now_

_You say that we are through_

_I'm a fool but I'll love you dear until the day I die_

_Now and then, there's a fool such as I_ ”

He could hear Mark come and leaned over the trash can to throw up again. This had been a bad idea. He had been wrong. Jesus he had been so very wrong. Knowing wasn’t better. Knowing was worse. Adam had been right. He shouldn’t have hooked this up. He needed to stop throwing up so he could turn it off.

Christian had switched the camera with Mark and turned on some music - _Welcome to the Jungle_. The two alphas were laughing as Christian climbed up onto the bed, dropping his pants down to his thighs and rolling Dean onto his stomach.

“Let me show you how a _real_ alpha handles an omega,” he said, and Dean reached with a shaking hand for the camcorder to turn it off, but wasn’t quick enough and had to stop to grip the garbage can and throw up again as he saw Christian thrust into him.

While his face was in the trash can the video took a hard left turn. Someone pounded on the outside door, and he heard Tyler’s muffled voice.

“Hey! Christian! Man, open up! I think I hear someone upstairs!”

Christian stopped and pulled out, frozen and looming over Dean.

“What?”

“I think someone’s upstairs!” Tyler repeated. “Maybe Sam woke up? I dunno know. Let me in! We gotta keep it quiet down here!”

Sam ‘woke up?’ Why had Sam not been awake?

The camera was swinging around away from the bed as Mark walked to the door, snapping, “Godammit, Tyler…”

Mark was opening the door, but he barely had it cracked before he was rushed. Dean saw flashes of Tyler with Sam right behind him, and what looked to be at least three other people. There was a series of shouts and it sounded like at least one person was being taken to the floor. The camera caught a glimpse of a young black woman with what looked like Dean’s gun backing Mark up against the wall, then the camera was batted away and fell to the ground. The lens ended up pointed at the floor beside the bed. The image jumped for just a second before the camera continued recording.

“Get. Off. Him.”

It was the memory from the parking lot. Sam was talking to Christian. Christian was making gross comments about Dean being prepped. Sam made a sound unlike anything Dean had ever heard, guttural and animalistic and suddenly there was more shouting and Sam and Christian were half in frame on the floor. Sam had Dean’s old Bowie knife, the one he hadn’t been able to find after leaving Shreveport. He’d impaled Christian through the shoulder, and there was more screaming, and then Sam was strangling Christian one-handed and declaring that Dean was his and anyone who touched him was going to end up gutted like a deer. Dean had stopped throwing up and started trembling. He’d never seen Sam alpha-out before. It was terrifying, but at the same time he wasn’t terrified anymore. His omega recognized the safety of Sam’s alpha, and while he didn’t feel exactly calm his growing hysteria was rapidly subsiding and he was able to breathe again as he stared at the screen, transfixed. He heard Adam crying in the background, could make out that Adam was talking to him, but not what he was saying. Sam ripped the knife out of Christian’s shoulder and stood up mostly out of frame. He was gigantic. It made his omega feel even safer, if still not anything close to calm. There was blood everywhere from the knife. He heard one of the women talking, telling Mark exactly what was going to happen, making it clear the three cousins were very close to being shot, salted, and burned in the backyard if they didn’t play their cards right, then Mark and Tyler were getting Christian up off the floor and dragging him out of the room.

A few moments later Sam collapsed back into the frame, reaching over towards the bed - towards him. He and Adam were both crying. Adam sounded hammered. Sam was leaning over. It looked like he was trying to scent Dean. They agreed to take Dean to the hospital. It took a long time to get him off the bed. Sam was saying to get the camcorder so they’d have leverage. Adam was bundling the camcorder up in Dean’s clothes.

The camera kept rolling.

They were going upstairs - had he been in some kind of basement? Adam was carrying the camera. Sam was carrying Dean. Most of the shots were of the wall or the floor or sometimes some fabric. Someone came back inside. A girl, the third person from the basement that wasn’t Adam and wasn’t the girl who had taken out Mark. She was saying something about laws. Bad laws. Terrifying laws. Laws that would let Mark or Christian claim Dean. No one had been there to know who had done what to him, so the possibility that any of the cousins could claim him had been very real. Adam was clearly scared they would come back to try to force Dean into matehood with one of them. It seemed a valid concern - it was two years later and suddenly it was all Dean could think about; the possibility of Mark or Christian staking a claim. Dean would need to make sure he didn’t take any jobs in Louisiana just in case. There was something about Sam needing to get his scent on Dean, needing to mark him to prevent his cousins from coming back for Dean. Dean felt filthy listening to it. Sam was appalled at the idea. Adam got immediately on board with what the girl was saying. He sounded numb. The girl left.

The camera kept rolling.

Sam and Adam were getting Dean into a bathroom. Adam put the camera on the floor with Dean’s clothes. He could hear Sam helping Adam get him into a bathtub and a shower started. He saw Sam moving bottles of something to the floor, then the sheet dropped over the camera so there was only the sound. Sam was going to go lock up the house. Adam was going to wash Dean. Sam’s feet padded away out of the room. There was the sound of the shower, and of Adam crying, and then after a while he started talking.

“Dean? Dean, could you wake up? I really need to talk to you, Dean, I’m really scared, I don’t know...I don’t know how to fix this. And you always know how to fix things. Always. I need you to wake up and...and tell me how to fix this. I remember, when we were little - I think I was maybe five - I started asking questions. How come dad left us at the school? Why did the older kids have guns? Why did Dad travel around for work all the time? And you used to beg me, ‘Quit asking, Runt. Man, you don’t want to know.’ You just wanted me to be a kid, as long as I could. You just wanted to protect me from the truth. And when you presented, and they made you leave, I promised myself that when I got out I was always going to protect _you_. Just like you protected me. All those things everybody kept saying, every time you came to visit. It made me so mad the way they all looked at you, they way they all tried to smell you, and I swore, I _swore_ that I would keep you safe from them. It was my responsibility, you know? It’s like I had one job. I had one job and I screwed it up. I blew it. All I had to do was _watch_ you, and I couldn’t even do that. I couldn’t even _watch_ you for one fucking night. How am I supposed to live with that?” He was sobbing. Dean could barely understand what he was saying. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do, Dean. _Please_ tell me what to do. God...I have to keep you safe. I don’t know how to do that like this. I can’t keep you safe if you won’t leave this life cuz you’re always gonna be surrounded by them. I need to get you out of hunting, Dean. I swear, I’m gonna get you out of hunting, and when I get out of school you’re going to come live with me. And I will keep you safe. No alpha is ever going to touch you again, I promise Dean. I’m so sorry I got so drunk…”

Sam was back. The house was locked up. Dean heard himself waking up. Heard a struggle in the tub. Heard himself scream. Sam was soothing him. Getting him out of the tub. Dean was throwing up, asking why he was naked. Adam was lying - straight up _lying_. Telling Dean he’d had too much to drink. Making Dean think he’d just been irresponsible. They needed to get Dean some clothes, but Dean didn’t want Sam to leave. Sam sounded reluctant to go, but then Sam and Adam _were_ leaving the room. Someone scooped up the clothes and the sheet and the camera. They left the bathroom and walked for a ways. Adam was insisting they weren’t going to tell Dean what had happened. Sam was upset, objecting - they had to tell him. Adam said he was scared Dean couldn’t handle knowing. They blamed themselves for what had happened to him. Sam never expected Dean to forgive him. Adam was worried Dean would never trust him again. Adam wore Sam down, and after a few minutes Sam promised to do his best not to say anything. Sam was going to burn the clothes and the sheets while Adam got Dean dressed, and the camcorder was popped into the darkness of what might have been a cookie jar or maybe a breadbox.

There wasn’t any more audio and the battery eventually died.

Dean sat on the couch staring at the blank TV screen for what felt like years, then grabbed the trash can and bolted for the bathroom. He didn’t really have anything left in his stomach, but it rolled anyway. He was surprised at how little he was actually feeling besides the nausea, but imagined he was simply too overloaded at the moment to process what he’d just watched. He was almost certainly in shock and would probably not be able to get out of the car tomorrow. When his stomach had settled he emptied the trash can into the toilet, flushed, and rinsed it out in the shower. If he’d been thinking clearly he would have left it there for Adam to clean up - he sure as hell deserved it - but he was on automatic and his omega wouldn’t dream of leaving vomit uncleaned. He went back to the living room, grabbed his duffel, shoved the camcorder into it, and headed downstairs.

At least now he knew.

The walk down to the front of the building gave Dean plenty of time to start to feel again, and what he was feeling for the most part was anger. Intense anger. At the Campbells, at the Louisiana legislature, and at Sam and his brother. At least Sam knew he shouldn’t be forgiven. He’d said so on the tape. But Adam - how could Adam have thought he had any right to keep this from Dean, or to demand that Sam go along with keeping this from Dean? When he was spouting off that bullshit about Adam’s omega class he had no idea how close he actually was to the truth. Adam didn’t trust him to make his own decisions. Omegas were too programmed by society to know what they actually wanted as far as Adam was concerned. In his mind Dean might as well be a child. He was no better than the alphas he wanted to protect Dean from.

By the time he’d made it to the front stoop he was seething and pushed right past his brother, his brother’s stupid roommate, Ellen, and Jo. The stupid roommate was complaining about how long they’d been outside, and Adam looked like he’d just been face to face with a Wendigo without a flare gun on hand. Dean ignored the confusion and concern on Jo and Ellen’s faces, respectively, and headed off down the sidewalk.

“Dean, where are you going?” Ellen asked.

He didn’t even glance at her.

“Bus station. Catchin’ a ride back home. You guys have a nice weekend.”

“Dean…” Jo said, and he heard someone running after him.

“Dean, wait…”

It was Adam. His stupid, stupid brother Adam. Dean swung around, dropping his duffel to the ground, and stopped him in his tracks with his glowing gold eyes.

“Walk away Adam,” he warned.

“I can’t...I can’t just let you wander around Durham, Dean…” Adam said helplessly.

He looked like he was about to cry again. Dean couldn’t have given less of a fuck. He advanced on Adam and shoved him, violently.

“Oh, you can’t _let_ me?” he sneered. “How are you gonna stop me, Adam? More _lies_?”

And now Adam was crying, his shoulders shaking, as huge tears rolled down his face and his breath came in short gasps. Ellen had taken a couple of steps towards them, but Jo and Becky were frozen on the front steps of the house.

“Dean…” he choked. “I’m so sorry…”

Adam was coming up with the wrong things to say all over the place today. Dean hauled back and swung with everything he had, laying Adam out on his ass on the pavement. Adam turned over to spit the blood out of his mouth. It felt like maybe he’d cracked a molar.

“Sorry ain’t good enough,” Dean spat, glaring down at him. “Sorry isn’t gonna give me back the two years you just _took_ from me that I coulda been dealing with this. Sorry isn’t gonna make me trust you, or forgive you, or give up the life to move in with you, or whatever other crap you were hopin’ for. Sorry’s not gonna fix _shit_.”

“I made a mistake,” Adam wept, holding onto the ground so he wouldn’t fly off as the world broke apart around him. “Please Dean…”

“Sometimes that happens,” Dean told him coldly. “Sometimes people make mistakes, and some of them can never be fixed. Bye Adam.”

He moved back to his duffel, swept it up off the sidewalk, and stalked away down the street. He couldn’t be near his brother anymore. He would do something he really regretted, like breaking his nose or his knees or some other part of his body that wouldn’t result in permanent damage but would certainly give him an outlet for the rage that was overflowing from him. And he couldn’t be this angry and this out of control in public. He needed to stay aware of his surroundings. He had to fight his omega instincts when he heard Adam cry, “ _Dean_!” after him like his heart had broken, and pressed on, heading for the diner on the corner. His stomach had recovered from the earlier events and he was starving. He’d grab a bite to eat, find out where the nearest bus station was, and get the hell out of this place for good.

The diner was a themed place called Cherry’s, with neon lights, booths that looked like the rear ends of classic cars, servers in retro clothing, and what appeared to be a real honest-to-goodness vintage malt and milkshake station behind the counter. Each of the booths had a tabletop jukebox that connected to the sound system and allowed the patrons to select a song from the catalogue without having to get up and walk over to the actual jukebox that stood against the far wall by the entrance to the bathrooms. The sign at the front instructed him to seat himself, and he surveyed the packed diner for the best spot while _Earth Angel_ echoed through the joint. A couple of people were starting to scent the air, but he was still too heated to care. He spotted a booth over in the far corner from the door by the windows and stalked over, throwing his duffel in and grabbing a menu. He’d been there for about a minute or so when a young male server with close cropped dark blond hair, giant blue eyes, and tons of freckles, wearing a striped shirt and suspenders came over to give him a cheery smile while Dean focused on ignoring the diners sitting nearby who were trying to glance in his direction without being too obvious about it.

“Hi, and welcome to Cherry’s!” the server announced far too happily for what Dean was going through. “I’m your waiter, Alfie. Can I start you off with something to drink?”

“Coffee, black,” Dean said, barely glancing up at him, then remembered he wasn’t supposed to have caffeine. “Wait, no, milk, please.”

“Sure thing!” Alfie noted it down on the pad and grinned at him again. “I’ll grab that for you and be right back to take your order!”

“Thanks.”

Alfie practically skipped away as Dean’s adrenaline and anger began to wane and the reality started to sink in that he was probably never going to be able to stand talking to Adam again. Alfie returned about sixty seconds later and set down his glass of milk with a smile before disappearing. Dean took a sip as his chest clenched and he tried to clamp down on the deep sadness that washed over him at the thought of the encounter on the sidewalk just now being the last time he ever saw his brother, but goddammit, the jukebox had switched to _You Really Got a Hold on Me_. Whoever the omniscient being was that had given him Johnny Cash for a theme song the last time he was in a diner really seemed to want to fuck with him now. When the song switched to _All I Have to Do is Dream_ he was sure of it, pulled up the hood on his sweatshirt and turned to the window so he’d have a little bit of privacy while he sat there and cried. He didn’t know how he was supposed to get past this. His dad was gone, picking a job over taking care of him for about the ten thousandth time in Dean’s life; his brother had completely betrayed him in ways that Dean really couldn’t even begin to process outside of the all consuming rage he’d just experienced; and he was utterly torn between hating Sam and wanting to be held by him, which didn’t even matter because he had no way to contact him to either beat the shit out of him or climb into his lap and never leave.

He was startled momentarily out of his spiral by his phone ringing. God, he did not want to talk to anyone right now. He didn’t think he’d ever want to talk to anyone again, but he saw the name on the screen and had to pick it up, trying to even out his voice.

“Hey Benny,” he said, hoping his friend didn’t notice the tremble.

“ _Dean_!” Benny sounded thrilled. “ _We got ourselves a baby girl, man_! _Seven pounds, three ounces. Namin’ her Elizabeth, after Lisa’s mom_.”

Shit. Dean needed to get himself together _right now_ to respond appropriately to his best friend. He was not going to be the kind of jackass who took a baby announcement and made it all about him. He sucked in a deep breath and did what he could to clamp down on his emotions, but the fucking song switched to _The Great Pretender_ , and he just wanted to figure out who the sadist in this place was that was playing all these stupid songs and pummel them with their tabletop jukebox. God, he had chosen the worst diner _ever_ to try to grab a bite to eat in.

“That’s great Benny,” he said, and he meant it, he really did, but his voice was a vile betrayer and didn’t want to play along with the pretense that everything was fine. “I’m really happy for you guys.”

“ _Yeah, it was quick, too_.” He could picture Benny’s grin on the other end of the phone. He hadn’t heard him this happy since Ben was born. “ _Almost didn’t make it to the hospital. Thought we were gonna have to spend a fortune getting the car detailed_.” He laughed, and Dean tried to stifle the sob before it broke out of his throat but couldn’t. “ _Dean_? _Are you okay_?”

“I’m fine, Benny,” he choked, huddling into the corner of the booth and wishing he could just disappear.

Before Benny had a chance to say anything he felt a hand on his shoulder and reacted instinctively. He dropped the phone and was on his feet with his Bowie knife out, his eyes wide and furious as he whipped around and pinned Alfie to the wall beside his booth, knife to his throat. The poor kid thrust his hands into the air as quickly as he could as Dean registered the sound of chairs skidding back and tipping over as the startled diners sitting near him backed away en masse. He could vaguely hear Benny on the phone, demanding to know what was wrong as he glared into Alfie’s terrified eyes.

“Please, sir,” he said, his voice trembling. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay…”

“Don’t. Touch. Me.”

“Yes, sir, I’m sorry…”

“Dean?” Ellen’s voice behind him preceded her touch on his arm, which was good or he might have taken her straight down to the floor. “Honey, let him go and come back with me to the car, okay?” Dean’s base instincts were locked in fight mode, and did not want to back down, even as he knew at the higher functioning levels of his brain that he needed to let the poor kid go before someone called the cops. But he couldn’t. It was like he was floating above himself, unable to control anything that his body wanted to do in this moment. “We’re so sorry about this.” She was talking to Alfie now, trying to diffuse the situation, as she pulled gently but insistently on Dean’s arm. “He went through somethin’ real traumatic recently and he’s havin’ a very hard time.”

“It’s okay.” Alfie’s voice was still shaking as he looked at Ellen over Dean’s shoulder. He took a deep breath and fixed his big blue eyes back on the omega. “I didn’t mean to scare you, you just looked really upset.”

Dean finally came back to himself at the sincerity in the kid’s voice, blinked, and stepped back from Alfie, his face turning a deep crimson. He moved to pick up the phone, where Benny was still yelling frantically for him.

“Hey, Benny, I’m gonna have to call you back later, okay?” he said numbly.

“ _Dean_!” Great, he’d scared the shit out of Benny on the day his daughter was born. Why Benny bothered with him Dean didn’t know. “ _Jesus, Dean, are you all right_?”

“No,” Dean replied simply. “No I’m not. I’ll call you later, go be with Lisa.”

“ _Dean_!”

He hung up the phone and turned to Alfie, who hadn’t dared to move. They needed to get out of here before he found himself getting arrested for assault and brandishing a weapon at the very least.

“I’m really sorry,” he said quietly as Ellen grabbed the knife and the phone from him and tossed them into his duffel, snatching it out of the booth to throw over her shoulder.

“It’s okay,” Alfie replied, flashing him a nervous grin.

“No,” Dean told him, his voice cracking. “Nothing’s okay Alfie.”

“Come on,” Ellen said, hurrying him out the back as the sound of sirens began to approach from a great distance.

They were two hours outside of Durham before Ellen spoke to him again. They’d left Jo behind - she’d didn’t know what the hell was going on, but she was pissed at the way Dean had treated his brother, and since she’d planned to come for the weekend she damn well was going to stay for the weekend, and she knew how to take a fucking bus. Ellen didn’t argue with her. If she really was going to get Jo off the path to becoming a hunter and into a college she’d have to deal with leaving her behind eventually anyway. They’d already settled it before she went to get Dean so that she could bundle him into the car and take off as soon as they got out of the diner, before the police could track him down. It was a good thing he’d worn the hoodie - the diner surveillance didn’t have a really good shot of him.

“You can’t be doin’ things like that, Dean,” she told him calmly. “It’s not good for the baby.”

He was too desensitized to be able to register the shock he felt that she knew, since he and Bobby certainly hadn’t told her.

“How did you…”

“I’m not entirely unfamiliar with pregnancy.” She cast a sideways glance at him. “You tell Sam yet?”

Was he that transparent? Apparently he was. He leaned against the window and turned away from her.

“No.”

“You gonna?”

“Yes. No. Maybe. Pick one.”

“You should. Bein’ pregnant ain’t always the most fun experience on the planet.” Dean didn’t reply, and she glanced at him again. “I’m just sayin’ think about it.”

He looked over at her and suddenly felt exhausted. He really should have just talked to Adam over the phone. This whole thing had been way too much, and Ellen was doing a piss poor job hiding how concerned she was for him.

“Okay,” was all he could muster before he turned back to the window and went to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dean watches the tape because he doesn't know how to fight an enemy that is nebulous (at this point all the horrible things he's imagining were done to him). It is terrible. He spends most of it not watching and trying not to listen and throwing up. He starts watching again when Sam, Maggie, and Tamara come in to save him. The camera keeps recording after it lands on the ground. Dean listens to the aftermath, because the camcorder is in the pile of his clothes, all the way up until Sam leaves it in the breadbox. He hears the entire discussion about the Louisiana omega laws and Adam convincing Sam to lie, plus what Adam was saying to Dean when Sam came back in from locking up the house. Dean leaves. He and Adam have a fight on the sidewalk. Dean is determined to catch a bus by himself back to Sioux Falls. He walks to the diner at the end of the block where he eventually breaks down. Benny calls to say he and Lisa have had a baby and Dean can't stop crying. The waiter (Alfie) checks on him and Dean pins him to the wall with his Bowie. Ellen comes into the restaurant, gets Dean to let the waiter go, and they head back to the Roadhouse without Jo, who doesn't know what is going on, is pissed at Dean for the way he treated his brother, and intends to stay for the weekend because that's what they're there for. Ellen tells Dean she knows he's pregnant and that he needs to think about contacting Sam.


	23. All You've Gotta Do is Nudge Humans in the Right Direction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Welcome back, Sam.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have returned.

Sam didn’t know how he was still alive, or why. After the conversation with John and Bobby he’d attempted to drink himself to death, but the bartenders in the club he’d frequented the last few days before he spoke with them saw how upset he was after he took the call and only served him three more drinks before cutting him off. He’d stumbled to the nearest 7/11 and bought a couple twelve packs and didn’t really remember anything after that, certainly not how he ended up naked in bed with the petite brunette alpha named Kathy ( _or was it Kristy_?) who was barely half his size, telling him he’d just missed a phone call and asking if he wanted a pizza. He checked his voicemail and discovered he had a message from Bobby about Dean, whom he had just sworn he was going to get out of his system no matter what it took. After five days straight of calling and not having Dean pick up the phone once, he needed to get off the Dean Winchester ride before he got any sicker. Now listening to the voicemail he vaguely remembered talking to Bobby the night before about Dean being upset, but it was all foggy and almost completely void of any detail. He felt very much like Michael Corleone. Just when he thought he was out, Bobby pulled him back in.

Dean was fine. He thanked Sam for his concern, and that was the entirety of the message. Things got very awkward with Kristy ( _or was it Kathy_?) very quickly, because Sam’s alpha was out and it was enraged. It didn’t want to hear about his omega from a voicemail, or from some kindly beta who said only that Dean was “fine” and Sam didn’t need to worry about him, especially when he had no idea why Bobby would feel the need to make that phone call because he could barely recall the night before and certainly not why he should be worried. It had been a month since he’d last been able to touch Dean and scent him. This was not the way things were supposed to be between them. He was not supposed to be five states away worried sick about why he was getting messages saying Dean was “okay” with the clear implication that he _hadn’t_ been okay at some point and unable to get his omega to return a fucking phone call, let alone see him. His alpha wanted to storm up to Sioux Falls, claim the omega, and drag him off to somewhere like Vermont where they could get away from hunting, buy a nice house in the mountains filled with however many throw pillows his mate wanted, get a couple of dogs, maybe a cat since Dean had mentioned once years ago in passing that he had a cat as a kid, and start making as many babies as possible. The baby making was the thing he wanted most of all, and he wanted it _now_. He was tired of just having a shirt with a fading scent and his hand to keep him company. That his house in the mountains and a dozen babies and blissful lifelong matehood scenario was not actually how the situation was playing out and he was instead waking up with a random alpha who smelled like rum and engine grease and a confusing message on his voicemail was simply intolerable.

He was aware that it was his own damn fault for having written that stupid note so many weeks ago, but back then he had been worried about what Adam thought and couldn’t possibly believe that Dean would actually want _him_. Now Adam had turned into a gigantic dick, and really, how stupid had Sam been to care in the first place? He was an alpha and Dean was the omega he wanted. Things had become way too complicated because he’d worried about the feelings of Dean’s idiot beta brother for far too long, and Adam couldn’t even understand the way alphas and omegas related. And when it came to whether Dean would ever want him, Sam would do whatever it took to prove he was worthy of his chosen omega. If Dean wanted to play Aphrodite, Sam would be his Adonis; the Robin Hood to his Maid Marian; the the Pyramus to his Thisbe, but without the lion. But first he had to get Dean to _talk_ to him instead of having to keep going through damned betas who meant well but were clearly positioning themselves as barriers between the two. Kristy/Kathy barely managed to get her clothes on before fleeing the hotel room as Sam tore it apart, after which he snapped the phone in half before going out again to drink himself into oblivion.

It hadn’t occurred to Sam, because he’d stopped keeping track of the days, that he was just about due for his annual rut, which made his response to the situation with Dean that much more intense. The drunken one night stand with Kathy/Kristy should have been his first clue, since he was not a drunken one night stand kind of guy, but the bill for the trashed hotel room really made him stop and think when he finally woke up with the worst hangover he’d had in his entire life. That’s when he pulled out a calendar and finally did the math. He only had one, if he was lucky two days left before he was going to want to sleep with everything on two legs that walked past him. No wonder he’d spent the last few weeks looking for the bottom of every liquor bottle within arm’s reach. The two most routinely uncomfortable weeks of his life were hours away, he was separated from the omega he wanted, and he hadn’t made any plans for it at all. The last few years since Jess had died he’d gotten through it with a discreet personals service that specialized in aiding unmated alphas during their yearly hormonal spike, as an alpha in a rut could be very dangerous in the event they were unable to find willing partners. These services were popular and booked well in advance, and getting the kind of help he needed on a moment’s notice was going to be all but impossible. Before that he’d made do with heavy doses of suppressants started the month before, but they left him feeling disconnected from himself and depressed to the point of being suicidal so he’d decided after he met Jess he wasn’t ever going back on them.

It was way too late to start the suppressants now and even if it had been possible to get in with a service Sam’s alpha knew what it wanted, and what it wanted was Dean; no imitations or substitutions. An alpha or a beta from a service ( _it was illegal to employ omegas as sex workers_ ) was simply not going to do when his alpha _needed_ the thrill of the chase this time. The problem, of course, was that he couldn’t possibly show up at Bobby’s house with the hope that Dean was still there and expect to be welcomed with open arms. He didn’t even trust himself on the phone at this point. “Hey Dean, long time no talk, I’m literally in a rut” was not a pick-up line he planned to ever use, and no matter what he was about to go through he was never going to force Dean to do anything physical that he didn’t want. Luckily he didn’t have to. Apparently betas responded enthusiastically to big, strong, bitter, heartsick alphas in the middle of a testosterone surge and he was too desperate to care about the moral implications, so he just started fucking his way across the Midwest. For two weeks straight, every bar he hit had at least one person looking for a quick hookup and he was more than willing to oblige. Sometimes he took them back to his hotel; sometimes he went with them to their apartment; sometimes they locked themselves in single stall bathrooms in whatever bar they’d met; sometimes they went out into the alley behind the dumpster. He never got their names, rarely gave them his, and always made sure he wore a condom. Some would try to give him their phone number, and he’d write it down and then toss it the minute he passed a trash can. He made no promises and professed no love, and was in the middle of fulfilling a biologically driven necessity, so he shouldn’t have felt dirty afterwards, but he always did, scrubbing himself clean in the shower before going to sleep with Dean’s shirt. Dean was the only one he wanted, and if he couldn’t have him then he might as well get used to what his life would be without him; a string of meaningless encounters with nameless strangers and a lot of guilt-driven drinking.

At the end of the fortnight when his hormones had finally subsided and his head had cleared of all the doubt fueled by so many encounters with people who were _not_ his omega, his first thought was to call Dean and tell him how much he missed him, how much he wanted him, how he would do anything for him, but of course he was trying to crawl out from under the shame of just having slept with no fewer than thirty nameless strangers within two weeks because he’d been a moron who wasn’t paying attention to his datebook. He knew neither of them were virgins, but still, it felt completely wrong calling Dean when he still smelled so strongly of sex with other people. Few things would put an omega off faster if Dean agreed to see him ( _please_ **_god_ ** _let Dean agree to see him before he fell any farther apart than he already had, he did not want to go through his life like this_ ). He needed at least a week before his scent would return to normal and Sam could even hope to approach Dean. Besides which, he'd broken his phone. He had just gotten a new one from his carrier and hadn't even had a chance to update his contacts when his grandfather phoned with disturbing news. Steven Wandell had been killed in a house fire about three weeks ago. The arson investigators hadn’t been able to find any accelerant in the house, which had left them initially stumped because of the burn pattern, but the forensics team had managed to recover some of the surveillance footage from Steven’s hard drives. It seemed the last person to see him alive had been Sam, and the police wanted to talk to him. Samuel advised him to abandon his apartment, ditch his phone, and lay low until his grandfather was able to grease enough palms to make the whole thing go away; by which he meant keep the family name out of the papers and Sam out of jail.

Sam was more than willing to do what Samuel suggested, though, because the fire sounded an awful lot like what had happened to his mother and Jess. Combined with the murders in each of the cities he’d hunted in recently that Ash had tracked, it certainly seemed like something not very good was following him around, and maybe he should keep his distance from Dean for a bit until he figured out what was going on. Much as he didn’t trust her, he doubted it was Ruby doing the killings for the simple reason that she could have popped in on him at any of those places if she were attempting to get his attention. He didn’t have the hex bags hiding him from demons until after his meeting with Steven, which is when these events seemed to stop. There would have been no reason for her to butcher people or incinerate his sire if she were looking to talk with him. _Especially_ if she were looking to talk with him. Few things would get him to trust her less than if she went around murdering innocent people.

He was in a hotel in Scranton, Pennsylvania when he decided to try summoning Ruby to find out what the hell was going on. He’d never attempted a summoning ritual before, but there was a detailed description of how to do one in the book Steven had given him, and it didn’t look like it was that hard. Some of the ingredients were on the strange side, but the rest was basic - candles in a specific arrangement, an urn or cauldron to ignite the ingredients in, and a sigil on the floor beneath. There was a basic Latin incantation he would need to recite, and he would need to inscribe her name in his own blood on the inside of the bowl before adding ingredients, but that should do it.

Do it, it certainly did, and Ruby was pissed when she found herself in Sam’s suite at the Marriott.

“Where the hell have you been?” she demanded the instant she arrived. “I’ve been trying to find you for weeks.”

“Nice to see you too, Ruby,” he snapped. Ruby was not amused.

“What the fuck do you think you’re playing at, Sam?” she demanded. “A game of hide and seek?”

“I had some things I needed to take care of,” he told her, and that was all he was going to tell her. She didn’t need to know he was probably now the subject of numerous, ‘for a good time, call’ notes scrawled on bathroom walls everywhere between Ohio and North Dakota. “Would you happen to know why the last set of jobs I took ended up with someone I interviewed getting their throat slit and a bunch of their blood drained?”

“Of course I know, you moron,” she snapped. “Meg has been on your tail for a while now. At least until you dropped off the radar after visiting daddy dearest.”

“Well then, I guess I was right to drop off the radar.”

“No, Sam, you were an idiot to drop off the radar. If Meg was following you that means Azazel wanted tabs kept on you, and if he can’t keep track of where you are for too long he’s going to start doing things to get your attention, like burning your sire’s house down with him inside pinned to the ceiling. You better hope he hasn’t figured out about your boyfriend or Dean’s gonna be the next one roasted like a marshmallow. Hopefully you've been staying away from him.” Sam blanched while Ruby paced the room like a caged tiger. “Just my luck to pick the _stupidest_ son of a bitch on the planet to try to take him down.”

“He’d go after Dean?” Sam asked, his head swimming.

“He went after Jess, didn’t he?” Ruby demanded. “And you didn’t even really love her that much, remember? Killing mommy, daddy, and your girlfriend isn’t enough to get you to twenty paces at high noon. You think he’d overlook the fact that you got your chocolate all up in Dean’s peanut butter and now want to start making Reese’s Pieces if hurting him gets you back on the gameboard?”

Sam didn’t say anything and just sat on the bed with his head in his hands. She hadn’t said anything that wasn’t true, but it still left him feeling ashamed. He’d completely thrown aside hunting Azazel once the mess with Dean started because he _hadn’t_ really loved Jess that much. This had seemed worth it when he started, but now he barely cared. Once he had slept beside her, kissed her, held her, made love to her, wept at her grave, but that had been a lifetime ago and now he had a difficult time recalling her face. He certainly had no reason to avenge his mother’s death, especially after learning about her and John Winchester and finding out who she really was through her letters, and that made him feel ashamed too. She may have died when he was just an infant, and she may not have written of him with the same glowing terms that John used when talking about his son, but she was still his mother. He should feel _something_ about her death, but he really just couldn’t care. Likewise, he didn’t care that Steven was dead. How could he when he’d just met the guy and it had been made clear that the man felt less than nothing for him? He was more upset about Dolores in Laramie than he could ever be about Steven Wandell, and he certainly had been more interested in staying off the police’s radar than in finding out if his death was indeed connected to Azazel.

But if Azazel was going to turn his attention to Dean - that was an entirely different story.

Ruby knew it, too. She’d had Sam pegged from the moment she showed up on his doorstep: smart, stubborn, and headstrong but so hamstrung by a propensity to feel guilty about everything from sending back food at a restaurant to crossing the street without using a crosswalk he was going to be easy to play to do her dirty work and undercut that stupid Scotsman whose ego was getting entirely too big for his kilt. Why Lilith wanted him handling Azazel instead of handing the job off to Ruby to begin with she didn’t know, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to let someone like Crowley show her up. It had been easy to play up the angle of Sam’s promise to Jess’ parents at the beginning, but now that she knew about Dean Winchester she was even more certain she could keep Sam on task. She even had something to sweeten the pot, but she’d been keeping it in reserves just in case a situation like this arose.

“Look,” she said, softening her tone and crossing to sit next to him on the bed. “I get why you were trying to dodge me. People were dying. You were the connection. I’d have thought maybe it was me that was doing it, too. But we’ve got to keep our eyes on the prize. Finding the Colt. Taking out Azazel. And now that I know why you pulled a Houdini I have a gift for you.” She pulled a knife out of the inside of her jacket that at first glance looked a lot like a Bowie knife, except with a serrated blade and less of a curve. This knife also had symbols carved into the blade and was fixed in the antler of a stag. She held it out to him by the blade so he could take hold of the handle. “This was crafted by the Kurds several thousand years ago and can kill most demons. Could go a long way towards protecting your damsel from the great red dragon if you want it, St. George. It’s not going to take out the higher-ups like Azazel, but a low-level grunt like Meg won’t stand a chance against it.”

Sam took the knife from her, turning it over in his hand to examine it before asking, “What about you? Will this work against you?”

“Sure,” she replied with a shrug, standing and moving away from the bed. “But without me you’re not going to find the Colt, and without the Colt you’re not going to kill Azazel, and without killing Azazel you’re never _really_ going to be able to make sure Dean’s safe.”

She saw the way his eyes flashed at the mention of protecting Dean and had to suppress a grin. Sam was just so easy to wind up.

“Have you found the Colt?” Sam asked, judging the distance between the two of them to determine how quickly he could close in on her and whether he could test out her demon killing blade before she managed to vanish.

“I have an address.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a slip of paper. “A motel outside of Jefferson City, Missouri. Room 42. It’s heavily warded or I’d go get it myself.”

“And Azazel?”

“Still trying to track him down.” Sam took the paper from her and stared at it for a long moment, his brow furrowing. “What’s wrong Sam? You have that stupid look you get on your stupid face when you’ve got a stupid idea running through your head.”

“Steven told me something,” he said without looking at her. “He said that when my mother made the deal with Azazel I was supposed to be a part of it. Do you have any idea what he wants with me?”

“You were probably meant to be one of his special children,” she told him, bored of the topic before it even got started.

That certainly didn’t sound good to Sam.

“What the hell is that?” he demanded, and Ruby sighed.

“An experiment he’s been working on for a couple of centuries now. He was curious how much demon blood a human would have to drink, and how young they would have to start drinking it, for him to have the maximum influence over them with the minimum effort.” She shrugged. “Basically he wanted to figure out if you could encourage a human to go dark if you just added a little bit of extra special vitamins to the formula at an early enough stage.”

“I have…” Sam felt like he’d been punched in the chest. “I have demon blood in me?”

“How the hell should I know?” Ruby wanted to officially be done with this conversation. This was a rabbit hole Sam didn’t need to be going down. “Have you developed any strange psychic powers? Premonitions? Telekinesis? Mind control?”

“No…”

“Then you’re probably good,” she snapped. He didn’t look convinced, and she sighed. “Look, Sam, if you were one of these kids you’d know it by now. You’d have had dreams that came true, or you’d stop a person’s heart with a touch, or you’d have super strength - real evil villain kind of stuff. Azazel wanted to have people in power positions that he could control so humanity would fall more and more into the pit without him having to get off his ass. He’s got _serious_ delusions of grandeur -  sees himself as the second coming of Lucifer.”

“Lucifer?” Sam’s eyebrows shot up into his hairline. “Like, the fallen angel Lucifer?”

“Well bravo, you did go to Sunday school after all. Starting to see why it’s important to put a bullet between his eyes?”

Sam did. He really did. The thought of what his mother had put him in danger of made his stomach turn. How many of these “special children” were out there? What kinds of positions of power had Azazel put them in? If they were like him, from families who could buy their way out of just about anything, they could reach the highest levels of society and government with relative ease, and he had no idea how any of them could be tracked down and dealt with - presuming they were already going dark.

This was way more than he signed up for.

“Any idea how long the Colt is going to be at this address?” he asked, looking at the slip of paper again without really seeing it.

“It’ll probably be gone by the end of the week, and then I’ll have to track it down again,” she replied. “If I were you I’d get driving. And lose the hex bags, Sam. Otherwise we’re not going to be able to have these nice little chats.”

She was gone without so much as a wave of her hand, leaving Sam trying to figure out how the hell he’d gotten himself into this. The answer was obviously that he hadn’t. His mother had. He was just trying to clean up the mess. But how much of that mess was he really going to be on board for cleaning up? This was supposed to be a straightforward job. Find the Colt. Kill Azazel. What Ruby was talking about could shape up to be the rest of his life if he wasn’t careful. And he didn’t want this to be the rest of his life. He wanted to go back to school, get the law degree he’d been planning on, settle down and have the kind of family he didn’t growing up; birthday parties at pizza places that smelled a little funny, Thanksgiving dinners, Christmas trees, Fourth of July barbecues, trips to Mt. Rushmore and Yellowstone that didn’t involve trying to gank a vengeful spirit, minivans and soccer games and school plays and dance recitals. _Normal_ stuff that hunters didn’t get to have. He wanted all of it, and he wanted it with Dean Winchester, and what Ruby had just dropped at his feet ran counter to all of it. It was going to be really difficult to get to sleep tonight, and he needed to sleep because he had a long drive ahead of him if he was going to make it to Jefferson City to get the Colt before whoever had it had moved on. Regardless of what he decided to do about all the “special children,” he needed to at least take out Azazel to make sure he never went after Dean.

He left Scranton before dawn the next morning and was in Jefferson by 10pm, having stopped only for gas and to grab something for lunch and dinner. The address Ruby had given him was for the Moonlighter Inn, but he opted for the Best Western because it offered free breakfast and had both an indoor and outdoor pool, and a swim to stretch out his cramped legs after driving all day sounded like a good idea. In the morning after grabbing some coffee, fruit, and croissants from the breakfast buffet he changed into the black suit he wore when he wanted to use his Federal agency connections and headed over to the Moonlighter. After flashing his FDH credentials to the receptionist at the desk, he explained that he was tracking a potential skinwalker who had rented room 42 and needed whoever was working the desk to call him the minute the occupant left. The receptionist, a guy in his late twenties with blue eyes, black hair, and a pinched expression who had introduced himself as Jimmy, looked like he might be a problem. He was entirely too interested in hunting as a job and kept asking what he could or should do if the guy came out to give him trouble. It took a lot of convincing on Sam’s part to make Jimmy understand that the best thing he could do was call in the professionals and keep his head down.

Sam found a library near the Moonlighter Inn where he could hunker down and wait for the call from Jimmy while seeing if he could find anything in the ancient history section on the knife Ruby had given him. It was rare there was any quality lore in public libraries, since most people in the country knew if you came across a strange book that talked about weird stuff you should turn it over to the FDH, but it was better than doing nothing. He pulled out his phone about a dozen times to call Dean, not knowing if he’d pick up an unknown number or let it go to voicemail and thought better of it each time. He needed to stay focused on getting the Colt, and that would be almost impossible to do if he heard Dean’s voice. He was distracted enough as it was by missing Dean. He didn’t need to purposely make it worse.

It wasn’t until about four o’clock that Jimmy finally called Sam to tell him the guy in room 42 just left. He said it in a conspiratorial tone and used phrases like “Roger that” and “Ten-four” that had Sam legitimately worried the guy thought this was some kind of crime thriller and he’d spent the day Googling skinwalkers so he could be of service to the Feds. It took a while for Sam to shoo the guy away after he let Sam into the room using his master key.

Sam checked the blinds to make sure they were closed, then clicked the lights on to see what he was dealing with. The room certainly wasn’t what he expected. Whoever this guy was, he was old school. There were photos and newspaper clippings all over the walls with handwritten notes and theories on various cases, all connected by thumbtacks and different lengths of colored yarn. Each case was set on a map of the area the monster appeared to be hunting, presumably so the whole thing could be rolled up quickly and packed away. It was a little low tech for Sam’s liking, but still, it was impressive.

The far wall by the entrance to the bathroom caught his eye, where a strip of paper was pinned at the top that read “Azazel” with a question mark under it. There were strings leading down to two other names he recognized: “Ruby” and “Meg.” There wasn’t much on Ruby, but Meg had a full description written out of what to look for to indicate her presence. Under “Meg” was a line running down to a picture of a woman with a pouf of chin length blonde hair smiling and holding a little blond boy who looked to be about three years old. The boy was wearing a pointed birthday hat and grinning, chocolate cake smeared all over his mouth. The name “Millie” was written under the picture. Sam’s eyes went wide.

Millie was John Winchester’s wife. He had just walked unaware into the motel room of a dangerous hunter who had more than enough reason to shoot him on site after what Sam’s mother had done to John’s family. Forget the Colt, he needed to get out of there five seconds ago.

Just as he was turning to head back out as quickly and quietly as possible he heard the click of the gun in the dark bathroom behind him. He froze, cursing himself, and slowly raised his hands. He prayed he could talk his way out of this and that John hadn’t been drinking, as Sam knew he was wont to do. It sure would suck if he got shot by Dean’s father before they could get around to making all of those babies.

“I hope you’ve got a good reason for being here, son,” growled the angry alpha behind him. “I’d hate for housekeeping to have to clean up a lot of blood.”


	24. You Both Can't Wait to Sacrifice Yourself for This Thing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John and Sam have a conversation.

He should have checked the bathroom. It was stupid for him not to do a full sweep of the room as soon as he got in, but the clippings on the wall had straight-up distracted him. Though it was possible that John had snuck in through the bathroom window - presuming there was a bathroom window. In which case he should have done a sweep of the exterior of the motel to make sure John wasn’t lurking somewhere outside before Jimmy let him in. Either way, Sam had really screwed up.

“You didn’t go anywhere, did you?” he asked.

“Nope. Spotted someone who looked like a Fed going to talk to the front desk this morning. It was easy enough to pay that guy Novak off to tell you I’d headed out. Turn around nice and slow and keep your hands up where I can see them,” John was saying as Sam tried to figure out what to lead with to get himself out of this mess. Mentioning he was head over heels for John’s eldest son didn’t seem to be the way to go, and bringing up the salted and burned remains of his friendship with his youngest son probably wasn’t going to help either. Maybe they could bond over their mutual dislike of his family. He really just needed a segue into their obviously shared goal of finding and killing Azazel. He did as John said and turned around nice and slow. “Mind telling me who you are and what the hell you’re doing in my room?”

“We...uh...we’ve never met but we’ve spoken on the phone,” Sam said, noticing how John reacted to the sound of his voice. “I’m Sam Campbell. It’s nice to meet you sir.”

Well, that didn’t work. John’s eyes flashed red and he was backing Sam up to the wall with the barrel of the gun pressed hard against his forehead. Sam’s alpha wanted to react with force, bristling at the aggression from the older man and certain John could be easily trounced by someone younger and stronger, but Sam pushed the feelings away. He was pretty sure no matter how strained Dean’s relationship was with his father it wouldn’t help Sam’s chances if he left the man seriously maimed.

That was when it hit him. The initial rush of adrenaline at realizing he was in John’s room had caused him to forget for a moment that John had been with Bobby when they spoke and they had both been with Dean. Sam took a quick inhale of the room, searching for Dean’s scent in case he was back to hunting with his father, and swept the place with his eyes for evidence of a second person. There was nothing. Just the one bed was unmade, and there was only one duffel. Dean wasn’t here.

But if Dean wasn’t here, that meant he was alone. And now that he was thinking about it really hard, John had said when they spoke on the phone that Dean had been distressed. Granted, Sam had no context whatsoever for Dean being distressed so it could be about anything - maybe someone keyed the Impala for all he knew - but an omega in distress needed an alpha around to feel safe. So was Dean okay now, or was he with another alpha? Or was he still just with Bobby who, as a beta, wouldn’t be able to provide him with any real sense of calm if something were actually wrong with him? Sam felt a wave of panic at the idea that Dean might be alone and upset about something with no one to soothe him, and then he felt a wave of anger that John wasn’t with his son.

John smelled the conflicting emotions flooding off of Sam and shot him a grim smile. This is the kind of kid he could have liked under other circumstances. He didn’t smell of the arrogance that had rolled off of his grandfather, and if it hadn’t been for the fact that he was related to the bastards that had hurt his son and then lied about it he might have been the kind of alpha John would have nudged Dean towards in times gone by. But he didn’t believe Sam’s story about not knowing what his cousins did for a second, and he certainly couldn’t stomach liars. The kid had better have a damn good reason for having broken into his room or he was at the very least leaving here with a busted jaw.

“I wish I could say the feeling was mutual,” John said after giving Sam a good fifteen seconds to sweat it out. “I hope you’re stopping by to return my letters. Otherwise I can’t think of anything we have to discuss.”

The letters? What letters was he talking about? Sam thought for a minute, masking his confusion, and managed to pull from somewhere deep in his brain that he _had_ talked to John about the letters between him and Mary. Must have been part of that phone call. He decided to just pretend he knew what they’d said to each other. Saying otherwise might make John think he was playing some kind of game, and the man was clearly not in the mood for games.

“Sorry, I don’t carry the shoeboxes around with me,” Sam told him, his voice even. “Didn’t realize this was your room. If you want to give me a forwarding address I’ll be happy to send them along. I don’t have much use for them.”

John didn’t know what it was, but something about the way the kid carried himself made him feel like it would be okay to take a step or two back without getting jumped. It might have been the utter indifference in his tone when he spoke about the letters. He’d expected some kind of outrage that John and Mary’s relationship had ruined his life, but there was none of that. He slowly uncocked the gun and tucked it in the back of his pants.

“Steven tell you anything about your mother and me?” he asked, watching as Sam’s jaw flexed. He might have put the gun away too soon.

Sam was still two steps behind in this conversation. So they’d talked about the letters _and_ his sire. What else was he missing?

“Not a lot,” Sam replied. “She was hung up on you, Samuel didn’t approve, she cut a deal with a demon and ended up dead.”

“So did my wife.”

“Yeah.” Sam glanced over at the case board for Azazel. “He suspected the deal had something to do with that, but he didn’t know for sure. I’m sorry.”

“Sorries ain’t worth much in this line of work, Sam. You’re old enough to have figured that out.” He walked over to look at the picture of his wife and his son, thinking about how different things might have been if he never met Mary. “You talk to Adam recently?”

That was a strange question. Adam and Dean didn’t have the same mom so why would John ask about Adam? Maybe this was some kind of quiz to make sure Sam really was who he said he was, since the "real" Sam Campbell would obviously know those kinds of details.

“Adam and I don’t talk anymore.”

“No?” John raised an eyebrow at him. “Because of Dean?”

Sam wasn’t sure if John knew about Laramie or if he was talking about something else and erred on the side of caution.

“Adam holds a particularly dim view of alphas,” he said. “It was stupid to think we could stay friends long term.”

“Right.” John gave him a thin smile, his eyes hard and assessing. He didn’t know if Dean had called Sam to tell him he was carrying yet and decided he wouldn’t bring that up. “All that stuff you said you came in after.”

What the _hell_ was John talking about? Sam wished to god he could remember that phone call.

“That’s right,” he agreed firmly. “Have _you_ talked to Adam recently?”

“Adam hasn’t taken my phone calls in years,” John said, his voice tinged with regret. “We gonna cut through the bullshit and get down to brass tacks?”

It was interesting after all this time to be in the same room with the alpha who had done so much damage to the two boys who had in so many ways shaped Sam’s world since he was six years old. Despite the grey at his temples and in his beard he certainly didn’t look like anyone’s father. There was a set to his jaw and a lack of warmth in his eyes that didn’t compute when Sam thought of a dad. Not that he had anything to compare it to - all he had was a sire, and one who had been willfully absent his entire life. But still, all those years he’d imagined what his father would have been like before being bitterly disappointed he’d pictured someone who openly cared for his offspring. He couldn’t imagine John ever looking like that. He must have really been something in his heyday with that steely gaze and the confident way he held a weapon, but it made no sense that he would have kept two boys with him that would have obviously cramped his lifestyle instead of packing Dean off to relatives ( _unless there just weren’t any_ ) and leaving Adam with his mom. Sam could respect the man’s straightforward nature, but he couldn’t respect much else about him.

“An acquaintance of mine tipped me off to the location of a gun that I need to gank the demon that killed my girlfriend,” he said simply, and held his arms up to indicate the room. “She didn’t bother to mention whose room it was.”

“An acquaintance? Care to be any more specific than that?”

“Not really.”

“This girlfriend. Did you love her?”

“At the time.”

John smiled to himself. He knew how that felt.

“But it’s not like she was the love of your life?”

Dean sprang into Sam’s mind at the question; the way his fingertips felt as they ghosted over Sam’s chest, his teeth nipping at Sam’s earlobe, the fullness of his lower lip, the curve of his neck from his shoulder up to behind his ear, where his scent was strongest. Sam pushed down the growing feeling of want that was spreading through his chest and swallowed the remorse about Jess. He told himself that he shouldn’t be ashamed just because she had never made his heart flip when they were in the same room the way the simple memory of Dean could, but clinging to shame was one of his trademarks. He would always feel guilty about her death, but he knew he needed to stop feeling bad about having moved on.

“No.”

“So why risk going after a demon as high up the ladder as Azazel?”

John was genuinely curious. He’d started this hunt seeking vengeance for his wife, and now he was locked into it so he could get vengeance for his son as well. But as far as he could tell this kid had his whole life ahead of him, had access to a cozy trust fund, and stood to inherit an awful lot of money as soon as Samuel shuffled off his mortal coil. It seemed stupid to go up against a Prince of Hell for a girl he’d loved “at the time.” Had Sam made the same kind of deal John had with this acquaintance he’d mentioned?

Sam looked at John for a long time, debating how much he should tell him. Everything he’d heard from the Winchester boys led him to believe that John was pretty black and white in his thinking. If he told John about the “special children” he couldn’t be sure whether the man would simply take him at his word that there wasn’t anything demonic about him or if he’d see him as just another monster. If word spread around the community that there was something wrong with Sam he could find himself on the bad end of a hunt pretty quickly. Still, he’d learned the hard way where lying got you. He wasn’t eager to repeat the mistakes he’d made with Dean when it came to Dean’s father.

“According to my fa - my sire,” he began, choosing his words very carefully, “you weren’t the only part of my mother’s deal. I was too.”

He could smell the spike of distrust and wariness in John’s scent, and didn’t miss how he moved his hand towards the back of his waistband where he’d tucked the gun.

“Meaning?” John asked evenly, his eyes trained on the young alpha.

“He was hoping to infect me with his blood.” Something flashed through John’s eyes that was so quick Sam couldn’t identify what it was before it was gone. “My mom walked in and stopped him. Or interrupted him, at least. That’s why he killed her.”

“So which was it?” John was definitely weighing whether or not he could get a head shot off before Sam closed the distance between the two of them and wrestled him to the floor. “Stopped or interrupted?”

Sam shrugged, hoping if he appeared nonthreatening it would help diffuse the situation. He could scent that John’s alpha was starting to amp up again and he really didn’t feel like getting shot today.

“I don’t know,” he said. “But apparently if he’d managed to dose me I’d have noticed some of the effects by now, and I haven’t lifted a car off of anyone recently or started bending spoons with my mind.”

“You think this is funny, son?”

John was about three seconds away from drawing his gun and blowing this kid’s head off. Jesus, if he _did_ have demon blood in him what did that mean for Dean’s baby? Would the pup be born corrupted? How was he going to break this news to Dean, especially when he’d been so damned fragile when John left? Would Dean even listen to him? He couldn’t tell Sam anything about the baby if there was even a chance that he was going to turn into a demon’s bitch one day.

“No, I don’t,” Sam said flatly. “I don’t think anything about this is funny. Two years ago I was in my sophomore year at Stanford. I had a plan for my future, friends, a girlfriend who had introduced me to her parents, a _life_ away from sirens and poltergeists and Jersey devils, and it was a great big middle fucking finger to my grandfather for deciding when I was four years old that I was going to follow in his footsteps and become a hunter. I was _out_ of this life and then this yellow-eyed bastard torches my girlfriend’s dorm room with her in it, apparently to drag me back in because - thanks to my mom - he has unfinished business with me.” He stared at John, hard. He was flush with anger after laying it all out like that. He’d always resented his grandfather for the way he’d run Sam’s life, never giving him any choice over which path to take, and knowing that his mother had taken it one step further and tied him to a demon was really too much. He drew in a deep breath to try to push the fury away before his alpha took over and beat John into unconsciousness so he could toss the room and find the Colt. “I want out of this life, Mr. Winchester. Maybe you can live this way, but I can’t.” He shook his head, looking over at the picture of Dean and his mom on the Azazel board. “That’s not true. I can. I just don’t want to.  I shouldn’t have to just for having a shitty omega for a mom. I didn’t ask for that and it’s not my fault.” He looked back at John, who was listening closely to what he was saying. “I want to have a house and a family and a regular nine-to-five job where I don’t have to worry all the time that I’m going to get eaten or eviscerated. I can’t get out of this life with something like Azazel hanging over my head. That’s why I want to kill the bastard.”

The older alpha regarded him thoughtfully for quite a while, trying to gauge his sincerity. That little speech seemed awfully well rehearsed, but it was possible the kid had just spent a lot of time thinking about these things. He understood the impulse to want to get out of the life. It was traumatic and awful and created a lot of alcoholics, drug addicts, and mental institution residents out of the hunters who didn’t die young. Still…

“No one ever really gets out of the life, Sam.”

They were both startled to the point of jumping when Sam’s cell phone went off. John drew his gun on instinct when Sam reached for it, but the young alpha held his hands up again quickly and kept himself bullet hole-free for the time being. He quirked an eyebrow in question at John and after getting a quick nod fished the phone out of his inside jacket pocket. His brow furrowed when he saw the caller ID.

“Who is it?” John asked.

“My grandfather,” Sam said, a scowl turning the corners of his mouth down. “He never calls unless it’s something important. I have to take this.” John cocked the hammer of the gun again as the call went to voicemail. Sam shot a glare at Dean’s father as the phone began to ring again. “He’s just going to keep calling, and if I don’t answer he’s going to put a track on my phone. I’m serious. Samuel is a paranoid control freak.”

John considered his options as the phone range through to voicemail again and then started ringing for a third time.

“Fine. But no tricks.”

Sam huffed out an exasperated grunt.

“You think I can work ‘John Winchester has me at gunpoint’ naturally into conversation?” He pressed the green button and held up a hand to keep John quiet. “What can I do for you Samuel?”

“ _Sam_! _Thank god_! _I was starting to think something had happened to you_!”

Samuel sounded sincerely and uncharacteristically frightened. This was not like him. His entire life Samuel had retained an air of detachment and disinterest when it came to his grandson. This was quite possibly the most emotion Sam had ever heard in his voice. It was unnerving.

“Yeah…” he said warily. “I’m fine. Was just...in the bathroom. Couldn’t get to the phone.”

“ _Jesus Sam, I need you to come home as soon as possible._ ”

“Home?” Sam asked, his eyebrows shooting up. Sam legitimately couldn’t remember the last time he had been “home” to know where Samuel was even talking about.

“ _The family compound in Lawrence. I don’t care where you are or what you’re doing. I want you to drop it and get there now. I’m heading out on a plane in one hour._ ”

“I…” Sam couldn’t help suppress a laugh. “I’m not coming ‘home’ to Lawrence.”

“ _Goddammit Sam, the head of the FDH just came into my office. Your cousins are dead_!”

Samuel had been genuinely rattled by this news, which was a surprise since Sam was under the distinct impression that death no longer affected him. He looked over at John, who still calmly had the gun trained on him.

“Which cousins?” he asked. “I’ve got a bunch.”

“ _Tyler, Mark, and Christian_.” Now Sam was really looking at John and trying to keep the fear out of his scent. “ _You know I don’t keep too close tabs on them but I haven’t heard from them in a while so I thought I’d better send out some feelers. God...Sam…_ ” It sounded suspiciously like Samuel was crying, but that couldn’t be happening because his grandfather was a cyborg incapable of human emotion. “ _Something turned them inside out_!”

“What...what do you mean?”

“ _I mean inside out, Sam_! _Everything that should have been on the inside was on the outside_! _They’d been that way for a couple of weeks_.” Sam thought he might be sick at the visual. It wasn’t that he thought his cousins deserved better. It just sounded like a disgusting scene for some poor unsuspecting person to come across. “ _You need to come home until we find out what did it. It could be after all of us_.”

Sam may not have known what did it, but for some reason he was sure he knew who had it done. He turned slightly to peer at John out of the corner of his eye instead of head on. The lack of expression in the man’s face was starting to unnerve him. How had John known about his cousins? Had Adam told him? He said he hadn’t talked to Adam in years. Was that just some kind of ruse? Dean couldn’t possibly have told him. Dean didn’t remember. Unless he _had_. But if he had, John certainly wouldn’t be here right now, he’d be back at Bobby’s or wherever Dean was by now making sure he felt secure. No alpha would ever leave an omega going through something like what Dean would be going through if he had remembered. So he could rule out Dean in the conservatory with the candlestick on his “Clue” scorecard in trying to solve this mystery, but he was still sure John was whodunnit.

“If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not,” he said at last. “Those three were never very good at the job. Probably just got in over their heads with something.”

“ _Sam this is serious. I want you home right now_!”

“Can’t, Samuel,” Sam said firmly. “I’m in the middle of a hunt.”

“ _Sam_!”

“I gotta go. Bye.”

“ _Sam_!”

Sam clicked the call off then walked to the bathroom, acutely aware of John at his back, and tossed the cell into the toilet. He’d have to pick up a burner phone so his grandfather couldn’t track him. He should ditch the Hummer, too. Dammit, he had that thing set up just the way he wanted.

“Trouble back at the ranch?” John asked evenly.

“Apparently some of my cousins have died a gruesome and untimely death,” Sam replied. “I’m sure you don’t know them. Mark, Tyler, and Christian. They were quite a bit below your skill level, you wouldn’t have worked any jobs with them to be able to pick them out of a crowd.”

“You don’t say?” John sounded only half interested. “That’s a damn shame. Real sorry to hear it. My condolences.”

Sam turned around to lean against the sink and try to read John, but it was impossible. The guy really was good.

“Thanks. It couldn’t have happened to more worthy individuals.”

It was a few more seconds before John let a smile crack his face and lowered the gun. It was a good thing too, since Sam was just about to break out into a cold sweat. John headed out of the bathroom and after a minute Sam felt safe to follow.

“You’re gonna have a hard time stayin’ off the radar of someone like your grandfather,” John said as he started to pull the case boards down off the wall to neatly roll them up for transport. “All that money buys you a lot of eyes and ears.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Sam said. “I’m pretty good at disappearing. I aced all the covert ops classes at Actaeon.”

“Yeah?”

John stopped and regarded him with something like interest. Sam hesitated for a moment as an idea took hold, before taking a step towards the older hunter. This might be a very good plan if Sam could convince John of it.

“Yeah. I was thinking...being that we’re after the same thing…”

“I’m gonna stop you there,” John cut in. “I don’t need a partner, and I’m not particularly interested in having a kid tag along that I’m just gonna need to keep from getting killed.”

That made Sam’s alpha bristle. He didn’t do anything to push the flash of anger down this time.

“I’m good, John,” he said firmly. “I’m damn good. Ask Adam or Dean if you don’t believe me.”

John sighed. He should have seen this coming.

“Look, Sam, I don’t play well with others,” he said tiredly.

“I don’t either, but we want the same thing and we’ll get it quicker if we work together.” Sam could see John considering it, the wheels turning in his head as he weighed the pros and cons and pushed forward. “It makes sense. You know it does. Whoever goes after this thing is going to need backup. It’s obvious you tend to do things the traditional way, clipping things out of newspapers, but I’m really good with computers. We can double up on the research and find him twice as fast. I’ve even got Ash running a scan for demonic activity.”

“Ash?” John looked skeptical. “Roadhouse Ash? Business in the front, party in the back?”

“Ash went to MIT,” Sam said. “He’s a certified genius. His IQ is somewhere in the one eighties.”

“I’m not exactly the most welcome man at the Roadhouse these days,” John told him. “If I showed my face I’m pretty sure Ellen would fill it full of buckshot.”

“Then clearly you need me to be a go-between,” Sam said earnestly. He knew he could get John to see the logic behind this if he could just get him over the fact that Sam’s last name was Campbell. “And we wouldn’t be going up against Azazel with just the Colt. My...acquaintance gave me a knife that kills demons. She said it’ll take out anyone low level that Azazel would have surrounded himself with.”

“She did, huh?” That definitely had John’s interest piqued. A demon killing knife could come in very handy if Crowley tried to change the terms of their arrangement. “You had a chance to try it out yet?”

“No, but I know a demon I want to try it out on,” Sam told him. “Her name’s Meg. You’ve got a bunch of notes about her on your wall.”

John nodded bitterly.

“She’s the bitch who killed my wife.”

“She’s been following me around slitting people’s throats on every job I’ve worked recently.” He thought of Dolores, who had helped him take care of Dean. He may not have the same animus towards this Meg that John held, but he definitely had reason to want her dead. “I’ve been doing some research and I think that’s how demons communicate with each other - through spellwork involving lots of blood. I think she’s been telling Azazel where I am. I’ve been carrying around a hex bag for a couple of weeks to dodge them, but if I got rid of it…”

“He’d be able to find you again.”

“We could trap him.”

Sam had him all but convinced, he could see it. It paid sometimes to be a stubborn son of a bitch. John took a moment to pace and think it all through, running a hand through his hair as he considered this plan. It did have an awful lot of advantages. Whatever program Ash was running would undoubtedly be quicker than combing through newspaper and waiting for tips to come in from the community or checking the FDH feed constantly in the hope of spotting something helpful. It _would_ be good to have someone watching his back, and if Sam really did have a demon killing blade that would come in damn handy. It would also give him a chance to determine whether Azazel had managed to do anything to Sam that would make him a threat to civilians or to Dean, plus it wouldn’t hurt to get to know his grandchild’s sire and keep an eye on him if he did turn out to be dangerous.

After a solid five minutes of thinking and pacing, John finally looked at Sam and said, “All right. Grab your gear. You’re riding with me.”

Sam looked practically giddy at the decision, throwing John a huge grin that showed deep dimples. He looked like he was about twelve. Maybe this was a mistake.

“It’ll just take me a couple of minutes,” he said, heading for the door.

“All right. We need to get you a prepaid phone and get rid of your car so Samuel can’t find us.”

“I was already planning on it.

“Good. And Sam?”

The young hunter looked back at him from the doorway, excitement still lighting his face at the thought that he might actually be able to close this chapter of his life very soon and open a whole new book with his omega.

“Yeah?” he asked.

“While we’re figuring out how to trap Azazel, we kill as many bad things as we can,” John told him firmly.

The bright smile lit up Sam’s face again.

“Deal,” he said without hesitation, and was gone.


	25. So, This Job as Glamorous as You Thought it Would Be?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean gets back out in the field.

It had been almost two full months since Dean had gone to visit Adam and Bobby was worried sick about him. He’d asked what had happened when Dean got home, but Dean had been very tight lipped about the whole thing and Bobby hadn’t wanted to pry. He could surmise how things went anyway because of the camcorder. Dean had brought it back with him, probably figuring Adam didn’t need to see the tape again, and Bobby watched out the kitchen window as Dean set it on the trunk of a wreck he’d been planning to break apart for scrap and then took a crowbar to it. The first hit smashed it thoroughly, but Dean just kept swinging. He swung and swung and swung, little pained grunts escaping him, demolishing it to bits and punching a hole through the metal of the trunk lid before swinging around to smash a window in another car and then dropping the crowbar to the ground, exhausted and panting. Bobby didn’t count, but if someone put a gun to his head and told him to guess, he’d say Dean must’ve swung that crowbar close to twenty times. It went a long way towards illuminating for the old hunter how poorly his boy was doing.

His second prenatal appointment was about a week after that and Bobby asked hesitatingly about strain and how much Dean should be helping out with around the yard. It was going to be another few weeks before they’d be able to hear the baby’s heartbeat to make sure it was okay, and while Dean was not what you might call enthused about his condition Bobby thought things might be far worse if anything happened to the kid because Dean was going around beating up cars with crowbars. His anxiety level was already way too high, he wasn’t eating well, and even though he was tired all the time he barely slept. Jody and Dr. Milton both stressed the importance of getting the alpha involved as soon as possible, but one of the few things Bobby had been able to accurately determine was that Dean was pissed off at Sam and vacillated between wondering if they might be able to find him through the FDH database to ask him to come to his next appointment and hoping he was somewhere being a kitsune’s lunch. And his opinion was even harsher when it came to Adam. As far as Dean was concerned, he didn’t have a brother, and there was no wavering on that point. Adam became person non grata in the house pretty immediately after Dean’s return from Durham, and it was a point Bobby didn’t want to press.

Benny had desperately wanted Dean to come out and stay with him and Lisa after Dean had Bobby call him on the speaker phone and tell him what was going on so that Dean wouldn’t have to talk about anything he couldn’t just yet. For the first time he was okay with Bobby coming clean about the whole sordid mess - the rape, the pregnancy, Sam, Adam - and for a while there Bobby had thought an angry alpha was going to drive out from Indiana and bust down his door. But Lisa had just had a baby, and Dean staunchly refused to impose. He told Benny that if he dared leave his mate to come rescue his stupid ass from the stupid mess he’d gotten himself into, Dean wouldn’t be at Bobby’s house when he got there and he wouldn’t call Benny again until after he needed advice on changing a diaper. Benny had finally backed down, but insisted Dean was coming out sometime between Christmas and New Year’s even if Benny had to come out and roll him to Indiana, and then he’d point blank told Dean what everyone else had said: no matter how badly the guy had screwed up, Dean needed to call Sam.

Dean didn’t, though, and not just because Sam had changed his number. Halloween came and went, as did Thanksgiving, and he seemed to take one step forward and two steps back the whole time. He was able to leave the house now, sometimes by himself, without being incapacitated by a panic attack, but only with a great deal of effort and a whole lot of preparation. The new scent blockers Bobby had found for him did a lot to move Dean towards that end. They were a spray that he could apply not only to his skin but his clothes as well for a double layer of scentless-ness and they worked extremely well. Between them and the collection of hoodies he’d acquired to hide his neck and the tiny pup pouch he was starting to sport he felt safe enough to pass among society for brief periods of time. Well, that and the Bowie knife that now never left him. Bobby had mentioned it once and Dean had just shrugged and said he was a fan before singing a couple of bars of _Life on Mars_. When Bobby pointed out to the idjit that the two “Bowies” were pronounced different Dean just sang louder. It made the beta glad that Dean was trying to remember how to joke around - his sense of humor had always been one of his best defense mechanisms against the harshness of the world - but he didn’t think walking into McDonald’s with a fourteen inch knife tucked under his shirt to buy an apple pie and chocolate shake was exactly a good thing.

Bobby was shocked out of his socks when Adam called at the beginning of December and begged to speak with Dean. Up to that point the boy had had the good sense to give his brother a very wide berth, but something had happened and he needed Dean’s help. It turned out that Adam had managed to track down his mother, and they’d been corresponding and talking on the phone for about a month. She still lived in Minnesota, where she’d met John and had Adam, and Adam had been planning to spend the winter break with her so they could get to know each other. The last time he’d spoken to her was over a week ago, and while he thought it was possible she had gotten cold feet and was just trying to ditch him he knew the hospital where she worked and had called to check on her. She hadn’t shown up to work in all that time. They’d even opened a missing person’s case with the authorities but the police had found literally nothing at her house except her car in the driveway. There were no signs of forced entry or a struggle, or that she’d done anything other than pack a bag and walk out. It was like she had just vanished. Adam had been out of the life so long that he was rusty and had no pull with the FDH to get another hunter with the agency to look into it. He couldn’t even get it on the jobs board. He knew he had no right to ask, but he wanted to know if Dean could meet him there to check it out. He promised not to try to do any brotherly-type stuff and that it would be strictly business; just a hunt like they used to go on.

Bobby was even more shocked when Dean agreed to meet Adam at his mother’s house to see if he could figure out what had happened. He didn’t want to point out that at about four months pregnant he shouldn’t be going off to hunt anything more dangerous than a new pair of shoes that wouldn't pinch his growing feet, but Dean had promised if it looked like anything serious he would call in someone more equipped to handle it. He still hadn’t told Adam about his “condition” and didn’t see any reason he would need to anytime soon. It wasn’t like the two of them were brothers anymore.

If Dean had been honest he’d been desperate to get out of Bobby’s house, but he’d forgotten how to do so. He hadn’t been in one place so long by choice since getting dropped off at Actaeon and he was getting antsy. It wasn’t anything having to do with Bobby, either. He was just feeling a creeping sense of agoraphobia that he was sure was only going to get worse as he got bigger and less easily mobile and really _couldn’t_ go anywhere by himself because he was the size of a house and didn’t fit behind the wheel of the Impala anymore. He had been trying desperately to regain his sense of confidence and autonomy and had been completely unsuccessful in doing so. This might be the last chance he had to prove to himself that he would be okay to venture out into the world on his own before having to worry about going places laden down by diaper bags and a tiny person who was completely dependent on him for their very survival. He needed to get his anxiety under control before he ended up so entrenched in his fear of “what if”s that he became a shut in.

“You sure about this?” Bobby asked, watching as Dean, bundled in a black wool coat over several layers of shirts, a thick scarf tied around his neck, loaded up the Impala with his gear in the dropping December temperatures. “I can always come with if you’ve changed your mind.”

“I’m good,” Dean replied, even though he wasn’t. “You know what they say - go big or go home.”

“Got your scent blockers?”

“Whole duffel full of them.”

“Okay. Call me when you get there.”

“Yes mom.”

He flashed Bobby a shaky smile, got into his car, and pulled away as a light snow began to fall.

It was only about a two hour drive up to Windom where he booked a room at the Blue Lamplighter Motel and waited for Adam to arrive after shooting him a text. Adam had opted for flying into Minneapolis and then driving down, so he’d be there before midnight. Dean thought of getting two rooms so the kid wouldn’t get the idea that this was any sort of bonding exercise, but his bank account was running on the low side. The government subsidized expectant omegas regardless of their mating status in an effort to ensure healthy pups so he had regular money coming in but not a ton. He needed to start thinking towards saving up for things like onesies and burp cloths, though he suspected Lisa and Benny would shove boxes full of stuff at him as Elizabeth outgrew things and they needed to make space for new, bigger clothes.

He took the hours he had between when he arrived at the Lamplighter and when Adam got there to call Bobby, then break out the packet of wipes he’d packed and scrub down every surface in the room before he dared to unpack any of this things. The aversion he’d always held towards cheap motel rooms was amped up now, as his sense of smell was ever sharper and his need for cleanliness bordered on obsessive-compulsive. Even high end hotel rooms were never really clean. He wished he’d remembered to pack his slippers. There was no way he’d be able to take his socks off to walk from the bed to the bathroom, there was no way he could take the socks home to be washed after they’d come in contact with a motel room floor, and there was no way he could keep his shoes on like he would have done under other circumstances because then he’d just be tracking the bacteria from the ground outside all over the room. God this had been a terrible idea.

Feeling that he’d gotten enough germs wiped off that he could sit at the little table by the window with his laptop and do some research, he plunked himself down and started looking into the local news. After only a half hour or so his stomach rumbled and demanded he fill it. He’d stopped on the road to buy himself food and went to grab it from the mini fridge. It was ridiculous how hungry he was these days. He thought he’d eaten a lot before but now he wanted to eat all the time, and he was exceptionally cranky when there was no food nearby for him to stuff in his face. Apparently growing a kid took at least as much energy as ganking a lamia.

It made you tired, too. He’d read in a couple of places that the first three months were the worst, and they’d certainly been for him with feeling constantly nauseated but never enough to throw up. That created an interesting dichotomy with the persistent hunger where he was always hungry but food was too gross to actually eat. All the pamphlets he’d read from the clinic said he should have started getting an energy burst around week fourteen but he was past that by a couple of weeks now and still fucking exhausted most of the time. He supposed that could be put down to his emotional state, since he knew he was hovering dangerously close to the edge of depression, and while normally he’d just drink his way through until it got better or he pickled his liver that was obviously not an option now. Jody Mills was still pestering him to attend therapy to help deal with everything on his plate, but while he may certainly be suffering the after effects of the assault it was just the latest in a long string of traumas he’d dealt with over the course of his young life. If he started picking at the scabs now he wasn’t sure there’d be any amount of therapy that would stanch the eventual bleeding.

He woke with a start and grabbed for his gun when he heard the knock on the motel room door a few hours after he’d sat down with the laptop and the ham and cheese sandwich he’d bought from a corner store. He’d fallen asleep on the table, leaving behind a pool of saliva where his face had been. He wiped at his chin with the back of his hand, stood and stretched out his back ( _which had not appreciated the way he’d been leaning over the table_ ), and went over with his gun cocked to check through the peephole and see who it was. It was Adam, of course, huddling into his jacket and shivering in the snow. Dean put the gun away and opened the door for him, moving back to the table as he came in.

“Hey Dean,” he said quietly, moving into the room just far enough to close the door behind him and then stopping as if waiting to be instructed what to do.

“So, your mom’s not the only one missing,” Dean replied, not looking up from the laptop. “There’s a bartender named Joe Barton who vanished a day or two before. We can go check out your mom’s house tomorrow and then we’ll go interview the people at the bar.”

“The cops have already been over her house,” Adam said. “They didn’t find anything.”

“Yeah, well, they don’t have my eyes,” Dean stated flatly, then got up and went to the bathroom to brush his teeth, carefully making sure he never looked at Adam. “Get unpacked and get to bed. We’re going to start early tomorrow.”

“Okay,” was all Adam got out before Dean closed the bathroom door in his face.

Dean’s planned “early start” turned out to be eleven o’clock, when Adam finally got up the nerve to go and wake him after getting up around eight, going to grab them breakfast, and then coming back and watching a couple of hours of morning television. His gentle shake of his brother’s shoulder got him a gun in the face as Dean reached under his pillow when he woke with a start and whipped around with wide eyes. Adam was quick to back off and after a couple of tense seconds Dean put the gun down.

“...time is it?” he asked blearily, rubbing at his eyes with the back of his hands as he yawned.

“Eleven.”

“Eleven?” Dean looked up at him with huge, angry green eyes. He sprang off the bed and headed for the shower. “Why didn’t you wake me? Is that food?” He opened the bag from Hardee’s that sat on the top of the mini fridge, took a whiff, and immediately recoiled. “God, not bacon.”

“What?” Adam actually laughed a little. “You love bacon.”

“Yeah, well, not anymore,” Dean said grimly. It wasn’t an exaggeration to say that one of the worst moments of the last few months was coming down for breakfast at Bobby’s one morning and discovering he could no longer tolerate the smell of bacon. It turned his stomach every time. “I’m gonna grab a quick shower and then we’ll go.”

“I got you coffee, too,” Adam offered, but Dean simply grabbed clothes from the dresser in the room and tossed back over his shoulder, “No coffee, I’m good. We gotta get going.”

Adam was utterly baffled but didn’t dare press the matter further. Dean had always been a relatively early riser from years at Actaeon where he could get in an extra hand-to-hand training session before classes and he considered bacon and coffee two of the major food groups. To see him get up late and then turn down both made him very worried that Dean wasn’t handling the whole graduation party tape very well, but it was obviously not a subject he was able to broach with him if he wanted to keep all of his teeth.

Dean’s quick shower took closer to twenty minutes, due mainly to how thoroughly he was dousing himself and his clothing with scent blockers. It was enough that even Adam with his beta nose could detect the cloud of chemicals when he came out. He was dressed similarly to the way he had been when he visited in Durham; lots of layers under a hoodie. Adam noticed his face looked a little fuller and that his pants were just a bit on the tight side. He’d never known Dean to retain weight from his terrible diet and drinking habits because he worked off so much energy hunting. Why did he look like this? Was he just sitting around drinking and eating at Bobby’s house? Adam desperately wanted to know what was going on but didn’t dare ask.

It was about a fifteen minute drive to Adam’s mother’s house, and with the alternate side parking they had to go up around the corner to find a spot and then backtrack in the chilly Minnesota morning ( _mid-morning_? _early afternoon_?). It was a nice house with a large front porch and a heavy front door which was, of course, locked. Dean gave Adam a little head shake so he would block Dean from view of the street while he got out his lockpick kit to let them in. It only took a couple of pokes and twists before the door popped open and they hurried in.

The electricity was still working so they could flip on the lights as they needed and split up to search the rooms. Dean knew they probably should have stuck together, but being in Adam’s presence was a hell of a lot harder than he thought it would be. He was still so consumed with anger at the lies and giving Adam the silent treatment wasn’t nearly as cathartic as he had expected it would be. Splitting up seemed to be the only possible option to keep from getting into a fistfight with him, and he was very much not in any condition to be getting into fistfights.

There was nothing on the ground floor so they met back at the front door and headed upstairs, going methodically through each of the bedrooms. In what was obviously Adam’s mom’s bedroom Dean found his first clue. There were scratches on the floor just at the edge of the bed that trailed underneath it. It also looked like there were marks on the floor where something had been shoved up against the door. Dean called for his brother and Adam came at a run.

“What is it?” he asked, his heart rate spiking with fear. He had been hoping Dean wouldn’t find anything and they could accept that the cops were right. Dean finding something meant odds were good a very bad thing had happened to his mother.

“Those look like scratch marks to you?” Dean said, indicating the floor.

Adam squatted down to check it out. The color drained from his face.

“Yeah,” he said, and got down on his side to look under the bed. “There’s a big grate under here. Must be a cold air return.”

“All right, move the bed,” Dean ordered, and Adam rolled onto his back to look up at him with large, confused eyes. Dean handwaved to try to dismiss it. “I...hurt my back at Bobby’s last week and I don’t wanna aggravate it in case I have to kill something, okay?”

That seemed plausible enough to Adam, but was still very weird because it was just a queen bed. With the mattress, box spring and frame it couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred and twenty pounds. Dean could slide that aside in his sleep. Still, he wasn’t going to say anything and shoved the bed away so they could get at the vent and pull it up.

Dean took a second to shine his light down and check for immediate threats. Six months ago he wouldn’t have thought twice about shimmying down there, much as it would have sucked, but now he was pretty sure crawling around on his belly in the floor ducts was a big no-no. He surveyed everything he could, then stood up and declared, “Well, down you go.”

Okay, this was _very_ much not like Dean.

“What?” Adam asked. “You want me to go down there?”

“Yep,” Dean replied. “Don’t like the feeling of being confined.”

“Since when?” Adam demanded, and Dean fixed him with a hard stare.

“Since recently,” he snapped, and Adam backed right down. This was probably some sort of punishment for lying to Dean, and Adam knew he deserved it so he didn’t argue anymore. Dean pulled his gun out of the back of his pants and handed it over. “Here, take this down with you just in case.”

“‘Kay,” Adam said, and crawled head first into the ductwork.

He had only made one or two turns through the tight junctions of the ductwork with the gun and a flashlight before he came across a grizzly sight. Blood was splattered all over the ducts and there were large chunks of flesh everywhere, some of it with hair still attached. Adam fought back the urge to vomit and backed out of the ductwork as quickly as he could.

To his surprise, Dean found himself actually concerned at how pale Adam looked when he scrambled out and went to stumble to the bed. The kid was shaking like a leaf, had dropped the flashlight, and barely had a hold on the gun. Years of big brother instincts overrode his anger and he hurried over to put a hand on Adam’s shoulder and get him to look up.

“Hey,” he said, giving him a little shake. “What is it? Talk to me?”

“Blood,” Adam told him, sucking in giant breaths of air to try to get the smell out of his nostrils. “Lots of blood. Some hair and skin.” He grew even paler, looking at the floor. “So much for meeting my mom, I guess.”

“Sorry,” Dean said quietly, then whipped out his phone to call the FDH. “Looks like this officially became a hunt. I’m gonna call it in real quick.”

“What?” Adam was getting to his feet, looking confused. “You’re going to call it in instead of tracking down whatever did this and killing it?”

Shit. How was he going to get out of this without just being a total dick? He had every right to be a total dick of course, but this was his kid brother’s _mom_ and no matter how mad he was he couldn’t be a dick about someone’s almost-certainly-dead mom.

“Adam, we have no idea what this could be,” he responded, trying to sound reasonable. “All we know is it’s something that eats people, which doesn’t narrow down the list very much. There’s just the two of us, and you’re rusty as hell.”

“I’m not _that_ rusty,” Adam snapped, and Dean gave him an irritated look.

“Really?” he asked. “Did you even pack a gun?”

“I...I don’t have a gun anymore,” Adam admitted sheepishly.

“I rest my case. We’re calling in backup on this. Someone else can climb around the ducts and figure this out. It’s not worth us getting killed over.”

Dean was out of the bedroom already and halfway to the stairs. Adam was starting to wonder if he was dealing with a shifter, because whoever this guy was did not sound like his big, badass hunter brother at all. He grabbed Dean’s arm and almost got punched.

“Dean,” he said when his brother dropped the arm he had cocked back. “This is my _mom_. I may not have known her, but I _wanted_ to. Please. Help me figure out what’s going on here.”

Dammit, Adam had turned on the Big Blue Eyes. Dean would have thought he’d be immune to them with how fucked up their relationship was right now, but he suddenly couldn’t say no to the kid. It wasn’t fair that Adam could still wrap him around his finger with just a look when his actions had done so much damage to their ability to relate to each other as brothers. This was already crossing over into territory where he knew he should be calling in someone else to take care of it, but Adam had those stupid pleading eyes and Dean caved, at least for the moment.

“Fine,” he sighed. “We’ll go talk to the people who know the bartender and do some more research into the area, but I mean it Adam. If it turns out that this is anything bigger than a really hungry dog we’re getting back up. I’m too pretty to get eaten this week.”

He turned on his heel and started downstairs, Adam right behind him. They switched off the lights in the house and came out on the front porch to lock it up before heading out. He turned the collar of his coat up against the wind, which was picking up, and had glanced back to make sure Adam was still behind him when he smelled it.

Gunpowder, books, well worn leather, and green tea.

Followed immediately by gun oil, sandalwood, tar, and dirt roads.

He whirled around in time to see Sam and his dad coming out of the house across the street, thanking the woman at the door whom they had clearly been interviewing since they both wore their Fed suits. They hadn’t spotted or scented him yet because of the blockers, so he popped the collar of his coat higher and took off down the porch steps at as quick of a walk as he could without running or attracting attention to himself. He thought he was going to make it away clean, but then Adam, who could not smell the two alphas across the street and was looking to where his brother was, called from the porch in confusion, “Dean?”

He had made it about halfway up the block, so Adam had to call loudly after him. He tried not to turn to look, but couldn’t stop himself. He needed to know if he’d been spotted.

He had. Sam and his dad were staring right at him from across the street. Both looked stunned to see him, and he started backwards at a frantic pace as Sam started to move, leaping down the full length of the porch stairs. Dean didn’t hesitate, he turned and ran for the Impala on his super fast bow legs, trying not to slip and digging his keys out of his pocket as he went.

“Dean!”

He glanced back at the sound of Sam’s voice in time to see him almost get hit by a car. His dad was hurrying across the street to intercept Adam, who was taking off after Sam and Dean with a furious look on his face. Dean didn’t look back again but went for his car with everything he had. Lisa’s words rang in his ears, “ _He’d have been able to smell the change in your scent._ ” He wasn’t ready for this discussion. He had made it to the driver’s side door, gasping and shaking and had just gotten it unlocked when he felt Sam’s huge hands on his shoulders and he found himself being spun around against the car window.

He didn’t know what he expected, but it certainly wasn’t the clear scent of joy that was flooding off of Sam as he straightened Dean’s coat and ran his hands down Dean’s face and neck, grinning at him with his dark wavy hair growing increasingly plastered down on his head by the snow, white fluffy flakes catching on his eyelashes. It took everything Dean had not to lean into Sam’s touch.

“Dean!” he exclaimed with a huge smile, trying to catch his breath. “Why’d you run?”

“Heya Sammy,” Dean responded weakly, at which point the wind picked up again and Sam caught a whiff of him.

Dean watched the confusion wash over Sam’s face as his nostrils flared and he tried to pick out the change in Dean’s scent. It was hard with all the blockers, but the tumblers began to click into their slots, and a few seconds later one of those huge hands was on the side of Dean’s face, gently holding him in place while Sam’s other arm went around Dean’s back to keep him still so Sam could push aside the scarf and press his face to Dean’s neck to breathe in deeply. Dean whimpered slightly, pinned between the enormous alpha and the car, feeling Sam’s grip on his back tighten and Sam’s fingers slide into his hair. His heart thrummed as Sam’s scent washed over him, enveloping him in a cloud of warmth and protection, and then Sam’s mouth was on his, desperate and hopeful and hungry. He tasted like pancakes and happiness and lazy Sunday mornings lounging in bed, and though Dean had expected something like this would have panicked him oh my word it didn’t. Quite the opposite, he felt little sparks lighting up every one of his nerve endings and he latched onto Sam’s hair to pull him in closer, going up on his toes to press himself against the full length of Sam’s body like if he could just get close enough it would fuse them into one being. Sam responded by backing him up flush against the Impala and kissing him even deeper, until they were both dizzy and only being held up by the car. It seemed to go on forever but was over far too soon when Sam finally pulled back and looked at Dean’s puffy pink lips, his eyes blown wide. Dean’s omega was singing as they both gasped for breath, and he could smell the desire mixed with joy in Sam’s scent.

Sam had the biggest smile Dean had ever seen. The sun would have had to admit defeat against it. His dimples were like canyons and his eyes were dancing as he studied Dean’s face, kissing him quickly and urgently again before asking, “When were you gonna tell me?”

Dean’s heartbeat picked up for an entirely different reason as his anxiety spiked and the color drained from his skin, freckles included. The million watt smile slid slowly off of Sam’s face and was replaced by confusion.

“You were gonna tell me, weren’t you?”

Dean didn’t know what to say so he didn’t say anything except, “Sam…” in an effort to quell the growing hurt in the alpha’s eyes. After standing there in the snow for a few moments, taking in huge deep breaths and trying to calm himself, Sam snatched the keys from Dean’s hand and yanked open the door.

“Get in,” he said, shoving Dean down on the seat. Dean caught a glimpse of his father and brother, who had stopped a little ways from the corner. Sam shouted back to his dad, “We’re going to the hotel John,” then slid behind the steering wheel and shut the door.

“Sam…” Dean tried again, and quickly found himself pinned down by glowing red eyes.

“ _Not another word, Dean_ ,” he ordered in his alpha voice, reaching over to pull the seat belt across the omega’s lap. “ _We can talk when we get to the room_.”

Dean wanted to object but of course couldn’t, nor could he tell Sam to slow down as they sped off down the street. The portion of his brain that was Dean Fucking Winchester was seriously pissed off at being manhandled into his own vehicle, but his omega told it to shut the hell up. His alpha was here now, and he already felt safer than he had in months.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anything pregnancy related either comes from my own personal experience or my mom's. Fortunately I was good with bacon, but six years later I still don't like the smell of chicken when it's being cooked. Yuck.


	26. You're Saying We're Both a Couple of Dumbasses?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam reacts to the baby.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: There may be some triggery stuff in here. I don't want to post spoilers but...well, there may be some triggery stuff in here. Certainly for Dean.

It had been weeks now that John and Sam were hunting together without any clear plan in place of how they were going to trap Azazel, and it was beginning to become apparent to both of them that this partnership might not work out. While they might share the same end goal, they were ultimately just too much alike to do anything other than butt heads half the time. John was used to giving orders that were to be obeyed without question. Sam was used to being the smartest one in the room and having everyone fall into line behind his obviously correct way of doing things. Both of them were stubborn as mules, and everything seemed to be a dick measuring contest, from research to the best way to pack John’s truck. They were at each other’s throats half of the time, and they were getting absolutely nowhere hunting the yellow-eyed demon.

The one thing they were managing to do was kill a lot of things that needed killing, which was a great outlet for all the pent up aggression the two felt for each other, and John’s respect for the kid was growing even if he still didn’t really like him that much. Sam had set up several bank accounts and credit cards under various aliases so he could still get at money without his grandfather noticing and he let John put all the closed jobs into the system under his name without asking for a dime. They’d taken care of a goblin infestation in Maine, a yeti in New York, a pagan god in Ohio, and a soul eater in Michigan. They had just finished clearing a nest of okami in Wisconsin when they spotted the long string of unsolved grave robberies on the FDH feed in Windom, Minnesota, the same town where John had hunted a pack of ghouls just over twenty years ago, so it was obvious they should head on over and check it out. Even if it meant John might run into Adam’s mother it was definitely worth it to make sure he hadn’t missed anything, and that if he had they weren’t going to progress from eating the dead to chomping on the living. It was an easy call to make.

It hadn’t taken long after checking in to the AmericInn over in Jackson ( _too ritzy for John’s taste - he would have preferred the Blue Lamplighter Motel closer to town, but it was Sam’s money so he wasn’t going to argue too much_ ) to catch wind of the fact that Joe Barton, who helped John on the case all those years ago, had gone missing. When they headed out to speak to the staff at the bar where he worked they heard about Kate Milligan, so off they’d gone to interview her neighbors to see if they heard or saw anything suspicious.

They’d parked a good ways down the street from Kate’s house, since there weren’t any spots close by what with alternate side parking, and walked up the street knocking on doors. They weren’t really getting anywhere, but the little old lady who lived across the street from Kate said she was certain she saw her milling around inside the night before, but that she hadn’t seen her since. She walked them to the door asking if there was a number she should call if she saw Kate again, and while they were standing on the porch giving her their details the wind picked up, and a few moments later they heard someone shout, “Dean?”

The men recognized the voice as Adam’s, and after turning sharply to try to scent the air they’d spotted both Adam and Dean across the street. Dean was moving away fast, halfway up the sidewalk towards the end of the block, but Adam was standing on his mother’s front porch looking confused. Sam figured he was probably going to have bruised ribs from how violently his heart tried to break free from his chest, sprout wings, and fly across the street. He didn’t know if John had seen him too, and he really didn’t care. Dean turned back and saw them on the porch and then started backing quickly away.

Under other circumstances he may have paused to try to figure out what was going on, because Dean actually backing away from him was _weird_ , even with what had happened in Laramie. He would have expected Dean to stand his ground, maybe punch him ( _he certainly deserved it_ ), but not that he would run. As it was, his alpha didn’t care why the omega was taking off. It meant he was _finally_ going to get to _chase_ , and how badly he needed on a primal level to chase and catch Dean was just embarrassing.

He leapt off the porch and was off across the street, shouting after Dean, who was now actually running, before nearly getting taken out by a teenager in a Corolla. He hesitated just a second to give the kid a “Sorry” handwave before taking off again. Dean had a good head start on him and was surprisingly fast. No wonder he and Benny won all those competitions before he presented. Omegas had tremendous stamina once they started fleeing and were well known for being fleet of foot, but Sam had never seen anyone run as fast and flat out as Dean was moving right now. Even with his longer legs Sam was having a hard time closing the distance between them and had started to genuinely worry he wasn’t going to catch him. He didn’t want to end up being Apollo watching Daphne turn into a laurel tree and caught a break when Dean rounded the corner and stopped beside the Impala, trying to get her unlocked.

How long had she been parked there? Sam and John certainly would have noticed the car if it had been there when they started canvassing the street, though admittedly they hadn’t exactly been paying attention to traffic. It wasn’t the sort of car that went unnoticed. Dean had gotten the driver’s side door slightly ajar when Sam finally got to him, whipping him around to get a look at his face and confirm it was really him.

It was. God, it really was. Sam didn’t know what to do with his hands. Well, he did, but he certainly couldn’t do that in the middle of the street, and definitely not without Dean’s permission. He’d wanted desperately to call him for weeks and weeks, but hunting with John glued to his hip had left him with very limited privacy to do anything personal. It was almost like John was trying to keep tabs on him. He got to piss and shower by himself and that was about it, and while it had occurred to him to turn on the shower and use it as a cover to try to get the omega on the phone he thought that the sound of a shower in the background would come across as incredibly perverted and decided against it. He’d figured after this hunt he would suggest he and John take a night off to relax and had planned to use it as an opportunity to get some time alone to ring up Bobby’s house and see if he could get Dean’s number to put back into his contact list. Seeing him face to face was so much better.

The way Dean had looked slightly nervous at having Sam so close to him was disconcerting, especially coupled with the mad dash for his car and attempt to escape. Dean was good at masking his emotions as it was so Sam probably wouldn’t have been able to read him anyway, but he also appeared to be doused in scent blockers because Sam couldn’t smell him at all, even from a foot away. Then the wind had blown in from the south and carried with it just the faintest trace of Dean’s scent, and it was...different somehow. There were still the roses, the coffee, but now something else underlaid it. Something that was really hard to pick out. Vanilla, maybe? Sam’s big higher level monkey brain couldn’t process what he was smelling, but his Stone Age alpha brain could. He grabbed Dean and held him still so he could try to scent past all the blockers and almost didn’t believe his nose. It was a baby. Dean was carrying a baby. No, more than that. Dean was carrying _his_ baby.

_Dean was carrying his baby_ _._

His heart went back to trying to break through his ribs and he found Dean’s mouth like it was a magnet drawing him in. He was delicious - strawberries and cream and sunny summer days and the house in Vermont with the dogs and the cat and the pillows and all the babies in the world and every other thing Sam had ever, ever dreamed of. And Dean was pulling him in tighter, pressing them together, trying to mold his body to Sam’s. His brain broke and he found himself unable to think of anything besides “Dean” and “baby.” Mostly “baby.” Over and over again, playing on a loop in his head. Baby baby baby baby **baby**. He had never felt so happy, couldn’t imagine himself ever being this happy again, except maybe the next time he was able to scent Dean and smell a baby, and god, he hoped that was going to be as soon as possible after this one was born because they were having a **baby** and it was the best thing that could have happened to him. He wanted to populate New England with little Sams and Deans, or Samanthas and Deanas, he didn’t care, just as long as they all had ten fingers and ten toes and Dean’s eyes. Jesus, he needed to stop kissing Dean before his heart literally burst with joy, which felt like a distinct possibility in this moment.

The joy was short-lived when his big monkey brain grasped the reality that Dean apparently hadn’t been planning to tell him about the baby. Not soon anyway. Maybe not ever. His alpha rose up indignantly at the thought the omega would keep something like that from him, and he shoved Dean into the car and took off for the AmericInn so there wouldn’t be a screaming match in the middle of the street. Everyone on the block had already gotten an eyeful of their public display of affection. He didn’t need to follow it up by making the fight that he knew was coming public as well.

They were about five silent minutes into the twenty minute drive back to the hotel that was only going to take fifteen with the way Sam was driving ( _undoubtedly too fast for the road conditions_ ) as his brain sputtered out “Dean baby angry baby Dean baby baby **angry alpha angry** ,” when Sam suddenly realized he couldn’t smell anything anymore besides his own fury at having nearly been denied his child. Dean had clamped fully down on his emotions as effectively as Sam’s alpha command had clamped his mouth shut, but more than that there was no scent. At all. In the confined space of the car with nothing but stagnant air aside from the warmth being put out by the fan, Dean’s scent had vanished. What’s more, the baby’s scent was gone as well. Sam tried to subtly sniff the air, which got him a worried sideways glance from Dean, and considered pulling over to the shoulder to slide across the seat and get his nose up against Dean’s neck again, but he thought that might result in the omega fumbling the door open behind him and escaping the car. The idea of chasing Dean down again along the side of the road was not a welcome prospect, since it certainly looked like he was trying to figure out how to get away. There was no way Sam was going to allow that, not with the new information he now had. As if to confirm Sam’s suspicions about him trying to run again, the minute they pulled into the parking lot of the hotel Dean was messing with the seat belt to get it off. Sam barely had time to throw the car into park and grab Dean’s arm before he could get the passenger door open.

“I don’t think so,” he snapped, turning off the engine and pulling the keys out. He threw the driver’s side door open and dragged Dean across the bench seat behind him, getting an iron grip around his upper arms so he couldn’t go anywhere Sam didn’t want him to. “No more running Dean.”

They got a couple of sideways glances from other guests as Sam strong-armed Dean through the lobby and up to his room, but the glower on the alpha’s face was enough to keep everyone at bay. Whatever was going on, the smaller man he was manhandling did not appear to be in any immediate danger and he didn’t ask for help, so they decided it was none of their business. Sam swiped the keycard into room number 228 and shoved Dean inside, slamming the door behind him.

“Jesus Sammy, what the hell!” Dean snapped, his eyes all fire and fury, since Sam had ordered him in the car to talk when they got back to his room. “Are you tryin’ to break my arm or something?”

Sam wanted to respond, to yell and accuse and demand to know why Dean hadn’t called him the minute he got a plus sign on a stick, but Sam wasn’t in charge of himself in any way at the moment. There was still no scent from Dean except for a mild spike of irritation, and it had now been a full twenty minutes at least since the alpha had been able to smell his child. He was officially in a panic and in no way capable of rational thought. He grabbed Dean and tried to scent him again, but the air in the hotel room still smelled faintly of Sam and John and the last couple who had been in there ( _another pair of alphas, which didn’t help reduce Sam’s irritation or protective instinct to a level anywhere near reasonable_ ), and as he inhaled sharply at Dean’s collar he discovered immediately that his clothes were covered in the completely unacceptable scent blocker. Sam threw off his overcoat and suit jacket, then spun the confused Dean around and yanked off his coat, then his hoodie and his outer flannel, drawing a string of protests from the omega.

“Sam!” Dean was having a hard time blocking his emotions, and a wave of distress rose off of him as he tried unsuccessfully to bat Sam’s hands away. Normally Sam would have soothed him instantly, but his alpha was too frantic and glad to be able to smell _something_ that he couldn’t stop stripping the layers off. “Sam, stop!”

“Quiet,” Sam growled, though he wouldn’t make it a command, grabbing Dean’s wrists to stop him shoving at his face as he took another long inhale from Dean’s stomach all the way up to his chest.

Still nothing. He grabbed the hem of Dean’s tee shirt and whipped it off over his head with a single, desperate tug, then grabbed the white wife beater underneath and simply ripped it off of Dean’s chest.

“Sam!”

Sam ignored him and scented him again. The blockers were all over his skin, too. Sam was officially starting to go batshit crazy and toed off his shoes quickly before dragging Dean towards the bathroom.

“ _Sam_!”

Dean was really desperate now. He had no idea what was going on or why the alpha was acting this way, but Sam’s red eyes and the low growl emanating from him were terrifying. Sam didn’t even acknowledge him, but just turned on the shower, climbed into the stall fully clothed, and dragged Dean in after him. Dean yelped at the cold spray that took a minute to warm, plastering his hair to his head as he sputtered and got held in place so Sam could dump shampoo on him and start scrubbing him with a washcloth. He tried to wiggle free, but Sam easily held him where he was one handed as he batted fruitlessly at Sam’s chest and arms while Sam washed him from his head down to his waist.

“ _Sam_! _Stop it_!”

Dean was dangerously close to bursting into tears but Sam just wouldn’t be deterred. After a few minutes in the shower he dragged Dean out from under the spray and they squished their way out of the bathroom. Dean barely managed to grab a towel before he was shoved across the room and onto one of the beds. He tried to scramble away but Sam was on him in seconds, his suit soaking wet and dripping all over Dean, white dress shirt translucent and clinging to the sculpted muscles of Sam’s chest and stomach. Sam straddled Dean as he squirmed and tried to get at the knife in the now soaking wet sheath on his hip, then pinned Dean’s forearms down at his side and leaned in to take a long, deep inhale of Dean’s neck from shoulder to ear. Dean was screaming at him to get off, but Sam didn’t even appear to hear him, until after far too long of a moment Sam rose back up, sat all the way back off of Dean, and closed his eyes, relaxing visibly as a tremor ran through his body.

Dean took the opportunity to kick Sam square in the chest with both feet and send him flying back off of the bed. He rolled off sideways, grabbing the towel and holding it against his chest with one hand to get some semblance of modesty back while finally getting his knife out with the other and ended up in the corner of the room between the bed and the closet as Sam stuggled up to his feet. His eyes had cleared and he appeared to actually _see_ Dean for the first time since they got there. It clicked into place what he had just done and a wave of guilt flooded off him towards the omega.

“Dean…” he said, his hands shaking as he reached carefully towards him. “God, Dean, I’m so sorry, I would never do anything…”

“Well, you kinda just did, Sam,” Dean replied bitterly, at which point the hotel room door behind them was flung open by John and Adam, who advanced in with guns trained on Sam.

Sam turned instinctively to put himself between Dean and whatever threat was coming through the door behind them, but Dean took the opportunity to dart into the bathroom and slam the door shut. Sam exclaimed, “Dean!” and tried to go after him, but heard both guns cocking and stopped, raising his hands slowly. He wasn’t sure how he was going to explain this when his chest was starting to clench as the panic of the last few minutes subsided and he really registered how he had been behaving since they arrived at the room. Dean was never going to forgive him for that.

“You wanna tell us what that was all about Sam?” John said in the dangerously calm voice Sam had learned usually preceded someone getting shot.

“God, John, I’m so sorry.” Sam was desperate to make him understand, to figure out how to fix this. “He was wearing so much scent blocker…”

“Yeah, so fuckheads like you will leave him alone!” Adam spat, but John was looking at Sam with something like understanding and started to lower his weapon.

“And?” the elder Winchester asked.

“I couldn’t smell _anything_. I couldn’t smell him, I couldn’t scent the…” Sam bent over, his hands on his thighs, as the world spun and the ground tipped and he started to hyperventilate. “I thought something had happened, that I’d scared him so badly or the running had been too much…”

His back found the wall and he slid down it onto his rump, putting his head between his knees before he passed out. He heard John uncock the hammer and sheath his gun, then take a few steps closer.

“But he’s okay?” he asked quietly, suddenly deeply concerned.

“Yeah…” Sam said, then laughed bitterly. “I mean, as much as he can be after I just tore his clothes off and shoved him into a shower with me.”

“You son of a bitch…” Adam hissed, advancing on him, but John got between them quickly.

“Adam, stop,” he ordered. “You don’t understand what’s going on here.”

“Then maybe you should fucking _tell me_ , Dad!”

“Alphas can scent their children a long time before they’re born,” John explained, stopping at the shocked look on his son’s face. “Dean didn’t say anything?”

The gun in Adam’s hand suddenly felt very heavy and he let it fall to his side. A lot of things in the last day fell into place, and all the crying and baggy clothes when Dean came to visit a couple of months ago did, too. It was like getting punched in the solar plexus, realizing their relationship was so badly damaged that Dean wouldn’t have told him. Apparently Sam had just found out too, judging by whatever had gone on in the room before they got there.

“No,” he said quietly. “No, he didn’t tell me.”

John was looking back at Sam, who was shaking violently.

“But the baby’s okay?” he asked, and Sam nodded before leaping to his feet and going to the bathroom door.

“Dean?” Sam called, trying the knob and finding it locked. He could have forced it open easily but didn’t dare. Dean didn’t answer, but he could hear muffled crying, like the omega was trying to be as quiet as possible. “Dean? Baby? God I’m so sorry, please open the door.” The crying turned to sobs and Sam ended up weeping, helplessly pressing himself against the wooden barrier between them. “Please, Dean, I’m so sorry…”

He flinched at the hand on his shoulder and turned to see John trying to gently move him away from the door. The older alpha could smell the despair pouring off of him, but knew he wasn’t going to get anywhere. He had Sam’s duffel in his hands and pressed it into the young man’s arms.

“Sam, why don’t you and Adam go get another room and you can get changed into some dry clothes,” he suggested evenly. “I’ll take care of Dean.”

“But…” Sam started, not even sure what he was going to say. Dean needs me? I can’t leave him like this? Dean clearly didn’t need him, and he’d obviously have to leave him like this if he had any hope of salvaging anything between them after his appalling display.

“It’ll be fine. After you’ve got a room you and Adam can go get their stuff from wherever they’re staying.”

“The Blue Lamplighter,” Adam offered, and John snorted.

“See?” he said triumphantly to Sam. “Told you we should have stayed there.”

Sam nodded dumbly, choking back tears as he tried to get himself under control, then took the duffel and wandered out of the room like an eight year old who had been grounded. Adam followed, looking slightly dazed. With Dean still locked in the bathroom, it seemed that John was the only grown-up left of the quartet. Good thing he’d had a lot of practice at this “dad” thing, even if he did suck at it. Obviously he’d better start getting good at it quickly.

“Hey Dean?” he said after the two younger men left. “You wanna open up? Sam’s gone.”

It was a long, tense sixty-three seconds before John heard the door unlock and Dean cautiously opened it a sliver. He was an utter mess, eyes puffy, nose red from too much wiping with hotel room toilet paper, teardrops still clinging to his lashes. He was still clutching the towel to his chest, his hands shaking, while his pants left a puddle on the floor.

“He left?” Dean whispered. John nodded and his son’s face crumpled with another bout of sobbing. John moved quickly into the bathroom to wrap him in his arms and close the door behind them. “I was so scared, Dad…”

“I know Dean,” John soothed, running a hand up and down Dean’s back. “I know. I’m sorry that happened.”

“Why would he do that?” Dean squeaked, and felt his father sigh.

“Well, he was scared too.” That got a bitter snort out of his son, but John pressed on. “No, I mean it, Dean. I know you can’t scent the baby - omegas can’t detect changes to their scent like that, not any more than an alpha can tell if their scent has changed - but alphas…”

“I know,” Dean interjected. “I know they can.”

“Yeah, but you don’t understand what it’s like.” John continued the long, soothing sweeps up and down Dean’s spine until his son notched his head onto his shoulder and started breathing in his scent. “The first time you can scent your child...There’s nothin’ like it Dean. It’s like Heaven come down to earth, no exaggeration. It’s magic. And if that scent goes away -  god, there’s nothing scarier. Nothing.”

“What do you mean, goes away?” Dean asked, calmed enough that he could back away a little to look at his father.

“Those scent blockers,” John explained. “Hell, Dean, I didn’t even know you were there until your brother yelled your name. I couldn’t smell a damn thing, and I’ve known what you smelled like since before you were born. Well, at least the cherry pie and coffee. When we were outside in the wind Sam could probably just get a hint of you and the baby, but by the time you got back here I doubt he could smell anything.”

“So you’re saying it’s okay that he just...what, tore my clothes off?” Dean demanded, his anger rising.

“No Dean, what I’m saying is…” He sighed. He was never going to get through to Dean this way. He took a step back and removed his coat and then his flannel, which he wrapped around Dean’s shoulders so he’d be draped in John’s scent to help calm him. As he slipped Dean’s arms into the sleeves and buttoned it up like he used to when his son was too small to work the buttons, he said, “When your mom...when she was about five months along she went out to the grocery store while I was at work. This was back when things were starting to get pretty bad for omegas, and while even back then no one would think of touching a mated om they still got a lot of...unwanted attention. So she loaded up on the scent blockers and she put on a new dress that she hadn’t worn yet so it didn’t have her scent on it already and I don’t know what she did to her hair, but she did something to her hair too, so that she wouldn’t smell at all while she was getting the milk and bread and whatever else she picked up that day.” John smiled at the memory of her going grocery shopping. Dean was enthralled. His father never talked about his mother this way. John grabbed another towel and started drying off Dean’s hair, shaking the smile away. “Anyway, she must’ve gotten home right before I got out of work, because she hadn’t cleaned any of the blocker off, and when I walked into the kitchen...it was the scariest thing that had happened to me, up to that point in my life, period. Worse than ‘Nam. Worse than any hunt I’d been on before we mated. I could barely smell her and I couldn’t smell _you_ , at all. I just about lost my goddamn mind. Where the fuck had she been, why was she putting away fucking groceries, why wasn’t she fucking sitting down, what the fuck had she been doing while I was at work, had she fallen down the fucking stairs, why the fuck hadn’t she called me, why the fuck hadn’t she called the doctor, why the fuck was she doing _anything_ \- I’d never screamed at her like that before. Never did afterwards either. I scared her half to death, Dean. Dragged her over to the kitchen sink and made her scrub off her neck until it was practically raw so I could be sure both of you were okay. I didn’t even care that she was screaming and crying and trying to get me to let her go. When I finally stopped she hit me with a cutting board and locked herself in the bedroom and I had to get Mrs. Wilbert from next door to come over and calm her down. Mrs. Wilbert was an alpha so she got it, but it was a solid week before your mom would let me back in the bedroom.” Dean was listening very intently to him, the distress having left his scent, and John cupped his son’s face in his hands. “I’m not sayin’ what Sam did was all right, or that you need to forgive him right this second. I’m just sayin’ that I know what that kind of fear is like, and I swear to you, it makes it so an alpha can’t think straight. We just can’t. It’s all instinct, all ‘protect offspring’ - no frontal cortex input whatsoever. It’s like something just short circuits and we can’t stop until we know one way or the other if the baby is still there. So no more scent blockers around Sam, okay? Or you’re gonna lose all your shirts.”

John was pleased when that elicited a small laugh and a head duck from his son. Dean looked down at his squishy boots and nodded.

“Okay, no more scent blockers around Sam,” he agreed. “But I’m still pissed at him. He owes me, l don’t know, two dozen roses or somethin’ after that.”

John scoffed.

“Don’t let him off that easy,” he said. “That kid’s got more money than God.”

And there was the full belly laugh he wanted. He convinced Dean to get out of his wet shoes and jeans and to hang out in a towel until Sam and Adam got back with his clothes, then went to see what was on the television and order some room service because Dean was starving. He got an appetizer, two entrees, dessert, and a milkshake and told them to put it all on Sam’s card, and he didn’t even feel the slightest bit guilty. If he was going to have to put up with being scrubbed down in the shower, the least his baby’s father could do was feed him. They were in the middle of _Hercules_ , which John bristled at having to watch even though Dean insisted it was a great movie and he was going to have to get used to watching these things if he ever wanted to see his grandkid. When it got to _Go the Distance_ he understood why his son liked the movie and put his arm around Dean’s shoulders to tug him a little closer. By the time the Muses were trying to convince Megara to admit she loved Hercules Dean was asleep on his chest, tucked under the comforter from one of the two queen beds, and John thought maybe he’d been wrong all those weeks ago. Maybe things would eventually be okay after all.


	27. God, I Was So Damned Stupid

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adam and Sam talk. And things go a bit sideways.

The ride to the Lamplighter was quiet and uncomfortable for the former childhood friends. Both were miserable over the current state of their respective relationships with Dean, and both were sitting next to the person they normally would have talked to about it but now couldn’t even look at. Adam was still angry with Sam for Laramie, Sam was still angry with Adam for making him lie about the party, both of them were angry with Dean for shutting them out, and both of them were angry at themselves for being angry with Dean. He had every damn right to shut them out if he wanted to, but that didn’t mean they weren’t hurt just the same.

And then there was the whole Dean being pregnant with Sam’s baby thing, which Sam wanted to sing about from mountaintops and Adam couldn’t even begin to process because it was his big, strong, godlike older brother carrying around a pup, and even though Adam had known for a decade that Dean was an omega and obviously knew that omegas were at the heart of their nature maternal, the idea of _Dean_ , with his broad shoulders and thick arms and give ‘em hell attitude wearing maternity shirts and pants just didn’t compute. Dean was a warrior, not a mother; someone who cleaned up blood and stitched up gunshot wounds and popped shoulders back into place, not someone who cleaned up vomit and sang lullabies and soothed away nightmares.

Except that Dean already did do all of that. He’d already done that with Adam when he was very little. Hell, he’d done that for Adam all the way up until he got kicked out of school, even while he was setting all those national qualification records. He helped with homework and showed him how to fold laundry and let him crawl in bed with him when there were really bad thunderstorms outside because Adam hadn’t gotten over his fear of thunderstorms until he was nine. So really, Adam’s problem with the idea of Dean being a mother centered around what he thought an omega was _supposed_ to be and thinking that conflicted with his idea of _Dean_ instead of accepting how his omega brother actually _was_. It was exactly what Dean had accused him of back in Durham.

What made it even worse was he could _tell_ that Sam was thrilled about the baby; and not just that he was having a baby, but that he was having a baby _with Dean_. Anyone who had seen the way he’d reacted to Dean on the street could tell he was thrilled, could tell it wasn’t because Dean was an omega, could tell it was because Dean was Dean. That wasn’t just your average lovers making up after a fight kiss, that was a bona fide “you have made my life complete by giving me a child” kiss. That was the kind of kiss most people only dreamed about, that you only saw in movies because no one really kissed with that much passion; at least not in public. It threw into question everything he’d ever thought about alphas, that the only thing they cared about was knotting someone, that the number of pups they sired was more a matter of pride than of affection, and that in general they saw an omega mate as a prize, some _thing_ to inflate their ego and prove they were better than all the other alphas who had to settle for beta mates, as opposed to some _one_ they cherished. He had known Sam a very long time and had never seen him as happy as he was today. Which meant that it was possible Adam had been misjudging Sam all along.

As for Sam, he sat in the passenger’s seat of John’s truck feeling like the guilt of the situation just might crush him. More than just throwing Dean around the hotel room like a rag doll, practically ensuring he would _never_ feel safe with Sam again, there were all the weeks he had thought of calling but talked himself out of it. Laramie had been roughly four months ago. That was four months of time he could never get back - months when he could have been with Dean, making him feel loved and cared for, making him feel secure enough that he wouldn’t want to douse himself with so many scent blockers no one could smell anything on him. Yes, Dean could have called, but after that awful note Sam left he couldn’t possibly have expected him to. He’d been such an unbelievable ass for such a long time and he had no idea how he was ever going to make anything up to Dean.

They pulled into the Blue Lamplighter parking lot and Sam went to empty the room of Adam and Dean’s things while Adam went to check them out. He recognized Dean’s laptop and duffels from the Laramie job but was surprised to see how many more weapons he was carrying. There was an empty duffel that he presumed was for Dean’s clothes, which he had unpacked and laid neatly in the room’s dresser. He had a tremendous number of shirts, at least two week’s worth, unless he layered up every time he got dressed like he had been today. Sam got them all back into the empty bag and went to do a sweep of the bathroom. He recognized Dean’s blue toothbrush, thinking the green must be Adam’s, and found the bag of scent blockers, which had apparently replaced the first aid kid. There were no bandages, no antiseptic ointment, not even a bottle of aspirin. The only thing even remotely like medicine was the bottle of prenatal supplements. In the place of the basic necessities for a hunt were a dozen cans of scent blocker. Sam wouldn’t have thought he’d need that much for a simple job and wondered how much of that stuff he actually sprayed on himself before he left the room every day. He picked it up and read the back to see what was in it, and if it was even safe to use. At the bottom of all the instructions in bold black type it clearly said, **NOT RECOMMENDED FOR USE WHILE CARRYING**. Beyond being disconcerting that Dean was spraying himself with stuff that could hurt the baby was the idea that Dean was willing to _risk_ hurting the baby. Granted, Sam was still trying to get up to speed on how the omega was feeling, but Dean had never been someone who would purposely put others in danger. What was going on with him that he would ignore that kind of warning to drench himself in this stuff? On top of everything else there weren’t any styling products for his hair, which also struck Sam as wrong, though he couldn’t pin down what it was about the simple lack of hair gel that bothered him so. It was such a small detail, but Dean took a great deal of pride in how he looked before he went out into the world. Sam had teased him about it pretty mercilessly in Laramie. To not see something that had been a basic part of Dean’s hygiene regimen just didn’t sit right. Everything about Dean’s belongings made him uneasy, and he wondered what else he had missed besides the positive pregnancy test in the time since he’d last seen Dean.

Adam only had one bag full of clothes and nothing else to indicate he’d even prepared for a hunt, so Sam grabbed everything but the scent blockers and got it out in one trip. The beta was waiting for him by the truck already and grabbed his bag from Sam, noticing that they were one bag short.

“You missed something,” he said. “Dean brought three duffels.”

“He doesn’t need one of them,” Sam told him, piling Dean’s things into the bench seat between them.

“The blockers?” Adam guessed, and Sam’s jaw flexed as he pushed back his rising anger at just the thought of them. “He needs those.”

“He doesn’t need those,” Sam insisted.

“Yeah, Sam, he does.”

“It says right on the goddamned can that they’re not recommended for pregnant oms. I’m not bringing them.”

“Sam, you’re not hearing me. He _needs_ those.”

“Why would he need those when he’s got me?”

“Are you gonna be with him every single second?”

“He doesn’t need me to be with him every single second.”

“You sure about that? Cuz when he came to see me in Durham two months ago he was a mess, and that was _before_ he watched the tape.”

Adam’s words stopped Sam dead in his tracks as the puzzle came together. Realization dawned that the phone call he couldn’t remember must have been about Shreveport. John hadn’t said anything about the call or what had happened afterwards in the time they’d been hunting together, but Sam figured with whatever he was missing if something were really terribly wrong with Dean, John never would have left him, so he must be okay. Yes, he’d suspected John knew about his cousins and had made arrangements for their untimely deaths, but after spending a lot of time mulling it over he’d decided that _Adam_ must have been the one to tell John, even if John insisted they didn’t talk. That was the only thing that made sense with how disinterested John seemed in his older son - never mentioning Dean, never calling him - and no matter how strained their relationship was, John would want to hide any involvement Adam had in the Campbell cousins’ deaths. Now that he was aware that Dean not only knew about Shreveport but had actually watched the tape and had been _alone_ all this time he felt utterly horrified. What kind of memories might that encounter in Sam’s hotel room have brought back? No wonder Dean pulled a knife on him and wouldn’t open the bathroom door. Maybe he should listen to Adam, even though listening to Adam had gotten them where they were now. But those blockers...Dean shouldn’t be using them when they could hurt the baby. Sam had no idea what to do. The sudden urge to get back to the AmericInn was overwhelming.

“Still don’t want me to tell you what they did to him?” Adam asked, his eyes cold.

“If Dean wants me to know he’ll tell me,” Sam snapped.

Adam gave him a disgusted nod and went around to climb into the driver’s seat.

“Coward.”

They didn’t talk at all on the way back to the AmericInn, and by the time they pulled into the parking lot Sam could tell that Adam was seething. They couldn’t keep going like this if they planned to share a room, which they clearly needed to for at least one night. The case they were on involved Adam’s mom and Sam and John couldn’t just cut him out of that. As Adam turned the car off Sam asked, “Why did you watch the tape anyway?”

Adam looked for a second like he was going to ignore Sam and get out of the car without answering, but instead turned back to grip the steering wheel and stare out the windshield into the cold, snowy dusk. His jaw worked for a while as he thought of what he wanted to say. He really didn’t want to get into this discussion with Sam now. Hell, he didn’t want to get into _any_ discussion with Sam _ever_ , but they were going to be tied together by his brother’s impending bundle of joy and he wanted to be in his neice or nephew’s life, so he decided he needed to come up with some way to be around Sam without getting an ulcer.

“I got dumped,” he said bitterly. “And I got drunk. And I figured if I watched it I’d finally have the guts to kill your cousins for what they did to my brother.” Sam didn’t say anything, waiting to see if Adam was done, and after a few moments the beta continued. “And I...I needed to make sure I never forget. That I never get sloppy like that again. Cuz...cuz if I ever get that shitfaced it might not be me that gets hurt, you know?” He glanced over at Sam, his eyes glassy. “Dean’s gonna have to live with the consequences of my actions for the rest of his life. I thought, why should I get to come out of it not knowing what the consequences were? Didn’t seem right for him to carry it alone.”

“That why you keep wanting to give me the details?” Sam asked quietly.

“No, it’s so you know how bad it was,” Adam replied.

“I get that,” Sam said, turning to look at him. “But I still think it’s his story to tell me, not yours.”

Adam looked back for a few moments before nodding and getting out of the car.

John answered the door to room 228 when Sam quietly knocked, holding Dean’s two bags while Adam went down to put his stuff in room 251. The television was playing quietly in the background and the sweetness of Dean’s changed scent when the door opened just a little made Sam’s head swim. John glanced over his shoulder and then stepped out into the hallway, keeping the door open just enough that he wouldn’t get locked out.

“Hey Sam,” he said quietly. “Dean’s asleep. You got his stuff?”

“Yeah.” Sam handed over the two duffels, not sure what else to say. He was badly shaken by his conversations with Adam, with getting Dean’s belongings and seeing how different they were from what he used to carry, at knowing now that Dean was aware of every detail of what had happened in the basement, of feeling like he was in the dark in general and not knowing where he was going to find a flashlight. “Is he okay? I didn’t hurt him, did I?”

“No, he’s fine,” John replied, and added in answer to the question Sam hadn’t asked, “The baby’s fine too, far as I can tell. You just scared the shit out of him. That’s gonna take him a while to get over.”

“I know.”

“What room are you guys in? I’ll leave a bunch of my clothes with Dean so he can scent me and we’ll let him sleep and we can get back to workin’ the case. I think the sooner we get him off of this job the better.”

Sam had to clamp down quickly on his alpha before it freaked out completely at the idea of his pregnant omega on a hunt.

“He wasn’t actually gonna work it, was he?”

John could feel the tension ratchet up in Sam and how he was trying to suppress his growing anxiety and quickly said, “No, he was just gonna do some research to make Adam happy and then hand it off to the FDH.”

“Oh, okay.”

“I’ll meet you in your room in fifteen.”

“Okay, we’re in 251.”

John gave him a nod and went back inside as Sam headed off down the hall. He flipped the extra door latch at the top of the frame and noticed that Dean was waking up on the couch when he turned around. His hair had dried sticking up on the side of his head and he looked around for a minute in sleepy confusion as he figured out where he was. John was worried momentarily he might panic, but there was no distress in Dean’s scent, just lethargy.

“Who was that?” he asked, his voice thick with drowsiness.

“Sam was just dropping off your stuff,” John said, taking the duffels over to toss them on the bed that wasn’t rumpled and damp from Sam’s earlier panic. “I was gonna head down to their room to talk about the case. You want me to send Adam down here to sit with you?”

“Adam’s not gonna want to come sit with me,” Dean said, crossing to the bed to get out dry underwear, pants, and socks to pull on with his dad’s flannel. He slid quickly into the boxer briefs and the jeans, trying not to think about his bare feet being in contact with a hotel room carpet. “Something killed his mom. He’s gonna want in on the hunt.” Before John could think of what to say to that, Dean was going through the second duffel, and then back to the first frantically. “Where are my blockers?”

“What?”

“My blockers!” Dean was starting to get upset, digging through both duffel bags and starting to dump their contents out on the bed. “I had a whole bag of blockers, where are they?”

“Those were the only bags Sam gave me,” John said, growing very concerned at the mix of distress and anger that was starting to flood off his son as he searched in a frenzy through his belongings. “Dean, calm down…”

But Dean would not calm down. He needed to have his scent blockers. He couldn’t leave this room without them. He didn’t think he could make his father understand and didn’t even try. He managed to force himself to quit throwing clothes around the room in an effort to find the spray cans that simply weren’t there, and clenched his fists to try to stop them from shaking.

“What room are they in?” he asked as calmly as he could.

“Two fifty-one.”

“Thanks.”

He was across the room and out the door before John could stop him, storming down the hall looking for the door with 2-5-1 on it and filling the hallway with his furious pregnant omega scent. He passed a couple of people who literally turned and were visibly fighting the urge to press themselves up against his neck, and man did he hope one of them tried something because he was itching for a fight. John was trying to figure out where he put the keycard to their room so they could get back in and was only halfway down the hall after his son when Dean got to the room where Adam and Sam were, smelling the scent trail of Sam outside. Without so much as a word he took a step back, lined himself up, and kicked in the door.

The entire lock mechanism exploded inward, giving Dean the satisfaction of being able to follow up the kick by slamming the door wide open as he stalked inside to glare at Sam, who was sitting at the table by the window in complete shock, his laptop open in front of him. Adam had been in the bathroom brushing his teeth and came out with the brush still in his hand, looking around startled and confused. Sam’s eyes went wide as Dean stared daggers through him then went to the dresser to start digging through it.

“What did you do with them?” he demanded, flinging Sam’s clothing everywhere.

“With what?” Sam asked, struggling to get with the program. Five minutes ago Dean had been asleep in his room and now he was here filling Sam’s room with the intoxicating scent of his omega. Even with the rage spilling off of him he smelled amazing. Sam didn’t dare say that though, he wasn’t an idiot.

“You know fucking what!” Dean spun on him, his eyes gold and canines descended. “My scent blockers! Where they fuck _are_ they?!”

“I didn’t bring them from the other hotel,” Sam replied calmly. He certainly wasn’t about to lie about forgetting them.

“You son of a bitch,” Dean growled, storming to him and shoving him back up against the table. “What are you trying to do, _trap_ me here?”

“No, Dean, of course not…” Sam started.

“ _Really_?” Dean’s voice was high and disbelieving. This was not good. “Well how the fuck am I supposed to _leave my room_ smelling like a free all you can eat _buffet_?!”

“Dean, just listen to me for a second…”

Holy shit, Sam was just as dumb as Dean’s stupid ass little brother. How was it possible that his _dad_ of all people was the only person in Dean’s life right now who wasn’t a gigantic raving moron? He pulled back and swung, his hit to the jaw sending Sam toppling over his chair.

“I don’t have to listen to _shit_ from you!” he roared, launching himself at Sam as Sam scrambled to his feet and tried to deflect some of the blows Dean was throwing. Dean didn’t hesitate and just continued to clobber him. “Those were _mine_! You had no fucking _right_ to leave them!”

“Dean, stop!” Sam yelped, getting the irate omega into a bear hug and pinning Dean’s arms down to his sides.

It was the wrong move. Dean thrust his forehead straight into Sam’s nose and the alpha let him go with a shout, blood spurting everywhere as he staggered back into the wall. Dean reached around for something, _anything_ to hit him with and got his hands on the laptop, swinging back with both hands to slam it upside Sam’s stupid fucking head.

“Dean!”

Suddenly John and Adam were both on him, Adam coming in from the side to get both his arms around his brother while John came from behind and got one arm under him and the other on the laptop before he could swing. Dean roared, lifting both feet to push off of the table, which sent the table toppling over but catapulted all three of them back across the room and drove John’s lower back straight into the dresser. It got John off him with a grunt, though his father maintained control over the laptop, but Adam still had him in a deathgrip that he was not about to let go. Dean swung his fist, now free of his improvised weapon, but Adam ducked under it and forced Dean backwards until they went flying over the coffee table and he was pinned on his side to the couch.

“Dean!” Adam shouted as John hurried over to grab his swinging arms with one hand and start sweeping the other over his son’s face and back to try to force him to calm down by overwhelming him with pheromones. “Dean, you’ve got to stop!”

“Fuck you Adam!” Dean bellowed. “Get the fuck _off_ of me!”

“Dean, you’re going to hurt the baby,” John said desperately.

“ _I don’t care_! I don’t _care_ about the baby!” the omega roared. “I don’t _want_ the baby!”

Dean might have raged on endlessly if Sam’s tomented scent hadn’t filled the room, wiping away the omega scent like it didn’t even exist. It was enough to get Dean to at least look over at the alpha, who was standing by the window looking ashen and devastated. He was breathing very heavily and shaking, blood still dripping from his nose. Unable to look at the omega he was instead staring at the floor as the house in Vermont went up in flames.

“The blockers you had were crap,” he said in a tremulous voice when Dean had finally stilled enough to listen. “They may have worked but they weren’t safe. I was looking up options for you to use while carrying. Figured I could have a bunch overnighted to the hotel. I was gonna tell you when I dropped off your stuff, but you were asleep. John, can I borrow the truck?”

“Sure Sam,” the older alpha replied quietly, and Sam grabbed his jacket and the keys from where they’d fallen off the dresser to the floor and walked out. “Adam, go with him, make sure he doesn’t wreck my truck.”

“Yes sir.”

Adam grabbed his coat and hurried out after Sam, glancing back at his brother with a look somewhere between pity and anger. Dean had finally stilled on the couch, but he was panting hard and his heart was racing. John sat down slowly next to him, laying a hand on his son’s leg.

“Did you mean that, Dean?” he asked, keeping his voice even.

Dean was coming down off the high from the anger, and turned away from his father’s carefully neutral gaze. That had gotten far uglier than he would have thought possible. Apparently he was a whole lot angrier at Sam than he had realized, and a whole lot less able to keep himself in check. He shouldn’t have said that. He may have meant it in the moment, but it wasn’t how he really felt. It wasn’t the _baby_ that he didn’t want. It was all the _extra_ stuff that came with carrying: the hormones and the emotions that he clearly couldn’t control and the nausea and the way his pants kept getting too tight and how tired he was all the fucking time and how his shoes didn’t fit and how he knew he was so much weaker now.

No, weaker wasn’t right. He was _delicate_ now. And he _worried_ about how _delicate_ he was all the damn time. It wasn’t just being delicate that he worried about either. He worried about _everything_. He worried about lifting too much weight. He worried about how many preservatives were in his food. He worried about slipping on the steps and falling. He worried about whether he’d remembered to take his prenatal vitamins. He worried about whether he was getting enough calcium. He worried about how much stress he was under. He worried about how much sleep he was getting. He worried if he was going to be able to save enough money for a crib and a car seat and if he could even secure a car seat properly in the Impala and what he would do if he couldn’t because he had no way to get another car. He worried about sudden infant death syndrome and bathtub drownings and getting distracted and forgetting the baby in the back seat on a hot day. He worried about the way the seatbelt was positioned on his lap and what would happen if someone rear-ended him and he went flying forward and the lap belt was too high up or he ended up going stomach first into the steering column. He worried about the umbilical cord getting wrapped around the baby’s neck and strangling it before it could even be born. He worried _constantly_ that something he was doing was going to hurt his passenger, who he couldn’t blame for how he was feeling because the kid hadn’t asked to come along right when he discovered he’d been drugged and assaulted and lied to about it. It wasn’t right to blame him or her for any of it when it was entirely possible that if Dean had known about the assault when it happened and had been given time to process it then he might be jumping for joy about this. And no, he wasn’t over the moon the way Sam had been when he caught him on the street, but that didn’t mean he absolutely hated the idea of having a baby or that he didn’t think he would eventually be happy about it - even if “eventually” wasn’t until the baby was born. He loved kids. He really did. He was great with them. He had never thought he’d get to a point in his life where he would be stable enough to have them, but he’d always secretly hoped he would. It was just way, way more complicated than fending off “is it a boy or a girl” questions and strangers asking to touch his belly or commenting on how he was glowing, and that didn’t even take into account all of the conflicting feelings he had about Sam.

And boy were his feelings conflicted. He’d been scared when he saw Sam on the porch, and then he’d just wanted to melt into him when they’d kissed by the car, and it had seemed like things could actually get better for the first time in a long time, but then there had been the clothes tearing and the shower and the feeling of being safe around Sam was just gone. They could have maybe gotten past that eventually after his dad explained why it happened, but now Dean had just said quite possibly the worst thing to have ever come out of his mouth after Sam let him beat the crap out of him over a misunderstanding, and as his rage waned he was worried that he _had_ hurt the baby and he wished Sam hadn’t left so that he could fold himself up in his arms and scent him while Sam told him it would be all right. None of that even began to touch the stuff around the party and the lying and how were they even supposed to broach that subject when Sam had literally torn a shirt off of him earlier and Dean quite possibly had broken his nose a few minutes ago? His omega was horrified and kicking and screaming to go after the alpha and beg for forgiveness, but the non-omega part of Dean felt like crawling into a hole and covering himself over with dirt so he could just lie there and rot.

“No,” he replied quietly after quite some time. “No, I didn’t mean it. I was just...really fucking angry.” He looked at his father, trying to control his breathing as his heart set a frantic pace. “Can you still...do we both smell okay?”

“Yeah, you’re both fine,” John told him firmly. “But don’t make a habit out of doin’ things like that.”

“I won’t.” Dean looked at the hole he had exploded in the door and the total disarray of the room. Well, at least he knew he could still fight off more than one person if he needed to. Little victories. “I don’t think I’m getting those roses now.”

John helped his son up off the couch as someone from the hotel stuck their head into the room, looking utterly shocked.  

“Excuse me,” she said, taking everything in with wide eyes. She scented the air quickly, her eyes going red as she fixed them on Dean. “I heard there was some kind of problem up here.”

“Yeah…” Dean blushed, rubbing his hand along the back of his neck. For the first time in forever the sight of glowing red eyes didn’t phase him, not when he was standing in a room that reeked of Sam. “You’re gonna need a new door.”

“Evidently,” she said. She did not look amused.

“His mate locked himself out of the room and panicked,” John explained, giving her a knowing grin. “I’m sure you can imagine, your pregnant omega on the other side of the door…”

Well, that changed things for her and she smiled.

“Yeah,” she agreed with a chuckle. “It’s funny how scary a door can be sometimes.”

“Terrifying,” John said with a smile.

“Okay, I’ll send someone from maintenance up to replace it.”

“Thanks.”

She was gone with a little shake of her head, leaving them staring at the destruction around them. After a minute John dug around for the remote and plopped himself down on one of the beds, clicking on the television. Dean suddenly found he had no idea what he should be doing while they waited for maintenance.

“Are we just gonna sit here and watch TV until they get back?” he asked at last, desperate for direction.

“That’s what I’m plannin’ on doin’,” John replied. “Can’t leave the room unoccupied with a big hole in the door.”

“‘Kay.” Dean sat down next to his dad and leaned against him until John put his arm around the young man’s back. It was a lot less humiliating than asking for a hug. After a minute he added quietly, “What if they don’t get back?”

“They will.”

Dean wasn’t so sure.


	28. We're Stronger Together Than Apart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam and Adam get a drink.

Adam had absolutely no idea what to say or do to make Sam feel better. Honestly, he was surprised that he wanted to with the way they’d been going at each other recently, but it was obvious Dean’s comment about the baby had pretty much left the alpha shattered and after knowing him for so long Adam would have needed to be made of stone not to care what Sam was going through. He’d managed to convince Sam to give him the keys to the truck so they wouldn’t end up in an accident getting out of the hotel parking lot, and now he was trying to find the nearest bar so Sam could get “blind stinking drunk” while Sam sat with his bruised face turned to the passenger door window and silently cried.

As surprised as he was that he wanted to find some way to comfort Sam, Adam was even more surprised at how angry he was with Dean. Not just angry, but for the first time unwilling to feel bad about being angry with him. Adam knew how wrong he had been not to tell Dean about the party, how wrong he had been to talk Sam into keeping his mouth shut, but the two of them weren’t Dean’s enemies and the comment about the baby had been way beyond the pale, particularly when Adam was sure it wasn’t true. It wasn’t just the way he wouldn’t crawl around on his belly in the heating ducts, or refused coffee, or wanted to immediately hand this job off rather than working it himself. All the way back to Durham he had been acting like someone who was trying to be careful. He’d refused the offer of beer, he was layering himself in clothing so the physical changes he was going through wouldn’t be obvious, he clearly hadn’t been working any cases, and he was drenching himself in scent blockers so alphas wouldn’t smell that he was pregnant and see him as an easy target. He’d always been someone to wear blockers based on circumstance rather than as a matter of course, and even when he felt the need to go heavy on them he never went to the point where he masked himself completely. Adam would have bet money that the extra level of caution went beyond just the trauma of the rape and into protecting the little girl or boy he was growing. To shout that he didn’t care about the baby and didn’t want it struck Adam as crossing the line from justifiably angry to unnecessarily cruel, and Dean was not cruel by nature. That he had apparently wanted to hurt Sam so deeply about a situation that had clearly overjoyed the alpha really gave Adam pause about how well his brother was dealing with everything, and whether he and Sam were ever going to get to a point where Dean would talk to either of them again without contempt. He could take it if his relationship with Dean was permanently damaged, but Dean’s kid had a right to know both of his ( _or her_ ) parents and to not have her ( _or his_ ) mother going in for the kill every time his ( _or her_ ) father was in the room.

They pulled into the bar where Joe Barton had worked, finding the parking lot already starting to fill up. Sam was out the door before Adam even had the truck in park, wiping at his face and shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans. Adam mercifully hadn’t wanted to talk on the drive over, and if Sam was really lucky he could get inside, buy himself a bottle of Grey Goose, and be a couple of shots in before he had to say anything to his beta babysitter. Because what could he possibly say? Thanks for driving me here, please go away while I kill myself through alcohol poisoning? That didn’t seem a reasonable conversation to have, even if it’s what he fully intended to do. Maybe if he got drunk enough and belligerent enough Adam would just leave him there and he could go choke on his own vomit in the alley out back and Dean could be rid of him once and for all, since there was obviously no hope they were ever going to be together because of how badly Sam had screwed things up. Dean hated Sam, and he hated Sam’s baby, and so really, what the hell was the point of living? As far as Sam could see there wasn’t one.

He was already at the bar when Adam came in through the door and hurried over while Sam poured his first shot. The place was pretty crowded, the sound system quietly twanging away the opening strains of _Fade Into You_. Sam had downed a second shot before Adam got to the stool next to him and was busy pouring a third. He was going to get so drunk Adam was afraid he was going to have to carry him back to the hotel, and Sam had gotten way too big for Adam to carry anywhere.

“What can I get for you hon?” the bartender, a middle aged, redheaded alpha asked as Adam plunked himself down next to Sam.

“Cranberry juice and lime,” Adam replied, watching Sam down his third and then fourth shot as the bartender poured his drink and gave the lime a twist.

“You his DD?” she said, casting a wary eye at Sam.

“Yeah. He had a really bad day.”

“I should have listened to you about the blockers,” Sam said morosely, shooting back his fifth shot as the bartender wandered away.

“We really should get some food or something,” Adam told him. “If you drink that whole thing you’re going to kill yourself.”

“Yep,” Sam slurred in response.

“Look, I know you’re upset, but Dean didn’t mean what he said.”

“Yeah, Adam, he did. It’s not like I can blame him.”

“He was just trying to hurt you, Sam.”

“Yeah?” Sam raised an eyebrow at him with a laugh, his eyes growing moist. “Mission accomplished then.”

Sam turned back to his bottle of vodka and leaned against the bar, pinching the bridge of his nose and sniffing as he willed himself not to fall apart in public. He should have just gone to a liquor store and bought out a couple rows of the good stuff and found a bridge to hide himself under and die. If he weren’t a complete coward he’d just put a gun in his mouth and end it.  He very nearly lost it before taking in a shaky breath and pouring himself a sixth shot.

Adam grabbed his arm to stop him before he could toss it back, causing Sam to turn to him with glowing red eyes, a threat in his stare. Adam refused to back down.

“I know my brother, Sam,” he said firmly. “I don’t know how much you know about what’s gone on the last couple of months…”

“Nothing,” Sam spat. “I don’t know fucking anything. Your dad and Bobby called maybe two months ago but I was wasted and I don’t even remember a tenth of what we talked about, and your dad hasn’t said _anything_. Not even about...”

He couldn’t even talk about the baby now that he knew Dean didn’t want it and pulled his arm free of Adam’s grasp.

“Well then you’ve missed a lot. Hell, _I’ve_ missed a lot.” Adam turned to stare miserably at his cranberry juice. “This is the first time he’s even talked to me in months, and it’s only because something seems to have eaten my mom. After this it’s probably going to be back to the silent treatment.”

Sam actually stopped for a second and just stared at the alcohol begging to be lifted to his mouth, then tossed it back and slid the shot glass away from him a little.

“I’m sorry about your mom,” he said after a long silence as the alcohol began to hit his system and dull the pain just enough that he could think about something other than how his world had blossomed and then imploded in less than twelve hours. “I know how much you wanted to find her when you got out on your own.”

“Thanks.” Adam sipped his cranberry juice and shrugged. “It’s not like I knew her, but thanks.” He picked up a menu and flipped through it, ignoring the long intro to _Pictures of You_ playing in the background. “You want a burger? Or you still on that healthy salad kick?” Sam chuckled and grabbed for a menu as well. “I don’t know how you look like that when you eat like a rabbit.”

“It’s mostly hormones,” Sam told him. “Being big and muscley is about all they’re good for. Most of the time they just fuck with my head.”

“Yeah, I know,” Adam said quietly. “I...uh...I kind of used that against you at your grandpa’s house. Not on purpose, I mean...it wasn’t like some evil master plan, but...” Sam was looking at Adam warily, not sure where this was going. “The way you reacted, when we found him. That wasn’t...that wasn’t just a ‘shit what’s happened to my best friend’s older brother who I haven’t really talked to in almost a decade’ thing. I saw how you tried to scent him, how upset you got when you couldn’t. How you’d been acting around him all night. It wasn’t...inappropriate or gross like other alphas, you know? It was kinda funny. And god, I’ve seen my brother pick up a _lot_ of people, okay, and he was trying so hard to flirt with you and you were just being so respectful. I don’t know why he dragged me into the pool instead of you with you being so oblivious.”

Sam’s brain seemed to have stopped working as he stared at Adam, who had closed the menu and was trying to catch the bartender’s eye. It certainly felt like it. He definitely couldn’t think straight, and it wasn’t just the booze.

“Wh...what?” he sputtered.

“You think he didn’t know what he looked like in those wet jeans? Or the shorts and the wife beater? Those clothes weren’t even his because he doesn’t _own_ shorts. He raided my duffel for them. He hates shorts because of his legs, and a tank top that would completely expose his neck and the fact he’s not claimed? Not happening. Believe me, Dean knows what he looks like every single second of every single day. His looks are one of his most effective tools out in the field. He disarms people, makes them underestimate him. Watched him do it so many times.” The bartender had returned as Sam tried to still the whirring in his head while Adam ordered food. “Bacon burger, medium well, extra pickles if you can swing it. He’ll have a ceasar salad with a double order of grilled chicken, thanks.”

“Chips or fries?”

“Fries.”

“You got it honey.”

She was gone. Sam was still trying to jumpstart his neurons so he could absorb what Adam was telling him.

“It was hilarious, the look on your face when he mentioned skinny dipping.” Adam laughed, actually _laughed_ at the memory of how hopeless Sam had been back then. He looked at his juice and the laughter died away as he grew somber. “Anyway, afterwards I knew if I could appeal strong enough to your primitive protective brain I could get you to agree with not telling him. It’s not like I was trying to screw things up, I was just... _so_ scared about what would happen if he knew, how he would react. Which, you know, seems like I had reason to be, but...I mean, I know a lot of what’s going on with him right now is because we _lied_ about it but he’s just...he’s not doing well, Sam. He’s just not. And I did go to a school for alphas. I kind of know how you guys think. I...I just didn’t understand how the two of you were relating to each other. You were right about that. You were right about everything.” He shrugged. “I still really don’t get the pheromone thing, but you obviously make him feel safe, so…”

“No I don’t,” was all Sam could say. He was still stuck on the idea that Dean had been acting irresistible on purpose. Things could be so different if Sam had just jumped in the damn pool.

“Sam, he charged down a hotel hall with no blockers on, kicked in a door, and then tried to beat you to death with a laptop,” Adam stated flatly. “Add all the screaming on top of that and he probably alerted the whole floor to the fact that he was there. If he didn’t feel like you could kick anyone’s ass who came after him he wouldn’t have done that. I’ve seen what he’s like when you’re not around. Hell, he came after _me_ in Durham but I could tell he didn’t feel like he could just go at me without keeping track of who was at his nine and six. He knows you’ll protect him, even if you’ve got blood all over your face cuz he head-butted you. He’s just pissed off right now. He’ll get over the thing with the blockers. Give him some time to cool off so you can actually talk to each other. You know, have a real conversation about how fucked up everything is. And maybe, I don’t know, buy him some throw pillows or something. His love for throw pillows is _insane_. We worked this case once in a haunted Bed, Bath  & Beyond - I almost bit it because he couldn’t tear himself away from the bedding aisle.”

Sam’s primitive alpha brain roared in triumph at having correctly deduced his omega was a throw pillows kind of guy. His monkey brain, however, was still playing catch-up, and his emotions were way far behind the game.

“Agent Campbell.” Sam was jolted out of his thoughts by the middle-aged blonde alpha in front of him. It was Joe Barton’s wife, whom he and John had talked to earlier today. “Oh, excuse me, I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“No,” Sam said. “No, it’s fine, Mrs. Barton. This is...uh...this is Adam Winchester. He’s Kate Milligan’s son.”

Mrs. Barton’s eyes went wide at hearing this, and to Adam’s surprise she threw her arms around him.

“God! Adam!” she exclaimed, pulling away to look him full in the face. “You look so much like Kate. Jesus, she never stopped hoping you’d come back to find her. I’m so sorry, I know she’s missing too.”

“Yeah…” Adam swallowed around the lump in his throat. “I was planning to come out for winter break.”

“It’s just awful,” she said, becoming choked up herself. She regarded him for a moment before turning back to Sam. “I’m sorry to interrupt your dinner, but I was actually going to call you. There’s something weird out back by the dumpsters. I thought you should see it.”

“Oh!” The alcohol hit Sam suddenly and he felt his equilibrium shift. “I’m uh...I’m not in the best of shape right now…”

“Please? It’s kind of this glob of flesh and hair and I can’t tell if it’s an animal or...or something else.”

She looked really frightened, and dammit if Sam’s instincts didn’t kick in to want to stop her from being frightened. He knew he should wait until their food got there and he had something in his stomach besides vodka, but Adam was with him so he thought it would probably be okay just to go check out a gross pile of flesh in the alley. Adam didn’t seem to think it sounded that dangerous either, because he looked at Sam and gave a shrug to indicate it was his call and Adam would follow whatever he wanted to do. In the end he decided he’d better get the glob out of the way before he tried to eat anything, or he just might throw up whatever he tried to put into his stomach.

“Lead the way,” he said, sliding off of his stool and pausing for a moment to regain his balance. Adam put a hand on his back to steady him and shot a worried glance his way, but Sam just gave a little nod to indicate he was fine and they headed out the back after Mrs. Barton.

The alley was disgusting; all the smells of spoiled food and leftovers and empty liquor bottles mixed with urine and vomit. Sam hated alleys, especially when he had six shots of vodka in him on an empty stomach. Mrs. Barton was hurrying ahead of him over to an area at the far end of the alley near a sewage drain. The light to the back door of the business nearest it had blown, so that entire half of the alley was dark. Sam took out the flashlight he kept in his pocket and he and Adam headed over.

“It’s this, here,” she said, pointing to a sizable pile of what indeed looked to be flesh and hair with a good amount of blood mixed in. Sam and Adam squatted down to have a closer look, Adam fishing a pen out of his pocket to poke through the pile and try to determine its origins.

“God, I don’t miss this at all,” he said, spotting something white at the bottom of the pile. “Is that a tooth?”

“Or bone.” Sam was leaning in as well, trying to separate it out with his own pen. “Mrs. Barton, when did you…”

That’s as far as he got before the bartender’s wife brought a two-by-four down across the backs of their skulls, sending them both into darkness.

When Sam woke it took a few minutes for him to realize that he was strapped down to a table in a dark, mildewy room with a spray of light coming from somewhere up above. His arms were tied out at his sides to the table legs by his head, while his feet dangled slightly off the other end table and were similarly tied down. Several layers of duct tape were secured around his chest, effectively immobilizing him except for his head, which was screaming at him from the two-by-four blow. He looked around the room the best he could and found he was in a basement. The light coming in was from a street light or maybe the moon outside a block glass window. Adam was tied up upright against a supporting beam, ropes around his feet, thighs, and chest, his arms tied behind the post. Adam’s head lolled and Sam could see a trickle of blood running down his neck from the back. Sam pulled against the ropes and strained against the tape with everything he had, but whoever had done this had been thorough. Even with his muscular alpha frame he wasn’t going anywhere.

“Adam!” he barked as loudly as he dared, trying to wake up the beta. “Adam!”

That elicited a minor groan from across the room, and Adam seemed to stir, attempting to lift his head.

“Sam…” he slurred, continuing to struggle to wake up.

Okay, good. Adam was still alive. It didn’t help Sam figure out how to get out of these ropes, but it was better than being stuck down here with a corpse. He grappled against the ropes again with a roar, and heard footsteps on the stairs. Whoever it was moved slowly, as if building up anticipation for their entrance as he fought, and a few moments later three figures walked into the room: the missing Kate Milligan, Joe Barton, and his wife. Joe and the missus came over to the table while the thing that was Kate crossed to Adam, grabbed a handful of hair, and raised up his head. The sudden jerk brought Adam around with a gasp of pain, and after a minute he opened his eyes and looked at the thing holding his hair. He recognized her from the picture she’d sent.

“M...mom?” he asked, confused.

“That’s not your mom,” Sam said. “It’s a ghoul.”

Not-Joe-Barton laughed, pulling a long, thin knife fillet knife out of a sheath in the back of his pants.

“Very good Agent Campbell!” he cried. “Did you figure that out all on your own or did John Winchester help?”

“He thought he might not have gotten you all last time he was here,” Sam said, and cried out as the ghoul cut a long slice along his forearm and leaned down to lap up the blood like a cat.

“Oh, he didn’t,” explained the ghoul that looked like Adam’s mother. “He got our parents, though. Left us scavenging the graveyard for rotten meat.”

She pulled out a similar blade and made a shallow slice down Adam’s throat to suckled the blood from his neck. Adam gave a shout as the third ghoul came over and dug a short knife into the upper right side of his torso. Adam yelped, and then screamed as the ghoul dug its finger into him to scrape out some blood and fatty tissue.

“We weren’t even hurting anyone, just taking the flesh of the dead,” the third ghoul said as the first continued licking at Sam’s arm, then wandered over to carve a chunk of meat out of Sam’s left side to gnaw on like a piece of beef jerky. Sam’s accompanying shriek echoed through the house. “But up rolls John Winchester and blows away mom and dad. Makes you wonder who the monster is.”

The ghoul that was not Kate carved another cut on Adam’s neck, still not very deep, but enough that he was now bleeding substantially all over his shirt as she said, “When we learned little Miss Milligan’s son was coming home we thought he’d be excellent bait for daddy to come back, too.” She smiled up at Adam, who was starting to look very pale, blood staining her teeth. “But we got hungry in the meantime.”

“Fresh meat is so much better,” the third ghoul told them before latching onto the wound in Sam’s stomach and starting to chew while the other two ghouls sucked on Sam’s arm and Adam’s neck.

Both men were screaming and dangerously close to passing out when the basement door burst open and John was storming down the stairs with a pump action shotgun, getting the ghoul that had been attached to Sam’s stomach with a slug that burst its head like a melon, bone and brain matter spraying all over Sam and the ghoul sucking on his arm. The other two ghouls sprang at John, knives at the ready, and he got one of them on the way down, its head exploding in a pink cloud, but the last ghoul managed to knock the gun away and take him to the ground, trying to bring the knife down into his eye. John blocked it with both arms, finding himself quickly in a fight for his life to keep the knife from finding its desired home and the ghoul from sinking its teeth into his neck.

“Adam!” John shouted as his son did pass out while the alpha on the table struggled to try to slip his blood-slick arm out of the restraint. “Sam!”

Adam’s head had lolled back down and his shirt was quickly turning deep red at the collar and the stomach. John continued his desperate fight as the ghoul pressed one of its arms down across his neck to cut off his airflow and sank its teeth into his shoulder. Sam managed to get his right arm out but was having tremendous difficulty untying his left wrist because of all the blood on his hand. After an eternity of struggling against the monster John finally managed to launch it backwards off of him and tried to regain his breath and get his head to stop swimming so he could go for the gun. The ghoul was already on its feet and heading for him, knife extended above its head when Dean thundered down the stairs with a baseball bat and cracked it square upside the left temple. It reeled, advanced on him, and swung around with the knife, swiping at his stomach and drawing a long line of blood from his ribs. Dean gave a pained shout as Sam screamed out his name, then swung the bat up and brought it down right on top of the ghoul’s head, sending it crashing to the floor. John got his hands on the gun at last and turned to blow its half-split-open head off as it came back again for Dean, then he ran to the omega as Dean collapsed on the stairs.

“Dean!” his father yelled as the young man leaned against the wall shaking and panting, but Dean waved him off.

“It’s just my ribs,” he gasped. “Get Adam.”

John paused a moment to swipe his hands down Dean’s face to help calm him before grabbing a knife from amongst the gore on the floor and hurrying to cut his younger son free. Sam was trying desperately to get his other hand loose but was only causing himself to bleed a whole lot more, and after a few seconds Dean got his Bowie knife out of its sheath and hurried over to start on Sam’s bindings.

“Dean…” he gasped as the omega got his other hand free. “God, Dean are you okay?”

“I’m fine Sammy,” Dean said, though Sam could see how badly he was trembling as he worked on sawing through the ropes holding Sam’s feet and then the duct tape. “I’d’ve been here sooner, but uh...I got this thing with basements.”

Dean got Sam’s chest free and the alpha shot off the table and grabbed the omega, pressing Dean tightly to him and instinctively bringing his face to Dean’s neck to scent him past the fear rolling off of him. He could feel Dean’s heart pounding and how fast he was breathing and pressed his mouth to the omega’s hair, sweeping his uncut arm up and down Dean’s back. Dean clutched the back of Sam’s shirt and buried his face in Sam’s chest, using the mass of the alpha’s frame to hold himself upright as his knees gave out on him. The trembling worsened, and Sam pushed his own terror away so that he could focus on soothing Dean before he collapsed.

“You smell like me,” Sam murmured in an effort to distract the increasingly distressed omega.

“Had to put on one of your shirts when the old lady across the street called and said she saw Kate movin’ around the house.” He got his arms around Sam’s neck so he could burrow in closer. “Only way I could get out of the hotel. Some idiot got rid of my scent blockers.”

Sam chuckled, kissing Dean’s forehead and petting his face, trying not to worry at how anxious Dean’s scent was becoming.

“Did you try hitting him with a laptop? Cuz I’d have totally hit him with a laptop.”

“Didn’t work out so well.” Dean’s breathing was becoming fast and shallow. “I gotta get out of this basement, Sammy.”

“Sam, check their pockets for the truck keys,” John ordered, trying to wake his younger son. “It’s parked right outside, they must’ve driven here in it. Dean, I need help with Adam.”

“You gonna be okay?” Sam asked the omega, leaning him against the table.

“If you’re quick,” Dean said, trying to swallow down his rising panic.

Sam frisked the ghoul that had fallen by the table and then went to the one Dean had gotten with the baseball bat, lucking out and finding the keys in its pants pocket. Dean was on his knees at the table, leaning heavily against it and struggling to slow his breathing down. Sam hauled him to his feet as John snapped, “Dean!”

“I’ll get Adam,” Sam told him as Dean clung to him. “You need to get Dean upstairs right now.”

“I’m okay,” Dean insisted quietly, turning his face up into Sam’s shoulder to breathe him in.

“You’re not,” Sam said, walking him across the floor to John. “Trade you.”

“Saw your jackets upstairs inside the door,” John told him, struggling with his unconscious son. “The truck’s right outside. Get him into it.”

Sam managed to hand Dean off to John and grab Adam to throw him into a fireman’s carry. Adam moaned as Sam jostled him, which was at least something, since Sam’s back was growing increasingly wetter and warmer with Adam’s blood, not to mention the side of Sam’s shirt from where the ghoul had gouged him. He hurried up the stairs the best he could, John and Dean at his back, and caught the spike of panic in Dean’s scent as they got close to the door to the upstairs. Sam turned back with his bleeding arm to grab for Dean’s shirt and haul him forward into his side. They’d just made it to the top step when Dean passed out, nearly taking Sam and Adam down with him.

“Dean!”

He tried to drag him forward by the collar but couldn’t get him to budge when he was also carrying Adam, trying not to drop him, and still losing blood himself.

“Truck, Sam, now!” John ordered, getting his arms under his older son to hold him against his chest. “It’s probably a panic attack, I _told_ him to stay up here. Get Adam in the truck and come back for Dean.”

Sam didn’t move, his alpha completely unwilling to leave the omega and the baby behind, even in the safety of Dean’s father. Only when John finally barked, “ _Sam_! _Now_!” was he able to move forward to where their jackets were piled on the floor, grab them, and hurry out to the porch. The ghouls had been stupid enough to park right in the driveway, so at least he didn’t have to go far with Adam through the snow to get him into the truck. He fumbled the keys into the door lock with his rapidly freezing fingers and slid the young beta into the passenger seat, throwing the coats over him before running back inside for John and Dean.

The first thing Sam scented when he re-entered the house was the worry rolling off of John as he tried to help Dean get to his feet. Sam noticed there was a considerable amount of blood on the floor where Dean had been laying, and that his ribs where the shirt was slashed were wet and shiny. He was awake, but barely, and his skin was pale. A fine sheen of sweat was building on his forehead and he was still breathing very hard.

“Sam…” he gasped, reaching for the alpha.

“What’s wrong?” Sam demanded, running over to scoop Dean up against his chest.

“I think the ghoul cut him deeper than he knows,” John said, tossing him a set of keys. “Get him in the Impala and meet me at the hospital.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I cannot apologize enough for leaving you guys on a cliffhanger. We're picking my daughter up from my parents and after three weeks away from home I'm going to have a five year old glued to my hip. Plus school starts up after Labor Day. I *promise* not to leave this sitting that long, but realistically it's going to be harder for me to post super frequent updates in the next couple of weeks. And I'm in Medea the week after school starts so...yeah, got a big-ass awesome classic monologue I need to memorize somewhere in there.


	29. You Don't Want to Go Fighting Ghosts Without Any Health Insurance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Louisiana isn't the only state with messed up laws.

Dean woke up to shouting, bright lights, beeping, and the feeling of needing at least one more blanket to actually be warm. The last thing he remembered clearly was being in Adam’s mom’s basement after cutting Sam off of a table where a group of ghouls had been snacking on him. Before that he’d been frozen at the top of the stairs, listening to the gunshots and the fighting down in the dark, and had needed to count to one hundred and ninety seven before he could make himself move to save Sam, his dad, and his brother. He’d managed to get the last ghoul off of his dad so John could kill it, but as soon as the adrenaline wore off he began to see flashes of the room from the tape. The cement, the lack of light, the way Sam was splayed out on the table, it was all too much. He tried to power through it and wasn’t going to say a word about what was happening, but it took such a long time to get Sam off the table, and then John needed help with Adam, and then Sam had to get Adam upstairs because he was too much weight for John and after being wrapped up in the cloud of safe Sam scent, his dad’s tar and dirt roads wasn’t enough. Obviously they made it out of the basement because they weren’t there now, but how they got out and where they were he had no idea.

Gradually he became aware that he was in a bed, in a flimsy gown that tied in the back, with scratchy definitely-not-his mesh underwear on, an I.V. in his arm, and Adam on the other side of the room. So. He was in a hospital. He didn’t think he’d been hurt badly enough to go to a hospital but he hadn’t exactly been paying attention. Adam definitely looked a whole lot worse. He was pale and hooked up to a couple of machines monitoring his heart rate and breathing and had one of those oxygen tubes in his nose. The beeping was coming from him.

The shouting was coming from the hallway. He couldn’t make out what was being said because the door to the room was closed, but one of the voices sounded distinctly Sam-like. He went to stand up and go see what the hell the shouting was all about, which is when he realized he had some kind of band strapped around his middle. It was attached to a machine that was printing out a long strip of paper and looked like the seismographs from _Tremors_. The sight of it was disconcerting, since he was pretty sure he didn’t have a graboid inside him. He turned to see if he could figure out how to unhook it, and felt a sharp pain in his ribs. Moving the hospital gown aside he saw that there was an alarmingly large bandage on his right side, and when he pulled it back there was a neat, alarmingly long row of stitches. It hurt like a sonofabitch, but was a good stitch job.

His omega was insisting that he wait patiently until either the Sam-like voice came into the room, probably attached to Sam, or someone in authority came in to tell him what was going on, but that required patience and Dean had none of that when hospitals were involved. He was hooked up to too much stuff to walk over to his brother and try to wake him up, and he didn’t want to start shouting in a hospital room and have them come in and restrain him or something, so he did the next best thing: he raided the little table beside the bed for things he could chuck across the room at his kid brother and try to wake him up.

Adam must either have been hurt really badly or they had him sedated, because he didn’t even stir until Dean beaned him in the head with his water cup. Even then he didn’t really wake up, he just kind of shifted around, found a more comfortable position, and went back to sleep. Man, it was a good thing Adam had gotten out of the life. He’d get himself killed sleeping that soundly in a hospital.

He was about to toss the empty water pitcher at him as a last ditch effort when Sam stormed into the room carrying a duffel bag, his nose and arm bandaged, his face black and blue. He was followed by John, who had a bandage peeking out from the neckline of his shirt, and a slender, attractive brunette with green-blue eyes and an expression dripping with contempt. She wore a business suit with some kind of ID tag clipped to it, carried a file folder with her, and smelled like burnt bacon, which made Dean’s stomach do an unhappy flip. Hospital administrator of some sort. That did not fill Dean with confidence.

“Sam, it’s just for a couple of weeks,” John was saying, but whatever was only a couple of weeks Sam was having none of it.

“Couple of weeks my ass,” Sam snapped, whirling on him. “They’re bureaucrats, John, once they get him in the system he’ll never get out of this fucking state! If you won’t sign him out of here, I will!” He was beside Dean in two long strides, kissing his cheek like that was something they did regularly ( _or ever_ ) and started looking over the seismograph thingy. “Dean, get that I.V. out of your arm, we’re leaving.”

“Mr. Campbell, if you attempt to remove this omega from these premises I shall be forced to inform the authorities,” the administrator was saying in a crisp British accent. “I understand your grandfather is an important Director at the Federal Department of Hunters, but I assure you that agency has no jurisdiction over these matters.”

“Fuck you very much, Ms. Talbot.” He was digging into the duffel bag pulling out clothes. “Dean! I.V.!”

Dean sprang to attention and ripped out the I.V. as best he could without tearing a hole in his arm and starting it bleeding everywhere. Sam was shoving clothes at him and unwrapping the strap from his middle.

“Sammy, what’s going on?” he asked as Sam was undoing the hospital gown so he could pull a tee shirt down over Dean’s head.

“We’re getting out of here, that’s what’s going on,” Sam said, but the administrator was advancing around to address Dean directly.

She plastered a fake-ass smile on her face, bending slightly at the waist to look him straight in the eye as she spoke to him.

“Dean,” she said in a sickly sweet voice. “We’re discussing something very serious about your care. The state of Minnesota wants to protect you while you’re carrying. You want that, don’t you?”

Dean stared at her for a minute, looked at his father, and then up at Sam.

“Why is she talkin’ to me like I’m fuckin’ five?” he demanded, then turned back to the British bitch. “No, I don’t want the state of Minnesota to protect me while I’m carryin’. Whatever you’re askin’ I do not consent.”

“She doesn’t need your consent, Dean,” John said. He sounded old and tired and very unlike the man who had taught Dean since childhood to avoid law enforcement and protective services agencies like the plague. “You’re an unmated, pregnant omega and in the state of Minnesota apparently that gives them custodial rights over you.”

Dean’s eyes went wide at this.

“Like hell!” he shouted. “I’m going to be twenty seven in a month and a half! Plus I’m not a Minnesota resident! Check my fucking driver’s license!”

“Minnesota doesn’t recognize out of state omega driver’s licenses as proof of residence,” Ms. Talbot explained tersely, clearly disapproving of his word choice. “As I’ve explained to your father and the baby’s alleged sire…”

“ _Alleged_?!” Dean’s eyes went even wider as he gaped at her, then he turned to Sam and grabbed his clothes. “You were right, we’re leavin’. Where are my boots?”

“Dean, just calm down for a second,” John said.

“He doesn’t have to calm down,” Sam snapped. “If you want him to calm down sign for his custody and I’ll get us a hotel for the next two weeks until they can run the test.”

“I can’t do that, Sam,” John shot back pointedly. “You know I can’t.”

“Well Adam can’t, he’s recovering from surgery!” Sam thundered. “So maybe table this quest for just a little while and keep Dean out of a fucking halfway house!”

“I. Can’t.”

“I don’t need anyone to sign for my fucking custody,” Dean hissed. “I’m a fucking adult, I’ll sign for my own damn custody.”

“I’m afraid that’s impossible,” Talbot told him. “Omegas simply do not have the mental capacity required to make their own decisions when it comes to matters of their health.”

“Don’t have the mental…?! I’m not listening to any more of this.” Dean was looking for where Sam put his pants. “Sam, you know where my keys are? I’m gettin’ outta this backwater.”

“If you attempt to leave this state we will set a nationwide alert for you as a runaway and once the authorities find you they’ll simply bring you back.” She gave Dean a long, hard stare with her cold blue-green eyes. “And then instead of staying the two weeks necessary until you’re far enough along for us to conduct a DNA test to confirm Mr. Campbell _is_ in fact your pup’s sire you will be kept here for the remainder of your pregnancy.”

“ _What_?” Dean had gotten up off the bed and was now standing there in just a tee shirt and underwear, only one leg in his jeans, his back pressed up against Sam, who he noticed was shaking with the waves of rage pouring off of him. “You can’t hold me _hostage_ just because I’m knocked up!”

“Yeah, she can,” John said in the same tired tone. “I’m sorry Dean, I had no idea this state had those kind of laws in place for omegas. I wouldn’t have brought you in.”

“And then he almost certainly would have miscarried,” Talbot said with a shake of her head, writing notes in the folder she’d brought in with her. “Looks like we’re definitely doing the right thing by taking him into state custody.”

Dean had gone white as a sheet at the word “miscarried” and grabbed for Sam’s hand. He felt Sam’s arm tighten around his back and the alpha pulling him into his chest and Sam turned off all of the rage he was emitting like switching off a light. Dean heard him whispering something about just a little bleeding, and it didn’t make the word any better. He could feel Sam sweeping long caresses up and down both of his arms and started to shiver in the tee shirt and boxer briefs, feeling very exposed. He became dimly aware that his cheeks were damp and that Sam was holding him, and he slotted his face into the crook of the alpha’s neck so he could breathe in the soothing smell of green tea and gunpowder.

“I didn’t mean what I said about the baby,” he whispered to Sam, his voice shaking. All of those stupid worries overwhelmed him and he tried to stop crying and shaking but damn, he was terrified at the thought of what might have happened to his passenger while he was taking blind curves at too high a speed and running red lights. “I really didn’t.”

“I know.” Sam tightened his hold, pressing a kiss to Dean’s temple and massaging the base of his spine. “The baby’s fine, it’ll be okay, we just need to get you out of here.”

“The omega is far too distressed to continue this conversation.” Burnt bacon walked over to Dean’s bed and pushed one of the call buttons on the pillow speaker tied around the bed frame. “It’s time for you two to leave. I’ll get one of the nurses in here to sedate him.”

Dean looked like he was trying to crawl inside of Sam’s frame with the way he clung to him at the prospect of being sedated. In about half a second Sam had turned Dean counterclockwise so he was half shielding the omega with his body and had his Taurus out of the holster at his back shoved straight in her face, his eyes glowing. This was clearly something new for Ms. Talbot and as her eyes flashed red as well as she held her hands up and stepped back from the bed.

“Anyone tries drugging him and things are going to get real ugly, real quick.”

“Mr. Campbell,” she said, aware that she needed to diffuse the situation but not having the temperament to do so, “I think we can all agree that it won’t help matters any if I need to have you ejected from the building by security and barred from contact with the omega.”

“How well do you think that’ll go for you?” Sam asked far too calmly.

“You’re upsetting the omega, Mr. Campbell.”

“His name is Dean, and you’re the one upsetting him. Maybe if you fucking _leave_ I can calm him down.”

“Sam, put the gun away,” John snapped, running a hand through his hair. “Ms. Talbot, I’m gonna make this real clear. Since you said out in the hall that I’m the only one who can take custody of Dean because his brother is incapacitated, as Dean’s legal guardian I refuse any and all sedatives on his behalf. Unless he suddenly needs surgery he stays awake. I’m thinkin’ there’s some form you’re going to need me to fill out for that?”

“Fine.” Sam stared at Ms. Talbot, gun still in her face, until after the nurse had come in from the hall and she said, “The omega needs his I.V. reinserted. Mr. Campbell needs a few minutes to calm him and then I expect you can get him hooked back up.”

“Yes Ms. Talbot,” the nurse replied, ducking back out of the room and casting a sideways glance at Sam.

“Happy?” she snarled at Sam, and he put the gun away. She turned to John. “I’ll be right back with those forms.”

She gave Sam one more withering glare, straightened her jacket, and exited the room. Sam turned his back to the door to envelop Dean again.  

“I’ll figure out a way to fight this,” Sam told him softly, running a hand through his hair and down his neck.

“It’s not worth it,” Dean replied dully. “It’s only two weeks. I’ve been through worse.”

“I’ll see if I can get your grandfather to come sign for you,” John said. “It’s kind of complicated, contacting him, but he might be willing to help.”

“Sure Dad.” Dean had no illusions about Henry coming to help him. There was exactly one Winchester that Dean could count on, and that was himself. “Whatever.”

“I’m sorry, Dean. I wish I could get you out of here but…”

“I know. You have a job.” He glared at his father over Sam’s shoulder. “It’s that demon, isn’t it? That one I asked you to stop hunting?” John didn’t say anything. Dean pulled away from Sam, his anger rising, and took a few steps towards his father. Sam didn’t let him get any farther before grabbing his hand to rub small circles in his palm. Dean’s anger spiked briefly as he fought off how much the simple act of Sam rubbing his thumb into his hand calmed him, but his omega was purring at the gentleness of the touch and he just couldn’t stay angry. “You wanna tell me what happened to Adam, since I’m the one that’s gonna have to take care of him when he gets out of here? Assuming I’m not still on lockdown?”

“The ghoul nicked his liver pretty good,” John told him. “They had to open him up to fix it. “

“How long is he gonna be stuck here?”

“They don’t know. They’re gonna have to watch him until they’re sure the bleeding has stopped, and then he’s gonna have a long recovery when he gets out. At least two months.”

“And you’re just gonna leave him.” Dean’s anger spiked again and Sam moved in against his back, continuing to circle his thumb in Dean’s palm and using his other hand to rub circles into the back of Dean’s neck. It was very distracting. “Stop it, Sam.” Sam stopped it instantly and Dean’s omega whined at the loss. “Never mind, keep doing that, it’s nice.”

“Dean, I know you don’t understand this…” John started, and his son snapped, “You’re right, I don’t. So why don’t you just sign those forms for me and go chase your white whale? I gotta call Bobby and let him know what’s goin’ on. _If_ the wardens around here think I have the ‘mental capacity’ to use a phone.”

He went back to the bed and sat down, pulling the sheet and far-too-thin blanket up over his legs so he wasn’t just there in his boxer briefs and a tee shirt. He grabbed the pillow speaker and turned on the TV as the nurse came back in to insist he change into a hospital gown and reinsert his I.V. He refused to let her reattach the seismograph thingy, and she told him she’d be sending in the doctor shortly to make him see sense. Man, he hated hospitals.

“I’m sorry, son,” John told him, and he sounded it, but if there was one thing Dean knew by now it was that sorries from his old man weren’t worth the breath needed to speak them.

“Just go already,” Dean replied sourly. “Sam, why aren’t you rubbin’ my neck? You got me into this mess with your stupid tequila and your stupid _Fellowship of the Ring_. I think I’ve earned a neck rub.”

Sam hastened to perch on the edge of the bed and resume rubbing Dean’s neck as John gave up trying to talk to his son and walked out. They sat in silence for a long while, Sam making small circles with his thumbs where Dean’s neck met his shoulders as Dean tried very hard not to just lean back into Sam and cuddle him. He was still a jerk, after all. He’d still lied to Dean for two years. Just because he was good at backrubs it was in no way getting him off the hook.

It was just that...well, it had been _months_ since Dean felt safe letting someone touch him. He missed being touched so terribly. If he were going to be honest, he’d been missing it since his mother died, but it was different missing something that wasn’t constant but he knew he could get just by flashing a smile at the pretty beta waitress bringing his beer and missing something he thought he’d never be comfortable with again. Bobby had done everything he could to make things seem like they might someday go back to being something that closely resembled what life had been like before, but Bobby was not a hugger by nature. He wasn’t a caresser. He’d stepped up to the plate as best he could, but he was a beta, and it could never be enough. That wasn’t Bobby’s fault, it was just biology.

“Dr. Sexy, MD?” Dean could hear both the smile and the scorn in Sam’s question. “Really?”

“The man wears cowboy boots to do rounds, Sam,” Dean snapped without any real irritation behind it. It would be hard to sound irritated when Sam’s big, strong hands were going to work on his shoulders, easing the knots that had been worsening there since he’d decided to get a stick to pee on and everything fell apart.

Sam just laughed.

“Exactly my point.”

“If you want to pick the show, you can get confined to a hospital by the state next time.”

Dean hadn’t meant it to sound bitter, it just kind of came out that way. Dammit, was he ever going to be able to just relax again? He was getting tired of not being able to joke around without everything that came out of his mouth sounding like a Greek tragedy. Why couldn’t things just be normal? He desperately missed who he used to be. Sure, he drank too much and his eating habits were terrible and his job was fraught with trauma and danger and he was probably not going to live to see forty, but he knew how to unwind and have fun and enjoy things and just let it all go for a little bit. Where had that guy gone and why couldn’t Dean get him to come back?

Sam leaned forward and slid his arms around Dean’s stomach, resting his head on the omega’s shoulder before sweeping a hand up and down Dean’s chest. The omega inhaled sharply, caught between enjoying the sensation and not liking the feeling of having Sam pressed up against him. Why it bothered him sitting when he had been fine having Sam stand behind him he had no idea, but he felt the sudden urge to leap off the bed.

“Is this okay?” Sam asked quietly, stopping his hands right around the tiny little swell that was showing in Dean’s belly.

“I think maybe stick to the shoulders,” Dean replied, doing his best to keep his tone even.

Sam was trying to be nice and Dean didn’t want to ruin it, but now he was having a hard time thinking about anything else besides the fact that Sam was behind him on the bed and it was uncomfortable even though Sam wasn’t doing anything outside of trying to soothe him. So now on top of everything else he was a malfunctioning omega who couldn’t be soothed. Sam was back to rubbing his shoulders, but even that was making him want to crawl out of his skin. Why Sam was even bothering to stay in the room with him at this point he had no idea.

“You wanna tell me what’s going on?” the alpha said, sensing Dean’s discomfort and removing his hands.

“I don’t...I don’t really know what’s goin’ on,” Dean told him. “What you were doin’ was fine and then it just...it wasn’t.”

“Okay, I can stop.”

Dean felt the bed shift as Sam moved away, and immediately missed his closeness. He felt his chest tighten at the loss of Sam pressed against him, and was relieved almost to the point of tears when Sam came around to sit in front of him on the bed. This must be exhaustion from everything that happened the day before and all the crap with the bitch from social services or whatever. Dean had grown accustomed to being a basket case, but this was just ridiculous.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me, Sammy,” he said with a weak little smile. Sam’s eyes were full of concern, all blue-green flecked with gold, like the little solar systems they showed in a CGI rendering of the universe on the Discovery channel. “I think I’m defective.”

“You’re not.” He could tell Sam wanted to reach out to touch him but no longer dared. It made him incredibly sad. “You’re just dealing with a lot, Dean. And I certainly haven’t helped any. The way I acted yesterday - I don’t even know how to begin to say I’m sorry. John should’ve let you hit me with the laptop, it’s the least I deserve. I don’t blame you for coming after me about the blockers or kicking the door in or what you said about the...You shouldn’t ever have to be afraid I’m going to put my hands on you like that, and if I ever do again don’t even think twice about driving that knife into my stupid, thick skull. It would have served me right if your dad or brother shot me, the way I was behaving. I’m lucky they didn’t.”

“Yeah.” He laughed at the understatement of the millenium. “So, uh...I’m pregnant.”

Sam blinked his big beautiful eyes and cocked his head. He looked like a confused puppy. Dean felt his pulse racing and his face getting hot.

“I know.”

“No, I’m…” Dean looked down at his hands, at his stomach, at the way his waist was wider and his now decidedly convex abdomen. “I’m tryin’ to restart yesterday. I think we can both agree it...didn’t go well.”

Sam blinked again and said quietly, “Oh. Okay.”

“So…” Dean cleared his throat. “Like I said, I’m pregnant. And uh...it was an accident I didn’t...you know, I wasn’t tryin’ to trap you or anything back in Laramie…”

“I never thought you were.”

“It just...I ran outta my suppressants and I couldn’t afford them and that’s why I needed the job. I didn’t mention it at the time cuz I thought it wasn’t a big deal. I didn’t know that I was gonna develop super baby-making powers practically overnight.” That got a chuckle and a little grin out of Sam so that his dimples made an entrance to the party. Dean felt his heart do a little flip and looked back down at his hands. “And...you know, I should’ve told you, and I _thought_ about it but you...you didn’t seem all that interested and then the thing in the parking lot happened and then you changed your number.”

“What thing in the parking lot?”

“I had a...I had a flashback. Worse than the diner. A lot worse. I thought Bobby and Dad told you when they called.”

“Yeah…I was in a bar getting hammered at the time. I don’t actually remember what we talked about. I never would’ve just dropped off the face of the earth if I knew.” Sam frowned, running his hand through his hair and over the back of his neck. He wasn’t sure how much he wanted to get into with Dean right now, but knew he would have to eventually tell him about what happened to his sire and that he was hunting the same demon John was after, something of which Dean clearly disapproved. “And my phone, that...that just kind of happened. I wasn’t trying to ditch you. And then my rut hit and I _really_ didn’t think it would be a good idea to get in touch with you, and then I started working with your dad and Jesus, that man’s _never_ heard of privacy.”

Dean laughed, and Sam felt warm and tingly all throughout his chest and down into his groin. He suppressed the wave of longing that tried to drown him before too much of it seeped into his scent. He thought after yesterday he wouldn’t ever hear the sound of Dean’s laughter again.

“Oh believe me, I know. Try bein’ seventeen and horny around him.” He blushed deeper, seeming to screw up his courage before asking, “So your rut, huh? That couldn’t have been fun. Or maybe it was.” Sam didn’t say anything and looked over at Adam. “Was it?”

Sam thought about those two weeks when he was off getting laid while Dean was dealing with, god, all of the things he now knew Dean was dealing with and felt himself being crushed under the weight of the shame anew. All the faces he couldn’t remember, all the names he didn’t get - he wouldn’t want to talk about it with Hugh Hefner, never mind someone who was stuck in Minnesota for two weeks because Sam had gotten him pregnant. Dean couldn’t really be asking about this. Maybe he was trying to punish Sam for the lying.

“It’s not...it’s never fun,” Sam told him. “Well, I mean, it was okay when I was with Jess and there are services I’ve used a couple of times but...it’s not ‘fun’ being that out of control. Not able to rein myself in. It’s like how I was in the hotel room yesterday. I can’t stop until I find someone who’s...willing. It’s terrifying thinking of what I might do if I ever can’t find someone willing and I don’t have a service lined up. And the suppressants are worse. The literally made me want to kill myself. It kinda caught me by surprise this year.”

“So what’d you do?”

Jesus, Dean really did want to talk about this. It was definitely a punishment. Sam thought about it for a minute and shrugged.

“I started in North Dakota and worked my way east?” Sam didn’t know what reaction he expected out of the omega at that admission, but it certainly wasn’t the full belly laugh that he got. Dean laughed so hard he turned red, his eyes dancing, and Sam couldn’t help but start laughing too. “What? Why is that funny? It was two days before I could walk straight at the end of it.”

That made Dean laugh even harder, so hard Sam was afraid he might fall off the bed. Sam couldn’t believe Adam was sleeping through the whole thing as Dean clutched his middle and wiped away tears from the corners of his eyes, trying to slow his breathing down as he simply guffawed.

“Oh god…” he said after a minute, his voice high and filled with glee. “God Sammy, I’m sorry, you just look so embarrassed about getting laid. It’s like you’re twelve and just woke up with your first morning wood.”

Sam turned beet red and tried to look indignant, but Dean had hit the nail pretty much on the head with how he felt.

“Well, it’s kinda weird talking about this with you, that’s all.”

“Why?” Dean was still swiping at his eyes. “Because we’re talking about _sex_? I hate to break it to you Sam, but you and me have actually _had_ sex.” Sam ducked his head and laughed, the dimples reappearing as he grinned up at Dean from under his hair. “There’s nothin’ to be embarrassed about. Sex is great, you know? It’s got lots of benefits. It’s a great stress reliever. It releases endorphins. It’s a good workout. It feels amazing if you’re doing it right, and it lets you connect with someone. Touch someone.” The smile slipped from Dean’s face as Sam turned his full attention back to the omega. “And they get to touch you. You get to be intimate and vulnerable, even if it’s just for a couple of hours. When do we get to do that with our job, you know? Just...touch someone without them tryin’ to kill you or thinking that you’re gonna die.” His eyes had grown shiny and wet as he looked past Sam and stared at the far wall, mourning the loss of who he had been. “I know a lot of alphas think that an omega who sleeps around deserves whatever they get. Betas do too. They all just kinda think we’re not supposed to want it if we’re not in heat, not unless we’re mated. But what are we supposed to do if we’re not? Never have anyone touch us? Or hold us? We’re just supposed to go without any kind of connection to someone else ‘til we just give in and let someone claim us?” He turned his huge, green, imploring eyes to the alpha, willing him to understand. “You shouldn’t be embarrassed about it, or think we can’t talk about it. It reminds you you’re still alive.” His voice dropped, thinking of a few minutes ago when Sam’s touch had gone from soothing to frightening for no reason whatsoever, and he said sadly, “I used to really like sex. It was one of my favorite things.” Sam reached forward to gently take his hand, rubbing little circles on his wrist to try to drive away the sorrow that was pouring off of him. Dean drew in a shaky breath, fixing his eyes on Sam’s face and wishing he weren’t such a morose jackass, bringing down the room, and that the dimples would come back. “I told you about the baby. Got any secrets you wanna tell me Sam?”


	30. I've Made Some Mistakes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam and Dean have a conversation.

Sam looked at Dean for a long moment, at the tears welling in his eyes and the way he was trying to breathe in calmly through his nose to hold himself together. He knew what Dean was asking about; knew that he wasn’t going to be able to tell the omega anything he hadn’t seen on the tape. But it was obviously something he still needed to hear from Sam himself, because no one had actually told him. He’d remembered, and he’d seen the tape, but that wasn’t the same as having Sam and Adam _tell him_ , so he scooched a little closer on the bed until their knees were touching. He wanted to be close enough in case Dean needed to scent him, then ran his hand down Dean’s face and neck. The omega leaned into his touch, looking pained.

“You remember a couple of years ago when I threw that party for Adam at my grandfather’s house in Shreveport?” he asked quietly. Dean closed his eyes and nodded, a tear leaving a trail down his left cheek. “After we got into the scotch, you and Adam ended up really drunk and...some of my cousins showed up. They were obviously interested in you but you told ‘em to fuck off because even drunk you’re still the toughest guy in the room - you’re still Dean Winchester. But you needed to pee and I got you upstairs into the bathroom and had you lock yourself in cuz I was worried that Adam had alcohol poisoning, so I had to check on him even though I didn’t want to just leave you alone. I thought...I don’t know what I thought, I thought I could scare my cousins off or intimidate them or maybe just mark my territory so well they’d back down but...Adam fell into the pool and it distracted me and one of them hit me with something and when I woke up…” More tears were spilling down Dean’s cheeks, though his eyes were still closed, and his distress was spiking so Sam got one leg up around him and slid in closer to try to wall him in with his body. “There were a couple of female alphas still there who’d gotten Adam out of the pool. Everyone else was gone. He’d nearly drowned, and my head was splitting and I was really fuzzy on what was going on. Then I remembered you were in the bathroom. But you weren’t.” His voice shook as Dean choked back the sobs that were trying to break out of his chest by way of his sternum. Sam took a second to swipe at his own tears that were threatening to spill down his high cheekbones and angled jaw. “We found you in the basement. They’d drugged you, and obviously assaulted you, but we didn’t get there until after, so I...I can’t really tell you what they did. And we got them off you and got them out of the house, but one of the girls told us…” His voice broke completely and he swiped furiously at the tears on his cheeks. “Jesus, Dean, Louisiana has some fucked up laws. It sucks that we’re stuck here for two weeks, but Minnesota’s got _nothing_ on Louisiana. God I was terrified. The idea that one of them could come back and just _take_ you…” The horror of the moment seized him briefly, and it took a few seconds for him to shove it back down in the pit where he’d buried it. “Anyway, Adam didn’t want to tell you, because he thought it would...I guess send you off the rails, and that you’d just start getting really reckless and get killed on a hunt or maybe drink yourself to death. And I knew it was wrong. I _knew_ it was Dean. I _knew_ I shouldn’t go along with it but you were by yourself throwing up in the bathroom and my head really hurt and I just wanted to _get back_ to you. I needed to be _with_ you, or know that someone was with you, making sure no one...and I knew there wasn’t anyone else in the house, but I’d left you in the bathroom before, whatever I had to do to get back to you I was gonna do it because you were vulnerable and you’d just been…”

Sam stopped and sucked in a breath, and after a moment Dean quietly said, “Raped. You can say it, Sam, it’s what happened.”

Sam’s alpha rose up in fury at the word, at the simple acknowledgement that someone had violated Dean; that someone would dare touch him in a way that he didn’t want, that someone would make him fear intimacy and use something that had been one of his favorite things and clearly brought him comfort as a weapon. He didn’t know what John had to do to literally turn his cousins inside out, but he was glad he’d done it. He fought down the urge to break anything he could get his hands on and continued.

“And you’d just been raped. And it’s no excuse, I should have told you anyway, no matter what I said to Adam, but the next morning when you woke up and you didn’t remember anything...It was like...it was like that first summer at school, when I asked you why you hadn’t told Adam what your dad did, and you said that you just wanted him to be a kid as long as he could. Not that you were a kid, but…” He cradled Dean’s face in his hands, wiping away the tears with his thumbs. “You just had this innocent look on your face. Like you’d never had one single bad thing happen in your life. Not one. No shapeshifters, no skinwalkers, no ghosts, no gunshot wounds or stabbings or broken bones or dead moms or getting kicked out of school or alphas who got too handsy at a bar. You were just happy, and peaceful, and beautiful, and I was too much of a coward to take a sledgehammer to something you thought was just a night of getting really drunk and cuddling. I have no excuse for it, I was just a fucking coward, Dean. And then after...you wouldn’t even look at me for the longest time, and it made me such a mess I couldn’t even _talk_ to you, and even if I could have talked to you, what was I gonna say? Hey Dean, can I buy you a beer and tell you about this horrible thing that happened to you and is probably gonna ruin your life? The lie just got so big the farther we got from it. I knew once you found out it was just gonna break everything, and I’m sorry, god, I am so sorry, but I didn’t know how I was supposed to _break_ _you_. And now that that’s happened, I want to put you back together again, but I don’t know how I’m supposed to do that, either.”

“Neither do I,” Dean whispered. He was quiet for a moment before asking, “Do you wanna know what they did?”

Sam slid one hand into Dean’s hair to sweep down through the thick tresses. Though his hair was still relatively short, it had to be almost twice as thick because of the pregnancy hormones, and it was so soft Sam just wanted to bury his face in it and stay there forever. He ran his other hand down Dean’s cheek and along his neck to his shoulder. Dean seemed torn between which hand to lean into.

“Only if you want to tell me.”

“I don’t.”

“Okay. But if you ever do...”

“I won’t.”

“Okay.”

All of a sudden it was like they were back in Laramie, with Dean in Sam’s lap and his mouth slanting across Sam’s, his tongue demanding entrance. Sam’s brain didn’t know what the hell was going on and his body didn’t care. On some level he thought he probably should be stopping this, since he’d just brought up a serious trauma that the gorgeous creature straddling him had gone through, and it wasn’t like they were on the best of terms yet, but he didn’t want to second-guess Dean or why he was doing this or deny him something he wanted. Especially not when Dean’s lips were so soft and his tongue was trying to memorize the inside of Sam’s mouth and he was pressing himself desperately to the alpha’s chest and Sam’s fingers were still running through Dean’s thick, soft mane. Sam was getting dizzy from how violently his heart was pounding and the way the blood was rushing away from his head to other parts of his body as Dean’s hands went up into his hair and tugged. The room was suddenly filled with the smell of honeysuckle and Sam moaned, running his hands up Dean’s back to hold the omega flush against him, finding the skin of his back beneath the inadequate covering of the hospital gown and pressing his fingers into the smoothness and warmth of the Dean’s flesh.

Just as suddenly as the kiss started Dean was throwing himself off of Sam, grabbing the I.V. stand and running for the bathroom as his stomach lurched violently. This was not fair. He had decided to kiss Sam. He had _wanted_ to kiss Sam, wanted to see if he could wipe away some of the filth and humiliation he’d been feeling since the pharmacy, but especially since watching the tape. He wanted to be able to do things like kiss and caress and hold and be held without being overwhelmed by fear and disgust, and he was pissed that he couldn’t just get _over_ it. He felt like a tease and such an ass, getting Sam all worked up just to have to go dry heave into the toilet because his stupid brain refused to let his body just _enjoy_ something. And he _had_ been enjoying it, the taste of Sam and the feel of his huge hands kneading into his hair and back, right up until he felt the slick start to dampen his underwear and Sam moaned and all he could see was Mark dropping his pants. He clung to the seat of the toilet waiting for his stomach to stop revolting against him and trying not to break into total hysterics as he heard Sam’s footsteps coming into the bathroom. He was glad they hadn’t fed him yet so he wouldn’t be throwing up anything substantial, but he was also starting to feel lightheaded from the lack of calories and put a trembling hand on the floor to hold himself up.

“Dean?” Sam’s voice was very soft and full of concern as he clearly struggled to get the enormous erection he was now sporting to go away. Dean tried to apologize but was stopped by the panic he could suddenly scent off of the alpha, who a second later was running across the bathroom to him. “Dean, shit, you’re bleeding!”

Dean was feeling a little woozy from the vomiting and the stress and need to eat and looked down at his side where the stitches were to try to see how badly he’d torn himself open. He was very confused when he saw his hospital gown was clean, and it wasn’t until Sam hauled him up off the floor that he saw the thin line of blood running down the inside of his leg. Sam scooped him up and grabbed the I.V. stand as Dean’s brain tried to comprehend what was happening to him, but he was having a hard enough time keeping his vision from going black. Good lord, he was turning into a regular Victorian woman and should probably get his own fainting couch. Sam got him back in bed and frantically pushed the call button for the nurse before going to yell out the door for a doctor, and that’s the last thing Dean registered before he couldn’t fight off the darkness anymore and the world slipped away.

It took entirely too long by Sam’s estimation for the nurses and a doctor to show up, though it was probably only about a minute or two. They shooed him away from the bed as they took Dean’s blood pressure and hooked him back up to the fetal monitor. The doctor, a petite beta who didn’t even acknowledge the alpha in the room, ordered one of the nurses out to get a transchannel ultrasound, speculum, and portable ultrasound. Sam bristled, growled, and got himself unceremoniously kicked out of the room when the troupe of medical professionals shifted Dean down towards the bottom of the bed, lifted his knees, and stripped off his boxers as the nurse who had been sent out and yet another nurse wheeled in a cart carrying the various instruments the doctor had called for. He was barely able to get the doctor to tell him anything after wearing a rut in the hallway outside Dean and Adam’s room, since he wasn’t family and he was only the “alleged” sire of the pup, but he caught the words “incompetent cervix,” which didn’t sound like a good thing, and very shortly, much to Sam’s horror, they were wheeling Dean off to surgery. One of the nurses took pity on him and assured him it was just “minor” surgery, but it was surgery nonetheless.

Adam was actually awake before they brought Dean back, though he was groggy and not feeling particularly well. They brought the portable ultrasound machine back in to take a swipe of his abdominal cavity to confirm that the bleeding in his liver was subsiding. They would need to keep him there for at least a week, likely closer to two to monitor him, but at the moment they were cautiously optimistic. He was young and healthy and had arrived at the hospital soon after the attack. He had good odds of making a full recovery.

Because Adam was awake Sam was able to find out exactly what was going on with Dean, why he’d been whisked away, and what to expect now that he’d come back. He had gotten his behavior under control enough to be allowed back into the room, and while he couldn’t ask questions he was able at least to hear the whole conversation while he sat next to Dean and fought back the urge to smother his face in Dean’s neck to breath him in. The doctor explained the omega had a condition where the cervix had begun to dilate as the pup increased in size and weight and they’d had to perform something called a cerclage. The condition was quite rare among female omegas and betas, but extraordinarily common among male omegas, impacting eight out of ten. It had something to do with genetics, and Dean would have been checked for it at his next appointment as a precaution even without the scare that had brought them into the hospital. They had hoped the bleeding from the day before would stop on its own, but when it had returned they had confirmed both via the transchannel ultrasound and with the speculum that Dean was suffering from this condition. They’d also confirmed with the portable ultrasound that the pup was doing well and there were no other underlying conditions such as placenta previa or placental abruption, but even without those complications if they hadn’t performed the cerclage Dean would undoubtedly have miscarried before the end of his second trimester.

Despite his nursing classes Adam didn’t understand half of what they were telling him due to the pain meds, and kept asking why they weren’t waiting for Dean to wake up from the general anesthetic to explain it to him themselves. Apparently in Minnesota omegas were not considered capable of understanding anything having to do with their health care and in the case of an unmated omega their health concerns were communicated to the nearest relative, even if that relative was doped up on morphine. If there was no nearest relative the state made all medical decisions on behalf of the carrying om, including what to tell them and what to withhold.

Dean would have to take it easy for several weeks, and for the remainder of his pregnancy he would have to avoid strenuous activity. He would need to schedule more frequent appointments with his own Om-OB/GYN to monitor his progress and ensure he was not in further danger. It was likely he would need to delivery surgically, as the typical regular knotting required for a natural whelping would be far too strenuous for his condition. Adam was glad for the morphine, as this was not a discussion he was looking forward to having with his older brother - both the part about no strenuous activity and the other part that involved using the word “knotting” in a sentence dealing with his sibling - and the wooziness from the drugs definitely took the edge off. The doctor did give Adam the option of signing Dean over to the state of Minnesota to care for until the pup arrived, but even high as a kite Adam wasn’t falling for that. They also wanted to move Dean to the maternity wing to monitor him, but Adam wasn’t falling for that either. If he and Dean were both going to be stuck in the hospital for any length of time they damn well were going to be stuck in the same room. He wasn’t letting Dean out of his blurry sight.

Sam had called Bobby while Dean was in surgery and filled him in on everything that had happened in the last day ( _had it really only been a day_?), and Bobby made the two hour drive in an hour and a half. He was no more successful than Sam in getting the doctors to discuss Dean’s care, but at least with Bobby sitting guard in Dean and Adam’s hospital room Sam felt it was reasonably safe to go down to the cafeteria and get something to eat and maybe some coffee, as by that point he was exhausted. The idea of cafeteria food didn’t exactly thrill him, and under different circumstances he might run outside the hospital to grab some actual food to bring back for him and Dean, since he didn’t know the last time Dean had eaten, but with words like “incompetent cervix” and “surgical delivery” rolling around his head he was lucky he could force himself out of the room, especially when they’d really put Dean under and he still wasn’t awake yet.

The cafeteria had meatloaf and mac and cheese on the menu, and Sam thought wistfully of the first time he’d met Dean and Adam and how they’d piled their plates full of everything the school had to offer. Sam felt a bit like doing that now. With all the stress from when they’d gotten to the hospital last night through when Dean had been whisked away for his “minor surgery” it hadn’t occurred to Sam that it was close to twenty-four hours since he’d actually eaten, having been interrupted by the Mrs. Barton ghoul before he even got a bite of his salad. Sam got both daily features plus a sandwich, soup, yogurt, and a couple bags of chips. He decided once he was done eating he’d pick up some of the mac and cheese to go and a couple of pieces of pie for Dean, since he didn’t know the last time the omega had eaten either and he needed more calories than the I.V. drip was going to be able to provide. He tried to eat as quickly as he could, his irritation and impatience rising the longer he stayed in the cafeteria. Undoubtedly it was because most of the people in there were visitors and not wearing scent blockers. He’d noticed most of the staff were heavily blocked so big 6’5” alphas didn’t go around tossing doctors and nurses away from their pregnant and bleeding omegas, but now he was in a sea of smells his brain interpreted as threats to Dean and he was having a hard time not snarling every time someone passed him. It was especially hard not to launch himself across the laminate tabletop when an alpha with dark hair, sharp features, blue eyes, a three piece suit, and a briefcase sat down across from him without invitation, removing a fedora from his head to set down between them.

“Hello Sam,” he said pleasantly, and the alpha bristled.

“If you’re with that bitch, Talbot, I’m gonna have to stop you before you start,” Sam snapped around a bite from his roast beef and provolone on sourdough. “I’m not going to try to convince Adam to sign Dean over to the state in John’s absence, or move him to a separate room, and I’m sure as hell not going anywhere until after you’ve run the paternity test, so just save your breath.”

“What? Oh, no.” The man smiled, which wasn’t necessarily reassuring but definitely made Sam rethink his initial instinct. The hospital administration had much oilier smiles than this guy. “I’m not with the state. I’m Dean’s grandfather, Henry.”

Well that was a load of horse shit. Whoever this guy was he couldn’t have been any older than his early forties, if that. There was no way he was John’s dad.

“Of course you are,” Sam snarked, and went back to inhaling his sandwich.

“Would you like to see my driver’s license?” the man asked evenly.

Sam automatically reached for the gun at his back when Henry slid his hand into the inside of his suit coat. Much as he didn’t want to have a shootout right here in the cafeteria he wasn’t about to let whoever this guy was get the upper hand that easily. But instead of pulling out a weapon the man withdrew a wallet and flipped it open to toss across the table. Sam eyed him warily, then picked up the wallet to review the license tucked inside.

The Kansas driver’s license definitely said “Henry Winchester” on it, listing a home address in Lebanon, KS. It had what was probably the correct height, weight, eye, and hair color for the man sitting across from him, and the picture was definitely the same. However, this license was old - very old, dated 1963, made of paper and printed in black and white. It was either genuine or a very good copy. Sam wished they were in a library instead of a hospital so he could do a quick Internet search to see if he could find an image of what Kansas licenses looked like back then. He suspected they’d look like the one in his hand. Besides, why would anyone fake a driver’s license from 1963?

“That Just for Men is working wonders,” he said, handing the license back. “You sure you’re not Benjamin Button?”

That elicited another genuine smile from the man who apparently really was Dean’s grandfather.

“A Fitzgerald reference. I was definitely right to come talk to you.”

“Talk to me about Dean?” It seemed strange to Sam that Henry had sought Sam out when John said he was going to contact him about Dean. Although Henry was from a different era and was an alpha; a strong-willed, highly intelligent one by his scent. Maybe he thought discussing custody issues regarding an omega with the omega directly was beneath him. “Have you been up to see him yet?”

“No, Dean’s an omega.” Well, at least Sam had anticipated the old school sexism correctly. “There isn’t really anything I can do for him.”

“You’re not here to sign him out of state custody?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about, Sam,”

“John didn’t contact you?”

“Unfortunately I haven’t spoken to John in years.” Confusing as this statement was, it was said with a deep sadness that definitely convinced Sam he was talking to John’s dad. But if John hadn’t contacted him, why was he here? “I’m not sure how much you know about me, Sam. I’m part of an organization; a research organization known as the Men of Letters.”

“Yeah, my grandfather told me a little bit about you guys,” Sam said. “He always thought you were pretty useless and not much more help fighting monsters than a bunch of librarians.”

“That sounds like Samuel,” Henry stated coldly. “He never appreciated what we had to offer in the way of help on cases. I’m hoping you don’t share his viewpoint.”

Sam gave a shrug and sipped his coffee, replying, “I’ve always thought librarians were underrated.”

“Excellent.” The smile was back again. Sam was starting to see some of Dean in the way Henry smiled. It made him want to wrap up this conversation as quickly as possible and get back to the omega’s room. “I wanted to extend and offer to you to join our ranks. Give up hunting and become a Man of Letters. You’re certainly qualified, and you’re the kind of new blood we’ve been wanting to infuse the organization with for quite some time. Unfortunately hunters like your grandfather have established a highly efficient assembly line for training others in the physical aspects of the job of fighting the supernatural and steered many potential candidates away from the research end of things.”

“Oh!” Well, this was not what Sam was expecting, but it was not an unwelcome conversation at all. He’d never wanted hunting to be his life, but he did like helping people. It was why he’d been drawn to the law; to try to do some good in the world. This was definitely something he might be curious about once Azazel was taken care of, once he didn’t have to worry about a demon coming after him or Dean again. “I didn’t realize the Men of Letters were taking...applicants. Resumes? Sorry, I know you guys exist but that’s about it.”

“That’s the answer I tend to get when extending these kinds of offers.” Henry didn’t tell him he was the first person they’d extended an offer to in thirty years. Sinclair was monitoring this conversation, as he did all conversations Henry had with anyone outside their two-man fortress. This was just supposed to be an overture to get Sam thinking about life away from the hunting world. “So it’s something you’d be interested in?”

“Well, interested enough to hear more about it,” Sam said as a particularly large and offensive-smelling alpha entered the cafeteria and surveyed the area like he was looking for fresh meat. Sam bristled, his eyes flashing red, and had to suppress a growl. He decided immediately that he’d had plenty to eat and it was time to get back to Dean. “Not right this second, though, do you have a card or something? Some way I can contact you?”

“Certainly,” Henry said, reaching into his inside pocket again to withdraw a stiff slip of paper just slightly larger than a business card, which he extended to Sam. “This is a communication spell. The necessary ingredients are on one side, instructions for casting are on the other.”

“The Men of Letters do spellwork?” Sam asked, impressed. This was definitely an organization worth exploring.

“It's more of a Grecian Formula that keeps me looking this way,” Henry replied with a smile. “You’ll think about it then?”

“Of course,” Sam said, slipping the card into his wallet. “Thank you. Now, about Dean…”

“Ah, yes, you said something about signing him out of state custody?”

“Yeah, in Minnesota the state can take custody of an unmated omega who’s carrying unless a family member who’s an alpha or a beta signs for them. He’d rather not be stuck in temporary housing for the next two weeks until they can run the necessary tests to prove I’m the sire and I can take custody of him.”

Henry cocked his head to the side and looked at Sam as if he didn’t understand what the younger alpha had just said to him. After a moment he seemed to realize what Sam was talking about and said, “Oh! Oh, well of course you have my permission to mate with Dean.”

“What?” Henry looked even more confused at the horror on Sam’s face. “No...no, that’s...no, I’m not asking for permission to claim Dean as my mate. Not that I wouldn’t like to, but I’d never just... _do_ that unless he was willing.”

“Sam.” There was that smile again, though this time Sam didn’t find it friendly, not at all. It was condescending, like Henry thought he was just some kid who needed to have things carefully explained to him. “I’ve met my grandson. And while he is definitely impressive, at the end of the day he is only an omega. Omegas don’t know what they want. They need an alpha to tell them. So just tell him you’re going to claim him and get on with it.”

This was _also_ not the way Sam pictured this conversation going. He felt his anger rising and only tamped down on it because he suspected if he allowed it to boil over he would beat Henry senseless and get himself banned from the hospital all together.

“I would never claim Dean against his will,” he said firmly, his mouth set in a hard line. “What I’m asking is for you to sign for Dean’s custody so that in two weeks when they can run the paternity test you can sign him over to me and we don’t have this problem again. John was going to contact you about it but obviously hasn’t yet.”

“I’m sorry Sam.” He looked it, too, but that did nothing to stop Sam’s anger from swelling again. “I just came to talk to you about becoming a member. I have to get right back to my duties with the organization. There’s no way I could sign for Dean’s custody if it requires me to stay two weeks.”

“Jesus…” Sam was on his feet, fishing out his wallet to retrieve the card, which he flung back across the table before picking up his tray. “Forget it then. I have my own douchebag of a grandfather to avoid. I don’t need to add Dean’s to my list. Have a nice life, Mr. Winchester.”

He stalked off to the garbage cans and dumped his trash before heading over to the food line again to pick up something for Dean to eat. Henry regarded him bitterly before uttering a curse under his breath and heading off through the hospital. In the lobby he made a quick detour to a family restroom that was a stand-alone and would allow him to lock the door. He opened the briefcase and removed the small bowl and necessary ingredients to complete the communication spell, saying the incantation quietly and hoping he didn’t set off the smoke detector overhead. After only a few moments the image of a man with dark, slicked back hair, a weasley face, and his own three piece suit complete with bow tie appeared in the mirror over the sink.

“Well that couldn’t have gone worse,” the mirror man snapped.

“I told you I should have played the angle of being here to sign Dean out,” Henry snapped back. “An alpha will always put his omega first. You’d understand that if you’d ever cared for anything outside of your collections and spells, Cuthbert.”

“How many times must I insist you call me Magnus?”

“As many times as I’ve refused to use such a ridiculous name when referring to you.”

“Well now we’ll have to come up with another way to get him into our lair.”

Henry scoffed. He hated that he’d tied his fate to this man with a blood oath that kept them bound together until one of them died, especially when Sinclair had tricked him into drinking the potion that provided him with his eternal youth. He had been too trusting and stupid when he first met the man to have any idea what he was getting himself into, and now he was thoroughly stuck.

“Our lair?” he echoed. “You’re taking this supervillain role you’ve cast yourself in far too seriously.”

“We need the Werther box opened, Henry,” Cuthbert-Magnus hissed with and especially sour look on his face. “We need Sam’s blood.”

“Azazel has other children out there.”

“None of theirs is pure enough. We need the strongest alpha’s blood for the ritual to work.”

“Very well,” Henry sighed. “But I expect you to keep up your end of our agreement. I help you get Sam, you release me from our pact.”

“You say that as if you don’t trust me, Henry.”

Henry bit his tongue nearly clean through. Why he’d believed Sinclair when he said the two of them could rebuild after the Men of Letters had been decimated by a Knight of Hell was something he’d long since forgotten. Perhaps he’d thought someone who rose to become a recognized master of spellwork within a year of joining the organization and who discovered the necessary incantations to destroy the Knight, Abaddon, was worthy of his loyalty. Now he cursed the day he laid eyes on the man and wished for nothing more than to return to his family after far too long, to get to know his grandsons and his great grandchild, grow old, and die peacefully in his sleep. Of course he couldn’t trust the man, but instead of saying that he stated simply, “I’ll need to replenish some of my ingredients and will be back within the hour,” before turning on the tap to extinguish the spell. He gathered up the small bowl, dumping its contents down the toilet and flushing them away before packing everything back into the briefcase.

He thought for a moment of asking at the desk for Dean’s room, but had no idea what to say to him, not when he planned to take away the sire of his grandson’s pup. Best not to even let the young man know he’d been there. He popped the fedora on his head, hoping the next person who used the bathroom would think its occupant had simply been smoking some reefer, and headed out of the hospital without another word. He’d learned how to walk out on his family nearly forty years ago. No reason to change things now.


	31. Things You Learn About a Guy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean spends the night in the hospital and Adam's got a bedpan ready.

By the time Sam returned to the room both Dean and Adam were awake, though neither looked particularly well, and Bobby seemed to be in desperate need of a break. Sam spotted the pile of tissues on the bedside table next to Dean and surmised he had taken the news of everything that had happened since he passed out hard. The old hunter stood up slowly when the alpha entered the room and appeared to be fighting having to leap to his feet and flee. Sam couldn't blame him. Dean had left Sioux Falls two days ago in good health and now he was confined to the state of Minnesota for two weeks having just had surgery to prevent him from losing the baby. It was certainly a lot to take in.

Bobby felt guilty as hell for wanting to get out of the room, but he wanted to get out of the room because he felt guilty as hell and needed to find a public restroom where he could shut himself into a stall and have a good cry without anyone knowing that’s what he was doing. It wasn’t a very manly thing to do, but he thought he might just turn into a blubbering mess if he had to sit here watching _The Terminator_ after Dean had finally gotten himself together and was working at pretending he was fine when Bobby knew nothing could be farther from the truth. He’d been trying so hard to let Dean set his own pace and make his own decisions about everything that he hadn’t put his foot down to keep him off of this hunt. Even though Adam had explained as best he could under the influence of so many pain killers that Dean would have been checked for his condition at his next appointment anyway, he might not have gone through the fright of the two episodes of bleeding and he sure as hell wouldn’t have had some kind of wand shoved up his channel while he was out cold, or been put under without his say-so, or be stuck in this damn state for two weeks where no one would talk to Dean directly but addressed everything to Adam instead.

“I’m back,” Sam said as he went to set the pie down next to Dean. “Brought you some pie and some mac and cheese. I wasn’t sure when they were planning to feed you. I think the mac and cheese is still warm, you should probably dig in.” He held the container out to the omega, who was staring blankly at the television. “Dean?”

“Thanks Sam.”

Dean spoke so quietly the alpha barely registered what he’d said, and Sam tried not to let his concern seep out into the air as he watched Dean turn to look at the food like it had dropped down from outer space and then reach out to take it with shaking hands. It was immediately apparent that Sam should have tried to get by on the thoroughly inadequate snacks from the nurses’ station instead of going down to the cafeteria.

“How’re you doing, Adam?” he asked, not wanting to launch right into anything with Dean when he seemed very fragile. “Still feeling good?”

“Spectacu-lacular,” Adam replied and giggled. “They’re givin’ me aaaalllll the drugs, Sam.”

“Think I’m gonna go get myself some grub,” Bobby announced, and Sam gave him a quick nod before he hurried from the room.

Dean was still staring at the styrofoam container with the plastic fork stuck in the top like he couldn’t figure out how the thing opened. Sam gave him a minute to collect himself before he slowly slid his right hand into Dean’s left and swept his thumb up and down the entire length from Dean’s wrist to his fingers. His touch seemed to shake Dean awake, and the omega drew in a stuttering breath and opened the take-out box with fingers that were still trembling.

“They had to wake me up so they could put me under,” he said after a minute, staring at the pasta and stabbing it violently with the fork. “How stupid is that? They didn’t even ask if it was okay, they just said they needed to put me to sleep for a little while. They already had that...those metal duck bills in and...uh...expanded.” His face flushed as a huge tear splashed down onto his stomach and he shoveled some food into his mouth, looking determined to keep himself together. “I told them to stop, but they didn’t...they didn’t care.” A few more tears fell but it just made him set his jaw even more firmly and stab the macaroni so hard he was punching holes in the bottom layer of styrofoam. “They just did what they wanted to.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t stop them,” Sam said, and Dean knew he wasn’t just talking about the special brand of assholes that worked at the hospital.

“Dean,” Adam slurred from his bed across the room, “You jus’ say the word, an’ when I’m better I’ll come back here an’ kick their asses, okay? Cuz I’m not gonna be better for a while an’ you’re gonna be _huge_ by then so you can’t come back here an’ kick their asses so I’ll do it for you. Cuz you’re my brother. An’ I love ya.”

Dean laughed and cried and stared at his food.

“You’re really stoned over there aren’t you, Runt?” he asked. “Feel like sharin’ some of those meds?”

“Oh, man…” Adam said, his eyes rolling around the room. “If I could I tooootally would. You would _love_ this, Dean.” He noticed for the movie for the first time and declared, “Oooo! I love this part! ‘It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever...until you are dead!’ Reese was the shit, man…”

“You _like_ Reese?” Sam said, looking over at him in surprise as he moved his hand to run it casually up and down Dean’s arm like he was on autopilot. “He’s such an _alpha_.”

“Yeah, but he protects the _shit_ outta Sarah Connor,” Adam replied in something like awe. “He fuckin’ _dies_ for her, ya know? An’ it should be super creepy that he fell for her from jus’ a picture, but it’s not. It’s like...I dunno, true love or something.”

“Well...she’s his omega,” Sam explained simply. “Of course he’s willing to die for her. That’s our go-to move.”

“Man...you guys are lucky. Alphas an’ omegas get all the good movies. Betas jus’ get rom-coms.”

“There’s nothing wrong with rom-coms.”

“Name a rom-com you’ve even _seen_ recently.”

“ _Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind_.”

“Okay, one - not a rom-com, no matter what the poster says. Two - Clementine is clearly an alpha an’ Joel is her omega.”

“What are you talking about? Those are two dysfunctional betas who can’t communicate and don’t have scent to fall back on.”

“The whole reason they break up is cuz he doesn’t wanna give her kids, an’ then she does that stupid headstrong thing where she jus' makes a decision for the both of ‘em an’ gets her memory wiped. Nice try, though.” Adam’s head lolled back on his pillow and he closed his eyes, looking drained. “Wake me up if someone comes back in an’ is a dick to Dean. I’ll throw my bedpan at ‘em. I need a nap.”

Sam shook his head, chuckling, as Adam got himself comfortable and very quickly fell back to sleep. It was nice being able to talk to him again. He didn’t think that was going to be possible after the phone call from Bobby’s driveway. Of course the meds he was on probably had a lot to do to help his chattiness. Still, it was nice.

He realized after a moment or two that Dean was very still, and while there was a little anxiety coming off of him it was nothing like the distress Sam had been able to scent when he first came into the room. He had stopped running his hand up and down the omega’s arm while discussion Clementine and Joel and was holding Dean’s left hand in both of his. He took some time to study the size of Dean’s hand in his - that even with his square palm and thick fingers it seemed small and delicate, despite how strong Sam knew it to be. He pressed his lips to the palm and cast a look at Dean sideways from under his bangs.

“You’re quiet,” he commented, his heart picking up a bit as Dean started to sweep his thumb over Sam’s index finger the way Sam had been doing earlier to calm the omega. “You okay?”

“‘M scared,” Dean told him softly. “Adam and Bobby tried to explain what happened but it didn’t make much sense. The nurses won’t tell me anything.”

“Well Adam was really out of it when you came back,” Sam said. “He kept telling them to just wait until you woke up because he was getting confused but they wouldn’t listen to him. You just have to be careful, that’s all. Nothing that’s gonna stress you, no...uh...knotting...nothing that’s going to put a lot of strain on you.”

“No stress? Well, I guess that rules out my whole life right now.” He withdrew his hand from Sam’s to grab his pie from the table by the bed. “That no knotting thing is gonna suck for you, though. Sure you wanna stick around for that? Not that...I mean not that I figured you’d stick around, I mean, you don’t have to, I’ll be okay...” Dean had turned resolutely to his pie, the tremor in his hand betraying the emotions that he had closed off from bleeding into his scent. He shoved a huge forkful into his mouth and nodded as he chewed. “Good pie.”

“Dean…” Sam said, ducking his head a little to try to catch the older man’s eye.

“Cuz I mean, I’m a mess,” Dean responded with an unhappy laugh. “If I were you I’d get as far away from me as fast as you can. You don’t want to be saddled with the kind of baggage I got.”

“Dean…”

“Especially now with whatever _this_ thing is.” He gestured vaguely in the direction of his groin, knocking the pie off of his lap and to the floor. He was back to shaking terribly and losing his pie just about undid him. He looked at Sam at last with huge, dewy eyes. “See? I can’t even eat a fucking piece of _pie_ like a normal person.”

“Dean…”

“I’m just all kinds of fucked up, Sam.”

Dean was rapidly working his way into hysterics with everything that had happened in just the last couple of hours, never mind anything from before. Even though he didn’t really get the full scope of his condition, he did understand that it was serious, and he really could have lost the baby, but the way the hospital had treated him just left him feeling completely violated. He wanted to get out and go home to Bobby’s, but he was stuck here for at least two more weeks, part of it in some sort of state-run facility for knocked up omegas like some kind of nunnery out of the 1940s, and it was just too much; would have been too much for anyone. He was so relieved when Sam moved to the bed and wrapped him in his arms without the omega having to ask. If he hadn’t still been hooked up to the fetal monitor he would have curled himself into a little ball on Sam’s lap.

“I know,” Sam said quietly, “but it’s not like you need me to go up against a T-800 Model 101 or anything. That’s where I draw the line.”

Dean giggled against his neck and said, “You’re such a dork.”

“You think it’s hot,” Sam laughed, running a hand through Dean’s hair as he got another giggle out of the omega. God he loved how soft his hair was like this. The thoughts of the dozen babies in Vermont began to rise slowly from the ashes.

“Yeah, yeah I do,” Dean murmured, peering up at Sam from under his eyelashes as he blushed.

It was an awfully good thing they were in a hospital and Adam was in the next bed and Dean had just been through ( _minor_ ) surgery and he kept bursting into tears every couple of minutes, otherwise Sam wasn’t sure how he would have resisted those kinds of looks without rupturing a major blood vessel. Dean had locked his eyes onto Sam, tipping his head up a little so their noses were almost touching, soft little puffs of air huffing out of his soft, lovely mouth. He thought back to Adam’s comment the night before about Dean knowing exactly what he looked like every second of every day, but when it came to these kinds of moments he wasn’t sure if Dean was doing it on purpose or if he was just so naturally beguiling he simply had to flash his green eyes and the entire room would drop its pants. It was certainly what he wanted to do most right now, and was actually grateful when he heard Bobby clear his throat in the doorway.

The old hunter was staring resolutely at the floor when the two young men turned to him, his face beet red, and he sputtered, “You boys never heard of puttin’ a sock on the doorknob?”

Dean looked horrified at almost having been caught doing...well _something_ with Sam and flushed all the way down his back, ducking his head into Sam’s chest and trying to bury himself. It was delightful, and Sam couldn’t help but break out laughing. Bobby just grumbled his way back over to the chair with his coffee, sitting down to watch the movie.

“Glad someone thinks it’s funny,” he huffed.

Bobby and Sam spent the rest of the day watching television with Dean, since apparently _The Terminator_ was just the start of a marathon that included all three films. By the end of _Rise of the Machines_ they’d hatched out the plan for the next two weeks, as Dean was going to get shuffled off to one of the state homes in just a couple of days and Adam was going to be stuck by himself recovering from his liver surgery. Sam was planning to stick as close to Dean as the state would allow and Bobby would come up every couple of days to give Sam a breather and check in on Adam. In the meantime he’d be getting his house prepped for Sam and Adam to both move in. Dean insisted it was fine if Sam stayed in his room on the front of the house and Adam could take the bedroom on the other side of the bathroom but Bobby was adamant about making up two guest bedrooms just in case something went sideways. Adam woke up in time for dinner, mostly because his medication was wearing off, and blearily agreed to whatever Dean and Bobby thought was best. Bobby’s back got stiff sitting in the hospital chair and around eight o’clock Sam gave him the keycard to his hotel room and told him to go get some rest. It sure made Bobby feel ancient, needing to hit the sack so early, but there was a reason he’d retired from hunting in the first place. He was getting too old for this.

With Bobby gone, Dean scooted over on the bed as best he could so Sam could climb up and cuddle him. He didn’t even have to ask, Sam just seemed to know when Dean slid aside to free up room on the bed that it was so he could sit there and snuggle up against him. They twined their hands together and turned the volume on the television down and talked about things that had happened in the years after Dean left school; how Dean tricked John into signing over the Impala; that the worse case he’d worked so far had involved a Cupid, which meant there was a lot of naked hugging involved; how the bar below his old apartment in Sioux Falls was owned by a tough-as-nails omega named Marge and even though it had been kind of a dump he missed it. He talked briefly of his childhood, too, that his mother’s favorite song had been _Don’t_ and she’d made the best homemade applesauce and his cat had been named Mr. Bootsy and he wasn’t sure he’d ever want another pet. Sam mentioned meeting his father, but not what had happened to him, just that he was more of a sperm donor than anything else, and how he apparently had moved happily on with his life without ever sparing Sam a second thought; about the years he’d spent at Stanford and how it had felt nice to be normal for a couple of years, even if he was mostly just faking it; how he left because Jess had died, and how he hoped some day he could go back and get a degree in something. Not necessarily law, but something. Dean mentioned the GED he was never going to be able to get, which made Sam feel guilty, which had not been Dean’s intent, and that led to a simple apology kiss that turned into a lot more than a simple apology kiss and was fortunately broken up by the petite young nurse with short blonde hair who informed Sam that visiting hours were over, because Dean’s gown was only held on by a couple of flimsy ties in the back and they’d finally unhooked the fetal monitor and Dean’s lips were bright pink and kiss swollen and his brain wasn’t trying to cockblock him yet. Sam managed to talk her into letting him stay for just a couple of minutes, since trying to stand up and leave the room at that precise moment would be nothing short of humiliating, and Dean laughed so hard he got the hiccups. Sam tried to kiss them into stopping, which didn’t work, and he was lucky his little problem had actually gone away by the time the nurse came back to _really_ kick him out, since he was still lost in the scent of Dean’s roses mixed with vanilla and just a hint of caramel.

“I’ll be back in the morning,” the alpha breathed against the omega’s lips before the nurse grabbed him by the arm and dragged him from the room.

“You really have to be more careful,” the nurse scolded when she came back to check Dean’s blood pressure and his I.V. bag, then take a quick scan of his abdomen with the portable ultrasound that had been assigned to their room to use checking both Dean and Adam. “The cerclage will take time to heal into place. You need to abstain from knotting until after your next Om-OB/GYN appointment.”

“We weren’t…” Dean turned a deep red at the idea of having sex with Sam in a hospital room with his brother sleeping in the next bed. Maybe the old him would have snuck off into the bathroom with the alpha, but the “new” Dean found the prospect of potentially being walked in on horrifying. Besides, he wasn’t anywhere close to ready for that and was pleasantly surprised that he and Sam had almost made it to second base without his stomach revolting. “We were just kissing.”

“Listen honey,” she sneered as she cleaned the gel off of the ultrasound wand and Dean’s stomach, “I know how you unmated oms get once the hormones hit you. You’ll jump on anything that can get it up. But this is a _hospital_ and that kind of behavior is simply inappropriate.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’ve seen it happen more times than I can count,” she said, going over to check on Adam. “A pretty thing like yourself gets carried away during a heat and finds a big, strong alpha to knot him real good, then starts thinking things are going to be perfect. The white picket fence, the two car garage, the in-ground pool in the backyard, and all the babies you can pop out, right? And it never fails. Once the pup pops out and the hormones ebb the alpha loses interest and is back out looking for another hole for his knot.”

“What the hell?” Dean snapped, his temper flaring even as the little voice in the back of his head that always told him he wasn’t good enough pointed out she was probably right. “You need to work on your bedside manner, lady.”

“It’s Meg.”

“Whatever, Meg. No one asked for your opinion so why don’t you get the hell out and let me go to sleep?”

“Yeah, Meg,” came Adam’s groggy voice from the other side of the room. “Get the hell out. I got a bedpan with your name on it if you don’t.”

Meg glanced across the room at Adam, shooting him a tight, threatening smile. He opened an eye to glare in her direction and she turned her attention back to Dean.

“Just trying to help,” she told him. “I’ll be back to check on you both later.”

Dean woke from a heavy sleep as the sun was coming up and beginning to peek its way through the half closed blinds. He had a bit of a headache, probably from all the stress the day before that he was supposed to try to avoid from now on. He thought back to the night before, of cuddling and talking with Sam, of the kissing and caressing and how it hadn’t scared him, and while that didn’t mean it wouldn’t scare him if they ever got around to doing it again, he counted it as quite a bit more than a little victory. It was the last thing he would have thought he’d want after the way he’d been treated by the hospital and the awful thoughts it had stirred up, but it had happened so naturally he hadn’t wanted to fight it, hoping things would go better than they had that morning, and they had. They still had things to work through, obviously. Sam had still lied about something Dean should have known about years ago, and he hadn’t gotten over it, but it had been clear yesterday that Sam wasn’t _expecting_ Dean to just get over it; wasn’t expecting anything from Dean beyond whatever Dean wanted to give. He didn’t act like he had some right to hold Dean or kiss him just because they were having a baby together, and all of touching Sam had done throughout the day had been to soothe; never to claim or hurt or demand. He acted like he was thankful for any contact he was allowed, and he certainly hadn’t tried to push anything farther than Dean was comfortable with. And maybe it was just the hormones or the pheromones or the hormones _and_ the pheromones, but the way the surgery happened sure as hell would have been a lot worse if Sam hadn’t been there with him.

As he came to more fully, he was overpowered by the acrid smell of iron, and rubbed sleepily at his eyes, trying to find the source. A few moments later when he could focus he saw that something had been scrawled on the wall across from his bed in what looked like red paint. It was difficult to make out in the half light of the morning, but after blinking a couple of times he was able to see that it read, “AZAZEL SAYS HELLO.”

Azazel. That was the name of the demon his father was hunting. Dean shot up in bed, demanding, “Adam, wake up.” It was only then that he turned to his brother and discovered the origin of the smell.

Adam was lying motionless on the bed, his eyes staring at the ceiling, unblinking. There was absolutely no color to his skin, but his hospital gown and bed were stained red with the blood that had gushed from the gash at his throat and the deep cut that ran down the center of his torso. Dean was frozen in horror for a long moment, before finally launching himself off the bed and across the room, ripping the I.V. out of his arm. He grabbed his brother’s face as he screamed for him to wake up and Adam’s head almost came off in his hands from how deeply his throat had been slashed. Dean was screaming and sobbing and shouting for someone to come and help him, but nobody came for the longest time. He was clinging to Adam and sobbing when two nurses finally came in, both of them shrieking at the sight of the omega drenched in his brother’s blood and Adam’s unseeing eyes fixed straight above him. Suddenly Dean felt a terrible pain in his abdomen and doubled over, blood running down both his legs to mix with Adam’s on the floor. Two more nurses and a doctor were there almost immediately, and they tried to roll Dean onto his back out of the pool of Adam’s blood as the omega screamed, “ _Sam_!”

Sam woke in his hotel room, drenched in sweat from the nightmare that had just jolted him awake. He was gasping and shaking and possibly crying, and his head hurt terribly and it felt like he had a bloody nose. The dream had been so vivid, he could have sworn it was real, and looked over at the clock. Just past midnight. He’d only left Dean a few hours ago and fallen asleep immediately, not even bothering to take off his shoes. Bobby was snoring quietly in the other bed and Sam couldn’t believe he hadn’t awakened him. He was sure he must have cried out in his sleep. Regardless, he was going to wake him now. He needed to get back to the hospital to check on Dean, no matter how stupid he might feel when he saw that everything was fine. Bobby didn’t understand what the hell Sam was talking about, but it was clear the boy was scared out of his wits, so he threw on some pants and his boots and they took off for the hospital in the Impala.

The nurses tried to stop the hunters from storming into the Winchesters’ room, but a panicked alpha the size of Sam was not something any of them were willing to take on before security got upstairs. They were willing to follow them to the room, warning them that the guards were on their way and had tasers, and they were just far enough behind that they could see the young nurse with the blonde hair who they didn’t recognize standing over the patient in the far bed with a long silver knife in her hand before she threw her hand out and the door slammed shut.

Sam and Bobby had their guns out instantly, firing shots into her center mass, but she flicked her wrist and they were both thrown into the wall by the door. Bobby was knocked unconscious, but Sam just got the wind knocked out of him as she turned and the black lids flipped over her eyes.

“Well hello, Sam,” she said smoothly. “I’ve been looking for you for a long time now.”

“Let me guess,” he said, fighting to stand up. “You’re Meg.”

“Smart boy. Our father wants to speak with you. He’s tired of you hiding from him.”

“He’s not my father.”

Sam gave a shout as she lifted her hand and he was pulled into the air by his throat, gasping and choking and struggling to break free of the invisible grip as she advanced on him slowly, no need to rush when she was in complete control. She smiled up at him, an oily grin he recognized from all the times he’d seen Ruby, like there was a secret demon grin that you had to master before they let you topside. She clicked her tongue at him and shook her head.

“Poor Sam, so deep in denial. A dream brings you here and yet you still won’t believe it.” With a jerk of her hand Sam went flying across the room into the windows, hitting so hard the glass cracked. He cried out at the way the windowsill dug into his lower back and his shoulders screamed at him from the force of the blow. She still hadn’t let go of her hold on his throat. “The farther you run from us, the worse this is gonna be. Stop fighting it and give in. All my father wants is the Colt and your compliance, and you can have your apple pie life with your perfect mate and all the babies in the world.” She dropped him to the ground and he felt his ankle twist, hoping it hadn’t broken. He laid there hacking, almost vomiting from the strain on his throat, as she walked over and squatted down next to him to grab his hair and pull his head up. “That sounds reasonable, don’t you think? Isn’t that what you want? Whattaya say, Sammy?”

Before the demon knew what was happening, Sam had whipped the knife Ruby gave him from the sheath at his back and slammed it into her lung. A yellow glow like electricity coursed through her, flashing and running along the bones of her skeleton as she stared at the alpha in genuine shock.

“Go to hell,” Sam snarled, and Meg crumpled lifeless to the floor.

He became aware, past the ringing in his ears, of the pounding on the door across from him, of people shouting and demanding to be let in, and then the door burst open and two large, burly security guards practically fell into the room, tasers drawn. Bobby was still unconscious, Dean and Adam were both sleeping soundly - probably drugged, there was no other way they wouldn’t have awakened - and Sam was still trying to regain his breath. The nurses were checking Bobby, Adam, Dean, and Meg, confused when they saw the bullet holes and stab wounds but no blood. Sam pulled his FDH identification from his jacket and explained there was no blood because the vessel had been dead a long time. They would probably never know who she really was unless they got lucky with a missing person’s search, but she could be from anywhere in the country. The only thing they could do at this point was call it into the agency and let them know there was a sighting and kill of a demon in Minnesota, and that there were two patients who would need FDH protection. Sam hated it, because it would draw his grandfather back into his world, but at least it gave him a way to get Dean’s case under the Fed’s purview and Sam could get him back home to Sioux Falls. As far as he could see that was a pretty even trade.

Now he just needed to figure out how to tell the omega it wasn’t only John who was hunting Azazel.


	32. I Don't Even Know if I Trust You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean gets out of the hospital.

Dean knew he was supposed to be keeping his stress level down, and he really wanted to, but it would be a whole lot easier if the Universe didn’t keep dropping bombshells on him. He’d gone to sleep the night before feeling okay for the first time in a while. He didn’t quite feel safe, since Sam had gone back to the hotel, and that bitch of a nurse had sure tried to rain on his parade, but he hadn’t been jittery and on edge, only able to close his eyes for an hour or so before some terrible memory from the basement woke him. Quite the contrary, he’d slept all the way through the night without stirring once, dreaming instead of the lazy kisses he’d shared with Sam before visiting hours were over, and how unexpected and...well, _nice_ it had been. Typically Dean scoffed at the word “nice.” There were so many better adjectives to use to describe something, but in this instance “nice” was definitely the correct one to pick, given how sweet and void of pressure the make-out session had been. Even after he felt Sam’s considerable length stiffening against his thigh the alpha hadn’t made any attempts to progress the situation and had simply kissed Dean deeper, letting him set the pace. It was a complete shock to wake up shortly before dawn and find he and Adam were in a different room, that they’d both somehow managed to sleep through the move, and that the door, walls, and windows were now covered with protective sigils and warding. Sam and Bobby were sleeping uncomfortably in the visitor’s chairs - it was obvious they were uncomfortable by how their necks were cricked - and Bobby had his double barrel over his lap. Sam’s right hand was clenched around a large, serrated knife even in sleep. There were also two FDH officers stationed on either side of the door. He could tell they were officials with the bureau by their suits and matching haircuts. What the hell had happened while he was asleep?

As if sensing Dean was awake, Sam’s head jerked up and he looked around blearily until his eyes landed on the omega. Dean scented the wave of panic mixed with relief coming off of him and didn’t know quite what to do when Sam practically threw himself onto Dean’s bed, alternating between kissing him passionately and shoving his nose against Dean’s neck and behind his ear to scent him. It wasn’t exactly unwelcome, but it was definitely disconcerting, and now Dean _really_ wanted to know what the hell had happened while he was asleep. Just as soon as Sam stopped kissing him. Which he didn’t need to do anytime soon because this was nice, too.

Bobby clearing his throat was what finally stopped Sam from trying to kiss every inch of Dean’s face and neck, but Sam didn’t pull away the way he had the night before, he just sat there with his forehead pressed against Dean’s and his hands in the omega’s hair, his eyes squeezed shut. The two Feds at the door were politely looking anywhere but the two of them and Bobby’s face was bright red as he again stared at the floor.

“Mornin’ boys,” he groused, which still didn’t move Sam from off the bed. Dean gradually realized that the way Sam was sitting was a protective stance, like he was using his body as a shield between Dean and the rest of the room. “I’m real serious about that sock on the door if you’re gonna be stayin’ with me.”

“Hey Bobby,” Dean said, a little dazed from not having time to breathe with all the kissing. “Why the fancy room decorations and guard dogs?”

For some reason that made Sam tighten his hold on Dean’s head and neck and press himself in closer. The panic was still rolling off of him, and the way he was acting had officially gone from “nice” to “scary.” Dean turned his head a little in the hope Sam would open his eyes and look at him, because he needed some reassurance that things were okay, and he needed it now. He knew how scary Sam could be. If something had scared _him_ , Dean wanted to know what it was.

Sam crushed their mouths together one more time before murmuring against Dean’s lips, “There’s something I need to tell you you.”

That had been this morning, before he had been discharged from the hospital, and now he was going furiously through Sam’s hotel room to make sure he wasn’t missing anything while Bobby and Sam watched him and tried to bite their tongues. Bobby broke first.

“Dean, you need to calm down, son.”

“ _You_ calm down Bobby,” Dean snapped. Not his best retort ever, but he was actually working very hard to clamp down on the rage coursing through him before he was overwhelmed by it. He just wasn’t succeeding very well. “I just wanna get out of this stupid fucking state. Where are my blockers?”

“I got rid of them, remember?” Sam told him evenly. Shit. He’d forgotten that’s what the laptop fight was about. How could he have forgotten that? It was only two days ago. Man, pregnancy brain was real and it was a _bitch_. “I haven’t had a chance to order the replacements for you that I found.”

“Well, that’s just fan-fucking-tastic,” Dean spat. “Bobby, you’d better go bring the car around. Looks like I’m gonna have to make a run for it through the lobby.”

“Dean,” Sam sighed. “Look, I’m so…”

“Sam, I swear to god, you say ‘I’m sorry’ one more time I’m swingin’ with the laptop again.” He turned to look at the beta rooted where he stood by the door. “Why aren’t you gettin’ the car?”

“I don’t really feel comfortable leavin’ you both alone right now…” Bobby said. “Feels like I’m gonna come back up to Sam’s teeth all over the floor.”

“You always did have good instincts,” Dean snarled.

“Dean, I was gonna tell you.”

“Oh really Sam?” Dean gave a little laugh, looking at him wide-eyed. He was starting to get out of control again, and he wanted to stop, but those goddamned hormones wouldn’t let him. His blood was starting to boil and if he didn’t release some of the pressure he was going to explode worse than he had over the scent blockers. “When? _When_ were you planning to tell me that you’re hunting the same damn demon as my dad and are probably going to get yourself killed right along with him?”

“Once you got out of the hospital,” Sam replied, and that really made Dean laugh. Sam knew he should just sit there and take whatever Dean wanted to dish out right now, but last night had been terrifying and his alpha wasn’t in the mood for the omega to be all bluster and fury and brashness. “You think that’s unreasonable? You almost had a miscarriage yesterday! You needed surgery! It didn’t seem like the most appropriate time to bring it up!”

“You had _plenty_ of time to bring it up, Sammy,” Dean hissed. “You were tellin’ me about Stanford _just_ last night! You don’t think you could have slipped, ‘and that girlfriend who died got fried by a demon in her dorm’ into the discussion?”

“So I could freak you out after you’d _finally_ calmed down?!”

“You know, I’m getting really sick of you thinkin’ it’s better to lie to me if it means protecting me.”

“Who was _lying_?”

“Fine, _withholding_ _information_.”

“Dean, that is not what I was doing.”

“Really?”

“Yes, once they moved you out of the hospital to the interim facility I was going to tell you _all_ of this.”

“ _Really_?”

“ _Yes_!” The two stared at each other, both furious, and for a moment Bobby wondered if he should get out of the room because they seemed on the verge of having really angry sex and he did not want to be there for that. But Sam pressed on. “I was obviously going to _have_ to tell you when I showed up to paint the warding all over your room to keep you safe while you were stuck there, but I would have told you either way! I was just waiting for a day, maybe two, until things settled down and you hadn’t just spent two days bleeding and needing an operation to keep you from losing the baby! I didn’t expect a demon to come after you in the _hospital_!”

“ _Why_?” Dean’s eyes were as wide as saucers. He couldn’t believe how stupid Sam was. He really was going to end up dead right along with Dad. “It’s a _demon_ , Sam! Why would it think _hospitals_ are off limits?”

“Dean, I’m sorry…” Dean actually went for the table lamp on the nightstand since he was standing between the beds, but Sam was on him and stopping him from swinging before he could get a proper wind-up, one hand on Dean’s wrist and the other around his back, pinning them together. “Stop. Trying to hit me. With things in this room.”

Dean had to at least give Sam credit for not making that a command when he easily could have, and he wrestled his wrist free and set the lamp back down. Sam held on for a few more minutes, overwhelming Dean with his scent, which his omega loved while Dean bristled at it at the same time. He wanted to stay angry at Sam for years, but it was physically exhausting to be this upset and it wasn’t good for the baby, so in the end he would be doing more harm to himself than he would be to Sam. His omega wanted to just scent and purr and reward the alpha for being so big and strong and protective and press little butterfly kisses to his jawline to apologize and calm his ire, but Dean would be damned if he did that when he’d already let Sam win and given up the lamp. He could feel Sam’s big hazel eyes on his face, trying to will him into giving the alpha a peek of his green orbs, and he stared at Sam’s shoulder instead, feeling his face flush.

“Send the blockers to Bobby’s,” he said after a long time, and Sam finally let him go. Dean could scent his hurt and clamped down on the remorse that tried to burst out in his own scent. He moved around the alpha, saying, “You can come down after they move Adam to the FDH facility. I don’t want him left alone. I gotta pee, I think your kid’s sleepin’ on my bladder.”

The door to the bathroom slammed behind him and Sam closed his eyes and sighed. Not that he thought things were going to be easy with Dean after everything that had happened and all the things Sam had kept from him, but he really _had_ planned to tell Dean about Azazel, just not right after the cerclage surgery. He didn’t want Dean stuck in the state facility unaware of what might be after him, but it had seemed like a terrible time to bring it up when the doctors had undoubtedly stirred up memories of the rape with the way they’d handled the whole thing with his condition, like Dean had no say over his body at all. He wanted to at least get Dean out of the hospital and away from the people caring _for_ him but not _about_ him, and he hadn’t even had a chance to bring up the possibility that he had demon blood in him because Dean had cut him off as soon as he learned that Sam had been keeping something from him again. They were probably going to have to go through this all over again when Adam finally got moved to the Hunters’ hospital in Chicago where the wardings were built into the steel frame of the building and salt was laid into the foundation. He’d had a huge argument with his grandfather to ensure Adam would be protected for the length of his recovery and he’d had to promise to let Samuel know where he ended up and to always answer his phone. The hospital here estimated it would be close to two weeks before they’d feel comfortable moving Adam, so unless Dean was willing to continue the conversation calmly when he came back out of the bathroom it would be two more weeks that Sam was “keeping a secret” from him. He certainly didn’t want to tell Dean about his unknown situation over the phone.

But was it really unknown? Meg had called him one of Azazel’s children. No hesitation, no question about it - she was sure. Yes, she was a demon and demons messed with your head, but that dream he’d had that sent him running to the hospital had sure seemed real. Not just that, but Meg had been standing over Adam with a knife, ready to carve him up, when Sam and Bobby got there. He might have to admit that was more than just a dream and something closer to a premonition. He was going to have to hit up Bobby’s books as soon as Dean allowed him in the house in a couple of weeks and see if he could find out anything about humans infected with demon blood.

“Well, that went well,” Bobby said flatly, and Sam laughed to himself and sat on the bed with his hands in his hair.

“Jesus, I don’t know what I’m doing Bobby,” Sam said, frustrated at just how _bad_ he was when it came to doing or saying the right thing with Dean. “I’m trying, I really am, but I’m still playing catch-up to where he is after the last four months.”

“Where he is is a real bad place,” Bobby told him, which prompted Sam to walk over to his laptop and pull up the site with the blockers on it so he could buy them and have them overnighted before he forgot.

“I know Bobby.”

“No, Sam, you don’t.” The old hunter walked over to sit at the table across from the alpha and pushed the laptop closed so he’d have the young man’s full attention. “You didn’t see him in the parking lot when John triggered that flashback. And you didn’t see him later when Rumsfeld started barkin’ at somethin’ and he hid in the damn coat closet. You weren’t there when he just wanted to die after John walked out on him to go hunt this demon you’re both after. You haven’t watched him walk around like he’s made of glass or not wanna get out of bed in the morning or lock himself in his room every time the mailman comes to the door or sometimes just sit in the livin’ room starin’ at the TV and cryin’. You don’t know how much effort it takes him to get in the car and go to Burger King and not even go inside, but just hit up the drive through without freezin’ up. You haven’t gone to all his prenatal appointments and had to stand there with the rape counselor holdin’ his hand so he could make it through the exam without fallin’ completely to pieces. You didn’t see him after he came back from Adam’s with that tape and took a crowbar to it in the backyard. You haven’t watched him tryin’ to act like everything’s fine and havin’ to figure out how to be _Dean_ again and not knowin’ anymore. When I say he’s in a bad place, I mean he’s in a _real_ bad place. You have no idea how many times I almost picked up the phone to call you an’ tell you to return those damn books you borrowed so that you’d _know_.”

“I wish you had,” Sam said, burying his hands in his hair again. “God Bobby, I wish you had, I’d have been on the next plane.”

“I know you would have, but it wasn’t up to me to decide that.”

“I really was gonna tell him about the demon.” Sam looked up at the beta imploringly, his blue-green-gold eyes damp. “I just wanted to give him a little time to get past what happened yesterday before throwing another thing at him.”

“ _I_ believe you, Sam,” Bobby assured him. “Even if Dean doesn’t right now, I do. Hell, I’d’ve held back a day or so too. He was in rough shape when he woke up from the anesthetic.”

Dean’s ears must have been ringing because he walked back out of the bathroom, ignoring them both and went for his duffels on the bed. He looked considerably calmer and his scent no longer smelled angry, which just made Sam want to go over and cuddle him and breathe apologies into his hair until the scowl left his face. Instead he opened the laptop back up and completed the order for the scent blockers, sliding it over to Bobby to enter his address under the shipping information while Dean perched on the couch and waited for them to be done. Sam hoped against hope that he’d at least get a goodbye peck on his cheek, but the omega was pretty clearly walled off and Sam had to be satisfied with the clipped, “I’ll text you when we get there,” he got as Dean pulled the door shut behind him and Bobby without looking back.

It was all Sam could do not to start a timer and watch it count down the two hours it took to drive from Windom to Sioux Falls, but somehow he managed it, hanging out with Adam instead and watching daytime television, which made him realize quickly why he didn’t watch daytime television. He was going to have to get a deck of cards or a board game or something if he planned to spend the next two weeks babysitting Dean’s kid brother and making sure nothing came to kill him before he could be transferred to a more secure facility. He had just started to panic as the clock on the wall ticked to two hours and fifteen minutes past when Bobby and Dean had left the hotel and his phone beeped and vibrated. Adam cast a sidelong glance at the alpha, who was trying to act casual and not immediately whip his phone out to check it, and when the beta laughed Sam muttered, “Shut up,” and dug his phone out of his pocket.

There wasn’t a name listed with the South Dakota area code that popped up, which was the first time Sam realized he hadn’t put Dean’s number back in his phone in the last forty-eight hours, and he hastened to “add to contact list” before pulling up the message.

“ _Made it home. Still mad at you_.”

Sam’s alpha did a couple of backflips at his omega texting promptly upon arriving back in Sioux Falls and not making him sit around in agony, and he quickly texted back, “ _Okay. Call me if you need something_ ,” and then sat and stared at his response for the longest time. Was that enough? Should he tell Dean he missed him? Sign it “love you” or with a couple of XOs? He tried to think back to when he was dating Jess and how they used to talk, but she was a beta so his dynamic with her was entirely different. He sat there dumbly, unsure of whether he should add something else, until Adam said, “Like throw pillows.”

Sam practically jumped out of his skin and jerked around to Dean’s younger brother, who he hadn’t realized was looking over his shoulder at the text message.

“What?”

“Like throw pillows.” Adam gestured to the phone. “You’re clearly trying to think of something else to say. ‘Okay. Call me if you need something, like throw pillows.’ Then put a smiley face.”

“A smiley face?” Sam wasn’t sure he could trust someone who was still pretty hopped up on morphine. ”Really?”

“Raise your hand if you’ve known Dean Winchester since birth,” Adam said flatly, and then held up his hand. He quirked an eyebrow at Sam, who looked sufficiently schooled by the half stoned beta. “Okay, call me if you need something, like throw pillows, smiley face. Type it.”

Dutifully, Sam added “ _like throw pillows. :-)_ ” to the text and hit send. He felt like a complete idiot and wished he could reach out into the ether and pull the message back, but a few minutes later the phone beeped and buzzed again.

“ _You are such a dork_.”

Sam’s alpha progressed from back flips to singing romantic show tunes and without hesitating he typed back, “ _You think it’s hot,_ ” and waited. A minute or so passed and he was just about to try to crawl through the floor when the phone beeped and buzzed again.

“ _Yeah, but I’m still mad at you. See you in a couple of weeks_.”

“He’ll text you tomorrow to say good morning,” Adam proclaimed, noticing how the alpha’s face fell at Dean’s clear ending of their conversation for the day. “What’d you do this time?”

“The thing I told you earlier about the demon,” Sam said. “He feels like I was lying to him.”

“Yeah, well, with good reason.” Adam held up his hands weakly as Sam turned to him with a glare. “Hey, I’m in that boat with you. I’m sure he doesn’t believe a word comin’ outta my mouth these days.”

“I was just waiting for a day or two until he was feeling better. I didn’t want to come right out with it after everything that happened yesterday.”

“Dude, you don’t have to convince me.” He could see that Sam was still pretty miserable about the whole thing and added, “Give Bobby some time to work on him. He’s always listened to Bobby. Used to tell me Bobby-isms all the time when we hunted together those couple of summers. Dean goes kaboom when you push him too hard, but he settles and comes back eventually if you give him space to work through stuff on his own.”

“You realize asking me to give an omega space goes against my hard wiring, right?” Sam asked, his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. “And I’m not just talking about my stubbornness, I’m talking about my basic biology. Giving an omega space leaves them vulnerable to other predators.”

“Then you’re gonna have to fight against it,” Adam replied logically. “Dean’s been fighting his biology for years. You should see some of the dives we had to stay in as kids. Even back then he was always wiping stuff down and wouldn’t walk around without his shoes on. Dad shoulda known he was gonna present as an om - shoulda given him a real home instead of draggin’ us everywhere and then sticking us in school.”

Sam regarded the beta for a few minutes. He looked tired, and not just from his injury or the medication. He looked tired down into his bones, and a whole lot older than twenty. John had been right. No one really got out of this life.

“I know I said it before, but I’m really sorry you didn’t get a chance to know your mom,” he said, and Adam shrugged.

“‘S’okay. I mean, I still hate my dad for taking me away from her, but at the same time...I dunno, if he’d left me with her I’d be dead right now, you know? Instead of just almost dead.” He shot Sam a crooked smile and they both laughed until Adam clutched his side and said, “Ow.”

“You okay?”

“Yeah, just guess I shouldn’t laugh for a while.” He looked up at the two semi-toothless women fighting over the semi-toothless man on _Jerry Springer_. “Doesn’t seem like that’ll be a problem, though.”

“Yeah.” Sam rubbed tiredly at his eyes. The idea of fighting his protective instincts towards Dean seemed just about impossible, especially when he’d been doing that for so long and it had gotten them into this mess. “I’m gonna go get something to eat.”

“Okay, I need a nap anyway,” Adam said, clicking off the television. “Thanks for staying with me, Sam.”

Sam shot him a wry grin, saying, “Like I had a choice. Anything happens to you and all the throw pillows in the world aren’t getting me back into Dean’s good graces.”

“You could always try almost dying,” Adam suggested. “Seems to be working for me, at least in the short term.”

Sam’s grin broadened as he got to his feet, stretching out his back, which ached from losing the fight with the windows last night as well as sleeping in the hospital chair. Now that Dean was in another state everything was ramping down between his adrenaline and his hormones and he realized how much hurt. His ankle still throbbed, his ribs were sending out angry pulsing waves of pain, and where they’d tried to repair the damage done when the ghoul carved a piece of meat out of his side was on fire. He supposed he should find a doctor to check on the wound, but he didn’t feel particularly safe in the hospital anymore outside of this room. He was glad he’d given the second hex bag to Bobby so he could at least relax a little about the omega until he was able to head to Sioux Falls in fourteen miserable days. Adam was already dozing as he limped towards the door, the two Feds nodding at him as he went, and felt his phone beep and buzz again in his pocket.

“ _Just because I’m still mad doesn’t mean you shouldn’t text me._ ”

He giggled and winced at all the new pain he was definitely not enjoying. He didn’t second guess himself and shot back immediately.

“ _So you’re saying that you miss me already_.”

The phone buzzed a few seconds later.

“ _I’m just saying I’m bored and you can text me_. _And I like blankets, too_. _Fuzzy ones_.”

“ _Gotcha. Any other requests_?”

It was a very long time before the phone buzzed again, so long that Sam thought maybe he’d said something wrong, but then another text finally came through.

“ _Stop ‘withholding information’ from me_.”

Sam stared at the text, having no idea what he should say in response. The minutes ticked by as he leaned against the wall in the hospital hallway, wishing this morning had gone better and he’d been able to get everything out all at once instead of having another thing to drop on Dean at a later date. Before he could come up with anything the phone buzzed again.

“ _Sam_?”

He pulled up Dean’s number and hit the call button. It rang a couple of times before Dean picked up, and Sam could tell just by the way he said, “ _Hey_ ” that he was anxious. Great, he’d made Dean anxious with no one but Bobby to try to help calm him down. He shouldn’t have called.

“Hey,” he echoed, pinching the bridge of his nose as he looked down at his shoes. “So...there was more that I wanted to tell you but you got all upset and wouldn’t listen to anything else.”

There was a lengthy pause before Dean replied, “ _Okay. What is it_?”

“I’ll tell you when I get to Bobby’s.”

He could sense the anger rising in Dean without even needing to be in the same room.

“ _Sam_ …”

“No, Dean, listen,” he insisted. “I’m trying not to lie to you or ‘withhold information,’ but it’s something that I do _not_ want to talk about on the phone. It’s definitely a face-to-face kind of thing.”

Dean laughed nervously on the other end of the call.

“ _What, you’re dyin’ and only have a few months to live_ ? _Jess isn’t really dead but hidden away somewhere with your secret love child_ ? _Come on, what_?”

“You’re the only one having my secret love child.”

“ _Then what_? _C’mon Sammy_.”

“Dean. I’m trying to be honest with you and not keep secrets but this isn’t a conversation I want to have over the phone. I just wanted to give you a head’s up so I don’t show up at Bobby’s in a couple of weeks and end up with you throwing stuff at me because I was ‘withholding information’ from you again, okay?” There was a long pause. “Dean?”

" _Okay Sam._ ”

“Don’t just sit around thinking the worst, all right? I swear, no hidden love children or secret mate.”

“ _Okay_.”

“I miss you, Dean.”

There was another agonizing pause while Sam’s heart hung suspended over a cliff, feeling like it was entirely possible Dean would let it drop and splatter on the rocks below, then the omega said, “ _I miss you too. I gotta go help Bobby with lunch_.”

“Okay. You can call me tomorrow, if you want.”

“ _Okay. I’m still mad at you though_.”

Sam chuckled against the loneliness that wrapped around him as it tried to crush his chest. He prayed it didn’t take longer than two weeks for Adam to be stable enough to move. Dean had only been gone a little over two hours and his alpha was already withering in his absence.

“Tell Bobby I said ‘hi.’”

“ _I will. Bye Sam._ ”

“Bye Dean.”

The call went silent. Sam drew in a shaky breath, bending to rest for a moment with his hands on his thighs while he regained some composure. He wasn’t sure how he was going to make it through the next fourteen-ish days, but he was determined not to resort to his old friend vodka this time. He headed off to the cafeteria to grab something and bring it back up to the room, not trusting himself to keep his composure among all the foreign scents when he needed to get his emotions under control and keep them locked down. Adam told him to fight his biology and if Dean could do it for years, Sam could handle it for a couple of weeks. At least, he hoped so.


	33. Family Don't End in Blood; But it Doesn't Start There Either

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Meet Samuel Campbell.

Samuel Campbell hated the Winchesters. He’d hated them since Henry Winchester married and then abandoned his high school sweetheart, Millie - the first omega he’d been with and the one he thought would be his mate, until she cast him aside for a bookworm. He’d hated them since John Winchester wanted to claim his daughter, turning her into a bitter and obsessed shell of herself incapable of finding happiness with anyone else. And he hated them more now that Dean Winchester had managed to trick his only grandchild into siring a pup with him, undoubtedly to get his hands on Sam’s money. He hated that Sam had twisted his arm into getting Dean released from Windom Memorial before they could run a paternity test to prove Sam was the sire ( _he’d be insisting on that once the pup was whelped_ ), and he hated that he’d had to agree to bring John’s bastard, Adam, into the Department’s Chicago Recovery Center to protect him while he made his long journey back to health after surgery to sew up a tear in his liver. But it got Sam to take his phone calls again, and got Sam to promise to let Samuel know where he was, and as long as he knew where he was he could make sure the Winchester bitch wasn’t taking any further advantage of Sam.

He didn’t want to say any of this to Sam, of course. He’d seen the tape two years ago from the surveillance cameras he had hidden around his Shreveport estate. He’d known something had happened with his great nephews down in the basement, could see how distressed Sam had been by whatever it was, that even back then the bitch had his claws into Sam. He’d seen the way Dean had been flirting with Sam, watched how he’d thrown himself at his grandson down by the pool once Mark, Christian, and Tyler arrived, playing up to Sam’s protective instincts like the harlot he was. Samuel couldn’t blame Sam, of course. Sam was young and Dean was a pretty little thing, just the kind of omega he might “invite” into his basement given the chance. If the stories about him were true, he’d bend over anything with a whole and bend over _for_ anything with a dick. But there was a difference between bringing Dean in for a night of fun and accepting him as a potential mate. An alley cat might be nice to pet, but you didn’t start feeding it inside unless you wanted to get fleas.

He was also pretty damn sure that the Winchesters had something to do with those three boys’ deaths, God rest their souls. They’d been strong hunters who understood their place in the food chain and enforced it with anyone who needed a reminder that alphas ran the world. Maybe they’d had a little more fun with Dean than they should have - he didn’t keep cameras in the basement so he could only guess - but the om shouldn’t have been walking around in a tank top and shorts if he didn’t want to attract unwanted attention, and he certainly shouldn’t have had so much of Samuel’s scotch. Any omega who would walk around flashing their unclaimed neck and getting drunk in a party full of alphas deserved whatever he got as far as Samuel was concerned. He didn’t know how the Winchesters had managed what happened to his nephews ( _probably a witch_ ) but as soon as he figured it out he’d take his revenge.

He made sure to be in the Chicago field office the day they were transporting John’s bastard so he could have a conversation with his grandson about the pup he was expecting and when to file the paperwork to claim it once it was born. He was sure Sam hadn’t even thought of that. He was too wrapped up in the bitch’s pheromones to think that far ahead, but Samuel would get him to see the sense in making sure the child was raised as a member of the family. Sam was flying out to Sioux Falls in the evening ( _going to live with Dean at Bobby Singer’s house; it made him want to vomit_ ), and that gave Samuel a couple of hours to talk with his grandson and gauge just how deep he’d gotten himself in with all this.

Samuel had just gotten off the phone with the head of Homeland Security, updating him on the most recent violent supernatural entities the Department had taken out and discussing the threat of the demon attack in Windom, when Sam walked into the FDH offices on Michigan Avenue, severely underdressed in jeans, a green shirt with a red stripe across the chest and a white tee shirt underneath, a thin black canvas jacket with zippered pockets and a black overcoat. His red Doc Martens were especially offensive, as was his striped scarf that looked like it came out of that hideous British science fiction show Sam used to watch as a child ( _Doctor What? Doctor Why? Something like that_ ) and he looked like he was at least three months overdue for a haircut. The Winchesters’ low class taste already seemed to be rubbing off of him. Samuel observed him from the monitor on his desk, how he stood quite a good deal taller than the last time Samuel had seen him when he’d insisted on going to Stanford. His shoulders were broader as well, and the way he carried himself wasn’t the stance of a cocky teenager, but of an increasingly confident young man. He passed through the first magical item detector, unloaded all his weaponry into a bin to pass through the metal detector, then methodically put everything back in the correct holster before heading for the elevators.

He had mercifully removed the overcoat and scarf by the time he walked into Samuel’s office, and despite his lack of fashion sense and apparent propensity for hitting up discount stores now instead of high end establishments, the head of the Campbell clan was very pleased. Sam towered over his grandfather and his frame was even larger than it had looked on camera. He was a true alpha, and Samuel couldn’t have been happier with how he’d turned out. Now he just needed to get Sam to realize he could have any omega he wanted and convince him to give up Dean Winchester.

“Sam,” he said, his knees creaking as he got to his feet and extended a hand to his grandson. Sam took it and shook, his grip bone crushing as he clenched his jaw, and Samuel had to fight not to wince. “Thank you for coming up to see me while you’re in town.”

“Well, not like I had much of a choice,” Sam said calmly as they both sat. “You did make this one of your conditions for letting Adam into the CRC.” He looked pained at having to say it as he added sincerely, “Thank you for that, by the way. Adam’s a good friend.”

“Anything for family.” That elicited a snort from his grandson, who looked down at his hands and shook his head. “Anyway, I’m glad you agreed to my conditions. We haven’t really had a chance to talk since your cousins were killed. I had hoped you would come to the funeral. Everyone was asking about you.”

“Yeah, sorry about that. I was busy washing my hair that day.” Sam’s phone buzzed and beeped, and he didn’t hesitate to pull it out of his pocket as if his grandfather weren’t even in the room. He read the message and grinned, his entire body seeming to light up. He typed a quick response and hit send before turning back to his grandfather. “So is that why you wanted to see me? To give me shit for not coming out to bury my asshole cousins?”

“Watch your mouth, son,” Samuel growled, which got Sam on his feet.

“I’m not your son,” Sam snapped. “In fact, according to my sire I was just a business transaction. Mark, Christian, and Tyler were assholes. They were assholes all throughout school, and they were assholes after they got out. Why you think I would have wanted to come to their funerals, no matter how they died, is beyond me. So why don’t you tell me what it is you wanted to talk to me about and I can grab something to eat before I head out to the airport?”

Samuel regarded his grandson, impressed by his spunk and enraged by his disrespect. This might be a lot harder than he thought. After several minutes he calmly said, “I wanted to talk about you and this pup that’s on the way.”

“Not much to talk about.” Sam gave him a pointed look as he sat back down. “There’s a _baby_ , it’s on the way, and it’s mine.”

“You know that for sure?”

“We’re getting a paternity test done as soon as I get to Sioux Falls so we don’t run into the kind of problem with had in Minnesota. We’ve got a prenatal appointment tomorrow.”

“So you’re _not_ sure it’s yours?”

That was good. That was an opening Samuel could use to drive a wedge between Sam and the bitch. If he already wasn’t sure the pup was his…

“No, I know it’s mine.” Sam’s jaw was clenched again, like he could see where Samuel was going and he didn’t like it. The old man might have to rethink his strategy and how he talked about Dean. He might not be able to get Sam untangled from this mess until the pregnancy pheromones subsided. “I can tell by its scent. The test is just so I can keep Dean from getting locked up by another overzealous hospital that won’t even talk to him like he’s a person.”

That made Samuel laugh and went a long way to derailing his plan to talk Sam around to seeing sense. He should have locked it down, but he just couldn’t help it. Where on earth had Sam gotten the idea that omegas should be treated like _people_? _Alphas_ were people. _Omegas_ were breeding factories. They had smaller brains, were incapable of rational thought when in heat, and didn’t have the mental acumen to understand much beyond cooking and interior decorating. His daughter had been the only omega he’d ever known who could hold her own against an alpha, but even she had ended up so blinded by her emotions she wouldn’t listen to reason. Why Sam had decided your garden variety omegas were on par with even _betas_ was insane, let alone that someone should treat an omega like a _person_. At least betas could contribute to society outside of presenting and then popping out a pup. And while he was thinking about it, why was Sam insisting on calling the pup a _baby_? Only betas had babies. Omegas were barely a step above a family pet. They most certainly did not have _babies_. The torrent of anger that came pouring off of Sam was enough to convince him to get himself under control, but he still couldn’t stop himself from grinning.

“I’m sorry, Sam, I’m just not used to this new idea you kids have that omegas should be talked to about important matters like their health,” he said at last. “I’m well acquainted with the Minnesota omega laws and they’re really quite reasonable.”

“It doesn’t surprise me at all that you think that,” Sam replied coolly. “I still don’t know what it is that you want.”

“What I want…” Samuel began, but Sam’s phone buzzed again and his grandson once more completely ignored him in favor of checking his text messages. He grinned even wider, and actually chewed on his lower lip for a moment before deciding what he wanted to send back, his cheeks reddening as he typed. Samuel hoped his irritation was bleeding into the air and fixed a glare on him as Sam put the phone away. “That’s a terrible habit you have there, Sam.”

“Oh, I don’t do that normally,” Sam told him. “Only when I’m in the middle of something that’s not important.”

Samuel bristled, his eyes flashing red and his nostrils flaring as he folded his hands in his lap to keep from striking the desk or his grandson. He had expected Actaeon to instill more of a sense of respect for elders in the students they graduated. He would have to have a frank discussion with the Administration Office the next time they came calling for donations.

“I’m trying to talk to you about your future.”

“Is that right?” Sam didn’t even look at his grandfather as he lifted one foot up to place it on the desk and then crossed the other foot over it. “Well, I guess there’s a first time for everything.”

“Get your feet off of my desk, Sam.”

“Have I pissed you off enough yet to be excused, sir?”

“No, we are not done talking about this.”

“I don’t even know what we’re talking about.”

“This bastard pup you’ve got on the way!”

Sam’s eyes flared as he dropped his feet off the desk and leaped forward to grab his grandfather by his perfectly knotted tie, dragging him out of his chair. The old alpha attempted to posture but was having too hard of a time with his bad hip to accomplish it. Sam simply lifted him up to a standing position one-handed, clearly asserting his dominance in the room.

“I don’t see what business my _baby_ is of yours,” Sam hissed, letting his grandfather fall back into his chair. “It’s not like you’re going to be a part of its life.”

“You don’t mean that, Sam,” Samuel snapped. This was not what he had expected and he needed to figure out how to get the conversation back on track. “I’m just trying to look out for your best interests.”

“And what would my best interests be?” Sam demanded. “Really, I want to hear what you think, because you’ve never cared before.”

“You need to protect yourself when it comes to this...baby.” Samuel practically choked on the word. “You need to start filing the paperwork for custody as soon as you get the test results back, if the...baby is indeed yours. South Dakota has a very involved process to claim a pup from an unmated om.”

“Yeah, I’m not doing that.” Sam fixed his red eyes on his grandfather as a warning to exit off this highway before he got too much farther down it. “It’s _our_ baby, not _my_ baby.”

“So, what...you’re planning to mate him to ensure you have your rightful access to the pup?”

“Maybe someday, if he’ll have me.”

Samuel had not been planning for that. The bitch really had worked his way in deep. He was going to be harder to extract than the old alpha thought.

“Sam,” he said, trying to sound like the most reasonable man on the planet, “You’re young. You feel this way now. In a few months after the pup is whelped and the pheromones fade you’ll realize what a huge mistake you’ve made.”

“I’ve officially heard enough.” Sam was on his feet, putting his scarf back on before shoving his arms into his overcoat. “You’ve had your time with me for this visit, if this is the kind of shit you’re planning to call me about our conversations are going to be real short.”

“Why do you even think that pup is yours?” Samuel shouted. “Dean Winchester is the village bicycle! Fun to take for a ride but you don’t park it in your garage!”

Sam didn’t care that he had fifty years of youth on the man standing in front of him and that it wouldn’t in any way be a fair fight, he launched himself across the desk and took Samuel to the floor, the monitor, phone, and pencil holder flying so he could get his hands around the old man’s throat. He held Samuel down easily despite the old alpha’s feeble attempts to get him off, strangling him just long enough to make it clear that if he wanted to kill him he easily could. Then Sam sat back and slowly stood up, glaring down at him. Samuel gasped and coughed and threw up his lunch, drawing a shaking hand across his mouth to wipe away the vomit as he looked up at his grandson.

“You don’t ever talk about Dean again, do you understand me?” Sam hissed as his grandfather struggled to pull himself to his knees. “I’ll hold up my end of the bargain. I’ll make sure you know where I am, and I’ll answer the phone when you call, but you don’t _ever_ talk about Dean again or I’ll kill you.”

“That pup is a Campbell,” Samuel choked, his eyes red again with fury and his canines descending. “You better think about what that means and what you plan to do about it.”

“I’m not taking my child from its mother. And I’m not claiming Dean against his will. So you’re going to have to get used to the idea that we’re having a Winchester and not a Campbell.”

“Over my dead body.”

“Don’t tempt me Samuel. Really, don’t.”

Security arrived just as Sam was straightening his jacket and pulling on his gloves, and he gladly agreed to leave the building without causing any more trouble. His phone buzzed again as he was leaving the room, and he checked the text message and smiled, not even bothering to glance back at Samuel before he was gone. The guards asked if Samuel needed anything, and he asked for a janitor to come and clean up the vomit as he loosened his tie and continued the fight to catch his breath, then pushed the button to call his secretary, and instructed her to get in touch with his great nephew, Johnny, and his great niece, Gwen. If Sam wasn’t going to listen to reason, he’d take matters into his own hands.

Sam was regretting ever agreeing to stop by and see his grandfather in exchange for getting Adam into the CRC. He should have bartered for something else, maybe agreeing to attend the FDH Christmas party that he routinely skipped because he didn’t want to deflect all the questions about when he was going to give up field work and come work under his grandfather in the office. That conversation had been par for the course since he graduated Actaeon. It was all anyone wanted to ask him the whole first semester at Stanford, and even now when he saw actual Feds out in the field instead of just hunters they gave him the wink-wink-nudge-nudge to let him know they were in on the joke. He was just putting in a couple of years on the ground so it wouldn’t look so much like nepotism when he started off in a higher position than a lot of people who had been with the Department for a decade or more. When Samuel said he wanted to talk, Sam thought it were possible he was in for a lecture about dropping off the map, but when it veered off into a discussion about Dean and the baby he should have just gotten up and walked out. They were none of Samuel’s business, and if revealing Dean’s condition hadn’t been necessary to get him out of Minnesota he would have made it his mission to make sure his grandfather never found out about them. As it was the way he spoke about Dean made it clear where Sam’s dearly departed cousins got their opinions about omegas from; the fountainhead himself.

He got to O’Hare early enough to switch his flight to one taking off in the afternoon instead of the evening. He’d expected his grandfather would want to have dinner and had planned accordingly to accommodate him, but that was also when he expected they were just going to talk about Sam getting out of the field. There was no point in taking an 8:30 flight when there was a 4:30 flight that would get him there in time to eat with Dean after the roughly hour and a half in the air. He shot Dean a text to let him know he was coming in early and that his grandfather hadn’t had anything interesting to say, then picked up a onesie at the Field Museum Shop and the dark chocolate truffle collection from Vosges Haut-Chocolat. Dean shot him a text back telling Sam that he was going to make dinner and asked if steak and potatoes was okay because he could do something fancier if it wasn’t. Sam _almost_ made a joke about Dean turning into a regular housewife but didn’t think all the smiley faces in the world would get him out of that hole, so instead he just said it sounded great.

He worried briefly that Samuel might go back on his word about keeping Adam at the CRC after Sam nearly strangled him, but with the way the bureaucracy worked at the Department it would probably take three months before they could kick Adam out and the doctors had consistently anticipated his recovery would only take two because of his age. As with many governmental organizations, once you were in the system it was almost impossible to get you out of it, so Adam should be okay. He had actually managed to get a hold of John to let him know where his youngest son had been moved and to update him on what had happened with Meg, and since Christmas was only a few days away John said he’d swing by and make sure Adam wasn’t alone. Sam felt bad about it, knowing how unreliable John was when it came to his kids, but he’d learned he couldn’t be in two places at once, and no offense to Adam but he’d much rather spend the holidays with Dean.

It took him longer than he’d hoped to get his bags and rent a car when he landed in Joe Foss Field, and he shot Dean a quick text to let him know he was running a little late and to go ahead and start without him if it meant waiting was going to mess up dinner. He didn’t get a response but didn’t think anything of it, since the omega was probably in the middle of cooking. He was never going to say it, but it really was adorable that Dean wanted to cook for him, even if these last two weeks he had never failed to end at least one text conversation with “ _Still mad at you_.”

Sam had no idea anything might be wrong until he got to the house and Bobby met him on the front porch, a grim look on his face as Sam came up on the steps with his bags.

“Hey Bobby,” he said, wary of the old hunter’s expression and wishing he could scent him.

“Don’t ask about dinner,” Bobby warned. “He’ll tell you about it when he’s ready. We’re havin’ soup and sandwiches.”

“O...kay…”

“You can go ahead and put your stuff in the guest room, just in case he isn’t ready to unlock the door yet.” Sam didn’t have to ask the question. The look in his eyes did it for him, and Bobby didn’t need to be an alpha or omega to tell how concerned the young man was. “He decided to go grocery shopping to get stuff for dinner and it was a bit much. He’s been trying’ way too hard to be ‘normal’ since we got home. You should’ve come back with him and I should’ve stayed with Adam, and I ain’t just sayin’ that cuz hugs aren’t my forte.”

“Thanks Bobby,” Sam murmured, and the beta clapped him on the back as he headed inside.

He managed not to run up the stairs, but just barely, and followed Dean’s scent to his bedroom, noticing at once that it was a mixture of anxiety and misery. His alpha immediately sprang into protective mode, and he hoped that the omega would answer the door when he knocked, as breaking the door down would probably just make things worse. As much as he’d been trying to go against his instincts and it seemed to have been working as Dean’s text messages got flirtier and more frequent, now there was a door between him and his omega and he didn’t know if he could control himself if it stayed shut.

“Hey Dean,” he called, knocking softly and then immediately shoving his hands into his pockets so he wouldn’t force the doorknob. “You want me to put my stuff in the bedroom down the hall?”

If he’d counted, he would have known that forty-eight seconds had passed before he heard the creaking of bed springs and feet padding across the floor to the other side of the door. He held his breath, hoping to hear the lock click, but instead Dean’s very small voice said, “Hey Sammy. No, you can...come in here. I, uh, I need to take a shower to wash off all the blockers. I kinda like the shirt I’m wearing. Just...just gimme a minute to get in the bathroom.”

After a few more seconds the lock clicked, and Sam waited the agonizing minutes it took until he heard the shower running before opening the door to go inside and set his things down.

It was a shock to enter Dean Winchester’s bedroom and rather than seeing something that looked like the backstage of a Led Zeppelin concert instead reminded him of a teenage beta girl. The whole room was decorated in shades of blue, and Dean had carefully mounted different weapons on the walls, but those were about the only stereotypically masculine elements to it. Because Adam had not been kidding about the throw pillows.

There were throw pillows all over the place. There were throw pillows on the bed, throw pillows in a nest on the floor, a throw pillow on the desk, throw pillows on the daybed across from the full bed, and throw pillows on the bay window seat that looked out over the side lawn. It was like a throw pillow factory had exploded in Dean’s room. There were throw pillows with embroidery, throw pillows with tassels, fuzzy throw pillows and silky throw pillows, round and square and everywhere, and it wasn’t just throw pillows either, there were two of those weird pillows that you sat against and had arms ( _he thought they were called husbands, maybe_?) and a couple of body pillows as well. There were also quite a number of chenille and fleece throws scattered around the room, and the comforter looked like it might be crushed velvet. It was the most ridiculous and enchanting room Sam had ever seen, and it smelled sumptuously of Dean. Everything looked so comfortable that he just wanted to roll around in all the delicate fabrics even if he would turn around and beat anyone to death who suggested he felt that way. His chest ached as he thought of all the time Dean spent on the road, sleeping in his car or in shoddy motel rooms, and the years at Actaeon with the nondescript beige walls and scratchy, low thread count bedding provided by the school when _this_ was what made Dean feel comfortable. Sam didn’t even want to put his stuff down, afraid to intrude on Dean’s carefully crafted personal space with his clunky boots and uncleaned weapons and gigantic overcoat and overall alpha-ness.

The shower shut off and Sam suddenly didn’t know what to do. He went to perch on the bed, but thought that might look too forward. The daybed was too low to the floor for him to really be comfortable sitting on it, he would feel weird sitting in the bay window when it was dark outside and there was nothing to look at, and the desk chair had that big pillow thingy in it, which didn’t give him enough room to sit down, and he didn’t want to just toss it somewhere. After a minute or so of running around he ended up back where he started just inside the door with his duffels clutched in his hand, staring awkwardly at the bathroom as Dean came out, wiping his hair with a towel. A tremendous wave of anxiety was still rolling off of him, mixing in with the cloves and the cherry pie and the baby’s caramel-vanilla. He’d gotten partially dressed in the bathroom, wearing jeans and a wife beater, the little swell of his stomach surprisingly more pronounced after just two weeks. It was still little, but it was now very obviously there. His chest was also considerably fuller, and Dean blushed when he noticed Sam was gaping and draped the towel over his shoulders to cover up. Sam’s cheeks reddened as he stammered, “Sorry, I wasn’t...I didn’t mean to stare, you just look so different…”

“Yeah, I’ve been looking for something to keep them...contained,” Dean said, digging through the dresser and pulling out a plain dark green tee shirt to pull over his head, then getting a flannel out of the closet. “And most maternity stuff is for women. It’s really weird having moobs.”

“Have you checked online?” Sam asked, watching the way Dean’s hands shook slightly as he searched for a hoodie.

“Online stuff is expensive,” Dean told him. “Plus I don’t really know my sizes. I haven’t been able to, you know, really shop for stuff.” He noticed Sam was still holding his duffels and hastened to add, “You can just put your things down wherever. It’s fine.”

“Okay,” Sam said, and dropped them at his feet. Dean struggled for a moment with the zipper to his hoodie, casting sideways glances at Sam and his duffels, before he couldn’t stand having them in the middle of the floor and picked them up to move them out of the way by the desk. He grabbed one of the pillows from the floor and hugged it to his chest, clenching his hands around the edges. So. That’s why he liked them. “Your hair’s getting pretty long.”

“I know, I’ve been meanin’ to get it cut it’s just…” He glanced up at Sam and laughed pathetically. “Not sure how I feel about a stranger near my head with scissors. Bobby’s offered to go and sit with me but I’m already askin’ a lot from him.”

“I’ll go with you.”

Dean looked at Sam, really looked at him, for the first time since he’d come out of the bathroom. The relief that washed off of him and the way his face relaxed was painful to watch. He even loosened his death grip on the poor, smushed pillow. Bobby hadn’t been kidding down on the porch.

“Would you? It doesn’t have to be right away, I don’t know if you’re takin’ off for a hunt anytime soon or anything…”

“Why would I be taking off for a hunt?” Sam asked, moving slowly across the room to where the trembling omega stood. Dean was very clearly in need of a hug, but he also looked like he just might bolt at any fast movements. “I came here for _you_ , Dean.”

“Really? You’re really not goin’ anywhere?” A little half smile of relief cracked his face as his shoulders relaxed, and after a minute of staring at Sam’s lips he tore his gaze away and nodded. “Okay, let’s go eat. I’m starving, as usual. This kid’s gonna be your size with how much I gotta eat to grow him. Or her. We can find out at the appointment tomorrow, do you wanna find out? Cuz I don’t really care what it is but if you wanna find out...”

“Dean.” Sam had moved into his orbit and was running a hand through his hair. Dean closed his eyes and tried to chase the touch. “If you don’t want to ask me for a hug, you can just throw yourself at my chest and I’ll get the hint.”

“I can?” Dean whispered. It sounded like heaven, being able to get Sam to hold him whenever he needed it. He hadn’t had that as an option with anyone since his mother died. Well, his dad had started to figure it out in the last couple of months, but his dad was always leaving.

Sam laughed, pulling Dean into him and tossing the pillow away as he swept a hand up and down his back while continuing to caress his hair. He was definitely not going to rush Dean to the barber’s.

“And you call me a dork,” he said while the omega pressed his face to Sam’s neck to scent him.

“We’re not having steak for dinner,” Dean breathed, relishing the worn leather smell. “There were a _lot_ of people at the grocery store. Kinda freaked me out. I knocked over a toilet paper display and almost beat up the store manager when he tried to stop me from picking it up. I’m pretty sure I’m banned from the place.”

“There have to be other grocery stores in the area.”

“Yeah, but that’s the only on that carries Nutella.”

Bobby stopped outside Dean’s door to tell them that the soup was ready, listening to Sam’s loud laughter and the quiet chatter of the two young men. It was cliched as hell, but he felt like a huge weight had been lifted off of his chest that had been sitting there for a very long time. He smiled to himself and headed back down to put the pot on simmer just in case he was in for a long wait for them to come down. God he was glad Sam was finally here.


	34. The Boy Melodrama Scene

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam and Dean need to figure out sleeping arrangements.

Sam couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so nervous. Probably when Dean showed up in Bobby’s Chevelle at his grandfather’s house, overwhelming the alpha with his dizzying scent and suggesting they could go skinny dipping if there weren’t other people around. And he shouldn’t be this nervous, considering the fact that he and Dean were expectant parents together and that didn’t happen without getting to know someone in the Biblical sense, but as Dean brushed his teeth and got into his pajamas ( _which were really just a pair of beat up sweatpants and the wife beater_ ) he felt like he might wet his pants. Was he supposed to sleep on the daybed? Was he supposed to sleep in Dean’s bed? Was he supposed to sleep on the floor? He literally had no clue what would make Dean comfortable and where he should park himself while he waited, so he was back to standing awkwardly by the door until Dean was done.

It was especially difficult since he was having to fight every instinct he had to just _claim_ as soon as Dean had finished gargling. Being in Dean’s room was making his head spin, and with him not wearing blockers his fragrance was so potent it left Sam feeling almost drunk. His heart pounded and his stomach did little flips and his dick did other things that he was pretty sure were going to make Dean very uncomfortable. He should just settle himself in the daybed and make it easy on them both. The double bed was built for average sized people and nothing about Sam was average sized. He didn’t think there was any way they could both fit on it without being pressed up against each other, and being pressed up against Dean right now was both the best and worst idea in the history of the world. Maybe he’d order Dean a new, bigger bed as a Christmas present, but god, wouldn’t _that_ look presumptuous as hell and make it seem like he was expecting Dean to put out in exchange for Sam’s soothing presence? He should take his bags down the hall while Dean was still in the bathroom.

Except now Dean was coming out of the bathroom, neck fully exposed by the tank top and sweatpants sitting low against his hips, and Sam had completely missed his window of opportunity to flee before he did something hideously inappropriate. Dean had calmed down considerably since Sam got there, reassured simply by the presence of an alpha in the house, and he stopped just outside the bathroom and regarded Sam with a tilt of his head. It made the length of his unmarked neck even more obvious if that were even possible in the tank top, but it was clearly not meant to be flirty because there was a mixture of curiosity and confusion in his eyes.

“Why are you just standin’ there?” he asked. “You can put the pillows on the floor, I vacuum in here every day so they’re not gonna get dirty or anything.”

Sam was so relieved he almost burst, and smiled as he moved to the daybed to start taking off all the pillows and putting them in as neat a pile as he could on the floor.

“Okay, as long as you don’t mind…” he started, but Dean said, “Why are you clearing off the daybed?” and he froze. A cloud of hurt burst off of the omega, but he tamped it down quickly and headed for the bed, starting to clear off his own throw pillows.

“Oh…” Sam said, blushing deeply. “You meant the…”

“Yeah, no, it’s fine Sammy. If you wanna sleep over there…”

“I just didn’t think that you’d…”

“No, it’s fine, _really_ Sam, it’s fine, I just figured…”

“I mean, I can come over there if you want…”

“No, it’s probably better that you’re over there…”

“I was only thinking…”

“Sam, can we just go to bed please?” The hurt burst forth again, mixed with frustration, as Dean threw the last of the pillows off the bed to the floor. “You can sleep over there. It’s _fine_.”

Sam watched as Dean climbed grumpily into bed, turning his back to the alpha, and stubbornly closed his eyes. Sam sighed and went to his duffel to grab his pajama bottoms, shucking his jeans off quickly and getting into them, then sweeping the long sleeved green shirt with the red stripe off over his head so he was only in his white tee shirt. He grabbed his toothbrush and paste and turned to head to the bathroom to brush his teeth, but stopped when he heard the bed creak. Dean was sitting up and staring at him, knees pulled up to his chest and a sullen look on his face.

“What?” Sam asked.

“Is it that bad?” Dean said.

“Is what that bad?”

“What you said you were gonna tell me when you got here?”

Shit. Sam had completely forgotten about that after his afternoon in Samuel’s office and the steak dinner that wasn’t. He was glad Dean remembered or he might get accused of keeping secrets again.

“No,” he said, moving to the bay window to take up a seat close to Dean without crowding him on the bed. “God no. Well, maybe…”

“Cuz I just figured, if you wanted to sleep on the daybed it was probably cuz you thought I was just gonna kick you out of bed when you told me whatever it is you said you were gonna tell me.” He had moved nearer to Sam, but stopped and cocked his head again. “Wait. What do you mean ‘maybe’?”

“Well, funny story…” Sam wasn’t sure where to start, running a hand across the back of his neck. He wasn’t expecting Dean to move onto the window seat with him, but he was glad that he had so he could reach out to play with the omega’s fingers while he tried to figure out what he could possibly say that wasn’t going to send Dean running for the hills. “So I told you that the demon I’ve been hunting killed Jess, but that’s...that’s just kind of the tip of the iceberg. My mom knew your dad, back in the day, and uh...she made a deal with the same demon…” Dean removed his hand from Sam’s like he’d been burned and slid back to the edge of the window seat. Before the alpha got the idea he was getting that hand back, Dean had another throw pillow clutched to his stomach. “Obviously I don’t have to tell you that part of the story.” Dean shook his head, his face pale and jaw clenched. “Thing is, demons don’t just do favors for people without trading something, and...I was the trade.”

Dean couldn’t hope to contain the fear that came surging off of him so he didn’t even try.

“So you’re telling me what?” he demanded. “That your mom killed my mom and turned you into a demon? Cuz if that’s what you’re sayin’, I’ll take the secret love child behind door number two.”

“I’m not...I’m not a demon, Dean,” Sam told him earnestly, reaching a hand out and hoping the omega would take it. After a long, tense wait he did.

“Then what do you mean you were the trade?”

“He wanted something from me, to infect me with his blood,” Sam said. “I don’t know if he did or not, my mom walked in while he was in the middle of it…”

Dean pulled his hand away again and was on his feet, pacing the room, clenching the pillow as he walked.

“You don’t have to make shit up, Sammy,” he said, his scent growing increasingly distressed. “If you want off this crazy train you can just get off it any time.”

“I’m not making it up, Dean.”

“Right.”

Sam got into his path and grabbed his biceps, forcing the omega to stop his frantic pacing and look at him. Dean could feel almost nothing but fear and anxiety by now, and while he desperately wanted to throw himself against Sam’s chest to test out his promise that he’d figure out the omega needed a hug without him having to ask, this was honestly way worse than anything he could have imagined Sam wanting to tell him.

“I’m not making it up,” Sam repeated, running his hands up and down Dean’s arms and stepping closer into his bubble. “I wish I were.”

“So what, you’re gonna go dark side or somethin’?” Dean asked quietly, not wanting the answer to the question. “Is that what they’ve got planned for you?”

“I don’t know what they’ve got planned for me,” Sam told him. “It’s not like Azazel and I are on speaking terms.”

“Then how’d you find out about this?”

“My sire. He told me what he knew. And Ruby filled in a lot.”

Sam could feel Dean trying to pull away, and under any other circumstances he would have let him, but the jealousy that poured off of Dean at the mention of her name had him biting the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling and he thought it better to keep passing reassuring caresses over his arms.

“Ruby?” Dean balked. “That ice queen from Hal’s who was eating your bacon?”

Sam could taste the blood from where he’d just pierced the skin on the inside of his mouth, letting a little amusement slip into his scent.

“Of course you’d remember her eating my bacon,” he snarked.

“You think this is funny?” Dean demanded as his eyebrows shot up into his forehead.

“Little bit.” Sam stopped trying to fight the smile. “Kinda. You’re cute when you’re jealous.”

A furious blush rose all the way to Dean’s hairline and he clenched the pillow to his moobs.

“I am not jealous,” he snapped. “It’s just rude to eat another person’s bacon without askin’. Was she raised in a barn?”

“She was raised in Hell,” Sam told him, increasing the surface area he was massaging to include Dean’s shoulders and neck.

Dean’s eyes went wide and it looked like his eyebrows were never going to come back down.

“She’s a _demon_?” he exclaimed. “You’re purposely messing around with _demons_? Jesus Sammy, what the hell have you gotten yourself into?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I’ve been working with your dad, trying to figure it out.”

“All these ‘I don’t know’s are not very reassuring.”

“You see why I wouldn’t tell you over the phone?”

Dean definitely could. This was not the sort of thing you dropped on someone from two hours away when you were keeping an eye on their brother to make sure he didn’t end up getting one of Sweeney Todd’s shaves courtesy of some black eyed bitch. The only reason he wasn’t losing his mind right now was because of how calm and even Sam’s scent was, and wasn’t _that_ just all kinds of fucked up?

“So my dad knows?”

He knew they’d been hunting together for a while, and if John hadn’t killed him yet maybe Sam wasn’t any kind of real threat. _God_ he hoped Sam wasn’t kind of any real threat. He didn’t know what he’d do if he were.

“Yeah, I told him about it upfront,” Sam said, taking another step into Dean’s space as the omega’s fear finally started to ebb. “He wanted to know why I was going after Azazel. Didn’t seem like the kind of guy I should lie to about something like that.”

“Me you’ll lie to, but not him?”

Sam had to duck his head a little to get a read on Dean’s expression and saw he was deadly serious. He figured that was okay. He hadn’t gone for a gun yet to blow Sam’s head off, and that was definitely something to put in the “win” category. He waited until Dean was willing to look up at him, then threw a crooked grin at him.

“It’s possible I learned my lesson about lying,” he said, his eyes just as serious as Dean’s. “Besides, your dad’s a scary dude.”

Dean snorted at that, glad one of them had a sense of humor about this. He thought about the kid he had started to feel doing somersaults whenever he stopped talking, like it missed the sound of his voice, and wondered what the hell this meant for her or him. Was he or she going to come out with three heads and a craving for human blood? Well, maybe not three heads, someone would have noticed that on an ultrasound. He’d had enough of them by now.

“Shit, you officially have the worst mom ever,” he said.

“Believe me, I know,” Sam agreed.

“Is this your roundabout way of tellin’ me you want to go after Azazel again?” Dean asked, his breath catching in his throat and his heart skipping when Sam pressed a kiss to his temple.

“No,” the alpha replied, finally getting rewarded by the omega melting against him, even though he still clutched the pillow. “Just not withholding information anymore.”

Dean nodded, tipping his face up to inhale the books and leather and trying to relax enough not to be stuck awake half the night worrying about the implications of Sam maybe having demon blood in him. He sure didn’t smell like any monster Dean had hunted. Every kind of creature there was had a distinctly non-human odor and it was very different from what Sam smelled like. Sam smelled like security and stability and a home; all the things Dean hadn’t had for a couple of decades and tried to convince himself he didn’t need, that Baby was enough of a home and her trunk full of weapons was enough security and a couple duffels of clothing from Goodwill or AmVets were enough stability. Now, pressed up against Sam, it was all so wholly inadequate. It would have been humiliating how quickly he was being reduced to his base omega instincts if Sam didn’t just smell _so good_. Dean really needed to pull back out of his arms before he started something he couldn’t finish. That wouldn’t be fair to either of them, and would be a shitty way to end Sam’s first day in Sioux Falls. Besides, even if he thought he could finish something he had a prenatal appointment in the morning and would be mortified if the doctor decided to lecture him about strenuous activity because of something he and Sam got up to the night before. Sam seemed to be having the same thoughts, his face tipped dangerously close and his body still pressed up against Dean like they were the victims of a prank involving super glue, but not daring to move either closer or farther away. Dean had counted to twenty-one, his heart banging against his ribcage so hard he was sure Sam must have felt it, and then Sam squeezed Dean’s shoulders, sending a shiver through the omega, and stepped back.

“I’m gonna go brush my teeth,” he said, turning and hurrying to the bathroom where he promptly shut and locked the door.

Dean let out the breath he had been holding, feeling his knees threaten to give, and hurried over to sit down on the bed. Perhaps it was good that Sam was sleeping on the daybed after all. He stayed in the bathroom an awfully long time for brushing his teeth, and when he came back out his scent was extra strong and free of tension as he walked over to press a chaste goodnight kiss to Dean’s mouth, and it wasn’t hard to figure out why he’d taken so long to brush his teeth. It made Dean’s breath hitch and heart stutter and he almost leaned after Sam’s lips when he took them away. The alpha clicked off the light and then settled onto the daybed while Dean slid under his covers and tried to will his dick to behave. It was the first instance of the little fucker showing interest in anything in months, and now really was not the appropriate time.

He’d been tossing and turning for about half an hour after finally getting his hard-on to go away, trying not to wake Sam or throw himself onto the much-too-small daybed, when he heard Sam’s groggy voice say, “Get some sleep. We’ve got your appointment in the morning.”

“I’m tryin’,” Dean groused, fumbling around on the floor for one of his body pillows and then wrapping himself around it. Moonlight was streaming in through the window so everything in the room had a blue glow to it, letting him see just enough to know roughly where things were. “I’ve never had someone in my room before. It’s distracting.”

He heard the daybed shift as Sam rolled over and could see his raised eyebrows and shocked expression. Sam rose himself up on his elbows but stayed where he was.

“You’ve never had anyone else in here?” he asked, genuinely flabbergasted. He didn’t want to make too big of a deal out of it in case it embarrassed the omega, but god, he felt downright _honored_.

“Well, obviously Bobby,” Dean replied. “But no, it wouldn’t be right bringin’ someone back to Bobby’s house. An’ he doesn’t let anyone else in here when I’m not around so it doesn’t end up smellin’ funny.”

Dean could see the gigantic smile that broke out on Sam’s face, half moonlit, and his heartrate picked up to a staccato. His dick woke up again too, trying to take over the conversation, and he almost snarled at it to shut up. He hoped vainly that Sam would get up and come over to sleep next to him, but the alpha stayed where he was.

“So you’re telling me you’re some kind of room virgin?” Sam was enjoying this way too much. “And I’m your first?”

“Shut up,” Dean said, rolling over with his back to Sam and scissoring the body pillow between his legs. “But yes.”

The laugh that burst out of Sam filled the room and echoed loudly enough that they heard Bobby shout, “There better be a sock on that door!” from downstairs. Sam laughed even louder as Dean shot him a furious look over his shoulder and then pulled another pillow down over his face. That got the alpha up and across the room, running his hand up and down the omega’s back in apology, even if he was still giggling.

“I’m sorry,” he said through the chuckles, trying to will himself to stop. “I really am, it’s just adorable.”

Dean half turned to him, indignant, and declared, “Kittens are adorable! Baby seals are adorable! I am _not_ adorable!”

“You are though.” Sam got his laughter under control and moved in a little closer, running his hand through Dean’s hair until the omega closed his eyes, purring. “How can I help you get to sleep?”

“You could come over here,” Dean suggested, the blue light from the moon too pale to reveal how red his cheeks were.

“That’s not happening.” Sam could have sworn he heard a whine come out of Dean’s throat, but decided to ignore it. If the whole “room virgin” thing had embarrassed him, pointing out that Dean was whining might get him literally kicked to the floor. “Your bed is way too small and your scent is way too inviting. And I don’t think we’re anywhere near a point where I could do to you the things I desperately want to and would really need to if we were in this tiny bed together.”

“Desperately, huh?” Dean rolled over and waggled his eyebrows at him. “I’m that irresistible, huh Sammy?”

Sam didn’t even hesitate to say, “Yes.”

Dean must have been expecting Sam to play the question off as a joke, judging by the shocked look on his face at the simple admission. He wouldn’t pretend he didn’t know he was good looking and didn’t use it to his advantage, but he wouldn’t expect anyone on the planet to find him _irresistible_. He was way too messed up even before finding out about Shreveport for him to think someone might want him the way he could scent Sam did right now. Dean was okay for a night or two, depending on how long he was staying in town, but any longer than that and someone was bound to notice all the spackle covering the cracks. But Sam clearly meant it, because his eyes were dark and predatorial, and if it had been anyone else Dean would have felt downright threatened. Instead he felt suddenly very shy.

“Really?” he asked softly. “What is my scent like?”

“You don’t know?”

“I only go for betas, Sam. They all smell like the same generic brand of dish soap but at least they’re not gonna try to bite me while we’re...you know.” He felt his face heating up. Huh. Sam had been right, it _was_ weird talking about sex with him. “They can’t smell me so no one’s ever said. Well, Dad has said cherry pie and coffee before, which could just be cuz I had some that day.”

Sam snorted and said, “Yeah, there’s that, but also roses and cloves.”

“What about the kid?”

Sam didn’t need to lean down to press his face to Dean’s long, inviting, unmarked neck, but he did anyway, inhaling slowly up the length of it to behind the omega’s ear. He smiled to himself when Dean shivered, and whispered, “Vanilla and caramel,” without moving away.

“Like one of those frou-frou drinks you _call_ coffee?” Dean murmured, praying Sam would just tip his face up so Dean could chase after his lips again.

“Kinda like that.” Then Sam was sitting up, drawing in a shuddering breath, and removing his hand from Dean’s hair to lay on Dean’s forearm instead. It was decidedly less sexy. “So it...it would be a really bad idea for me to sleep over here cuz I think the timing is off and we’d end up doing some stuff that scared you or that you’d just regret, and even if you didn’t, I’d spend way too much time overthinking things and we’ve got enough crap to work through without adding more on top of it. Plus I’ve been reading up and pregnancy hormones can be pretty nuts and I don’t wanna take advantage so...yeah. But uh...” In a flurry of motion he grabbed the body pillow from Dean, dragged his white tee shirt up over his head, and pulled it down over the pillow before handing it back. “This should help.”

Dean looked at the pillow and couldn’t decide whether to be enchanted or insulted.

“You’re making me a Sammy pillow?” he demanded. “Like I’m a little kid scared of the monster in my closet?”

“I’m making you a _scent_ pillow to help you sleep,” Sam replied reasonably.

“And I don’t get a say in where you sleep?” Dean could feel his ire growing and worked desperately to calm himself. He really needed to stop having these bursts of rage. The kid swam a couple of laps around in his stomach in agreement. After a minute he got himself under control enough to say, “I get that I’m not the most stable guy right now, but I think I can decide if I want you sleepin’ on the daybed or over here. Not everything I’m feelin’ is my hormones.”

“ _I_ would feel like I was taking advantage of you, Dean,” Sam told him firmly. His hand was back in Dean’s hair and sweet lord the omega just loved that and leaned in. He felt like a cat being petted and didn’t want it to ever stop. “Even if I wasn’t I would feel like I was. Especially if it was because your bed is _really_ not big enough for the two of us to move around without being on top of each other.”

“We could get a bigger bed,” Dean offered lazily, which sent a wave of electricity straight down Sam to his groin. Dammit, he was going to have to head back to the bathroom if he sat on Dean’s bed much longer. “Tomorrow, after the appointment we could shopping.”

 _Yes,_ **_god_ ** _yes, Jesus_ **_please_ ** _yes_ his alpha screamed, and Sam thought he just might choke trying to suppress the surge of lust he was feeling at the thought of going bed shopping with Dean. Holy shit he should have set himself up in the guest bedroom down the hall, there was no way he was surviving this night.

“How about after Christmas?” he suggested, his voice hoarse from the effort it was taking to control himself. Among all the other things from Dean’s physical state to his mental state to Sam not just wanting a quick fuck but to build an actual _relationship_ with the omega was the fact that they hadn’t put a fucking sock on the door and Bobby would probably never stop harassing them if things went the way his alpha was _begging_ to let things go. “Everything goes on sale between Christmas and New Year’s.”

“I thought you were made of money,” Dean purred, fixing his big, bewitching eyes on Sam and eliciting a laugh.

“So now the truth comes out,” Sam said. “You only want me for my money.”

“Well if it gets me a memory foam mattress…”

Dean waggled his eyebrows again, throwing Sam an impish grin, and found himself very suddenly crushed under the weight of the big, strong alpha, who had latched onto his mouth like he couldn’t keep breathing otherwise. Dean’s hands came up to find the smooth, warm planes of Sam’s muscled chest, his breath catching in his throat at how strong the alpha was as he curled his fingers against Sam’s skin. It was one thing to know Sam was strong intellectually, or see it through a shirt, or through the blurry memories of a drunken night months ago, but to be allowed to _touch_ and _feel_ was a completely different sensation that grounded him even as it sent his omega soaring for the heavens. The baby did a series of ridiculous little flips as Dean registered vaguely that he going to be in trouble once that kid got big enough to actually make serious contact with his insides instead of just mostly floating around in his belly like a seahorse. Sam was biting and sucking and nipping and one hand was in Dean’s hair, tugging, while the other slid up along Dean’s side under his shirt and Dean saw fireworks on the insides of his eyelids and thought he just might pass out from all the little explosions he was feeling throughout his body. He was going to have stubble burn on his face from this tomorrow, but wow, he just did not care. Maybe if he was lucky he’d be walking around with a couple of hickeys. As quickly as he’d started, Sam pulled back, gasping for breath, his lips full and red and his eyes still dark and predatory.

“I’m gonna...I’m gonna move into the guest room until after Christmas when we can get a bigger bed that we’ll both fit on,” he breathed, certain Dean could hear how wildly his heart was pounding and scent how much he _did not want_ to move to the guest room. “Go to sleep.”

Just like that he was up and away, headed back to the bathroom, leaving Dean alone with his Sammy pillow and his painfully hard erection and his wish that his stupid bed wasn’t so damned small or Sam wasn’t so damned big ( _actually no, no - he liked Sam’s towering frame just fine, it was definitely the bed that was the problem_ ). He let out a frustrated grunt, rolling away from the daybed with the body pillow wrapped securely between his arms and legs, and inhaled a couple of deep breaths of Sam’s shirt, which was a huge mistake, because he still had that painfully hard erection. He heard the lock on the bathroom door click open and waited the harrowing seconds it took for Sam to pad back to the daybed, trying to take shallow breaths so Sam’s shirt wouldn’t drive him to do something that, honestly, he probably _would_ regret in the morning, if he didn’t change his mind right in the middle of it, which certainly wouldn’t be fair to either of them. Sam was definitely onto something with moving to the guest bedroom for a while.


	35. I Know You Think You're Gonna Try and Fix Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean has a prenatal appointment.

Sam didn’t know what he expected an omega clinic to look like, never having been in one, but it certainly wasn’t someplace cold and uninviting, with brown industrial carpeting that he suspected hadn’t been cleaned in a while and a receptionist who barely gave Dean a second glance when he signed in at the desk. The room had an air of indifference about it that he also wouldn’t have expected. He would think a place that dealt regularly with carrying omegas would be - well, not necessarily friendlier, but certainly not bordering on hostile. He suspected it was because this was a government-run facility, and he knew enough government workers to be aware that most of them were just there for the paycheck and not because of any real passion for the work, and that they knew someone would practically have to die due to negligence before they would lose their job. He didn’t like the idea of Dean coming here at all, and decided to talk to him afterwards about looking for a private doctor in the area.

There were four other omegas in the waiting area, two with very protective alphas that seemed to feel like they had something to prove as soon as Sam walked in. They were both solidly built but considerably smaller than him, and even though he tried his best to ignore them and just wait quietly in the corner with Dean he could still see them posturing, raking their eyes over his omega like they were trying to goad him into a fight. Sam was instantly glad Dean had gone heavy on the scent blockers this morning, leaving just the skin behind his ears clear so Sam could lean over and check on him if necessary. The small female oms with the alphas made it a point to look anywhere but at Sam, clearly afraid that even acknowledging him in the room would spark a fight. Dean definitely wasn’t coming here anymore if Sam had anything to say about it.

They had to wait half an hour past their scheduled time before Dr. Milton was finally ready to see Dean. Sam followed dumbly behind as the nurse took Dean’s height, weight, and blood pressure and asked if there were any concerns he needed to share with the doctor. Dean mentioned the cerclage, but that no one actually ever talked to him about it so he was pretty much in the dark, and Sam filled in what he could, trying not to take over but wanting to make sure the medical staff here, such as they were, were informed about what had happened in Windom. The nurse instructed Dean to get into the paper gown on the exam table and left him to change in private. Dean had been on edge ever since they arrived at the clinic, and Sam turned his back to let him get into the gown, fighting the urge to check on him when Dean’s anxiety level rose and dutifully waiting until Dean told him he could turn around.

Dean was already up on the table in the gown with a paper blanket spread across his legs, his clothes folded on a chair and hands folded in his lap. He looked like a little kid waiting for a shot, swinging his feet in and out nervously as they waited for the doctor to arrive. Sam felt really out of his depth, having missed all the appointments up until this one, but he went over and knocked his shoulder against the omega and then held out his hand in case Dean wanted it. Dean latched on almost immediately with shaking fingers and let out the breath he’d been holding just as two women came into the room.

“Good morning Dean,” said the one who was obviously the doctor, a very pretty young woman with very red hair in a white lab coat. She sized Sam up quickly and nodded in approval. “I take it you’re Dean’s alpha. I’m Dr. Milton.”

She held out a hand to shake and he took it, maintaining his hold on Dean’s hand and trying to gauge whether he was okay with Sam being referred to as “his” alpha.

“I’m the baby’s father,” he replied, thinking that was the easiest way to go. “Sam Campbell.”

“Glad you could start joining us,” she told him, opening Dean’s chart to look it over and make some notes. “As we’ve been telling Dean, this whole experience will be easier with you around.”

The other woman, an older brunette with very serious eyes, stepped forward to shake his hand as well.

“Jody Mills,” she said. “I’m the staff rape counselor. We’ve been trying to get Dean to come to group therapy. The majority of omegas find it very beneficial to help process what’s happened to them.”

“Yeah, well I’m not the majority of omegas,” Dean muttered. Sam didn’t know what to say, so he didn’t say anything, but made a mental note to get her card before he left.

“All right, let’s get you up on the table,” Dr. Milton said with an easy, gentle smile.

Dean huffed out a breath and swung his legs up so he was laying flat on his back. Sam gave Dean’s hand a little squeeze, noticing that he was trembling, and got a bone crushing grip in return. Dr. Milton rubbed her hands together to warm them, then slowly rolled up his paper gown to palpate his uterus and his mammary glands.

“I see we’ve got a little pup pouch started,” she said. “I told you it would take a while. Mammaries are less pronounced than we would expect at this point. Have you been taking your supplements?”

“Yeah.”

Dean’s voice was very small and hoarse, which surprised Sam as he sounded much more distressed than his scent let on. He carded the fingers on his free hand through the omega’s hair and asked quietly, “Are you okay?” Dean nodded a little too vigorously, biting his lower lip. Sam thought to a few weeks ago when Dean had tensed when the alpha ran his hands over his stomach and up his chest and wondered if it was linked to this or something else.

“It may be because your pectoral muscles were so pronounced before,” Dr. Milton stated, making a note. “We’ll want to keep an eye on that anyway. Have you given any more thought to suckling the pup?”

“Yeah, I...I don’t want...I’d like the formula.”

Dr. Milton was turning her attention to the large alpha who was really out of his depth in this conversation.

“What about you, Sam?” she asked, and Dean couldn’t keep the anger from bursting out of him, though he suppressed it quickly.

“What about me what?” he said like an idiot, wishing he weren’t almost five months late to this particular party.

“She means are you okay with bottle feeding,” Dean told him through clenched teeth. That seemed to Sam to be a ridiculous question to ask _him_ of all people. It wasn’t his body carrying or potentially feeding the baby. He didn’t understand why it would matter to him how the baby ate, as long as the baby ate.

“I’m fine with whatever Dean wants,” he said to the doctor, who made a note on the chart.

“We’ll have to file the paperwork soon if you want to be able to get a prescription,” she told them. “So we’re doing a paternity test today, is that correct?”

“Yes, we had some trouble in Minnesota and want to make sure we don’t run into that same problem again in another state,” Sam replied. “What do you mean prescription? What does he need a prescription for?”

“The formula.”

That didn’t make any sense. Every store had formula. He’d seen plenty of alphas buying it right over the counter. Before he could ask, Jody was explaining, “Most states require omegas to teat feed unless they’ve been given a prescription for formula due to the om being incapable of doing so.”

“Require?”

Dean was squeezing his hand, trying to get his attention, as the fingers Sam had in his hair had stilled.

“It’s not a big deal, Sam,” he said. “I’ve already been through this with them.”

“Well I haven’t, and it _is_ a big deal,” Sam shot back, staring at the rape counselor and doctor incredulously. “Are you saying that Dean doesn’t have a choice?”

“Mr. Campbell - may I call you Sam?” Sam gave Dr. Milton a short nod, and she wheeled over to the counter by the sink to grab some pamphlets out of the top drawer. “I gave copies of these to Dean a while ago. They explain his legal obligations to his pup, including teat feeding for the first two years of its life.”

“Two _years_?”

“Sam, stop, it’s fine,” Dean insisted.

“No, Dean, it’s _not_ fine,” Sam snapped. “You’re not a cow, they can’t just _require_ you to do something like that.”

“Actually they can.” Jody sounded like this was a conversation she’d had many times, and one she wished she could stop having. “Unless the omega is unable to produce any milk, has a medical condition that would prevent them from teat feeding, or has experienced an assault that would make it too traumatic, the law requires suckling from the mother as opposed to bottle feeding. It varies in length throughout the country, but it’s typically a minimum of a year. Vermont, Nevada, and Kansas are the only states that make an exception.” They were definitely buying that house in Vermont once the baby was born. “Even alphas need a prescription if they’ve taken possession of the pup. It will be easier to get Dean a waiver for a formula prescription now that you’ve agreed.”

“Are you saying an alpha can force an omega to...teat feed…” That was the most uncomfortable term he’d ever heard. “...even if it’s not what the omega wants?”

“Unfortunately, yes,” Jody said. Sam felt like he might be sick.

“It’s _fine_ , Sam,” Dean told him through gritted teeth, and Sam let the matter drop. He was angry all over again at Dean for not telling him he was pregnant sooner, when he could have been here to have this discussion months ago and saved Dean from the stress of this whole fucked up situation, and pushed it down as best he could. “Can we just get on with this, please?”

“Of course.” Dr. Milton could tell how irate the alpha was becoming, and turned back to the folder to review its contents. “So Dean, back in Windom it says you were diagnosed and treated for an incompetent cervix.”

“Yes.”

“What happened exactly?”

“I started bleeding, so they shoved the duck bills up, knocked me out, and took care of it.”

The doctor and Jody shared a look, and the doctor made some more notes.

“We’ll need to check that.” She finished with the folder, then turned to smile back at Dean. “All right, you know the drill. Butt down at the end of the table, feet in the stirrups.”

Dean’s hand clenched around Sam’s again, and the alpha scented a definite, sharp spike in his distress.

“I uh...I need a minute,” he said, his voice trembling. “Windom wasn’t exactly a joy ride.”

“I can imagine,” Jody agreed quietly.

Dean took in several deep breaths, squeezing Sam’s hand like he wanted to see how many bones he could break at once, then slid himself down to the end of the table and put his feet up. Dr. Milton wheeled between his knees, talking him through everything she was doing, but his breath still picked up rapidly as she was checking to make sure his cervix was firmly sewn shut. It wasn’t even happening to Sam and he was terribly uncomfortable. He couldn’t begin to think about what this must be like for Dean. Fortunately the internal exam only took a couple of minutes, then the doctor was snapping off her exam gloves and tossing them into the trash.

“Everything looks good from this end,” she told the omega, giving his free hand a little squeeze. “I don’t know how much of your condition they explained…”

“They wouldn’t even talk to me,” Dean said bitterly, and she gave him another squeeze.

“This is an incredibly common condition in male omegas. I don’t want you to feel like you’re damaged or did anything wrong, it’s just a facet of your biology,” she assured him. “I need you to keep your stress down. I need you to not do anything that is going to put you under any unnecessary strain. Let someone else bring in the tree this year. And no knotting for another two weeks. Beyond that it should be fine, as long as it’s infrequent.” This last part was said to Sam, who blushed in tandem with Dean. “As we get closer to your due date we’ll be able to determine better if the cerclage can be removed for a natural whelping or if you’ll need a surgical delivery. Personally I would recommend surgical delivery, as whelping without prior preparation of your channel could not only result in a long labor but a very painful and damaging delivery.” She gave his hand another squeeze, and Sam reconsidered looking for a private physician. Dr. Milton had a good rapport with him and clearly cared whether or not Dean was comfortable. The rest of the clinic still sucked, but at least these two women seemed to be on Dean’s side. “I know this is scary, but you’re not the first omega to go through this. We know how to take care of you. You can get up and get dressed and you can talk to Jody if you like. They’re waiting for you down in Imaging, and then you can get your bloodwork done for the paternity test. I want to see you again in one week.”

She gave them both one last smile and headed out the door. Dean finally relaxed marginally, reaching immediately for his clothes while trying to keep his paper gown closed in the back. Sam turned away again, at which point Jody said, “Dean, will you be okay in here for a minute? I’d like to talk to Sam about a few things. We’ll be just outside the door.”

Dean looked up at her warily, having just gotten his boxers on, and then shot a glance at Sam. The alpha scented the worry coming from across the room and cast a look back at him over his shoulder, attempting to determine what was going on. After a twelve count, Dean replied, “Yeah, I’ll be okay in here.”

“Great.” She shifted her eyes over to the alpha, and commanded, “Sam?”

Jody Mills did not seem at all to be the kind of beta female whose orders you ignored, and Sam got the feeling Dean needed a little breathing room anyway, so he gave the omega a small half smile and headed out into the hall. Jody didn’t stay right outside the door though, but went down the hall a little ways. It gave Sam a terrible feeling of deja vu as he hurried after her, and he actually felt his breathing picking up and his palms starting to sweat. His alpha was trying to put its foot down, insisting that this was how things went so wrong to begin with two years ago, but he squelched the feeling and attempted to will his heart to stop pounding so fast and furiously. They were two exam rooms over before she finally stopped, and Sam was beginning to feel a sense of panic at being so far from Dean in an unfamiliar building.

“What is it?” he asked, considerably harsher than he intended. She raised a single eyebrow at him in a look that clearly conveyed she would not tolerate being spoken to in such a tone. He ran a hand through his hair, surprised to find it shaking. “I’m sorry, I’m...we’re just farther away from Dean than I expected to be.”

She crossed her arms over her chest and stared at him, obviously trying to assess the situation, before asking evenly, “Why does that bother you?”

“Because I need to be _with_ him in case something happens,” Sam said, trying to keep his tone even as well. He didn’t think he managed it, but he tried.

“What do you think is going to happen?” she asked in that same reasonable tenor. “We’re in an omega clinic. No one is going to break down the door and come after him.”

“Can you please just…” He huffed out a breath, willing the irritation out of his voice before continuing. “Can you please just tell me what you wanted to talk to me about so I can get back to him? Please?”

Jody stared at him for several agonizing minutes that left Sam clenching and unclenching his hands at his sides. Dean must surely be dressed by now, but hadn’t come out into the hall. Which meant he was patiently waiting in the exam room for Sam to come back. That felt like deja vu, too, and he had to push down especially hard to override the fresh new wave of panic. Finally she seemed to have made some kind of determination about him and her face visibly softened into something that almost looked motherly, if Sam had to guess at what he thought a motherly look would be.

“I noticed the way you both reacted when Dr. Milton discussed knotting,” she said, apparently happy to get right to the point. Sam’s entire body must have turned red if how hot he suddenly felt were any indication. “I don’t know how long you’ve been back with Dean…”

“Not long,” he cut in. “We met back up in Windom and then I just got into Sioux Falls last night.”

“Well. So you’re a couple of episodes behind in the series.” She looked very tired, almost pained, and sighed. “I’m hoping you can help convince Dean to begin attending therapy. Perhaps if you started going to a support group for partners of an abuse survivor he would be more inclined to join a group as well. I keep asking, but so far he’s refused. I’m starting to get very worried he’ll begin to process his trauma in unhealthy ways.”

This was a very strange conversation to be having, and certainly not one Sam would have expected.

“Is this something we should be talking about?” he asked, his narrowed eyes studying her while she cast a glance back at the exam room Dean was in. “Doesn’t this fall under doctor-patient confidentiality?”

“Dean’s an omega, Sam,” she replied. “Omegas aren’t afforded confidentiality in South Dakota when it comes to matters of their mental health. As his alpha, I’m legally required to discuss this with you, but I don’t want to do it in front of him because that will just make him feel like he has even less control over his life than he currently does. Not that pulling you out into the hallway is a much better option, but we’re at the po-tay-to, po-tah-to stage of the game.”

“I’m not…” Sam felt the heat rising to his skin again. “I’m not his alpha.”

She gave him what could only be described as a knowing smile.

“Sure Sam. If you say so. Regardless, I needed to discuss knotting with you.” God, Sam felt like he was back in sixth grade biology class with the way she was looking at him. “Dean is what we term touch starved. As a small child he was denied the kind of physical contact he needed in order to develop healthy emotional attachments. This can happen to any child, any adult as well, but in Dean’s case, as an omega, his body required touch in order for him to...let’s say stay in balance. I’ve tried to discuss this with him but he just waves me off every time. I’m presuming you know about his sexual history and his promiscuity.” She saw Sam’s nostrils flare and hastened to add, “I’m making no judgments. He’s been doing what he had to in order to get the kind of physical connection his body has been missing since he was very young. We _all_ need touch, but omegas far more so. He was chasing something he required in order to survive and stay sane. Sexual contact has for years been how he got the kind of touch that was necessary for him to function day-to-day in between encounters, like a camel storing up the connection. But I needed to bring this to your attention, because it’s likely his body is going to react to you in ways that his mind isn’t ready for.” Whatever flashed across his face must have confirmed her suspicions, because she reached out to lay a hand on his arm. “I haven’t had any additional private sessions with Dean, only what he has been willing to talk about during and after his appointments, plus a couple of phone calls, but he’s textbook in touch starvation. Bobby Singer has called me for advice quite a few times and told me about his history, that his mother died when he was very young, that his father moved him all over the country before sending him off to an alpha boarding school, that he’s never been in a stable relationship, that he’s more of a one night stand kinda guy.”

“Our lifestyle...hunting...it really doesn’t allow for much in the way of stable relationships,” Sam told her quietly.

“That’s another thing. I’ve only counseled a few retired hunters suffering from PTSD so I’m certainly not an expert on your community, but the way hunters live is completely antithetical to everything Dean needs as an omega. I know he was raised in this lifestyle, but that makes it worse, not better. He may think he’s learned how to cope with the constant trauma hunters go through, with the lack of regular, soothing touch, with the lack of a loving, quiet home, but every coping mechanism he’s talked about with me is unhealthy. It would be unhealthy for an alpha or a beta, but for an omega - frankly I’m surprised he hasn’t put a gun in his mouth by now. Now that he’s carrying, those avenues for release are all useless. He can’t drink or hunt or fight or pick up someone for the night, so he has no outlet for what he’s going through except - now that you’re here - you. And his need for touch as a carrying om is going to run pretty much directly opposite to his need as a survivor to avoid uncomfortable reminders of his experience until he’s processed the event. Carrying oms have a heightened sense of vulnerability. They have an instinctual need to be reassured, through touch and scent, that they are safe. Coupling that with trying to work through his feelings from the rape and how unsafe it has made him feel in general, he’s almost certainly going to try to overcompensate to deal with it all. I expect he’s already started reacting to your presence, probably in ways you’ve found surprising, because his body is demanding touch whether or not his brain is on board.” She really stared at him for a long moment, and it was obvious she was trying to determine whether what she was saying was sinking in. She seemed to decide that it was. “You’re both adults, and I certainly can’t tell you what to do, and I can’t tell Dean how he _should_ be trying to work through what has happened to him, but I’d be remiss in my duties in the eyes of the state and in my own conscience if I didn’t pull you aside for this conversation. Whatever is going on between you, I’d urge you to take things very slow and give him time to adjust to your presence in a healthier way. Please think about what I’ve said, and _please_ talk to him about coming to therapy.”

Sam thought back to the night before, to Dean’s _immediate_ suggestion they get a bigger bed that they could both fit in as soon as they were done with the appointment, to all the cuddling and kissing in the hospital, and felt deeply ashamed of his behavior. Yes, he had worried not all parts of Dean were on the same page, and sure he’d managed ( _barely_ ) to tear himself away from the omega the night before and instead gone to jerk off in the bathroom for the second time in under an hour, but he’d never even heard of touch starvation or suspected Dean’s need to touch him had gone beyond the pregnancy hormones he’d researched. He gave Jody a little nod and said softly, “Okay.”

“Sam?”

Dean’s very small voice startled both of them from the doorway of the exam room. Sam could practically feel Dean’s clenched chest and thundering heartbeat from where he stood, dressed, holding one arm with the opposite hand with his coat slung over his bent forearm, his toes pointed in on each other. His eyes were large and dewy and he was chewing his bottom lip. He reminded Sam of a little kid who had gotten lost in a store and needed to ask a cashier for help to find his mom.

“Hey baby…” The endearment just kind of slipped out of him as he tried not to run down the hallway back to the omega. Dean immediately threw himself against Sam’s chest, just kind of leaning in with his torso until Sam wrapped him in the promised hug. He dissolved against the alpha, releasing a shuddering breath. “Sorry, that took a little longer than I was expecting.”

“I thought you’d left,” Dean whispered, slotting his face into Sam’s neck and breathing in deeply.

“Where was I gonna go?” Sam asked, his fingers finding Dean’s hair again. “They’re not interested in me over in Imaging. You’re the one with the kid they want pictures of.”

Dean snickered against his shoulder as Jody came over to put her hand on Dean’s bicep and run her thumb up and down it.

“Sorry Dean, that was my fault,” she said. “Just thought I should get acquainted with your boyfriend.”

“He’s not…” Dean started, and she stopped him with that knowing smile she’d given Sam earlier.

“Sure he’s not,” she told him. “You two better get to Imaging, they’re expecting you.”

“Thanks Jody,” Dean said as she headed away down the hall, and Sam echoed, “Thank you, Jody.”

She turned back and gave them both the motherly look, saying, “Bobby has my number, Sam,” before disappearing around the corner.

“You okay?” Sam asked when she was gone, pressing his nose up against the space behind Dean’s ear so he could scent the omega and the baby. He could smell and feel Dean calming down, but squeezed him a little tighter anyway. “You know I’m _always_ going to come back for you, right?”

“You don’t have the best track record with that,” Dean replied quietly, having to fight back the urge to cry when Sam pressed his lips to the omega’s temple.

“I know, but it falls in the same ‘lesson learned’ category as the lying,” he said against Dean’s skin. “I’m never going to leave you, Dean. Do you believe me?”

“Yeah.”

Sam could feel it was a lie, but that was okay; he’d just keep repeating it to the omega until he _did_ believe it. Dean had spent his whole life being left by people. Left by his mom when she died. Left by his dad when he dropped him off at Actaeon. Left by Adam when he went off to college. Left by Sam in the hotel room in Laramie. It would take a while to convince Dean that wouldn’t happen anymore, and it was probably going to be a struggle for a while, because after his talk with Jody he was definitely moving into the guest bedroom and there was no way they were getting a bigger bed.


	36. The Rapier Wit - The Wittier Rape

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean and Sam go out for lunch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: Do you see the title of this chapter?
> 
> Go back and read the title of this chapter. This is your official warning. There's some bad stuff in here.

Babies in utero were weird looking. Sam decided that pretty immediately, even if he wasn’t going to say anything about it while they were looking at the screen as the technician went back and forth across Dean’s belly with the ultrasound wand, checking for various developmental milestones and clicking pictures every time she found something on the the chart next to her. The little thing she was trying to track looked kind of like a baby but more like an alien, with an oversized head and undersized everything else. Plus it spent the whole time bouncing around, like it was playing a game of tag with the wand. Sam was captivated, having been kicked out of the room two weeks ago when they were doing this at Windom Memorial. There really was a little person in there. A very _active_ little person. He’d have to ask Dean if he could feel that, and what it felt like, but he’d do that later because right now the tech was describing all the various parts the “pup” had and how so far it was developing exactly as expected, though it was a little on the small side. Dean asked a couple of questions about the baby’s size, since neither he nor Sam were petite, but was assured that all a smaller baby meant at this point was that the baby was smaller. Besides, male omegas tended to have smaller babies as a rule. There was nothing for them to worry about.

Dean almost made a joke about how “worry” was practically his middle name, but was working too hard at suppressing his worry so the room wasn’t filled with it. Sam seemed to know anyway, because he kept sweeping the back of his fingers down Dean’s cheek in gentle, light brushes against his skin while the baby finally settled, having tired itself out, and curled up to sleep, sucking its thumb. Sam had been watching with twinkling eyes, and when the thumb went in the mouth his dimples showed up, too. Dean smiled for the first time all day, hoping the kid was blessed with those dimples as well. Now that the little alien had settled, the tech asked if they wanted to know what the baby’s gender was, and they agreed that they’d rather be surprised. She printed off some pictures, one a perfect profile, and sent them off to get the bloodwork taken for the paternity test, which would come back in a few days.

Sam couldn’t help but stare and grin at the sonogram pictures all the way back to the cars, leaving Dean to stop him from walking into a light pole at one point. They’d planned to return Sam’s rental to the airport after the appointment, so they’d driven separately, which worried the omega now in case the alpha was too distracted by his first baby pics to concentrate on what he was doing. He finally just snatched the pictures out of Sam’s hand and tucked them into the inside pocket of his coat, telling him he wasn’t getting them back until after they’d returned his car and Sam had fed him and his kid. It earned him another dimpled smile and a kiss on the cheek before they caravanned off to the rental agency.

Sam went off to return the car on his own while Dean waited in the Impala, looking over the pictures of his passenger and deciding the kid had apparently gotten his or her dad’s sloped nose, though it was probably way too soon to figure out who the baby looked like. Still, it was the first time since this whole thing started that he wasn’t just thinking about how miserable he was with everything that was happening to both his body and his ability to act like a rational human being who could remember why they walked into a room, but instead was thinking about having an actual person in there kicking around. It was something he’d known as reality since he saw all those sticks come up positive, but it hadn’t really registered before now that he and Sam had about twenty weeks left until this little person wouldn’t be quite so little and would be ready to come out and face the world. The whole thing seemed unreal.

He was so engrossed in the pictures that he jumped when Sam rapped lightly on the passenger side window so Dean could unlock the door. He slid across with a scowl on his face, pulling up the knob and snapping, “Jesus, you wanna scare me to death so your kid grows up without a mom?”

“Sorry,” Sam said, giving him another kiss on the cheek. “Though I don’t know how the kid would actually grow up if I scared you to death right now.” He swiped the pictures out of Dean’s hand and looked at them with the same huge, dopey grin that almost ran him face first into the pole. “It’s kinda small.”

“We gotta figure out something to call it besides ‘it,’” Dean told him, starting up the car. “Put your seatbelt on. Gotta set an example for your kid.”

“Yes, mom,” Sam teased as they backed out of their parking spot. “Still want lunch?”

“Sammy, as long as I’m growing a mini-sasquatch you should always just assume that I want lunch,” Dean said, eliciting a long, loud laugh from the alpha.

Sam shouldn’t have been surprised when they pulled up outside of Marge’s bar, which appeared to be dead at only a little after twelve. It was more than a bit of a dive, but Sam wouldn’t have dared point out how unlikely the place was to have anything nutritious on the menu when Dean looked so at ease getting out of the car and heading for the door. He even paused and held out his hand for Sam so he could lead him into a place he’d lived over for a year, not even questioning that Sam would take it. The alpha couldn’t help but smile, feeling a little like he was being brought in as a trophy Dean had won in a World’s Most Badass Omega contest.

There were only two older betas sitting at the bar when they walked in, listening to the slightly-too-loud “A-weema-weh”s of _The Lion Sleeps Tonight_. The look on Dean’s face indicated to Sam that this was not what Marge’s bar usually played, and it was confirmed when he spotted the red-haired omega polishing glasses at the far end of the bar, her back to the door.

“What the hell’s up with the music?” he bellowed, throwing his arms out to his sides.

Marge turned with a start, fixing her eyes on him and breaking into a huge smile. She looked to be in her mid-60s, her hair piled wildly on her head, and her face done up with heavy eyeshadow and too-pale foundation. She wore outrageously large earrings and a leopard print tunic over leggings, with matching leopard print stiletto heels. A heavy necklace and a flurry of bangles on her wrists, plus a few large, flashy rings completed the look. She might have looked utterly ridiculous were it not clear that her appearance had been honed over time to be exactly what she wanted it to be and get exactly the reaction she wanted to get. She was, quite simply, fabulous.

“Dean!” she practically shrieked, clicking over from behind the bar to wrap her arms around him in a ferocious hug. She pressed a kiss to each of his cheeks, leaving lipstick behind, and then slapped his shoulder. “You better have a good reason for sending Bobby Singer ‘round for your clothes and not even stopping by in person to say sayonara?” That was when she spotted Sam and quirked an eyebrow. “Oh. Well apparently you do.” She held out a hand to the alpha, pushing gently past Dean. “And who might you be?”

“Uh...Sam,” Sam said as he cheeks reddened.

“Well Dean, I never thought you listened to all my wise words of wisdom, but apparently you did,” she said, never once taking her appraising eyes off of Sam. She threw him a brilliant smile, and Sam couldn’t help but think she must have been really something back in her heyday.

“What...what words of wisdom?” he asked as Dean plunked himself down on a bar stool. Sam hadn’t thought it were possible for the omega to relax like this, but he was completely comfortable here.

“Get ‘em young, train ‘em well, tell them nothing,” Dean replied, and Marge tacked on, “If they die, they die.”

They both laughed, and she planted another kiss on his cheek before saying, “What brings you to this old dump?”

“I was in the city, wanted some lunch,” he replied. “Course, if this is the kind of music you’re playin’ now…”

“Jukebox broke last week and the repair guy needed to order a part,” she told him. “Wait here, I gotta go take care of Rudy and George. Be right back.”

She wiggled off down to the two betas at the other end of the bar, throwing the towel she’d been using over her shoulder as she went. Dean gave a little jerk of his head as he grabbed a couple of menus from behind the bar and said, “Come on, let’s get a booth.”

“So, your old apartment is upstairs?” Sam asked as they shucked off their coats and slid into the least tattered booth by the front windows to look out on the street at the falling snow and Christmas decorations while Dean took a minute to determine if the table was level and then leaned down to unscrew one of the feet a little to stop it from tipping back and forth.

“Yeah,” he said, tossing Sam a menu. “Haven’t seen Marge in, I dunno, maybe three months? Two and a half? After the clinic told me about the whole probably bein’ pregnant thing I just kinda took off for Bobby’s. Barely gave her thirty days’ notice on the lease.”

“She doesn’t seem to be holding a grudge,” Sam observed, looking over the menu. “Any recommendations?”

“Yeah, anything fried,” Dean told him. “Salads are not Bill’s forte.”

“Bill?”

“Dean!”

An absolutely _massive_ alpha about John and Bobby’s age banged his way out of the kitchen and came over to the table to wrap the omega in a bear hug. Sam instantly bristled, attempting to suppress a growl as Bill looked at Dean curiously, then took a quick scent from behind his ear. Dean stiffened slightly, but seemed to want to try to ride out the surge of panic that rolled off of him rather than push Bill away.

“Let him go,” Sam ordered as politely as he could, having gotten to his feet without even realizing he was moving.

Bill looked around at him, took a quick scent of his neck that almost got him punched, and then broke into a wide grin.

“Well! Congratulations whoever you are!” he exclaimed. “Obviously you’re the reason our boy up and vanished and came back like this!” He turned back to Dean and ran a hand down his cheek, getting another tiny flinch that Bill apparently didn’t notice. “I’m happy for ya kid. Truly. You’re gonna do a great job.”

“Thanks Bill,” Dean said, and though his voice was sincere his smile was weak.

Bill swung around to Sam, holding out his hand.

“Bill Danvers. Nice to meet ya.”

“Sam,” Sam told him, taking his hand for a firm shake. “Campbell.”

“Campbell?” Bill wrinkled his nose. “No relation to that jackass at the FDH are ya?”

“Bill used to be a hunter,” Dean explained, and Sam replied, “Regrettably, he’s my grandfather.”

“That’s gotta suck. He’s a Grade A shitstick. No offense.”

“None taken.”

“Dean! What can I get you honey?” Marge asked as she made her way over to the table. “El Sol with a medium well bacon burger?”

Dean’s stomach did an unpleasant roll at the mention of bacon, and he said, “No, uh...the grilled chicken with fries. And a...a ginger ale.”

“Grilled chicken and ginger ale?” she scoffed. “What are you, carryin’?”

“Of course he’s carryin’!” Bill exclaimed. “Didn’t you notice his scent?”

“What?” Marge stuck her face up against Dean’s ear, which had him flinching again while she cried, “Dean! You shoulda said something!” and hit him with her notepad.

The confident Dean who had walked into the bar was rapidly disappearing, crowded in by the bar owner and the cook who certainly meant well but were taking up entirely too much of the omega’s personal space. Sam really tried to contain his growing irritation, but at the full body tremor that ran through Dean when the notepad hit him, he couldn’t help but snap, “Get away from him!”

Both Marge and Bill turned, shocked, to the young, angry alpha in the booth across from the handsome omega they’d gotten to know quite well in the time he lived above the bar, but did as he demanded and took a step back. Bill bristled slightly, but didn’t challenge Sam, and it was pretty clear by the expression on her face that Marge thought he was a gigantic douchecanoe. Dean had gone quite pale while trapped in his seat by Marge and Bill and tried to defuse the situation.

“It’s fine Sam,” he said, even though he looked like he was swaying a little on his feet.

“It’s _not_ fine, Dean, stop saying things are fine when they’re not,” Sam insisted, before taking a deep breath and getting his irritation under control. He turned to Marge and Bill and said as politely as he could, “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be rude, but he needs some room to breathe. We’ve had a long morning and he hasn’t eaten yet.”

Marge and Bill took a second to look from Sam to Dean and seemed to notice for the first time that the smaller-but-still-large man did in fact look quite peaked. Bill took another step back as Marge ran a soothing hand up and down Dean’s arm.

“You all right honey?” she asked, her face melting from annoyance at Sam to genuine concern for Dean.

“I just need some lunch,” Dean told her with a smile.

“Grilled chicken sandwich and ginger ale. Got it,” she said. “You want chips or fries?”

“Fries, a double order if you can swing it.”

“Anything for you, Dean.” She turned to Sam, her voice hardening slightly as she asked, “And for you, Sam?”

“I’ll have the same, thank you.”

She marked down their orders on her notepad, tapped it with her pen, and headed off to the kitchen, to which Bill had already retreated. The two young men sat in silence, listening as one of the guys at the bar ( _no way to tell if it was Rudy or George with their backs to them_ ) sang along drunkenly to _Under the Boardwalk_. Dean glared out the window, pointedly ignoring the way Sam was staring at him with his arms crossed over his chest, clearly waiting for whatever was stewing in the omega’s beautiful head. Finally Dean snapped quietly, “You know that was really rude, right?”

“You know I don’t much care about consulting Emily Post when something like that happens, right?” Sam demanded, which got the glare fixed on him instead of the street. “I’m serious Dean. Marge and Bill seem like very nice people but they were swarming you and they needed to back off.”

“It’s not up to you to tell them that,” Dean hissed. “I don’t need some kind of knight in shining armor ridin’ to my rescue. I can handle myself just fine.”

Sam wanted to challenge that assertion, but could scent the anger starting to build in the omega’s core and thought it better to just let it go. It was incredibly frustrating, not ten minutes ago he’d been excited to be allowed into another aspect of Dean’s life and now they were sitting there listening to Rudy ( _or George_ ) crooning along with the overhead music without the pipes to do so, not speaking to each other. They still weren’t speaking by the time Marge returned with their food, and she cast a sidelong glance at both of them but didn’t do anything to try to spark a conversation, seeming to know she’d already done enough.  

Dean couldn’t stand how hangry he got when he was between meals and there was no food right within reach. He hated even more that as soon as he did have food within reach and could start filling the bottomless pit of his stomach he became almost instantly aware that he had gotten very hangry and perhaps been a bit less reasonable than he otherwise would be under the same circumstances. Like now. He was halfway through his chicken sandwich and fries, and he felt probably five hundred times better than he had a few minutes ago, but between then and now he had utterly committed himself to being pissed at Sam about the way he’d told Marge and Bill to step back and give him space, even though he had _needed_ Marge and Bill to step back and give him space but he was too...well, crowded by them to tell them to stop crowding him. Sam really should have given him time to handle the situation himself, but he was so in need of food he wouldn’t have been able to do much more than feel ill and dizzy when faced with anyone who randomly wanted to scent him without warning, even if it happened to be two people he knew. It seemed petty to continue to ignore Sam’s obvious attempts to catch his eye simply because the alpha had correctly deduced he needed help and stepped in to help him, but he couldn’t back down now.

George ( _or Rudy_ ) had been singing a while, and Dean had basically finished his meal when Sam Cooke came over the sound system and Sam abandoned his chicken and fries, which he wasn’t really eating, in favor of risking destroying the detente that had settled between them and taking the omega’s hand.

“Come here,” he said. “I’m going to teach you how to tango.”

The statement was so ridiculous that it didn’t even occur to Dean to object, and he went willingly from the booth with Sam to the middle of the bar where there was a tiny dance floor.

“You’re going to teach me to tango to _Cupid_?” he said, and Sam nodded. “How do you know I don’t already know how to tango?”

“Call it a gut feeling,” Sam replied, smiling and attempting to lead Dean through two long, slow steps, followed by three quick ones and a pause in place. “Dude, you have to let me lead.”

“Why do you get to lead?”

“Because I’m taller.”

“Who came up with that rule?”

“Really tall people.”

That got a snort out of the omega, who declared, “You’re such a dork.”

Sam gave him a smile and a shrug.

“What can I say?” he asked. “Dorks are hot.” That got another Dean snort, and after a minute of really not tangoing at all because Dean refused to follow the alpha’s movements, Sam said, “Seriously, just let me lead.”

“We look ridiculous,” Dean griped, though he worked a little harder at allowing himself to be led.

“Who cares?” Sam flashed him the dimples. “Rudy and George are the only ones here and they’re hammered at one in the afternoon. I hardly think we need to worry about their opinions.”

“Just didn’t peg you for a romantic, that’s all.”

“Well, I’m a Taurus. We are ruled by Venus.”

“Astrology? That’s the best you’ve got?” Now he’d drawn a genuine smile out of Sam, and Dean may have gotten a little too caught up in staring at Sam’s mouth to do anything but follow where the alpha was leading. “You use that in your online dating profile? ‘Hi, I’m Sam Campbell, I’m a freakishly tall Taurus who is ruled by Venus and likes to tango’?”

“Maybe.” He had noticed Dean was staring at his mouth, but he wasn’t doing anything about it. The brat. “What’s yours?”

Dean thought about it for only a few moments before he said, “My name is Dean Winchester, I’m an Aquarius, I enjoy sunsets, long walks on the beach, and frisky women.”

Sam laughed out loud, his chest vibrating with the sound and sending a shiver through the omega.

“I’m a frisky woman now?” he asked, and got a shrug in return.

“You do have long hair and great legs.”

“And you say I’m a dork.” Marge had apparently gotten tired of listening to Rudy and/or George at the bar, because the channel on the sound system changed and what was clearly an ‘80s station came on, and now Yaz was playing. Sam gave a happy little grunt and tipped his head back. “Man, I used to love this song.”

“ _Only You_?” Dean scoffed. “You really are a girl.”

“Shut up,” Sam ordered playfully. “So, I think I’ve got the perfect name for what we can call it until it’s born, so we don’t have to keep calling it ‘it’ or ‘the kid’. Maybe we can use it for a name after it’s born, too, it’s pretty inspired.”

“Yeah?” Dean raised his eyebrows skeptically. “What’s this perfect name?”

“Elliott,” Sam declared. “Cuz it looks kind of like an alien, and you know, _E.T._ , but obviously we can’t call it _E.T._ and Elliott works for a boy or a girl. Plus I always thought Dee Wallace was kinda the perfect movie mom.” That was when he noticed Dean had stopped moving completely, and was clearly trying to keep himself calm. A cloud of deep sorrow rose off of him before he could quell it, and he didn’t want to meet Sam’s eyes. “What? What is it?”

“No,” Dean said very quietly, his lower lip trembling. He didn’t even know how to begin to explain to Sam why he did not want people asking if he was Elliott’s mom. It was probably not a story he could get through coherently. “Just no.”

Sam didn’t need further convincing. He bundled Dean up against his chest and held him until he stopped shaking. All he said was, “Okay.”

“I gotta hit the head,” Dean declared after a few seconds, and he pulled free of the alpha and hurried off to the single seater bathrooms down the hall past the bar.

Sam felt like an idiot standing in the middle of the bar with his sandwich and fries getting colder and Rudy and George getting more drunk, half aware of Toto blessing the rains down in Africa overhead, but he wasn’t sure what else he could do. He felt the same kind of panic he’d had back at the omega clinic when Jody had swept him away down the hall to talk about Dean. Now Dean was going off to lock himself in a bathroom, and while there were certainly no threats he could detect at the moment, that didn’t mean someone wasn’t going to come along and talk him into coming out. Which was a ridiculous thing to fear, Sam was right there, Dean wasn’t drunk and vulnerable, the only other alpha in the place was Bill, who clearly recognized and respected that Sam and Dean were together ( _they were, weren’t they_?), but he couldn’t make himself go and sit down and patiently wait in the booth.

“His mom looked like Dee Wallace.” Sam turned with a start to look at Marge where she was standing on the other side of the bar, back to polishing glasses. “You haven’t seen the picture he keeps in his wallet?”

The only picture Sam had ever seen of Dean’s mother had been the one John had tacked to the case board, and then he’d only spared her a glance, much more interested in three year old Dean with cake all over his face. He shook his head. Marge continued polishing.

“He must’ve been living upstairs two, maybe three months? Only ever saw him when he came down to pay rent. He was on the road most of the time working cases. Anyway, one night he comes down and he’s all banged up, got this big ol’ cut on his arm and a bunch of bruises all over his face, and he can’t hardly breathe because his side hurts so bad, and he just starts ordering whiskey. One after another. No food, just a late liquid supper. Coupla alphas tried to get too friendly, but I don’t put up with that shit here. It wasn’t real busy, so we get to talkin’, and he tells me about this hunt, how he took down this thing called a rakshasa that was disguising itself as a clown. Getting kids to let it right into the house so it could kill the parents.” She smiled fondly and shook her head at the memory. “I knew he was an om, and we may be tough as nails cuz it’s the only way to survive the way the world is now, but we ain’t built for that kinda thing. I asked him why he’d want to stay in a business that was so full of death and dying and fear, and he pulls out this picture of this little boy with a kitten and this happy woman in the background, and he tells me all about how a rakshasa killed her - and the cat - when he was four, and that she looked like the mom from _E.T._ She was kind of fuzzy in the photo, but I could still see the resemblance. And then he just sat there and cried until I told one of the other bartenders to close up so I could get him upstairs to his apartment.” She fixed her eyes on Sam, pinning him to the floor, so that even if he’d wanted to move he wouldn’t have been able to, as she slung the towel over her shoulder. “You hurt that boy and I’ll hurt you.”

“Yes ma’am,” Sam said with a nod, and she vanished into the kitchen.

Sam figured Dean had been in the bathroom long enough that he could go check on him without seeming obsessive or controlling, passing by Rudy and George as they staggered to their feet, having had enough alcohol for the afternoon, and headed in a united weaving line for the exit. It was easy to figure out which bathroom Dean was in, since there were only two, and only one door was shut. Giving a few small taps against the wood, he called, “Dean?” and was surprised when the door opened for him immediately.

The bathroom was small and oppressively warm, the radiator by the sink putting out way too much heat for the cramped space. As a result, Dean had removed his hoodie and flannel and was standing there in just his boots, jeans, tee shirt and tank. There were beads of sweat on his forehead and the hair on him arms stood on end when some of the cool air rushed in from the outer part of the restaurant. The tee was loose, but Sam could still see the faint outline of the pup pouch. His puffy red eyes were all the sign Sam required that the omega was in desperate need of a hug, and he hurried inside to close the door.

“Dean, I’m sorry, Marge told me about your mom...” Sam started, but was cut short by Dean flinging himself into his arms, sobbing. “It’s okay, forget I brought it up.”

“I’m sorry Sam,” Dean said through the tears. “All I do is snap at you or cry or puke - I don’t know what I’m doin’.”

“You don’t have to apologize, Dean,” Sam told him, burying his nose in the omega’s hair and massaging the base of his spine.

“But I do.”

Sam felt one of Dean’s hands travel from his back around to his stomach, sliding tentatively up under Sam’s sweater and shirt to ghost over his abs, while the other moved up into Sam’s hair, and a few moments later Dean’s lips were pressing kisses along his neck and jaw, soft and sweet and chaste until he found his way to Sam’s mouth. Sam could still taste the chicken sandwich, fries, and ketchup on Dean’s tongue, and even though his brain was trying to remind him of the conversation he’d had with Jody just a few hours ago, the omega was so good at this Sam could hardly breathe, let alone think. Dean had Sam pressed up against the door of the bathroom and was up on his toes kissing and sucking and tugging at Sam’s hair and it was amazing, until the hand under his shirt that had been working its way up and over his chest started to travel down to dip below the waist of his jeans.

“Dean…” Sam tried to pull his mouth away, but it only made the omega chase his lips harder as he felt deft, strong fingers pop the button on his pants. “What are you…”

“Shhh, Sam,” Dean cooed, working at the zipper. “Just relax.”

“Dean, stop,” Sam said with a nervous laugh. This wasn’t at all the way he wanted to move forward from kissing to more intimate things, and Dean was shooting right past a whole bunch of stop signs that flashed through Sam’s mind. He tried to get away, to pry Dean’s hand out of his pants, but was roughly shoved back up against the door. “Dean, I mean it. Stop.”

“What’s the matter Sammy?” Sam felt Dean’s rough, thick fingers tease up the length of him, and sucked in a desperate breath as he immediately became hard. “Doesn’t it feel good?”

“Dean...” Sam gasped, feeling the calluses of Dean’s palm as he curled his whole hand around Sam’s shaft. “Please…”

“Please what, Sam?”

“Please stop!”

“Aw, you don’t mean that.”

Sam did his best to shove Dean’s hand away without hurting him, grabbing onto the omega’s wrist with both hands, but that simply allowed Dean to clasp both of Sam’s wrists in his other hand and pin them over Sam’s head. Sam couldn’t believe how strong Dean was, and struggled to get at least one hand free but couldn’t. Dean pushed himself harder against Sam, pulling on him in long, smooth strokes and causing Sam’s knees to buckle.

“I do mean it,” he choked, trying to buck Dean off but only succeeding in pushing himself farther and harder into Dean’s hand. “Stop!”

Dean just chuckled, moving his lips to nuzzle against Sam’s throat and bringing his ear, where he hadn’t put any blocker, up right against Sam’s nose. That’s when Sam finally smelled it: sulfur.

“ _Dean_!”

Dean’s face looked up at him and black lids flicked down and then back up over Dean’s eyes, a wicked grin cracking Dean’s beautiful mouth while Dean’s hand kept working on Sam inside his jeans.

“‘Fraid not, Sammy,” Dean’s voice said. “I told you to ditch the hex bags.”

“Ruby…” Sam gasped, redoubling his efforts to get the demon off of him without hurting Dean.

“The things I have to do to get your attention,” Ruby hissed, adding a twist to the long strokes right at Sam’s head.  He gasped involuntarily, trying to wrest his arms free or move to the side to slide away from her. “To get you to focus on the objective. It’s almost embarrassing, Sam.”

“Dean!” Sam shouted again, which just made her chuckle. He bit his lower lip, tears springing to his eyes, as he tried to push back against the automatic reactions of his body to stimulation, against the heat pooling in his belly and how close he was getting to coming all over both of them when he absolutely did not want to.

“Oh don’t worry, he’s in here,” she assured him. “I wouldn’t hurt your baby mama. In fact, he can feel everything I’m doing right now. He’s pretty horrified, but what’s one more trauma at this point?”

“ _Get off_!”

Suddenly Sam felt his head splitting open, a blinding white light obscuring his vision, and Ruby flew across the room into the wall between the sink and the toilet hard enough to crack the tile. She fell to the floor, pushing herself up as Sam gasped for breath at the door, feeling blood run down from his nose. A thin red line trickled down Dean’s neck from the back of his head.

“Ouch,” she said, cocking Dean’s head to either side so his neck popped twice. “He’s gonna feel that in the morning.”

“Get out of him!” Sam roared, which made her fix the green eyes on him until they rolled over black again.

“Make me,” she hissed.

She had only managed to advance on him two steps before Sam thrust his arm out towards her, not really knowing what he was doing or why he was doing it, but it stopped her in her tracks. She seemed surprised and irritated until Sam clenched his fist and concentrated his focus on her center mass. He could feel every cell in his body pulling on her, like she was at the other end of an invisible wire, and then he added a squeeze to the pull, his head exploding and a second trail of blood dripping from his nose until large red droplets were splashing on the floor at his feet. Ruby’s expression turned from surprised irritation to fear, and after a few moments of the squeeze-pulling she doubled over and Dean’s perfect mouth opened to vomit out a long column of black smoke down onto the floor. It felt to Sam like it took days to wring every last bit of Ruby out of his omega and into the ever growing black stain on the floor, and after far too long Dean crumpled into a heap. Sam fell to his knees, the world swimming, and tried to crawl over to check on Dean, but he only made it a few inches before he was lost to the darkness as well.


	37. I'm Not Gonna Die in a Hospital Where the Nurses Aren't Even Hot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The aftermath of the bathroom incident.

It was far too bright and his head hurt far too much for Sam to open his eyes, but he did anyway because his throat was sore and his mouth was dry and he desperately needed something to drink. Plus his phone was beeping and he needed to see who was calling. It could be his grandfather, and if he didn’t answer Samuel might go back on his word and kick Adam out of the hospital. Though he felt like he’d already worried about that and put those thoughts to bed. When had that been? Right, yesterday when he was in Chicago. Samuel had been even more “Samuel” than usual, and Sam had somehow managed to stop strangling him before he got himself locked up on a murder charge. After that he’d gotten on a plane to Sioux Falls to see Dean, and they’d gone to the doctor this morning and then stopped for lunch…

Sam lurched to a sitting position, the sudden movement making his skull pound and his stomach flip. Someone put a hand on his back and said, “Easy…” but he couldn’t take it easy because Ruby had been possessing Dean and somehow Sam had thrown her against a wall, and when he’d expelled her and sent her wherever demons went after they’d been exorcised, Dean had fallen like a sack of potatoes to the floor. He tried to get up but he could practically feel the rotation of the earth and he tipped sideways, falling back onto something soft.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t try that. You’ve been out for a couple days now.”

He recognized the voice as Adam, which was really confusing until he figured out he was in a hospital gown in a hospital bed and the beeping was not his phone but a heart rate monitor attached to him. If Adam was there, that meant that he was in the Chicago Recovery Center. And if he was in the Chicago Recovery Center, where was -

“Dean…”

His voice was sore and hoarse from several days of disuse, and he coughed from the dryness in his throat. Adam grabbed him a glass of water from the stand beside the bed. He looked a little better than when Sam had left him, and was out of bed, sitting in a chair beside the alpha. He definitely had a long way to go, though, by the lack of color in his face, and winced when he reached across to hand Sam the drink.

“He’s up on the fourth floor. They’ve wheeled me up to see him twice.” He smiled grimly. “They’re not that accommodating since he’s an omega. He’s locked down pretty tight.” Sam tried to sit up again but had no sense of equilibrium and almost tipped off the bed. “Careful. You’ve had swelling on the brain. I guess when you got to the ER the two of you looked like you’d been in a car accident. In a bathroom. You’d be surprised what people talk about when you’re pretending to be asleep.”

“And Dean?”

“Cracked skull, four broken ribs, a bruised kidney.” Sam’s stomach really flipped at that. He still didn’t understand how he’d managed to throw Ruby off of him, but he would have let her do whatever she wanted if he’d known how badly he would injure Dean. “The baby’s okay.” Sam laughed and sobbed at the same time, pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes. God his head hurt so badly. “I don’t know how, the doctors say it’s a miracle he didn’t lose it. Guess you’re lucky you’re having a Winchester and we’re tough to kill. They’re keeping him at least two weeks for observation. I doubt you’re getting out of here anytime soon either.” He poured himself a cup of water and toasted the alpha. “Merry Christmas and happy New Year.”

“Christ,” Sam breathed, downing the water in one gulp. He wished it were something stronger. “What the fuck did I do?”

Sam reached over to the pillow speaker and pushed the call button for the nurse. The pain in his skull was almost completely incapacitating and waves of nausea kept rolling over him, but he needed to figure out how to get up to the fourth floor to check on Dean, presuming Dean would even want to see him. There had to be something they could give him to at least dull the feeling.

“Your grandfather keeps stopping by, too,” Adam said, getting shakily out of the chair. “He seems like the life of the party.”

The door opened and a young man around Sam’s age wearing scrubs walked in. He had dark skin, broad shoulders, and a pleasant face. His alpha scent slightly overpowered the blockers, filling the room with the faint smell of explosives, but Sam’s head hurt too much for him to react.

“Well, Sleeping Beauty woke up without us needing to track down a prince!” he declared upon seeing Sam awake, then scowled at the beta standing next to him. “Adam. What’s the rule about getting out of bed on your own?”

“Don’t do it,” Adam replied grumpily, as if the man had scolded him about not picking up his room. “Sorry Jake.”

“If you were sorry you’d sit back down until I was done here and can help get you back in bed,” Jake declared, and Adam immediately sat back down. “I know it’s tough being stuck in here man, but you didn’t just get a little tickle from those ghouls.” Jake was methodically checking Sam’s blood pressure even as he continued lecturing Adam. “You pass out on me or something you could injure your liver again and then you’ll be here even longer.” He took out a thermometer and swiped it across Sam’s forehead. “Temp looks good, blood pressure is good, how’s your head feeling?”

“Like an elephant’s standing on it,” Sam said.

“I’ll get the doctor in to look at you, see what we can get you on. He’s probably going to want to take a CT scan to check on the swelling. As for you - ” He was moving over to Adam and pulling him to his feet like he weighed nothing. “Stay in bed, or I won’t take you up to see your brother this afternoon.”

“Can you take me?” Sam asked, trying to raise himself up on his arms but finding himself too dizzy to do even that.

“Sorry, only family is allowed to see him,” Jake said. “Orders from pretty high up. I’ll go page the doctor. You want the light off over you?”

“Please,” Sam practically begged, and Jake clicked off the lights in his half of the room on the way out.

The doctor, a dark haired British man named Davies who seemed nice and relatively benign for a Department doc, came in about fifteen minutes later to get a look at Sam; check his pupil dilation, his reflexes, his bilateral strength, and ask some simple questions to test his memory. Sam suspected he was making sure Sam wasn’t having a stroke, and it seemed to satisfy the man that the only real problem with him was the overwhelming pain in his head. He scheduled him for a CT scan and said he’d be sending the nurse back in with something to help with the headache. Sam asked about Dean, but Dr. Davies was not his attending physician. That was Dr. Ketch, and since Sam was not a relative he couldn’t give him any more information than that.

It only took an hour or so before they came to wheel Sam down to the scanner to see how the swelling was coming. He suspected he’d been pushed to the front of the line, since things like CT scans were not something you got in just an hour unless you were in the ER. The swelling had gone down but had not resolved completely. They also couldn’t determine what had caused it, since Sam had nothing more than a bloody nose when they found him and Dean had clearly received the worst of the injuries.

Much to Sam’s disgust, his grandfather was waiting in his hospital room when he got back from the scan. Samuel had a manila folder in his hand. Adam wasn’t there, and Sam hoped that was because he was up visiting Dean.

“Welcome back to the land of the living,” Samuel said as the nurse who’d wheeled Sam down for his scan helped steady him as he climbed back into bed. “I was worried about you for a while there.”

“I don’t know why,” Sam stated coldly. “Gwen and Johnny are still around to carry on the family name.”

“Let’s not do this, Sam. Didn’t our last meeting go badly enough?”

“There was a reason for that.”

That was all it took for them to reach an impasse, staring stubbornly at each other and waiting to see who would blink first. Samuel was annoyed by the realization that he had very little to bargain with. There was Sam’s inheritance that he could deny him simply by changing the will, but Sam already had access to his trust fund, which was sizable, and upon which his grandson could live quite comfortably with the right investments, never having to work a day in his life, and still have plenty left over to pass down to his own children. The trust fund could only be removed by proving Sam was mentally unfit to have access to it, and no matter how great his power was Samuel hardly thought that “I don’t like the omega my grandson wants as a mate” would hold up in a court of law as sufficient cause to lock down his money. He’d fully expected Sam to understand what it meant to be a Campbell and to be loyal to the family, completely oblivious to how sending Sam away at such a young age and keeping him at arm’s length his entire life was the entire reason pleas of upholding the family name held no sway with him. Somehow he had just expected Sam to fall in line with whatever he wanted because they were tied by blood, and now that he wasn’t Samuel was at a loss.

“The results of the paternity test came back today,” Samuel said at last, indicating the manila folder. “The clinic in Sioux Falls sent over Dean’s medical history when he was admitted and forwarded this over about an hour ago. Thought you might like to see it.”

Sam shot him a sardonic grin and commented evenly, “You say that like there’s going to be anything in there I don’t already know.”

“Sam, it’s important to start the custody paperwork in South Dakota as soon as possible.” Sam’s headache had subsided a bit, but not enough that he thought he could have this conversation without pummeling his grandfather again. “This is the second time Dean’s been in the hospital within a week. And he’s not even planning to teat feed. It will be easy to prove to the courts that he’s unfit.”

“He’s in the hospital because of me!” Sam exploded, his head hammering behind his eyes. “ _I_ did this to him! I’m lucky I didn’t kill them both!” He squeezed his eyes shut, rubbing his thumbs over his eyebrows in an attempt to drive away the stab of pain that was only partly from his encounter with Ruby in the bathroom. “Give me the file and get out.”

“Sam,” Samuel snapped, frustrated, “I understand you feel some guilt about this situation…”

“You’ve never understood _anything_ about me, Samuel.”

“I can have him thrown out of here. I can have his status switched to inactive with the FDH and get him kicked out of here on his ass.”

“Try it and I’ll contact every national news organization with a story about how the Assistant Director of the Federal Department of Hunters endangered the life of a pregnant omega injured in a demon encounter.”

The look on Sam’s face told his grandfather he meant every word that came out of his mouth, and the furious scent of a geriatric alpha filled the room. He tossed the manila folder on the end table beside the bed, standing and straightening his suit jacket as he glared down at his grandson. Grandson - that was a funny word for this disrespectful upstart Samuel clearly didn’t even know.

“You’re going to regret abandoning the family,” he said after a few moments before grabbing his overcoat and storming from the room.

Jake was wheeling Adam back in at almost the same moment Samuel was flinging the door open to leave and got a growl from the old alpha as he passed. Jake raised an eyebrow but didn’t react, continuing past Sam’s bed with Adam as Sam picked up the manila folder to look at the contents. As expected, the results for “Winchester Pup” confirmed “Sire: Sam Campbell.” It made him smile, even though he’d known what it was going to say.

“What’d you do to him, Sam?” Adam asked while Jake was helping him back into bed. “Tell him Santa isn’t real?”

“He thinks he can actually talk me into taking the baby away from Dean,” Sam replied, too tired to try to play it off as anything other than what it was. Adam somehow managed to grow paler than he already was these days, thinking of how John had just swooped in and stolen him from his mother, and how conflicted he felt now knowing his father’s actions were the only thing that had saved him from being ghoul chow. “Like I’d ever agree to raise a kid he has unrestricted access to.”

He could almost feel Adam’s relief at that statement, and would have been insulted if he weren’t sure Adam was comparing his mother’s situation to Dean’s. Adam grunted in agreement as Jake went back to Sam to check his blood pressure again, and after a moment nodded at the manila folder and asked, “What’s that?”

“Paternity test.” Sam smiled contentedly, his eyes lighting up as he looked at Adam. “I’m gonna be a dad. Officially. Nothing like Minnesota can happen again.”

“You wanna go up and see him?” Jake inquired as he removed the blood pressure cuff, momentarily stunning Sam.

“What?” he said. “I thought I couldn’t see him because we’re not related.”

“Well, technically you’re not going up to see him,” Jake replied, taking the folder from Sam. “You’re visiting your pup. It’s a fine distinction, but it’s in line with hospital policy.”

Sam nearly leaped out of bed, his headache seeming to lessen just with the idea of getting to see Dean. He wanted to sprint up to the fourth floor and fling open the door of every room until he found Dean’s, bury himself in his neck, and never leave. His splitting skull had done a good job of keeping him distracted from what would otherwise undoubtedly have been an overpowering need to stalk the halls until he’d tracked down his omega, and now that need was definitely starting to take hold.

“I…” His mouth was dry again, the heart rate monitor starting to go crazy as his pulse picked up at just the thought of _Dean_. “Can we go now?”

“He was pretty worn out when we left,” Jake told him. “My shift ends at six tonight, I can leave instructions with the night nurse to take you up after dinner.”

Sam thought he saw both Jake and Adam trying to hide smiles at the ever increasing beeps from the monitor and tried to force himself to calm down. He was actually getting quite lightheaded between the headache, the pain meds, and his racing pulse, and was glad he was laying down. Finally he simply said, “Okay,” and worked on slowing his breathing down before he passed out.

Trying to wait until after dinner was slow torture, and Sam wondered if they were messing with the clocks just to make it seem like time was moving at a crawl, because good god was it ever. Lunch had arrived right after Adam got wheeled back into the room, and following that the younger Winchester had fallen into a fitful sleep while Sam tried to find something on television, finally settling on a marathon of _The X-Files_ . Left alone with the beta and his thoughts, it didn’t take long for his brain to decide to replay the events from the bathroom on an increasingly frightening loop. There was the way Dean’s mouth was pressed against his, the sound of his voice, the way he tasted, what his hands felt like grabbing and stroking even when Sam was telling him to stop. The way his eyes flicked black, the gruffness at the back of his throat, how easily he could pin Sam against the door and there was absolutely nothing the alpha could do to get him off until he managed to throw the demon against the far wall apparently through sheer force of will. And he kept trying to tell his brain that it hadn’t been Dean, Dean would never touch him like that, would never force something like that, but his body really didn’t care what his brain was saying. Even when Adam woke back up and they found _Die Hard_ on USA Network he couldn’t stop hearing Dean ( _no,_ **_Ruby_** _, not_ **_Dean_** ) taunting him about the lengths she had to go to to get his attention, nor could he stop his chest from clenching with every replay. By the time the night nurse, Ava, came to take him up to see the omega he was giving himself another splitting headache with his effort to suppress the anxiety he was feeling and focus instead on what a relief it would be to scent his baby and his ( _mate_ ) baby’s mother.

Dean was awake and focused on a _Shark Week_ rerun on television when the small, dark-haired beta nurse knocked on the door to announce she was coming in, then wheeled Sam’s far-too-large-for-his-wheelchair frame into the room, all gangly arms and legs like a newborn colt who had failed at learning how to walk. Dean was hooked up to a fetal monitor again, and had an oxygen monitor hooked to his finger, in addition to the standard I.V. drip. The omega looked terribly pale and incredibly tired, and the only thing Sam could scent in the room was utter exhaustion. Still, when he turned and saw the alpha he managed a small smile.

“I’m startin’ to think they don’t let anyone actually walk around here,” he said as Sam got out of the wheelchair and into the recliner by Dean’s bed.

“He needs to rest, so I’ll be back in fifteen minutes,” Ava told them, and headed out with the wheelchair.

A charged silence hung in the air between the two young men when the door had closed behind her, things so very different than they’d been a few days ago. Sam wouldn’t have needed to know the extent of Dean’s injuries to tell that he was in incredible pain, and Dean could have guessed by the stubble growth on Sam’s jaw that he had been incapacitated until very recently, and that’s why he’d only seen Adam since he woke up here, strapped to the damn seismograph, terrified and alone three days ago. He wanted very much to slide aside and invite Sam onto his bed, like he had in Windom, but the visions of what he’d been doing to Sam in the bathroom, what that damn demon bitch had been forcing him to do to Sam before he flew back into the wall and couldn’t remember anything else, made him feel like Sam wouldn’t accept, and if he did it would be because he felt obligated to and not because he was comfortable being that close to Dean. Dean understood more than a little about that and wasn’t going to put someone else through that kind of anxiety. Besides, he couldn’t really move well enough to scooch over, not without a tremendous amount of difficulty and a whole lot of pain. Hell, getting to the bathroom required a major effort and caused so much agony that this was the first day he’d progressed from using the bedpan. Still, he desperately needed to either touch Sam or have Sam touch him, just so he could relax a little. His nerves had been completely raw for the last three days, and they’d told him he had a week and a half of observation left at least to make sure his kidney healed before they would even consider releasing him.

After what seemed to be an eternity, Sam finally said, “Got the paternity test results back.”

“Really?” Dean looked at him, and tried to ignore the way Sam flinched when the overhead light caught his face in such a way that it made his eyes look black. “What did it say?”

“I _am_ the father,” Sam told him, using his best Maury Povich voice.

That elicited a laugh and then a wince with an accompanying sharp inhale of breath from the omega, and Sam finally touched him. It was very tentative, and his hand shook slightly, but he laid his hand on Dean’s arm and moved his thumb lightly up and down until he felt some of Dean’s tension ebb.

“That why they let you up here?” Dean asked after a minute when he was finally able to breathe again without it sending white hot pain through his core and shooting stars ( _not the good kind_ ) across the insides of his eyelids. “So you could give me the news that I’m not a complete slut?” He’d tried to make it a joke, but it was obvious by the dark look on Sam’s face that he didn’t think anyone calling Dean a slut was funny; _especially_ not Dean himself. Dean flushed and stared at his feet. “They told me the first day I only get to see family.”

“I’m not actually here to see you,” Sam replied, and then very slowly and carefully leaned over Dean’s abdomen and said, “I’m here to see you.”

It was the stupidest and cutest thing Dean had ever seen.

“The fetal monitor?” he suggested.

“The baby,” Sam breathed, taking a long, deep inhale to reassure himself he could still smell the caramel and vanilla. “I’m exploiting a loophole in hospital policy.” He talked directly to the baby bump again. “Aren’t you glad you hung in there kiddo?”

Dean gave a little giggle, not enough to hurt, and said, “Elliott’s doin’ backflips. Must like the sound of your voice.”

Sam looked up at the omega, whose eyes were shiny and very sad. He sat back up so he was closer to Dean’s face and hesitantly stroked his cheek. He saw the jaw clench, working back and forth, as the green eyes closed and a couple of tears fell, fear wafting up in a cloud that overtook the exhaustion in the room.

“So we get to go with my name choice?” he said, suppressing a flinch when Dean reached up to grab his wrist and hold his hand in place, running a callused thumb over the back of Sam’s hand. It was horribly unpleasant, and made Sam feel like he might throw up, having Dean’s hand on him, but he shoved the feeling down and buried it the best he could.

“Seems like the least I could do after what I was...what I did to you in the bathroom.”

“Don’t.” Sam had Dean’s hand sandwiched between his gigantic paws, pressing his lips to the omega’s knuckles, even as he felt himself beginning to shake. “Don’t do that, Dean. Don’t you dare do that. You will not apologize for that. You didn’t do _anything_ to me.”

“I’m the one who lost the hex bag,” Dean said. “I should have paid more attention when I got dressed after the appointment. I was just so ready to be outta there…”

“Don’t.” Sam repeated. He was really trembling now. Dean couldn’t possibly have failed to notice Sam’s mounting distress. What a messed up pair they made. “I don’t ever want to hear you blaming yourself for that again. I’m the one who started working with a demon. I gave you a cracked skull and broke your ribs and almost…” He exhaled a shuddering breath, looking at the ground with his elbows on his knees, Dean’s hand still trapped between his. “I could have killed you, Dean. I could have killed the baby. That’s on me.”

Dean pulled his hand from out between Sam’s and reached forward to gently card it through the alpha’s hair. The younger man shot up and back, out of Dean’s reach, cursing himself at not being able to control his reaction. They were quickly going to find themselves trapped in this moment if two seconds after insisting the omega must not feel guilty for what Ruby had done Sam was flinching away like Dean’s touch had scalded him. And Dean took it about as well as anyone could expect, his chest heaving in both physical and mental agony as he absorbed the frightened look on Sam’s face.

“I tried to fight her,” he said earnestly, a tremor in his voice. “I did, I could feel everything she was doing and I tried to get her to stop, but...god, Sam, she could just do whatever she wanted. That’s kinda becoming the theme of my life.”

“I know you did, Dean.” Sam had moved to the bed as best he could without Dean having to shift. He avoided the omega’s hands, instead opting to run a trail of fingers up his arm and over his neck, into his hair. It was going to get really long if Dean was stuck here for two weeks. Sam was determined to focus on that, on any part of Dean that didn’t feel tainted, until he could just get himself past the feel of Ruby pinning him down and trying to jerk him off. “Strong as you are? I know you tried.”

“Next time I see that bitch I’m ganking her,” Dean hissed, his eyes wrathful and cold as he locked them on Sam, who wasn’t succeeding in hiding his discomfort nearly as well as he thought he was.

“I already took care of it,” Sam told him. “She’s not coming after you again if she knows what’s good for her. She’s not coming after anyone for a long time.” When a confused look passed over Dean’s face, Sam forced himself to lean forward and press his lips softly to the omega’s mouth, swallowing back the bile that rose in his throat and praying Dean mistook his quivering kiss for restrained desire and not the fear it was. He decided in that instant to get Jody’s number from Bobby and give her a call in the morning before these feelings got any worse. He was rewarded for his effort with a decided drop in the scent of omega distress, and then said, softly, “It’s not a question anymore of whether I have demon blood in me. It’s how much.”


	38. The Crappy Diner Food and Skeevy Motel Rooms

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone gets out of the hospital.

The revelation of what Sam had done in the bathroom after Dean hit the wall was such an unbelievably fucked up new layer to all of the fucked up shit they were trying to deal with that they came to a silent agreement to just...not deal with it for a while. They’d have time to figure out what the hell Azazel wanted and how the hell they planned to deal with it once they got out of the hospital and Dean was feeling stronger, but for now they were going to act like none of that existed. Christmas was only a couple of days away, and Sam, Dean, and Adam were all going to be stuck there for it anyway. No reason to inject more anxiety into the situation. John didn’t come by, which shouldn’t have surprised anyone but still hurt both boys, though at the same time it was a relief. He knew about Sam and probably wouldn’t have taken it well finding out the alpha had thrown his eldest child into a wall and then straight up exorcised a demon using only the power of his mind.

The swelling had gone down completely in Sam’s brain in the interim and by the day after Christmas he was symptom free, so Dr. Davies felt it was safe to release him. Adam was released a few days later, earlier than scheduled because he was healing so well, and packed off to Bobby’s in time to sing _Auld Lang Syne_ with the old hunter. He hadn’t wanted to leave Dean but needed something more stable than the hotel room Sam had booked while he waited for the omega to be released as well, even if the hotel room was in The Peninsula on the Magnificent Mile. Dean, however, was kept under observation until several days past the New Year, and even though Sam brought him a flurry of throw pillows, a couple of fuzzy blankets, and a body pillow he was absolutely miserable. The attending physician, Dr. Ketch, was a complete dick of the “anyone carrying has lost too many brain cells to be able to decide between chocolate or vanilla, never mind important health issues” variety, and damn was Dean glad the DNA test had come back quickly so Sam could order Ketch to inform Dean of anything regarding his or Elliott’s health without needing the presence of the alpha. The exam he’d needed a week after arriving at the CRC to check the cerclage and update Dr. Milton in South Dakota had been the least comfortable since this whole thing began, and he was a little over halfway through his pregnancy when they finally let him back out into the world.

Dean had only been to Chicago once before in his life, and never in the winter, and he quickly decided it was the absolute worst. The wind was bitter, the sidewalks were icy, and the only thing that looked even remotely fun to do and wasn’t entirely family oriented was ice skating, which for obvious reasons he was banned from. Plus, with as many broken ribs as he had, two of them displaced, and the underlying contusions on his lungs he was still in danger of developing pneumonia if he overdid it. The weather definitely didn’t help with that, and the stress he felt just walking down the street that he was going to fall and break something else was enough alone to exhaust him.

Luckily he had Sam, who he honestly had expected to find a case and bolt on him once he got out of the hospital, given how jumpy and tense the alpha was around him now. He tried his best to hide it, but for Dean it was like looking in a mirror. He half expected someone to come along and whisk them off to a tropical island for “Sexual Assault Survivor” to carry around tiki torches, having them compete for immunity idols and a million dollars to see who was going to be the winner and get somewhat back to normal functioning first. He was pretty sure if that happened that Sam would let him win, since Sam certainly didn’t need a million _more_ dollars, and then decided he’d watched entirely too much television while he was stuck in bed re-learning how to breathe without causing excruciating pain to course through him.

He’d been sad but not really surprised when they got to the room Sam had booked with incredible views of the city and saw that it was actually two adjoining rooms, with a separate suite for Dean to stay in. Sam had said something about not wanting to hurt Dean while they were sleeping, but he suspected it was more likely that Sam wouldn’t feel comfortable if Dean’s hands started wandering in his slumber. Both rooms had king sized beds, so it wasn’t like they wouldn’t have their own sides and couldn’t avoid touching, but he wasn’t going to push the issue, even if he did feel terribly lonely in his big ol’ suite after they chastely kissed goodnight at the end of every day.

Sam had booked the rooms for two weeks once the omega was released, which Dean thought initially was going to drive him nuts but turned out to be very relaxing. They had an amazing spa and fabulous restaurants right on sight so they could do things together like an ordinary couple who hadn’t just gotten out of the hospital and weren’t horribly traumatized. The day Dean got out they’d gone to a tattoo parlor to get him the same anti-possession symbol Sam had on his chest. It was a bit of a struggle figuring out where to put it, since there was no way Dean was baring his chest for anyone and they kind of got caught on that being the logical spot for Dean’s to match, but eventually he settled on his left calf. A few days after that they found a barber to give him a trim, and while Sam mourned the longer locks and their silkiness it was far more practical given recent events for Dean to have shorter hair again. When Dean had tried getting dressed the day after his haircut and found, to his mounting distress, that he couldn’t button his pants anymore without being incredibly uncomfortable and getting a solid roundhouse kick from Elliott, Sam had done a fast Internet search and discovered there was a small boutique catering specifically to male omegas called Maxim’s within relatively easy walking distance of the hotel, right on the Mile, and after making a quick call confirmed they had a line of clothing for carrying oms. Dean felt ridiculous heading down the block at little more than a crawl because of the snow on the sidewalk and how tender his ribs still were, but Dr. Ketch had said mild exercise would remind him to breathe deeply and help keep him from getting too stiff, and a block and a half walk definitely qualified as “mild.” Besides, Sam seemed to do a lot better in Dean’s presence when they were well bundled and Dean’s hands were stuffed into gloves.

A lot of the clothing in Maxim’s was just ridiculous and impractical, made of soft, flowing fabrics that wouldn’t protect against a sneeze, let alone a werewolf, but Dean’s objections to trying on the various items Sam was piling into his arms were met with, “Well, you aren’t going to be hunting werewolves for a while, Dean,” before getting more styles of pants, shirts, and sweaters loaded onto him. When Dean balked at all the fancy things Sam was insisting he take into the dressing room, the alpha said he wasn’t trying to pick out Dean’s clothing for him, he just wanted the omega to try on a bunch of different things so Dean could actually figure out what he liked, or he was never going to get out of jeans, tees, flannels, and hoodies. Not that there was anything wrong with those items, Sam liked them himself, but between seeing Dean’s room back at Bobby’s and Jody’s explanation of how important touch was to omegas, coupled with how relaxed the soft couch in Sam’s suite made the omega while Sam sat with his hand on Dean’s abdomen, trying to feel Elliott kicking ( _no luck yet_ ), he thought that slightly more delicate maternity clothes might be in order.

The saleswoman in the store, a very calm and petite omega, even had some suggestions on what Dean could do about containing his moobs, which were even larger now and really starting to make him terribly self conscious and uncomfortable, particularly when he had absolutely no intention of using them. Little things about Shreveport kept coming back to him every now and again, and the last time Dr. Ketch had examined him and checked his mammary growth he’d distinctly recalled someone grabbing hold of his chest while they drove into him. Sam hadn’t been there, and the memory was so distressing he actually called Jody in tears on his cell, something he’d only done twice before, so she could talk him through it. Maybe it really would help if he started going to those group sessions she kept mentioning once they got back to South Dakota.

At any rate, the store clerk suggested either a couple of sports bras one size too small to help contain his blossoming chest and discourage further growth or wrapping himself in good old Ace bandages. She seemed to intuit from the way he asked the question that there was an underlying reason for wanting to control this particular change to his body, and sweetly showed him the range of pregnancy undergarments that they carried. She also recommended that he resume any activities his Om-OB/GYN allowed that would rebuild his pectoral muscles. Male omega biology was different than female omega biology in that the mammaries could be discouraged from growth by combining strength training and simply confining them, though medical professionals were typically banned from explaining this due to teat feeding laws. By the time he’d tried on everything Sam shoved at him, then found quite a few more items he wanted to test out, they’d been there two hours and had an embarrassing number of pants with stretchy panels in the front and shirts that were more tunic than tees, plus a good number of sweaters and button down shirts and several of his now-favored hoodies. They’d even found him a couple pairs of boots for his ever widening feet that didn’t make him think he looked like a total girl and a fabulous black wool coat ( _not that he would_ **_say_ ** _it was fabulous aloud, but it really was_ ) that the cashier explained was called a maxi coat. It flared out in a way that looked very gothic but still masculine and was easily the favorite piece of clothing he’d found after trying on just about everything the store had to offer. He might even wear that thing in normal life after Elliott was done giving him heartburn. He nearly had a heart attack at the total that rang up on the cash register, sputtering and objecting and trying to convince Sam he didn’t really _need_ all of those clothes, but Sam had just covered Dean’s eyes with his hand, clucking at him to be quiet, and handed over his AmEx Black Card. The fact that Sam even had an AmEx Black Card and apparently had since he was somewhere around the age of fifteen made Dean want to faint. He’d known Sam was financially stable when they were kids, but this was a whole different level of Richie Rich. He definitely had to push down some pretty serious feelings of inferiority, which Sam must have scented past the blockers because he leaned in for an honest-to-goodness kiss, something Dean had been starting to fear they weren’t doing anymore.

At the end of the first week they went for a day at the spa, which was about the most omega thing the omega could have thought of. He grumbled about it the entire way to the appointment, earning himself another real kiss just to shut him up, and while initially he continued to bristle eventually he couldn’t help but admit that being pampered was amazing. He never knew facials would leave his skin baby smooth or that his fingernails could be so clean, and they even took off the calluses on his hands, so that when he slid his palm into Sam’s at the end of the appointment the alpha didn’t flinch. It definitely sold him on day spas.

They had about five days left on their hotel reservation when in the evening, as they watched the newest episode of _Dr. Sexy, M.D._ ( _which, okay, the show was a little ridiculous, especially with the character who was the ghost of a patient’s dead husband, but Sam could admit there were a lot worse things they could be watching, like Big Brother_ ) while Sam tried to convince Elliott to kick _super_ hard so Daddy could feel it and Mommy was telling him to stop egging the kid on towards giving him internal bruising, Dean’s phone rang startling them both. They’d just talked to Bobby and Adam earlier that day, and John never called. Dean leaned away from where Sam was talking to his stomach to grab the phone from the end table, and Sam just barely caught a glimpse of the caller I.D. before Dean was getting up off the couch and heading towards his adjoining suite at an easy pace.

Dean was aware that Sam saw his phone flashing **Benny** , not that he thought Sam was trying to look, he was simply right there when Dean picked up the phone. There was a brief flare of something very close to ire in Sam’s scent before he got himself under control, and it drove Dean right out of the room, though he controlled his immediate instinct to straight-up flee and instead casually headed to his own suite. He’d called Benny and Lisa a couple of times while he was alone in the hospital so they’d know why he wasn’t coming out between Christmas and New Year’s as he’d planned, and they’d called him a couple of times since he got out to ask how things were going with Sam and to give him a hard time about the horrible conditions he was being kept in, what with the downstairs spa and the room service and his own suite with panoramic city views, but it had been quite by coincidence that they’d called whenever Sam was using the on-site gym. Dean hadn’t anticipated just the sight of Benny’s name on his phone would provoke such a sharp reaction from Sam, even though he knew Sam still inexplicably did not like Benny. They were obviously going to have to hash that out soon, but at the moment Elliott really was throwing a bit of a tantrum in his abdomen and his ribs didn’t like the most recent temperature drop and he simply didn’t have the energy to ask Sam what the hell his problem was with Dean’s best friend.

“Hey Benny,” he said, sliding the door closed between the two suites and heading over to his own couch with a wince. “Calling to make sure Sam and I aren’t makin’ out behind the bleachers?”

“ _You’re a funny guy, Dean_.”

“I did come up with Vampirates on that one case we worked. Can’t believe I beat you to that one.”

Benny snickered at the memory on the other end of the phone.

“ _Only your cheesy ass would come up with something like Vampirates for a nest that lived on a boat_.”

“What else were we gonna call them? Besides, you loved it. What’s up?”

“ _Well, we’re about halfway through January and Lisa’s startin’ to get real antsy about not havin’ a pregnant belly around here to fuss over._ ”

“I’d’ve thought you guys had enough of pregnant bellies for a while.”

“ _Nah, her hormones are still in overdrive_.”

From the background Dean caught, “ _I heard that_!” and then there was a brief scuffle for the phone that had Dean snorting and wincing at the pain in his side. After a minute Lisa came on.

“ _When are you coming out here_?” she demanded. “ _I have baby tending knowledge to impart and it’s making me_ **_nuts_**.”

“Well, Sam and I have the hotel room through the end of the week…”

“ _Perfect_. _You can make a quick stop over here before heading back to Sioux Falls. Ben misses you and you’ve only seen pictures of Elizabeth. You can stay with us a couple of days and then head back home in time for your birthday_.”

“ _You have to see my Christmas presents Dean_!” Ben’s voice shouted in the background, and Lisa said, “ _Honey, you’re going to wake up Lizzie._ ” Sure enough, a baby started wailing as if on cue. “ _Shit. I gotta give you back to Benny. I expect you here in a few days so we can meet tall, dark, and handsome_.”

“Okay,” Dean said, still snickering at the madness on the other end of the call. He’d have never thought anyone could actually get out of the life and have something so, well, _normal_ , but Benny had definitely managed it. Maybe when they got out to Indiana he’d ask _how_ he managed it. Even though Dean was clearly in no condition to hunt anything, it was all he’d ever known and he really did feel restless without a case to work. It might not be so bad if he had an idea of how to go about doing something else.

“ _You gotta come save me from this, man,_ ” Benny told him at last. “ _Plus Sam needs to know what he’s in for once the kid gets here_.”

“I will. I’ll talk to Sam about us renting a car and driving out once we’re done here.”

“ _Sounds good. See you guys soon_.”

“Bye Benny.”

The idea of giving Sam a bird’s eye view into the kind of nuttiness his hormones might drive him to after the baby was born did not exactly thrill Dean. He remembered when Lisa had Ben and how long it had taken for her emotions to even out. Though obviously Sam hadn’t run for the hills yet, and that was encouraging.

Sam was still sitting on the couch watching _Dr. Sexy_ when Dean let himself back into the room, and though the flash of anger was gone, there was a definite tension in the air, so thick Dean could almost taste it. There was also a scowl on the alpha’s beautiful face, and if Dean wasn’t mistaken a low growl was rumbling in his throat. Dean’s omega wanted to kiss and soothe and placate the grumbling alpha until he was all smiles and cooing at the baby again, but it reminded Dean too much of that night at the Roadhouse, when Sam had all but forbidden Dean to go on the vampire hunt with Benny. The Dean back then would have happily picked a fight over Benny with the upset alpha sitting on the couch, but now he was thankful he had his own room to retreat to.

“Who was that?” Sam asked as mildly as he could manage, which wasn’t very. It was a stupid question. He was sure Dean had seen him catch the name on the screen, so basically he was testing the omega to see if he was going to lie. Jesus, he knew he was being an ass, but it was all Sam could do right now not to fly into a jealous rage and _claim_ , no matter how unreasonable that response actually was in any kind of civilized society.

“Benny,” Dean replied, staying where he was in the doorway. “I was plannin’ to head out to visit him sometime between Christmas and New Year’s but, you know, I was otherwise occupied.”

“So you want to go see him?”

The question was careful, measured, but Dean felt how loaded it was anyway. He really should just ask what the hell Sam’s problem with Benny was, he’d disliked Benny all the way back at school, and he certainly would have if his omega weren’t insisting he back down, present his neck, and beg forgiveness for whatever sin he’d committed.

“It would be nice for a couple of days,” he said softly. “I told him we were staying here through the end of the week, and then maybe we could come out…?”

It felt like a dangerously long time before Sam looked up at him, but by the time he did the alpha had managed to school his features into something that closely resembled calm. He had obviously realized how his irritation was impacting the omega and was struggling to contain whatever he was feeling about making the drive out to Indiana. After what felt like years he stood and walked slowly over to Dean, taking in several deep breaths before laying his hand on the omega’s cheek and pressing a kiss to his forehead, his fingers gliding down Dean’s face and along his throat and shoulder.

“We can do that,” Sam said finally, following up the statement with a soft kiss to Dean’s mouth that gave the omega butterflies and made him seriously consider lifting one of his feet like heroines always did in classic movies. He hoped desperately that it wouldn’t just be the one kiss, that they were going to start inching past their respective issues, and indeed Sam pressed a second kiss to his mouth after a few moments, one that was a bit more urgent, but that was it before he was pulling back. “You look tired. Why don’t you get some sleep?”

“O...kay…” Dean said, terribly confused as it was only eight thirty and while, yes, he had been getting tired earlier he was good for at least another half hour, but Sam was cradling his face and moved in for a third kiss that quite frankly had Dean’s toes curling in the slippers they’d also picked up at Maxim’s so he wouldn’t have to walk around the hotel in his socks. His fingers found a home in the front of Sam’s shirt, tugging him closer and trying to convey with his lips that he _really_ wasn’t tired, but again the alpha pulled away after far too short a time.

“I’m gonna go get in a quick workout,” he said, heading over to grab his gym bag from the bathroom. “See you in the morning.”

“O...kay…” Dean repeated, watching in utter confusion as the door to the room clicked closed behind the alpha and he was left alone with the last half hour of _Dr. Sexy_ , which, without Sam cuddled up next to him on the couch complaining, was not nearly as fun.

The remainder of their time at the hotel was awkward, with Sam going to work out more times than could possibly be healthy for anyone but at least explained why his chest and stomach looked like they did. When he was with Dean he seemed to be making a concerted effort to ignore any of the discomfort he clearly still felt from what happened at Marge’s, opting instead to squelch any fear or disgust as best he could in favor of touching the omega, even when Dean could tell it still lingered and didn’t want things moving forward between them at the expense of Sam’s comfort. As a result, Dean was getting a lot more physical attention from Sam than he had in weeks whenever Sam was in the room with him, even if Sam wasn’t in the room that much, but it didn’t really make the omega happy. And Sam not being in the room that much created other problems. Up until that point they’d found things to do outside the hotel, but with Sam spending so much time lifting weights it left Dean effectively stuck waiting on him. Even though there were only a few days left before they’d planned to leave ( _Sam had tried to talk him into an hour flight to Fort Wayne instead of a three hour drive, but Dean wasn’t having it_ ) he’d already been confined to a hospital for two weeks and additional time trapped inside, even when it was cold and windy and snowy outside, was torture. He made it until the day before they were planning to leave before he finally broke, getting out his scent blockers and heading to the Shanghai Terrace for some Cantonese food for lunch.

He was actually glad for the shopping trip the week before, or he would have felt really underdressed and even more out of place than he currently did among the business people and those who were clearly having clandestine affairs who populated the majority of the lunch crowd. There were only two or three other omegas in the whole restaurant, none of them solitary, so he got plenty of attention as he followed the maitre d’ to a table by the glass doors that led out to the terrace. The tables nearest him were filled primarily with alphas, who gave subtle sniffs of the air and tried not to lean obscenely the minute he sat down. He was thankful Sam had upped the affection the last few days, as he was quite confident he smelled at least faintly like he had an alpha, and the new green button down shirt he was wearing hid the fact that he was unclaimed. Besides, he and Sam had eaten here several times since they checked in and they’d charged everything to the room, so the odds were good that the waitstaff at least knew exactly who he was with and could run interference if anyone started getting out of line.

He had just ordered the beef potstickers and an array of dumplings with the Celebration iced tea he’d already asked for when his presumption that he’d have any kind of backup from the employees went straight to shit. An elderly, bald alpha who smelled of money and like he’d been sprayed with a skunk sat down across from him, his mouth drawn in a hard line, while two other alphas in black suits began to “encourage” the tables sitting nearest Dean to find somewhere else to have their meal. Dean recognized him immediately of course. It wasn’t like he exactly kept a low profile.

“Mr. Campbell,” he said, having a sip of his tea and trying not to let his temper flare in the face of the man whose daughter had destroyed his life. “Is there something I can do for you?”

“Dean.” Sam’s grandfather fixed him with a serpent’s smile, his eyes icy. “A pleasure to finally meet you.”

“Somethin’ makes me doubt that. Sam’s in the gym, so if you’re lookin’ to talk to him…”

“No, you’re the one I wanted to talk to.” Samuel reached into his inside jacket pocket, which had Dean going casually for the chopsticks sitting in the little silver ship that looked like it was supposed to be a junk on the right side of his plate. Instead of a weapon, though, Samuel pulled out a checkbook and a pen. “I’m hoping you’re smarter than your father was.”

“You seriously think you can bribe me to stay away from Sam?” Samuel clearly didn’t understand why Dean was smiling. “Man, you and me don’t even speak the same language.”

“I don’t want to bribe you to stay away from Sam,” the old man said.

“Good, cuz I’m not gonna do that,” Dean informed him.

“I want to bribe you to sign your rights to the pup over to my family.”

Dean was in the middle of taking a drink and paused to stare at the FDH Assistant Director. Sam had never mentioned that his grandpa was certifiably nuts.

“Yeah,” he said at last. “I’m not gonna do that either.”

Dean had gravely miscalculated how serious the alpha was and how untouchable he believed himself to be, and before he had a chance to react Samuel was on his feet, leaning across the table with his right hand around Dean’s throat, bracing himself on the table with his left, his eyes luminous and a growl building in his throat. Despite being halfway through his seventh decade, when riled he still possessed a tremendous amount of strength, and with his recent injuries on top of the need to be wary of protecting Elliott, Dean wasn’t any kind of match for him. He allowed himself to be dragged to his feet, choking and prying at Samuel’s fingers while his vision swam. The restaurant was rapidly clearing out, with some diners casting a backwards glance at what was going on but most seeming to want to stay out of whatever was happening.

“Listen to me carefully, Dean,” he snarled, his voice low and serious. “I have shown my grandson deference in this matter because he is my heir, but you mean less than nothing to me. You’re an incubator, a cunt - someplace warm to spend the night and not good for anything else. Whatever you think you’re going to get out of my family you aren’t. There won’t be new wardrobes, or trips to fancy hotels, or dinners out at pricey restaurants, and you will _not_ keep me from my great grandchild. So you’d be very wise to take what I’m offering you now, because it’s the best deal you’re going to get.”

Unfortunately for Samuel, Dean wasn’t the only one who had miscalculated the man across the table. Samuel had barely finished his threat when Dean, in a move he’d done so many times he could complete it in his sleep, grabbed the chopsticks and slammed them into the hand Sam’s grandfather was using to brace himself on the tabletop. As the alpha was shrieking at finding his hand pinned down by the sticks, Dean landed a jab straight to Samuel’s solar plexus. The old man had no choice but to release Dean’s throat as he collapsed inward on himself, trying to draw in a breath and failing as Dean grabbed for the back of his chair and gasped. The two alphas in black started for the omega, but Samuel held up his free hand to stop them. Sam was right: a pregnant omega being mishandled in the middle of a five star restaurant might be something Samuel could sweep under the rug if he was the one doing the manhandling, but his two bodyguards doing the same thing wouldn’t fail to make the news. For several moments it was a race to see who would recover first, and Dean won, straightening and stepping back out of Samuel’s reach.

“Not quite…” he coughed, “as good as a fork.”

Samuel grunted and gasped, trying to free his hand from the table, and when he finally managed it he spat, “That was a very big mistake, Dean.”

“No, my dad’s the one who made the mistake gettin’ involved with your crazy piece of shit daughter.” Samuel looked like he was on the verge of exploding with rage, his canines descending and the growl growing louder with every breath. Dean’s eyes flashed their shining gold, his own canines joining the party to match Samuel’s threat. “You ever come near me or my kid and you’ll have a lot more to worry about than chopsticks.”

He kicked the table into Samuel before heading out, the alpha being taken to the floor with it by the hit, and the two bodyguards rushed to his aid. The few diners who hadn’t fled watched Dean stalk through the restaurant doors, enthralled. The omega made it all the way outside before the trembling threatened to overtake him and buckle his knees, but he fortunately had the wall to hold onto and was able to keep himself upright all the way until Sam appeared at the end of the hall, still in his workout clothes and running at a breakneck pace towards Dean.

“What happened?” he demanded, the fear coming off him almost enough to knock the omega over without the help of Dean’s already shaky legs. “The front desk routed a call from the restaurant to my cell phone. Are you okay?” He checked Dean’s terribly pale face, tipping his chin up so he could get a thorough look at him, and saw the purple fingerprints forming on the long freckled throat. Sam’s eyes immediately flashed a vivid red, and he was shaking as well. “Who did this to you, Dean?”

“I just wanna go lay down,” Dean replied quietly just a second before Samuel came out of the restaurant, his bleeding hand wrapped in a napkin. Sam fixed his eyes on his grandfather with a singular focus, moving in front of Dean to completely obscure him with his nearly six and a half foot frame and straight up snarling down the hall. His grandfather didn’t move, but as Sam started forward Dean grabbed at the back of his shirt, saying, “Don’t. Sam.” When Sam showed absolutely no sign of retreat Dean moved around to press himself up against Sam’s side and pointedly inhale his scent. The feel of Dean’s breath on his neck and his hands clutching at his shirt snapped Sam out of his blind rage, and he finally turned to look at the smaller man beside him. “You’re sweaty and gross and I just wanna lay down.”

“Okay,” Sam said at last, nuzzling his lips against the omega’s temple. “We’re not gonna come to Chicago again.”

“Fine by me.”

Sam shot his grandfather one more murderous glare before steering Dean towards the elevators, running his hand all the way from Dean’s hair to rest it on the small of the omega’s back. That he happened to catch the rage that flooded Samuel’s face as the old alpha watched them just made touching Dean feel that much better.


	39. Are We Gonna Talk About This or What?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean tries to take a nap.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last update before next week. Posts are going to be slower for just a tiny little bit.

“You could have told me your grandfather was a fuckbucket.”

They’d been lying down for half an hour after the lunch they ordered from room service and Sam’s quick shower, Dean under the sheets on Sam’s bed and Sam on top of them, when the omega finally said something. He hadn’t wanted to talk about whatever had happened in the restaurant, despite Sam’s prodding, his face tired and strained, and had instead simply gone to crawl into Sam’s sheets and curl up on his pillow after finishing his food. He’d removed his shoes and his shirt, stained with blood from Samuel’s hand, while Sam was rinsing off, and had been resolutely turned towards the wall when the alpha came out of the bathroom smelling like high-end hotel soap and dressed in track pants and a tee shirt. Sam had carefully climbed in behind him, whispering, “Is this is okay?” and when Dean had nodded his assent Sam had wrapped himself around the omega like a snuggie, letting Dean twine their hands together and pull Sam’s arm against his heavily Ace bandaged chest. Sam knew he wasn’t sleeping, but he certainly wasn’t expecting _that_ to be the first thing he said.

“Cover your ears, Elliott,” he ordered, directing his words at Dean’s stomach. “Mommy has a mouth like a sailor.”

“You think this is funny?” Dean asked, his face still aimed pointedly at the wall.

Sam pulled his hand free and skimmed his fingertips up over the bruises on the omega’s neck.

“Not even a little bit,” he murmured against Dean’s hair. “I just thought you knew my grandfather was a fuckbucket already.”

“It’s different knowin’ from a distance and seein’ it up close.” Sam’s giggle up against the back of his neck, his nose pressed in the space behind Dean’s ear, had the omega half turning with a pained wince. “Dude. Not a laughing matter.”

“I’m laughing because you just described yourself,” Sam said, raising up on his elbow to peer down into Dean’s angry green eyes.

“I’m a fuckbucket?” he demanded, eyebrows shooting up as he rolled all the way over with some difficulty. Even the kiss Sam planted on him didn’t wipe the shocked and irritated look off his face.

“You’re beautiful,” Sam told him. “From a distance you kind of...I dunno...sparkle. But up close you’re blinding. I can’t see anything else when you’re in the room.”

At another time in a different life Dean probably would have given Sam a lot of shit for using such a cheesy line on him, probably chastised him about chick flick moments or teased about the rom-com fetish he obviously kept well hidden behind claims that he considered _Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind_ a movie in that genre, but in this moment he just about melted into the mattress. It ran through his mind that this was what it might be like to be wooed; that Sam seemed to be actively wooing him, and who would have ever thought Dean Winchester wanted to be wooed? Certainly not Dean Winchester, except now that he thought Sam might be about two seconds from bursting into _On the Street Where You Live_ all he could think about was how hopelessly he wished he didn’t have broken ribs and traumatic flashbacks and hadn’t molested Sam in a bathroom while possessed and wasn’t officially termed a “high risk pregnancy” because he just wanted to flip the alpha onto his back and maul him, leaving a trail of dark, mouth-shaped bruises all over him in case anyone ever got the idea that Sam Campbell was not one hundred percent spoken for. Sam seemed to be having the same idea, given how his eyes were locked on Dean’s jugular, which pulsed in response to the insane rhythm his heart was pounding out. This was not what he would have ever expected a few months ago, and while it was definitely thrilling, he didn’t understand it one bit. He was a complete mess, not just physically but emotionally, not to mention every time he turned around practically he found himself in a situation where Sam felt he had to charge to the rescue. It was possible Sam had just read _Morte D’Arthur_ too many times - he was a geek after all - but it still didn’t compute for him that Sam Campbell, who could very clearly have anything or anyone he wanted, was sharing a bed with him in a hotel room Dean never could have dreamed up, telling the omega how beautiful he was.

“What are you doin’, Sam?” he asked, not accustomed to just laying things out there, or asking for thoughts to be shared, but feeling as if he were likely to get his heart broken if he didn’t say something right now. “Fancy hotels, new clothes, whipping out your AmEx card every chance you get. Offerin’ to fly me out to Benny’s - who I know you can’t stand - tryin’ to teach me to tango...If you’re tryin’ to bribe me to give up the kid, you should just come out and say it like your granddad did at the restaurant instead of buildin’ me up like this.”

“My grandfather…” The hazel eyes flashed an angry red, which under other circumstances would have had Dean rocketing off the bed, but instead just frustrated him. “My grandfather tried to bribe you to give up the baby?”

“Yeah, and I stabbed him in the hand with a set of chopsticks, can you please answer my question?” Dean snarked, bringing Sam’s focus back fully onto him. “Cuz I’m just...I’m tired Sammy. I’m tired of tryin’ to figure this out, whether you’re doin’ this because you feel obligated because of Elliott or you wanna make up for lyin’ to me for so long or you feel bad cuz the only thing I’ve really got to my name are my car and some clothes that don’t fit anymore and a bunch of pillows that I keep at Bobby’s house. And let’s be honest man, my main form of survival is credit card scams and hustling at pool or poker, and that’s pretty fuckin’ pathetic for someone rapidly approaching thirty who’s gonna have a kid to pay for soon, so just...please tell me why you’re doin’ all this.”

Sam appeared to be an equal mixture of shocked and baffled as he looked at the omega and tried to process what he’d just said. He thought things had been going really well between them. Granted, the last couple of days he’d been avoiding the omega, but that was only because he was really still quite irritated about the whole “Benny” thing and didn’t want to stink up the room with his funk. Besides, it had given him a chance to get in a couple of extra phone calls with Jody, who he basically had on speed dial since that first night in the hospital when he couldn’t even stand to let Dean touch him. She had been incredibly accommodating to him given the circumstances, even though he wasn’t an omega and treating trauma in alphas wasn’t exactly her area of expertise. The two extra weeks Dean was in the hospital had given him a lot of time to work through on his own what had happened; and yes, since Dean was released it had been tough working conversations with her in when the two of them were together almost all day every day, and that had definitely made it harder for him to deal with Dean’s presence until he got that manicure that smoothed out his hands, but Jody had been giving him some really good ways to help separate “Dean” from what Ruby had done to him back at Marge’s. Sam thought between that and taking things slowly they were finally both moving in the right direction. Where had Dean gotten the idea that he was doing any of this out of obligation, or worse, pity?

“You don’t…” He was at an utter loss, not knowing where to begin to untangle Dean’s misconceptions. “You don’t know?”

“Would I be asking if I did?” Dean demanded.

“I _love_ you!” Sam snapped, the “you idiot” implied. “ _Jesus_ , I’ve loved you since I was six years old and you licked the cherry pie filling off your fork in the cafeteria! And I’ve _wanted_ you since I was twelve, probably before that but that’s the earliest I remember being able to figure out what that pull towards you, towards wanting to be wherever you were actually was, why hanging out with you always made me feel tingly and how empty my room was every time you left! It _killed_ me when you went into junior high and suddenly everyone started to see you, because I saw you _first_ and you weren’t just this glamorous _object_ they all saw and wanted. You loved pie so much your eyes rolled back whenever they had cherry at dinner, and slept on your stomach and drooled on yourself and you were _super_ cranky in the morning, and _super_ possessive of your stuff - and you sure as hell weren’t ever gonna admit how much you loved Disney movies, but you fucking _loved_ Disney movies and I couldn’t even mention _Dumbo_ without you getting all teary because he was just a baby and how could everyone be so mean to a _baby_ ? But you’d go on for _days_ about how no one should be upset about Bambi’s mom because if she’d let Bambi go out in the field with her the hunters would have seen she had a fawn and not shot her and besides the time of year was wrong for doe hunting and most hunters don’t want does anyway, they’re after bucks, and your Uncle Bobby had explained the whole thing to you and he knew everything about deer hunting so I should just trust you that there was no reason to cry over Bambi’s mom. And when you were eleven you went through about three months after your dad forgot Adam’s birthday again where you didn’t want to be a hunter anymore, you wanted to be a rockstar, and I tried to convince my grandfather that I wanted a guitar for Christmas so I could give it to you but he said I wouldn’t have any practical use for a guitar as a hunter, and by the time you turned twelve you didn’t talk about it anymore, and then your dad started taking you in the summers. And every time you came back it took you _weeks_ to stop jumping whenever someone came up behind you in the hall, and I just...I _hated_ your dad for doing that to you. For taking you away all confident and bringing you back terrified. I remember how proud you looked after that first competition you won -  the foot race with the target shoot and then the quarter mile swim, and you smoked everyone. It was the first year you did quals, you were the youngest competitor and no one could catch you, you hit every bullseye, your dive off the pier was even perfect. You were amazing, and you just kept getting better every year. Then you presented and your dad wouldn’t even get out of the car to pick you up, and he left all your trophies behind, and he used his fucking alpha voice on you, and I just wanted to kill him. I know that makes me a big fucking hypocrite because I used mine on you in Windom, but he humiliated you in front of the whole goddamned school, and the way people talked about you afterwards...and I tried to rip Gordon Walker’s throat out and got my jaw broken for it because of the things he was saying, but it was worth it because you were _mine_ and I’ll be damned if anyone thinks they can say those kinds of things about you when I’m around.”

He took the omega’s hand and pressed Dean’s smooth palm flat against his chest so he could feel how wildly Sam’s heart was pounding. Dean’s heart thrummed in almost the same rhythm, his breathing shallow and his eyes fixed to Sam’s like he was entranced, which was very nearly the truth. The alpha had him completely spellbound, and he barely registered it when Sam pressed his palm tighter over his heart.

“This has been yours for almost as long as I can remember. Every time you came back to visit Adam you just walked in like you knew you were the most interesting thing in the room and you were daring anyone to touch you so you could show them how far back their fingers needed to bend before the knuckles snapped. Whenever you’d walk into any room it was like you brought the sun with you. But you’d drifted so far away, and everything was so dark for so long. I tried to get over you when I was at Stanford, I really did, I’d barely gotten to see you anyway and I figured what was the point in pining, y’know? Then you showed up at Adam’s party and god...I was just _gone_. Even if Jess hadn’t died, that would’ve been it for me. I never could have built anything with her that was real. You just reached right into my chest and grabbed hold and took my heart with you when you left in the morning, and I’ve been walking around with this...emptiness ever since. So no, I’m not doing all of this because I feel obligated or sorry or because I pity you. It’s because you’re _here_ and I feel whole for the first time in forever, and you _deserve_ overpriced hotels and nice clothes and fancy dinners and spa days and all the fucking throw pillows and fuzzy blankets in the world, and what the hell is the point of having a shit ton of money if I can’t spend it on you? And if this is too much for you that’s fine, we can drive around in the Impala and stay in two star motels and eat at greasy spoons and never wear anything but jeans and flannels and henleys, whatever you want to do if those things make you happy.” His eyes were wide and earnest as he held Dean’s hand to his chest, searching the green depths for understanding. “I just want you to be happy, Dean.”

It was a rare occasion that anyone managed to render Dean speechless, but that had certainly done it. He tried to think up some witty retort about rom-coms but his brain failed him completely, and even if it hadn’t his omega would have taken him to the woodshed, because that kind of declaration from an alpha was not a joking matter. The whole idea that Sam was a Taurus and ruled by Venus seemed decidedly less ridiculous than it had a little over a month ago. He needed to get his heart to stop skipping beats and his brain to come back online so he could formulate a proper response while Sam’s big, gorgeous eyes stared at him expectantly. The best he could manage was, “This is where you kiss me, moron,” so Sam did.

And boy did Sam ever kiss him. The little chaste goodnight kisses had clearly left Sam feeling bereft as well, if the way his tongue was going to work inside Dean’s mouth was any indication. There was a need in the way Sam’s mouth slanted over his, like Dean was the source of something necessary for survival and he’d barely held out without access to Dean’s lips and skin and the feel of his stuttering heartbeat. Sam had brushed his teeth when he got out of the shower, everything tasting minty and cool, like sucking on a candy cane, and the sweetness of it made Dean wonder if he could live off of just the taste of Sam’s tongue. He certainly wanted to give it a try. One of Sam’s hands was against the small of Dean’s back, his fingertips skirting just under the waist of his pants, the other threaded in his short, thick hair, pressing the omega to him as tightly as he dared between the baby bump and the broken ribs. Dean tried to figure out where to put his own hands that wouldn’t shock Sam out of the moment ( _down his track pants was where he wanted to go but god that was a terrible idea right now_ ) and settled for the long expanse of skin on his back under his shirt. He traced a scar along the alpha’s shoulder blade with feathery touches, making a note to ask about that later, and after a few seconds Sam was pulling his tee shirt over his head so he could press his bare chest up against the omega, his breath catching as his stomach came in contact with Dean’s swollen abdomen where his tank top had ridden up. When the alpha finally moved from the omega’s mouth to suckle and lick at his neck a bowed leg came up all on its own to circle against Sam’s hips and pull him in closer, Dean’s hands twisting in Sam’s hair to hold his lips against his carotid. Maybe he was finally going to get that hickey.

“We...should...uhn…” Dean was surprised at how high pitched his voice sounded. He was almost whining. It was very unmanly but he seemed incapable of finding a deeper register. “We...should...”

“Yeah?” Sam breathed before latching onto an earlobe, inhaling directly from the spot where Dean’s scent was strongest.

Dean had meant to say “stop” but his dick certainly wasn’t on board the “let’s stop” train, rebelling quite violently against him and leaking precum inside his new super absorbent pregnancy underwear, and if he could trust where Sam was pressed up against his hip joint, the alpha’s dick had the same opinion. His heart was banging its way around against his sternum while his eyes rolled back at the feel of Sam grinding into the crevice between his pelvis and hip, a wet spot starting on the front of his track pants. Dean was leaking slick like a faucet and felt flushed and feverish all over as his body tried its best to tell his brain to just zip it because it wasn’t in the driver’s seat and shotgun shuts its cakehole. It had been a full twenty three weeks since Laramie, nineteen since the parking lot, five since the bathroom, and he wasn’t short-circuiting yet. Sam wasn’t either, for that matter, and he did _not_ want to leave Chicago without christening this hotel room, because the whole point of these big, fancy, overpriced hotels was to have mind blowing, life affirming sex and god help him he wanted to be _affirmed_.

But his stupid, stupid brain just would not _stop_.

“Yeah…” he gasped, despite how amazing Sam’s gigantic hand felt where it was now cupping Dean’s ass over his soaking wet underwear, the room filled with the smell of honeysuckle. “The...um...baby...we’re not...supposed to...gotta avoid...strenuous…”

Sam’s mouth paused where it had moved back to Dean’s neck and his hands tightened, one still in Dean’s hair and the other having wandered down to his thigh, half taking the pregnancy pants with it. His hips ceased their frantic rolling as they sought out enough friction to give him release, and he laid his forehead against Dean’s shoulder for several minutes, panting for breath before he could say shakily, “You’re...you’re probably right…”

“I don’t…I don’t wanna stop…” Dean clarified, nuzzling against Sam’s face until he turned to meet the omega’s eyes, pupils huge and dark. “I just...I think we _gotta_ …while there’s still a sheet and some clothes between us...cuz I... _Christ_ Sammy...”

His body wrestled the steering wheel back from his brain and dove in for some more candy cane, sucking the breath out of Sam like he was the only source of oxygen in the room. He knew it wasn’t fair to either of them to continue when he’d just said they needed to stop, but goddamn, he’d give anything not to be broken in multiple ways and needed to make sure the alpha knew he meant it when he said he didn’t want to stop. Because eventually he wouldn’t be broken anymore, and he really hoped they could pick up where they were leaving off when that day rolled around.

Sam spent several minutes attacking Dean’s lips in response, until neither of them could feel their mouths, and finally, drawing in a ragged breath, pulled back, his eyes still blissfully closed as he fought his way out from under the heavy fog of Dean’s scent combined with his slick that was making him feel stupid drunk. He wasn’t sure if he could get his heart to stop pumping blood to his dick long enough for him to stand up, or if his brain could form coherent sentences, but he managed to stammer out, “I’m...bathroom...be back…” and with strength of will that would have made Hercules look like a wimpy third grader wrenched himself off the bed and headed for the bathroom in as straight a line as he could manage. Dean took a moment to gather the reserves necessary to climb out of the bed that smelled like Sam before heading to the bathroom in his own suite for the same purpose that had just driven the alpha from the room.

After retreating to their respective bathrooms Dean laid down to take a nap while Sam went back down to the gym to try to work off some of the excess energy coursing through him. He’d practically lived in the gym the last couple of days, which had led to a particularly awkward misunderstanding with one of the attendants this morning when she tried to slip him her number by reaching into the pocket of his shorts. He’d nearly punched her, and part of him wished he had. Sure, he was the sort of alpha who would never consider hitting a woman, especially not a beta ( _alpha females were different if they were riled and stupid enough to try to take him on_ ), but the thought that she considered it perfectly appropriate to reach into a stranger’s pants made him wonder what the hell she was doing working in the gym. He’d reported her to the management immediately and was glad to see she wasn’t there now. He was, however, quite unhappy to see the dark haired man in the three piece suit and fedora sitting on a weight bench.

“Sam,” Henry said with a smile when the alpha entered, standing and extending a hand. “So good to see you again.”

“I thought I made myself clear the last time we talked,” Sam hissed, heading for a treadmill with his workout bag clenched in his fist as if it were the only thing keeping Henry from getting decked. “Not really interested in joining your club.”

“And that’s my fault,” Henry acquiesced, watching as Sam raised an eyebrow at him. “I have to apologize, I’m from another time when omegas were looked at very differently. It was expected when I was young that the alpha would make decisions about such things as matehood once the omega had accepted them.”

“That’s really quaint, Henry, but Dean and I haven’t even had that conversation.” He climbed onto the treadmill and then stopped as something occurred to him. “How did you know I was going to be here?”

“We have very accurate methods of scrying.”

“And yet somehow you didn’t know what was happening to your own grandson back in Minnesota.”

“I really am very sorry about that,” Henry said. “My position within the organization does not allow for extended trips away from our home base.”

“That’s a pretty terrible opening argument you’ve got there,” Sam told him. “If you’re here to try to convince me that the hospital was a big misunderstanding and you just feel terrible about it and still want me to join the Men of Letters it’s going to be a tough sell if you make it sound like I’m going to be under lockdown.”

“Oh! Oh no, you would not be bound by the same rules that I am,” Henry hastened to say. “I’m one of the leading members and that comes with certain restrictions. You would be an initiate. While we would require you to live in our home base you would be free to come and go as you please.”

“Your home base?”

“It’s a bunker in Lebanon, Kansas. Warded against all forms of supernatural entity. It was our main outpost for years, but as our numbers have dwindled it was abandoned. Though it is underground it would make a fully functioning home for you.”

“And Dean?” Henry pursed his lips, seeming to think very hard about how he wanted to answer that question, but Sam didn’t wait to hear it. He shook his head and started up the treadmill. “That’s what I thought.”

“It isn’t that I want to tell you that you couldn’t bring Dean with you,” Henry hastened to say, which at least stopped Sam from popping the earbuds to his iPod in while he started at an easy jog. “Omegas are not allowed to join the organization. I’ve already explained this to Dean. I genuinely wish I could change the rules but I can’t.”

“Well, you may be okay with whatever arrangement you’ve got that keeps you separated from your family, but if I can’t have Dean with me I’m not interested so you can go look for other people to initiate,” Sam said, turning his attention back to fussing with the buttons on the treadmill to pick up speed just a little bit.

“It would be different if you were mated,” Henry said, wincing sharply and doubling slightly at the waist as if he were in sudden pain.

Despite himself, Sam slowed the treadmill to a stop and asked, “Are you okay?”

“Just a slight touch of diverticulitis,” Henry assured him, shaking it off as best he could and straightening. “The bunker is somewhat sentient and would attempt to expel Dean…”

“Expel him? What does that mean?”

“There are certain spells in place that would cause hallucinations, phantom smells, induce a sense of heightened paranoia. He would essentially be living in a Poe story.”

“I take it one more in line with _The Fall of the House of Usher_ than _Eleonora_.”

“But with your claim mark the bunker would accept him and stand down.” Sam’s interest seemed definitely heightened at this, and the pain in Henry’s stomach appeared to subside. “It would also recognize any children as yours, and you would have time to rework the spells to allow a beta or an omega to stay, should Dean’s pup present as either. It has its own water and electricity, a vast library, a war room, a garage, shooting gallery, dungeons, bedrooms, showers, a kitchen, archives...it’s the safest place I could think of to raise a child.” It was clear to the Winchester patriarch that Sam was close to taking the bait, and he stood even straighter as the previous agony he’d suffered ebbed completely. He reached into the breast pocket of his jacket and withdrew the same card Sam had tossed back at him in the hospital, extending it out expectantly. “Will you think about it?”

Sam regarded the card warily, though he was absolutely intrigued by the idea of this bunker being a place he could shield Dean and Elliott from anything that might come after them. He’d have to not use the world “shield,” though, if he brought it up to Dean. The omega’s pride would have him bristling at the idea that he needed to be shielded from anything, even while he was aware that at the moment he had significant physical limitations.

Plus, the idea that the only way Dean would be allowed into the bunker was if they were mated made Sam uneasy with telling him about any of this. Of course he wanted to claim Dean, but he didn’t want to feel like he’d coerced him into it with the promise of safety and security when Dean did not, as far as Sam had ever been aware, want to be claimed. He couldn’t stand the idea that Dean might draw up some kind of list of pros and cons to becoming Sam’s mate and decide that the “pro” of having a home completely warded against monsters outweighed everything, rather than deciding to accept Sam’s mark simply because he wanted to be with Sam, no matter where they were. But not mentioning this would fall into the category of withholding information, which he had promised not to do anymore. He wondered faintly if part of his mother’s deal with Azazel included his life just never being simple, or if it was some kind of cosmic punishment for being so comfortable monetarily, like the Universe was trying to balance the scales.

Finally, he snaked out his long fingers and took the card. It looked an awful lot like Henry had been holding his breath in anticipation, which raised a small warning flag for Sam, but not enough to keep him from dropping it into his gym bag.

“I’ll have to discuss this with Dean,” he said, and Henry nodded in agreement.

“Of course. I wouldn’t expect you to make a decision like this without consulting him.” He gave the young alpha a smile and said, “You see? Old dogs can be taught new tricks.”

“I gotta get a run in before dinner.”

“That’s fine, I need to be on my way myself. Thank you for hearing me out, Sam.”

Henry tipped his hat to the younger man, straightened his jacket, and left the gym right as the handsy attendant came in. She noticed Sam and blushed deeply, scurrying off to fold towels, and while Sam was not the sort of person to want someone to lose their job her continued employment at the hotel definitely killed his desire to go for a quick run on the treadmill. She must be related to someone here; there was no other reason he could think of that they'd keep a person on staff who groped the guests. He grabbed his bag and headed back up to the room, deciding he could just watch television until Dean got up from his nap. He had a lot he needed to think about, anyway, like whether he wanted to live in Kansas when the Campbell family compound was in Lawrence. At least it was one of the states that didn’t require two years of teat feeding.

Dean was awake when he got back, sitting on Sam’s couch watching _Gladiator_ and mimicking as much of the fight scenes as he could from a seated position with broken ribs. He started at the sound of the door opening and looked up at Sam with gigantic doe eyes, trying to pretend he hadn’t been doing anything like mimicking the fight scenes from _Gladiator_ , a scowl marring his gorgeous features when the alpha burst out laughing.

“I thought you were goin’ for a run,” the omega pouted, his eyes fluttering closed when the alpha’s only response was a slow, soft, deep kiss before sliding next to him on the couch and slinging an arm around his shoulders.

“ _Gladiator_ is awesome,” Sam said simply, pressing another kiss to the top of Dean’s head, and the omega couldn’t help but think that one, there was no doubt he was being wooed, and two, being wooed was way more awesome than _Gladiator_.


	40. How Do You Feel About Waffles?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam and Dean's last day in Chicago.

They decided to go to the Shanghai Terrace for dinner, Dean shushing Sam’s concerns that it might be a bit much after his encounter with Samuel that afternoon and trying to entice him into ordering room service again with promises of cherry pie and snuggling on the couch, and maybe a run at third base if that sounded like something of interest. While Dean did like the sound of that more than he was willing to admit, he’d decided that he was going to stop being afraid of facing situations that might make him uncomfortable and start tackling them head on. He hadn’t survived all the way to almost twenty-seven as a hunter by shrinking away from things that could potentially be frightening, and he was done waiting for the old, confident Dean to reappear. If that guy didn’t want to come slinking back on his own, the new Dean was going to drag him back kicking and screaming. His encounter with Samuel had been scary, for sure, but he’d handled himself just fine so it seemed like the restaurant was a good place to start becoming the bold New Old Dean.

The Front of House Manager fell over herself apologizing to Sam as soon as they entered the restaurant for how roughly his omega had been treated. Apparently, his grandfather was a regular at the Terrace, and she hadn’t thought anything of it when he asked to speak uninterrupted with Dean, whom he had characterized to the entire hotel staff as some kind of high class escort. He’d even offered money to anyone who called when they spotted Dean alone in the building, which had led to the ugly incident that afternoon. The bartender was the one who decided things had gone too far when Samuel grabbed Dean by the throat and had called down to the front desk to find the alpha who had been in with him several times over the past two weeks. He couldn’t remember Sam’s name, but he remembered his room number, and the front desk quickly realized the mistake they’d made in helping Samuel. Either that or they were really worried about the kind of publicity an attack on a carrying omega in one of their restaurants could bring. Sam barely managed to contain his fury, and despite going on six months pregnant Dean lost his appetite. They headed back up to the room in silence, and once there Sam wordlessly packed their things, phoned the front desk to have their luggage brought down to the lobby, and called a taxi to take them to the Holiday Inn & Suites in Downtown, since his grandfather was certainly not going to be a regular there. It never even crossed Dean’s mind once to try to handwave the whole situation away as “fine,” which was definitely a step in the right direction. He also managed for the first time in a while to keep his emotions in check, something that was surprisingly easy to do since Sam was more than angry enough for the both of them. After checking in to the Holiday Inn as the Smiths, Dean ordered a pizza with pepperoni and green peppers, even though it was bound to give him serious heartburn, while Sam found a _Twilight Zone_ marathon on the Sci-Fi channel, and they spent the evening making out like a couple of teenagers whose parents had gone away for the weekend.

They curled up together at last in the single king-sized bed, Dean the little spoon and Sam’s hand pressed against the bare skin of his abdomen, until Elliott kicked them both awake around two in the morning. Sam was so shocked at finally being able to feel a foot slamming against Dean’s insides that he couldn’t get his eyebrows to return to their proper spot, nor could he stop giggling and talking to the baby, who rewarded him with even more kicks and punches. Dean grumbled about internal bruising even as he smirked at Sam’s over-the-top glee, and by three in the morning they were both pretty well covered in hickeys, though at least Dean was considerate enough to keep Sam’s marks below the neck. As for Dean, he was pretty sure he was going to have to spend the next few days at Benny and Lisa’s wrapped in scarves. Either that or they’d need to stop at a drugstore and hope to find a sympathetic salesperson who would help him figure out how to use concealer. Sam dutifully pointing out that they took attention away from Samuel’s fingerprints didn’t really make the situation more bearable. He’d hoped for one hickey and come away with seven. Benny was going to have a field day with that.

Dean was up before Sam, his bladder forcing him to the bathroom and his stomach demanding food. He’d unwound the Ace bandages the night before but kept on the sports bra, which had left him feeling sticky and gross after a night under the covers with the alpha giving off heat like a furnace. He expected Sam to be up by the time he’d gotten out of the shower and re-wrapped himself, slipping into a pair of boxers ( _he liked the stretchy panel in the front far more than he was ever going to admit unless required to under oath, and even then he would probably risk a perjury charge_ ), but the sasquatch in the bed was still breathing deeply and evenly, so he decided to start off day two of the New Old Dean by heading down alone for the continental breakfast. He’d snag Sam a muffin and maybe some coffee if they had something that was fancy, slid on the pair of maternity jeans he’d gotten, one of the tunic shirts with one of Sam’s button downs over it, and attached his Bowie to his hip before strapping one of his boot knives to his ankle. It had been a while since he’d carried either, and though he wasn’t exactly nervous about the idea of heading downstairs by himself he thought it couldn’t hurt to be prepared.

“Hey, Sammy,” he said quietly, wincing just a little as he bent over to shake the alpha. His ribs were still a bit tender, but they were definitely much better.

“Huh…?” came the bleary groan from where Sam’s face was half buried in a pillow, the blankets pulled down to his waist because of that whole furnace body temperature thing he had going on.

“I’m gonna head down to get somethin’ to eat,” Dean told him, running his fingers through the strands of hair tangled across Sam’s forehead.

“’Kay…” Sam replied before turning his head away and letting out a huge sigh. As Dean was headed for the door, he mumbled into the other side of the pillow, “Make sure Elliott eats some fruit.”

“You’re such a dork.”

“You think it’s hot.”

Dean absolutely did, grabbing the hotel keycard and leaving the alpha to sleep in all his half-naked beauty. The second the door clicked closed he felt a sharp pang of anxiety, his omega begging to go back inside and wait for the alpha to wake up, but he shoved it away as best he could and headed for the elevator. There was no way he didn’t smell like Sam, even with the shower, after they’d spent a good portion of the previous day all over each other, and while things hadn’t quite progressed to the point where Sam actually marked him, he _was_ wearing Sam’s too-long shirt with the too-wide shoulders and sleeves that made him feel like a little kid playing dress up, and that would definitely help discourage anyone who got all scent-happy.

The elevator ride down to the ground floor was uneventful, only three other passengers in the car the whole trip and all of them betas, but once the doors to the lobby opened it was a different story entirely. The generic dish soap beta smell mixed with that of at least a dozen alphas, which momentarily shocked Dean into a standstill outside the elevator doors. The anxiety came flooding back, but he again pushed it away, breathing deeply and flexing his fists as he told himself, “Fake it until you make it.” He still had to count to nineteen before he could make himself move, but in the grand scheme of things it really wasn’t that bad. With the exception of the restaurant the day before, he hadn’t been out by himself since the grocery store back in Sioux Falls, and that had been entirely too long ago for him to continue not to venture out alone if he ever hoped to be able to do things by himself. Needing Sam to be with him everywhere he went was simply not a realistic way to expect to live his life, certainly not after Elliott was born.

The dining room where the continental breakfast was served was across the lobby and down the hall from where the elevators were, and it didn’t escape his notice that there were no fewer than three alphas who raised their noses to the air to sniff after him as he strode across the room, hand tapping out a rhythm at his hip over the Bowie knife as he hummed _Enter Sandman_ to calm himself down. Some generic kind of jazzy music was playing over the hotel sound system, possibly Kenny G ( _he’d made it a point never to listen to Kenny G so he could really only guess_ ), which at least gave the impression that the Holiday Inn & Suites expected everyone to stay relaxed and behave themselves. If they’d been playing death metal he would have been worried, but the muzak made him feel even more confident that he could do this by himself. After all, it was only breakfast.

The room was relatively empty, what with the hotel catering towards business people who tended to get up early to go off to meetings or conventions and it was almost nine o’clock, but there were a couple of betas there and one particularly gross smelling alpha who locked his eyes on Dean the minute he walked through the door. Dean gave him a glare, making sure he knew he’d been spotted leering without giving him any indication that he was being invited anywhere the omega was going, then moved to the buffet to load up a plate of scrambled eggs, waffles, toast, and fruit salad, snagging a banana and a yogurt cup along with two bottles of whole milk. It was sheer luck that the bacon was in the process of being refilled and there wasn’t any out at the moment. One of the hotel staff was just bringing out a new, greasy batch to dump into the pan over the Sterno, and he fled quickly to the opposite end of the room with his plate and his silverware. He’d have to hold his nose when he was finished and went back for Sam’s food and coffee - muffins, protein bars, and an array of boxed cereals available at the very end of the bar.

He’d just started digging into his waffles when Mr. Gross Smell sidled his way on over, stopping behind Dean and taking an appreciative sniff as he filled the air with the stench of garbage rotting in the hot sun. Dean gagged a little on the food in his mouth, stiffening as he sensed the alpha’s hands on the back of his chair.

“Well hello there gorgeous,” he cooed, leaning in and taking another deep, pointed inhale right over the top of Dean’s head. “What is a ripe young thing like you doing down here without an alpha?”

A month and a half ago Dean surely would have frozen and looked around vainly for anyone who could help him. Hell, a month and a half ago he wouldn’t have dared venture down here without at least Bobby as backup. But this morning he had something to prove to himself, that he might be knocked up and he might be unclaimed and he might be dealing with more shit than any one person should have to deal with at one time, but he was still Dean Motherfucking Winchester. So instead of bolting or making a scene or calling for help, he took a deep breath, despite the rotting garbage cloud surrounding him, and forced his hands not to tremble, calmly reaching to his side to pull his Bowie knife out of its sheath. He then very deliberately peeled his banana, sliced it straight down the center with a relatively violent chop, and started to cut off tiny pieces to mix into his fruit salad with skilled, practiced moves. He didn’t need to look back at the alpha to ensure his point had been made – he could smell the fear rolling off the guy.

“This is my alpha,” he said, flashing the knife. “Name’s James Bowie. You got any other questions for me or for him? Cuz I’m sure he’d like to talk to you.”

The guy staggered backwards and knocked over a chair, drawing the attention of the betas across the room. How the hell betas always seemed to just not notice when an omega was being accosted he really didn’t understand. It probably had something to do with their defective sniffers, but still, when someone was that obviously being a jackass he’d expect someone to at least catch it out of the corner of their eye. Dean calmly cleaned the knife with his napkin, his insides feeling like jelly and his heart racing with suppressed panic, then went back to eating as the alpha ran from the room.

A few minutes had passed and he was into his yogurt when a member of the hotel staff came striding into the dining area, heading straight for his table. He sighed, knowing this was probably his cue for getting kicked out of the place for daring to defend himself, but instead the skinny red headed beta male said, “Are you Mr. Smith?”

“Uh...” Dean replied around a mouthful of mixed berry Yoplait. Was that the name they’d checked in with? They'd been up late and it was too early without the benefit of caffeine to try to remember details like that. He took a guess. “Yeah.”

“Your mate is on the phone at the front desk.”

“My what?” Dean asked, then remembered he and Sam had checked in as a mated couple. “Oh! Right, uh…tell him I’ll be there in a second.”

“He sounds very upset,” the beta informed him as he did his best to inhale the rest of his yogurt and fruit and down at least one bottle of milk.

“Fine, just…” He looked forlornly at his half-eaten breakfast, getting a kick in the bladder from the kid in his belly. “Don’t let anyone take my food.”

“Yes Mr. Smith,” the man agreed, staying by the table as Dean hurried out to the lobby to see why Sam was calling.

The very nice front desk clerk gave him a very nice smile as he hurried up, getting roundhouse kicks from Elliott, who seemed to think the jostling meant it was time to exercise his or her little legs, and when he explained he was Mr. Smith she hastened to hand him the desk phone. He rubbed a hand against the spot Elliott insisted on pummeling, muttering, “Knock it off, I’m right here,” before saying into the phone, “Sammy? What’s up?”

“ _Dean_!” Sam sounded very un-Sam-like, practically on the verge of hysterics. “ _God, Dean, where the hell did you go_?!”

“To get breakfast.” Holy shit, Sam was _crying_ on the other end of the phone. Had the world flipped upside down while he was grabbing Eggos? “Sam, calm down.”

“ _Jesus Dean…_ ” He could almost scent the relief through the change in Sam’s voice and heard something creak, like he’d sat down on the bed. “ _I woke up and you weren’t here and I tried your phone but you left it in the room…_ ”

Dean might have challenged him on his assumption that the omega was incapable of going anywhere by himself had Sam not been obviously shaken, and quite badly from the tremor still clear in his voice.

“I told you I was going down to get breakfast,” Dean said softly. “We had a whole conversation.”

“ _We did_?”

“Yes. You told me to make sure Elliott ate some fruit.”

“ _I did_?”

“Yeah, and then I called you a dork and you said I think it’s hot, which I do, for the record.”

“ _I don’t...I don’t remember any of that. I must’ve still been kinda asleep. Are you…are you okay_?”

“Yes, Sammy, I’m just downstairs in the lobby.” It sounded like Sam was still crying, but also trying very hard to pull himself together. “Do you want me to come back up? I can grab some stuff to go…”

“ _No_.” It was a firm assertion, even if the voice behind it wavered. “ _No, I’m...I gotta take a shower anyway and we gotta pack up to go so…no, it’s fine. Finish eating._ ”

“Are you sure? Cuz I’m bringing you a muffin and some protein bars and coffee anyway, so…”

“ _No, it’s okay. Just…just please remember your phone next time, okay_?”

“Okay. Go take your shower.”

“ _Okay_.”

The call clicked off and Dean spent a few seconds listening to the dial tone before handing the phone back to the clerk. He recognized that kind of terror in Sam’s voice. He’d heard it on the tape after they found him. The realization made his stomach do a very unhappy little flip, and he felt a cold sweat breaking out across his forehead and along the nape of his neck. Despite Elliott’s continued kicking, Dean found he no longer had an appetite.

Sam was still in the shower when Dean made it back upstairs with the muffin, protein bar, bagel ( _a last minute grab_ ), and coffee with enough flavored creamer for the alpha to reasonably recreate one of his fancy drinks, at least as far as Dean expected. He set it all on the coffee table, calling out, “Lucy! I’m home!” before moving to unstrap his boot knife. The shower shut off almost instantly, and Dean heard the shower rings sliding aside only a few moments before Sam came out of the bathroom, naked and dripping except for the towel around his waist, and stormed across the room to crush Dean in a hug, pressing his face into the omega’s neck by his ear and breathing deeply. Either Sam hadn’t calmed down at all or he had been _really_ beside himself when he woke up alone, judging by all the panic leaking out of him.

“So, I’ve been thinkin’,” Dean murmured after a few moments of Sam scenting him and trembling and not saying anything. “The best way to figure out if someone’s gonna cheat on you is hands down _The Pina Colada_ _Song_.”

That got a chuckle out of the alpha, and he moved his face from Dean’s neck at last to press his mouth into the dark honey blond hair.

“Yeah?” he asked quietly, still clinging to the omega as his shaking began to very slowly abate. “Why’s that?”

“Well, have you ever listened to the lyrics?” Dean scoffed, genuinely indignant. “I mean, it starts off with the guy saying he’s tired of his mate, so he checks the personals in the newspaper while she’s sleeping right _next_ to him, and he finds this personal ad that he likes and responds to so he can cheat on her. And then he meets the lady from the personals at the bar, and it turns out that it’s actually his mate, who had placed the ad to begin with so she could cheat on _him_ , and when they see each other instead of being horrified they just kind of go, ‘Hey, what a funny coincidence that we’re both unhappy and looking for other people!’ I’m tellin’ ya Sam, you find someone who likes _The Pina Colada Song_ , you run screaming in the other direction.”

Dean felt the vibrations of Sam’s laugh all the way into his core, smiling as the alpha finally loosened his grip and pulled back a little to stare at the omega’s face like they’d been parted for years instead of half an hour. Sam’s dimples were deep as he nuzzled Dean’s cheek, letting out a deep sigh.

“You’ve put a surprising amount of thought into _The Pina Colada Song_ ,” he finally said.

“Well, technically it’s called _Escape_ : _The Pina Colada Song_ but nobody knows that, and hello, it’s basically everything that was bad about ‘70s music wrapped up in a nice catchy refrain,” Dean replied reasonably. “People just think it’s such a _cute_ love song. Makes me nuts.”

“I would’ve thought the crown of bad ‘70s music went to Captain and Tennille,” Sam said. “They have an actual song called _Muskrat Love_. That’s pretty bad.”

“I would argue that the Bee Gees, while more talented, were easily as bad as Captain and Tennille in the ‘70s. No one really perfected soft rock until Air Supply in the ‘80s.”

“ _Air Supply_?” Sam couldn’t stop giggling at the thought of Dean listening to Air Supply. “You’re kidding.”

“You know I don’t just listen to Metallica and Zeppelin, right?” Dean asked with a raised brow. “Don’t knock Air Supply ‘til you’ve heard _Making Love Out of Nothing At All_ on the harp.” Sam’s jaw just about hit the floor, and the omega shrugged. “Worked a job with Dad a couple of years ago with a Ghost Ship. Had to go to a fancy party to steal a Hand of Glory. They had a harpist who clearly was a fan of ‘80s music.”

“You...were able to figure out a harpist was playing an ‘80s power ballad?”

“It’s one of my favorite songs.”

There was a long silence as the alpha stared at the omega in the slightly damp clothing from having been hugged by a large man who had just gotten out of the shower, Dean’s cheeks turning pink at the incredulous look on Sam’s face.

“Who _are_ you?” Sam demanded at last with a laugh.

“You need convincing.” Dean left the alpha standing in the middle of the floor and went to dig through Sam’s bag for his iPod and earbuds. He walked back over, scrolling through until he found the song to download, popping one earbud into Sam’s ear and the other into his own before pressing “play.” Sam rolled his eyes at the piano entry, but Dean admonished, “Just let it wash over you. Just take it in.”

Sam huffed but supposed he could humor the omega who had moved in closer and was brushing his nose against Sam’s neck. Air Supply was just such a stereotypically omega band that he’d never paid much attention to them, which he supposed was silly when he _was_ the one who had been excited about Yaz playing at Marge’s. This type of music just ran completely counter to everything that Sam knew of Dean’s tastes. Though maybe he shouldn’t have been too surprised Dean would hide his enjoyment of something like Air Supply when he moved in a world of alphas. Here he was dismissing what the omega had said without really considering the merits of the song because of his perception of the type of band they were. Even Russell Hitchcock was an omega, one of the last male oms to have had any kind of high profile career, and he’d only succeeded because he was from Australia where they had more favorable omega laws back in the 1980s and Graham Russell was an alpha, so he instantly commanded respect as a singer-songwriter ( _in other words, the “brains”_ ) of the duo.

Now that he was actually being made to listen to the song, it really didn’t take long to admit that Dean had a point. Yes, Hitchcock’s tenor bordered on feminine, and the background choir of the refrain was the kind of cheese that people scoffed at twenty years later, but the procession of the melody that took the singer from his chest voice into his head voice built and receded beautifully, the vocals clear and pitch perfect, the high notes coming effortlessly to Hitchcock in a way current artists needed autotune to accomplish. Besides that the lyrics - “ _the beating of my heart is a drum and it’s lost and it’s looking for a rhythm like you_ ” - were actual poetry. Anyone who took the time to listen would instantly be able to recognize the story of an alpha surprised to find themselves falling in love with an omega, and the fact that it was an omega echoing back an alpha’s words demonstrated perfectly how the designations were meant to fit together like two halves of a whole. No wonder Dean loved this song.

The omega’s hands had been running lazily over the damp skin of Sam’s back to help calm him, but now they’d come to rest on the alpha’s hips above the towel, his thumbs brushing lightly where the vee of his pelvis vanished beneath the terry cloth. Sam’s eyes fluttered closed at the touch and he drew in a deeply satisfied breath, his lips searching out the corner of Dean’s jaw where it met his hickey-covered throat.

“Breakfast was okay?” Sam asked softly against the light stubble, dragging a hand to the collar of the omega’s button down to slowly peel it off one side of him.

“Yeah, it was...fine…” Dean was shocked at how little effort it took from Sam for his breath to hitch and stutter, tracing his thumbs up the alpha’s perfectly defined abs, letting one hand and then the other fall away and return as the button down was removed to fall to the floor. “Was one guy who smelled like a dump, but I handled him.”

“Mmm,” Sam hummed against his throat, pulling gently at the hem of the tunic tee and giving Dean plenty of time to stop him if he wanted to. The New Old Dean didn’t. “That a Bowie knife on your hip or are you just happy to see me?”

“Why’s it gotta be one or the other?”

The tunic and iPod were gone with a tug and a fling, the song having ended anyway, landing on the desk lamp as Sam ate at Dean’s lips like that’s what the omega had brought him back for breakfast. The towel went next, ending up on the television while Dean tugged at his boots, Sam’s hands on his face and his neck and his hair so as not to sacrifice where they were joined at the mouth while Dean fumbled with the laces. Several maddening minutes of struggling and whining later the boots got kicked off his feet and across the room, one flying under the bed and the other banging loudly against the dresser as Dean all but ripped off his jeans and boxers, complete with the Bowie knife still attached, using his socked feet to push them down to the floor once they were past his knees. The room became immediately saturated with the sweet aroma of the omega’s slick as Sam moved to press himself fully against Dean’s skin, bracing the smaller man as he backed him up against the wall by the bathroom. After all, the doctors hadn’t outright forbidden knotting, they just said they needed to be careful and it would have to be infrequent. Six months since the last time they were in a Holiday Inn together sure counted as infrequent.

“Tell me if you want me to stop,” Sam breathed against his mouth.

“I don’t.”

“Okay, but if you do…”

“I won’t.”

Dean knew logically that Sam was stronger than him, probably by a good deal given not only their biology but his stature, but he still gasped when Sam picked him up like he weighed no more than a box of cereal. Goddamn if his father hadn’t been right; his bowed legs were perfect for wrapping around someone’s waist, which he discovered since there was nowhere else to really put them. He half remembered doing this back in Laramie, how small and enveloped Sam had made him feel, but then Sam slid into him like he’d been drawn a map on just how to angle to hit all the right parts of Dean’s insides, and Dean really couldn’t think about anything other than how good it felt being filled up by Sam. Apparently Holiday Inns were their lucky hotel chain. It may not have been the Peninsula, but they definitely weren’t leaving Chicago unchristened.

Sam had stilled, holding Dean against the wall without the slightest tremble in his arms to indicate it was in any way a challenge to support the weight of both of them. In fact, he only had one hand braced against one of Dean’s legs. The other was flat against the wall behind them while he pressed his forehead to the omega’s shoulder and took slow, steady breaths. The urge to bite down and claim was almost overpowering and he had to force it to the back of his mind before he could begin to do anything else, his vision tinged in red. He felt all of fifteen years old, on a hair trigger, and was dangerously close to embarrassing himself with how long - or more appropriately not - he was going to last.

“You okay?” he asked, feeling how desperately Dean pressed his face into the alpha’s hair.

“Move,” the omega gasped. “God, please move.”

“This is probably gonna be over quick.”

“For me, too. Just move, Sammy.”

So Sam did, rocking and thrusting and kissing Dean’s mouth and wherever on the expanse of his neck that Sam could reach without risking dropping him, memorizing the pitch of the pleasured-pained whines escaping from the omega’s throat as he clung to the alpha’s massive shoulders, his eyes a shining gold. It really was a disgustingly short amount of time before he felt his knot expanding, felt it slide in over the tight outer ring of muscle to lock in place, but he didn’t think he could really be blamed for that since he was at the right angle and had been hitting the perfect spot with every pump of his hips and Dean had just come all over their stomachs, shooting straight up their chests in thick, warm, white ribbons that didn’t look like they were going to stop anytime soon, his eyes screwed shut and his mouth a beautiful, perfect “o”. Sam’s hips continued to stutter for a few minutes, filling Dean up, until he finally stopped, shuddering as he felt the omega’s forehead against his clavicle. It occurred to him dimly that this couldn’t possibly be comfortable, that Dean’s ribs must be aching, that his Ace bandages were now a total mess, that they might not have been careful enough with Dean’s condition, but Elliott was kicking up a storm between them like they’d just taken the kid on an amusement park ride, tiny little protrusions evident from the inside of Dean’s belly, so it must have been okay. He bent slightly to get his mouth back on Dean’s, one arm going around the omega’s back and the other into his hair so he could walk them to the bed to sit until the knot had gone down enough for them to separate and clean up.

They’d been that way for a little while, still exchanging lazy kisses, when Dean drew in a sharp, quick breath, shivering slightly, and his scent went from happy contentment to a mixture of sorrow and bliss. Sam had been caressing his spine and finger combing his hair, and he pulled back to look the omega full in the face and try to gauge what had changed. Dean had flushed all the way from his hairline down to the top of the Ace bandages and was shaking slightly, his eyes downcast and moisture fringing his eyelashes. His breath was starting to come in ragged gasps and he had gone from shivering to shaking, and for several horrible moments Sam was deathly afraid things had gone too far, that they’d made a terrible mistake and he’d traumatized Dean even further. It certainly seemed like the most likely conclusion to draw given the huge tears that were splashing down between them and Dean’s quiet sobs. Sam wished more than anything that they weren’t tied together so Dean could get away from him if he needed to, but pulling away now would not only be incredibly painful but quite possibly cause serious damage to Dean. He was somewhat reassured when he placed his hands on either side of Dean’s face to try to get him to look at him that Dean reached up to hold him where he was and didn’t pull away.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, thumbing away the tears on the omega’s cheeks. Dean’s eyes were quickly becoming red rimmed, saline running in tracks down to the tip of his nose before dropping away. “Dean? Baby, you’re scaring me. Are you all right?”

“I didn’t…” His voice came out kind of high, and he cleared his throat and started over. “I didn't think I was ever gonna be able to do that again.” He laughed a little, starting a fresh bout of tears. “It’s just a relief, doin’ somethin’ I never had a problem with before. Makes me feel like less of a freak.”

“Hey…” Sam stroked his face until Dean looked up at him, little reservoirs of unshed tears gathered against his lower lids. “You’re talking to a guy with demon blood in him. You’re not freaky at all from where I’m sitting okay?”

Dean nodded, pressing a delicate kiss to Sam’s mouth, then a couple that were much deeper in response to the way he was being pulled into a tight hug by the alpha, his legs still criss-crossed behind Sam’s back.

“We’re gonna have to talk about that soon,” he said finally. “How we’re gonna figure out what Azazel wants and what we’re gonna do about it.”

“I know,” Sam replied, chasing Dean’s lips to where they had withdrawn. “But later.”

By the time Sam’s knot had gone down enough for Dean to climb off it was quite obvious they were going to need a later checkout time, so Sam called down to the front desk while Dean shot a text off to Benny letting him know they’d gotten hung up in Chicago, and after two more rounds in the comfort of the bed they’d finally managed to get up and shower, leaving the sheets an embarrassing mess for housekeeping to take care of. Sam left behind a large enough tip to mollify anyone who might be scandalized, though he doubted they’d done anything that hadn’t been cleaned up before. It took two trips to get all the bags downstairs, Dean volunteering to stay in the lobby with the first set while Sam went to get the second round, quite confident that the way Sam kept touching him and kissing him would give him a nice personal bubble no one was going to dare try to pop. Sam had already called for a taxi, specifying a van if one was available, and they made out up against the wall of the vestibule, ignoring the guests coming and going, their luggage piled around them, as they waited for it to arrive and take them to the car rental agency. They needed to stop at a pharmacy or a Wal-mart or something so Dean could get clean Ace bandages, but at the moment he was really enjoying just how strong his scent mixed with Sam’s was.

It was possible Chicago wasn’t that terrible of a city in the winter after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case anyone doubts me about Making Love Out of Nothing At All on the harp:
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGtGA79RHlk


	41. We Accept Homeowners of Any Race, Religion, Color, or...Sexual Orientation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam and Dean arrive at Benny and Lisa's.

Sam wasn’t sure what he expected when Dean said he wanted to visit Benny, but it certainly hadn’t been that they would be pulling onto a cul de sac in a cookie cutter residential development where all the houses had a minimum of three bathrooms, four bedrooms, and either a partially or fully finished basement. These were the kinds of homes that started at three hundred thousand and went up, and while Sam had barely known Benny it did not compute for him that _this_ was the kind of place he’d want to live. Dean explained that when Benny had gotten out of hunting he’d gotten immediately into real estate, and from there had progressed into flipping houses, and along the way he’d become a licensed contractor so he was able to do most of the work with his own team. It gave Benny a pretty reliable income as well as the flexibility to explore any nearby, simple hunts that needed to be taken care of, and apparently bought him a damn nice house in Indiana. That fell much more in line with the overachieving, textbook alpha Sam had known way back when he could do nothing but teem with jealousy at the close relationship Benny had with Dean. Even now, regardless of what had happened at the Holiday Inn, he still had to fight back the irrational thoughts about how nice of an area this was to raise a family in, and how Benny seemed to already have the perfect kind of life set up for an omega mate. He was stupidly glad he’d left all those hickeys on Dean’s neck, even if he hadn’t done it as a show of possession, but simply because Dean’s neck was irresistible.

The red front door to the brick and beige house opened as they pulled into the driveway and Benny was heading over, wearing a thick navy blue wool peacoat with a heavy white scarf and a black Greek fisherman’s hat. He really had grown into his physique, with the same broad shoulders, pale skin, and clear blue eyes that he’d had in school. Plus, his beard still looked like he simply had to think about how long he wanted it and it would grow in response. At the moment it was neatly trimmed, close-cropped at his cheeks and a little fuller by his chin, a surprising spray of white-blond hairs mixed in with the darker blond under his lower lip. He had a lopsided grin plastered on his face, showing off the apple of his cheeks, and Dean barely let Sam stop the car before he climbed out and was striding across the driveway to meet Benny in the middle of the front walk.

It was probably a good thing Dean got out first, giving Sam a chance to push down the surge of protective and possessive resentment that flooded him as he watched Benny wrap Dean in his arms, one hand carefully around his shoulders and the other in his hair, the smile on his face sliding away and his expression changing to something that looked deeply pained. Dean was hugging him back just as fiercely, his face slotted into Benny’s neck so he could scent him, while Benny was talking to him quietly about something, stroking his hair. The hug lasted for an indecent amount of time, too long for Sam to just ride it out in the Lincoln Navigator they’d gotten from Enterprise under the guise of putting on his gloves, Dean nodding along to whatever Benny was saying to him. He hit the button to open the back gate to get their bags and climbed out as the two men were actually separating, even if that meant they only moved about two inches back from each other. Benny tilted up Dean’s chin as Sam was going around the car, and Sam caught him saying playfully, “That’s some rash you’ve got there, Dean.”

“Shut up,” Dean snarked, but Sam could hear the laughter in it. Jesus, Elliott or no Elliott he was an idiot to think he was ever going to be able to compete with Benny. There was no way Dean was going to stay with him once the pregnancy hormones wore off. “Sam?” It actually caught him by surprise that Dean was looking back towards him as he was grabbing a couple of bags out of the back of the SUV. “There you are. Thought you’d run off on me. You remember Benny?”

The smile on Dean’s face could have lit up a moderately sized city, so Sam shoved down the massive insecurities and flood of jealousy that were threatening to explode out into his scent and plastered the best, “hey, yeah, great to see you” smile he could onto his face as the alpha headed over.

“Yeah, kinda,” he said, holding out his hand to shake. “You were way ahead of me in school.”

“I’ll say.” Benny took the proffered hand in an iron grip and quickly assessed him before smiling. “You were a scrawny middle schooler last time I saw you. Looks like you’ve grown a little bit.”

“Yeah,” was all Sam could manage, fully aware that his smile was becoming stiff and obviously forced.

“Let me grab those,” Benny said, his Cajun drawl smooth like a fine glass of bourbon, taking the bags Sam had already pulled out of the car. “We should get inside, s’posed to snow tonight. One of the only things I don’t like about Indiana. Snow starts in November and don’t end until March. But we’re on the opposite side of the state from Lake Michigan, so it’s not as bad as it would be if we were closer to Chicago. How was your drive?”

“It was…”

“Benny!” Much to Sam’s shock a very pretty dark haired woman with tan skin and deep brown eyes had appeared in the doorway of the house, a long cardigan clutched around her waist. A gust of wind brought the smell of peaches, lilacs, dewy grass, and freshly cleaned laundry wafting over to him. “Are you trying to heat the entire outdoors? We have a baby in here to keep warm!”

“Yes dear,” Benny replied dutifully, and murmured to Sam, “See what fun you’ve got to look forward to?”

“Hey, hey, hey, no whispering. You two don’t get to plot against us,” the omega snapped with no real irritation, as Dean had reached her and they were bear-hugging to the best of the woman’s ability. “I was starting to think you guys weren’t gonna make it!”

“Hey Lisa,” Dean said, giving her a quick kiss on the cheek as Sam and Benny were closing up the car and heading over to the house. Two seconds later he was almost knocked off the front stoop by a dark haired little boy who launched himself against Dean’s legs, squealing, “Uncle Dean!”

Sam flinched visibly as he watched Dean struggle for balance for a second, but Benny was already advancing towards the house with long, fast strides while the woman grabbed Dean’s arm to steady him.

“Ben, buddy, what did we talk about?” he asked, just the slightest tinge of warning to his voice.

“I gotta be careful with Uncle Dean like I was with mommy,” the little boy replied from around Dean’s waist. He tipped his head up to look at the omega he was clinging to. “You gotta come see Lizzie!”

“So you changed your mind about wanting a puppy?” Dean said with a smile.

“For now,” Ben said, releasing Dean’s middle and grabbing his hand. “Come on!”

“Get in here!” Lisa was saying to Benny, and this time her irritation was real. “I know the cold doesn’t bother you guys but some of us don’t have the boy gene.”

“The boy gene?” Sam asked.

“The one that makes you impervious to freezing temperatures,” she said. “I’m Lisa, by the way. Benny’s much smarter and prettier half.”

“Sam.”

“A pleasure.”

“Yeah, I think Sam got both of our boy genes,” Dean said as they all made it inside and the door finally closed behind them. “He runs hotter than anyone I’ve ever known. I’m surprised he’s not sweatin’ right now.”

“I’m sorry, did you say I’m hotter than anyone you’ve ever known?” Sam asked, surprised at how relaxed he suddenly felt knowing that Benny had a mate. Because of course he would have a mate, an alpha like that. And of course he’d have a house like this to provide for his mate and their children. He was determined not to get bogged down in how big of a moron he had been about Benny for so long and just enjoy the huge weight that had vanished from his chest.

“No, I did not.”

“That’s what I heard.”

“You’re such a dork.”

“And we’re back to my hotness.”

Dean had felt himself drawn into Sam’s orbit as soon as they got into the house and it occurred to him that he was probably standing inappropriately close to him while in the presence of a six year old that still had a hold on his hand, but whatever animosity Sam had held towards Benny seemed to have disappeared and it was such a relief. He’d secretly been dreading spending the next few days with Sam all tense and standoffish, trying to clamp down on his obvious irritation and failing miserably. This, with Sam joking about his hotness and Benny being conspiratorial with him by the car - this was much better.

“It _is_ the main thing you’ve got goin’ for you,” he said, pressing a kiss to the alpha’s jaw to soften the jab and getting a genuine smile in return, dimples and all.

“Come on and meet Lizzie,” Lisa insisted, taking Dean’s other hand and leading them through the foyer towards the family room. “The big strong alphas can get your stuff into the guest room.”

“Yes chere,” Benny said with a smile. “Then we’ll go hunt down a mastodon and kill it for dinner.”

“Thank god,” she replied. “I’m getting tired of chicken fingers and mac and cheese.”

She threw a pointed but affectionate look at her son, who clearly didn’t understand teasing yet, because he declared loudly, “What? That’s the best!” as his mother dragged both him and Dean away.

Lizzie was wide awake and bouncing her legs off in the Fisher Price monkey bouncer when the two omegas and little boy reached her in the corner between the family room and the entry to the dining room, cooing away while swiping towards the overhead mobile attached to the curved bar over the seat. She had a shock of dark hair like her mother and her father’s big blue eyes, and Lisa got a huge grin out of her as she knelt down to unstrap her from the seat. There was a lightly padded mat in the middle of the floor that had an arch attached to it from which dangled bright shapes and a mirror, and a bin with other brightly colored toys near the couch. A changing pad was laid out on the coffee table with a small bag on the floor next to it out of which diapers and wipes peaked. Between that and Ben’s trucks and army men scattered around the room it was an awful lot of “kid space” to take in at once.

Dean had barely adjusted to all the _stuff_ that apparently very small babies needed these days when Lisa plopped Lizzie into his arms and declared, “Here, practice while I make dinner.”

“I…” Dean started, but she shook her head.

“Nope. It’s been six years since you got to hold Ben and a lot longer since you were in charge of Adam,” she told him. “ _Practice_. I’ll be right back. We really are just having mac and cheese and chicken fingers. That one -” She pointed a finger at Ben with a mock scowl on her face. “- is going through a picky eating phase. Tomorrow we’ll start having proper meals.”

“Moooom!” Ben whined in response, leading Dean to deduce that proper meals likely included vegetables.

“Benjamin Horatio Lafitte, Jr.,” she said, nothing about her tone a jest. “Dean needs more than boxed and frozen foods. You’ll survive a salad or two over the next few days.”

Ben huffed out a huge sigh as if she were telling him he’d have to give up a kidney, and replied, “Fiiiine.” He immediately turned his attention to the omega who was not his mother. “Come on Dean, let’s build a castle!”

He was off across the room from the chocolate colored couch to another box of toys beside the entertainment center and dragged the whole thing, full of big Duplo blocks, back by the coffee table and dumped them all on the floor to start sticking together into towers and walls. It took Dean a minute to figure out how to get down to the floor while holding a baby, since his back was a little stiff from the drive and his ribs were sore from the wall sex and two rounds of early-afternoon delight, plus his center of gravity was starting to shift pretty markedly, but he managed to get bent down enough to brace himself with the coffee table and then lower himself down, Lizzie cooing at him and smiling the whole time. That’s where he was when Sam and Benny came in, snapping blocks together one handed in a scramble to finish the castle before Ben’s invading army of little green men could knock it down. Every now and then Elliott threw some furious punches to get his attention, and after the first time feeling the baby kick Ben had quickly gotten bored of it, apparently of the opinion that if you’d felt one baby kick you’d felt them all. Benny called his son up to go help his mother with dinner and gave Dean a quick wink before heading off through the dining room to the kitchen. Sam moved down to the cream carpeted floor in an easy, fluid motion that had him cross-legged across the castle from where Dean was sniffing Lizzie’s head like it was covered in cocaine and he was trying really hard to take a hit while she tugged at the collar of his shirt.

“You didn’t tell me you were an expert baby holder.”

“Honed my skills early with Adam.” He thrust out a pinky for her to clasp, making faces at her as she cooed and burbled. “Watched Ben a couple of times too when he was small. Not this small, he was crawlin’, but still pretty small.”

Sam inched towards them, seeing if he could get Lizzie to switch her grip from Dean’s finger to his, but she was enrapt and not even a little interested in the alpha. After a few tries he gave up, saying, “I didn’t know Benny had a mate and kids.”

“Yeah, what else woulda got him out of the life?” Dean asked, grinning up at Sam, who shrugged.

“I dunno. I don’t know him like you do.”

“He’s a great guy.” His voice was filled with affection for the other alpha and his focus was fixed again almost completely on Lizzie, obviously enjoying the sounds and faces she was making, even the little bubble of spit that was building on her lips as she babbled. “One of the best I’ve ever known.”

Sam smiled a little, surprised at the sudden bitterness that was encroaching on the warmth in his chest at the sight of his omega playing with Benny’s baby. After a moment he said, “It must’ve been hard.”

Dean looked up at him, face open and eyes inquisitive.

“What?”

“When he chose Lisa.” Dean didn’t seem any clearer on what Sam was talking about, so he added, “You know, over you.”

“What?” The inquisitive look had changed to incredulity, and for a minute Sam thought Dean might actually break out laughing. “You didn’t think...did you...have you...is that why you get all pissy whenever I mention him?”

“I don’t get pissy,” Sam said pissily. “Besides, are you telling me that you and Benny…”

“Just because we’re friends…” He glanced towards the kitchen, keeping his voice low so as not to disturb the baby or let their hosts overhear the discussion, because he wasn’t sure he’d survive that kind of embarrassment. “I mean, you threw my brother a freakin’ graduation party and I never thought the two of you were anything _other_ than friends!”

“That’s different,” Sam hissed, clearly aware that he needed to keep his voice down as well.

“How is that different?”

“Adam’s a beta.”

“ _And_? You said Jess was a beta! Obviously you’ll get it up for betas so what’s different about me and Benny?”

“I don’t know, you just seemed to _fit_ so well back at school.”

“Yeah, cuz he’s a great guy! What, you think because he’s got a knot that means I’m not gonna be able to resist his charms or somethin’? That my biology was just gonna take over and get me all wet for the first alpha that smiled at me? That he was gonna forget I was who I was once I grew a uterus?”

“Look, you guys were really close…”

“Because we’re _friends_.”

“Well what was I supposed to think after the way he reacted when you got kicked outta school, and how you’ve clearly _stayed_ close all these years?”

“ _That we’re friends_.”

“Dean, I’m sorry, I obviously got it all wrong…”

“Yeah, yeah you did Sam.”

“Dinner should be ready in about ten minutes,” Lisa announced, stopping at the tension flooding the room from the standoff on the floor between the two men. “I have apparently missed something.”

“Nah, Sammy was just commenting on how comfy your couch looked and wonderin’ what it would be like to sleep on it for the next couple of days,” Dean snapped, managing to get to his feet without tipping over or dropping the baby and heading for the kitchen.

“Dean…”

Sam got such a withering glare from the older man as he was standing that he clammed right up, balling his hands into fists of frustration as Lisa watched Dean storm off through the dining room, her eyes wide. She looked back at the very large, very upset alpha in her family room and said, “I’m not sure I should ask…”

“I thought…” He let out an irritated sigh, stooping at the shoulders in an unconscious effort to make himself look smaller and less threatening to the omega that he had literally just met and didn’t know a thing about. “I thought that he and Benny…and I didn’t word it well apparently, and now I guess I’m sleeping on the couch.”

“Ah.” She gave him a sympathetic look and began to move around the room cleaning up after her son. “If it makes you feel better, I thought the same thing when I met Benny.”

“You did?”

“Well, sure,” she said. “They were on this case in my neighborhood, a bunch of women my age going missing, turned out to be a dragon, which, you know, was enough in and of itself, but then to have this pair of hunters show up with this half broken sword they’d TNT’d out of a boulder? Just the way they moved around each other, like they could sense where the other one was even in another room, I figured there had to be something there beyond just friends. It was like watching two lovers dance. But then Dean moved on and Benny...well, he stayed.” She gave Sam a small smile, setting the box back down where it belonged. “Took a while for him to convince me that Dean wasn’t going to be coming back and turning everything upside down, though. I figured he was either lying to me or to himself because honesty, how’s a girl supposed to compete with over six feet of dark blond hair, green eyes, and freckles? Well, I shouldn’t make it just about how Dean looked, it’s about who he _was_ , how he _was_ , you know? Really funny and caring and underneath all that James Dean wannabe swagger, very, very sweet. So yeah, it took Benny a long time to convince me they were just friends, that they were never going to be anything else because Dean just wasn’t his, and he didn’t want him to be his. But I was. I probably worded my concerns better than whatever you said, though. Also, I know this is your first rodeo with the whole baby thing, so you likely don’t know that if you separate an alpha and an omega when the om is carrying it throws everything out of whack and it takes a while for the hormones to even out, which I’m sure didn’t help you just now. Alphas get super territorial and omegas get super irritable and someone spends a lot of time sleeping on the couch. That’s why if an alpha’s in the military and their mate is carrying they won’t be deployed during wartime.” She stepped in a little closer to him, looking over her shoulder and lowering her voice. “Just between you and me pregnancy hormones are a _bitch_ anyway. If you ever tell Benny I told you this I’ll cut your tongue out, but I am _so_ unreasonable when I’m carrying. With Ben I almost kicked him out of the house once because he forgot the milk at the store and I wanted to make pudding, and with Lizzie he got the wrong color of pale purple for us to paint the nursery. You’d’ve thought he told me he’d sold the baby to some guy at the market for a handful of magic beans.”

“Lis…” Benny appeared in the dining room with an unhappy Elizabeth. She wasn’t outright crying, but she was definitely fussy. “I’ve got a little girl who needs dinner.”

Lisa let out a resigned sigh and went to take the baby from Benny, who pressed a kiss to her forehead. She turned to Sam with a tight smile.

“Make sure you don’t move to Indiana after the baby is born,” she said. “Exclusive teat feeding for the first eighteen months is required by law, and they only grant waivers if you don’t produce any milk or have a health problem. I would have gone this route anyway, but it takes the joy right out of it when you don’t have a choice.”

She headed off to the foyer and up the stairs to the nursery, clucking at the baby, leaving Benny and Sam alone. Things were going about as badly as Sam had imagined they were going to go, but for entirely different reasons and in completely different ways. The best course of action would probably be to just suck it up and ask Benny what the hell he should do to fix this, since he’d known Dean for years and he seemed to have figured out how matehood worked.

“It _is_ a comfortable couch,” Benny assured him after a minute or so. “Picked it out myself since I’m the one who spends the most time sleepin’ on it. Sheets fit perfectly. Not sure you will though, you got a couple of inches on me.”

Well. So maybe Benny didn’t have the whole matehood thing figured out after all.

Dinner was awkward in Benny and Lisa’s very nice dining room around their very nice dining room table with Dean refusing to even acknowledge Sam’s presence, but fortunately Ben had enough to say about his first grade teacher, who was just the prettiest beta ever, that he was able to hold almost the entire conversation by himself with only a little prompting from Lisa. The Lafittes actually felt very sorry for Sam, who seemed like a really decent young man that didn’t have a clue how to handle an omega as strong willed as Dean. Before heading off to sleep for the evening while handing him extra sheets, Benny recommended a florist in town and suggested he get as many lilies as he could get his hands on. There had apparently been a Jenny Greenteeth in a botanical garden that they’d hunted years ago and Benny had to fill out all the paperwork because he couldn’t get Dean away from the lilies afterwards.

The couch was indeed comfortable but quite a bit too short for Sam, though even if it had been long enough it’s not like it would have been easy to sleep anyway. The family room was too quiet with everyone else upstairs, and it smelled like Benny and Lisa and vaguely of baby poop, but eventually he drifted off, being plagued almost immediately by visions of John standing in something like a boiler room across from a janitor with yellow eyes. It wasn’t clear like the dream of Meg in the hospital; it came in foggy, disjointed bits, flashes of some kind of monitor, someone having trouble breathing, a sigil on the floor, candles, a copper bowl with ingredients, another man with a beard, dark suit, and red eyes. Everything was distorted, oddly bulging or shrunken, and it was all at odd angles. It made no sense but still woke him with a gasp and a searing jolt of pain to his head. His upper lip felt wet, and upon checking he discovered he had a bloody nose. He dug around in the diaper bag by the coffee table looking for a tissue and came away with just a baby wipe, but it was good enough to keep him from leaving droplets of blood all over the carpet.

He tried to be quiet creeping into the guest bedroom to get the aspirin out of his bag and might have succeeded if the baby wipes were unscented. Unfortunately they were not formulated for sensitive skin, and having one shoved up his nostrils all the way up from downstairs led to his nose itching terribly. After struggling to hold it in a loud sneeze escaped him, bringing on a fresh gush of blood and a sharp, agonizing pulse of fire shooting across the base of his skull. He collapsed partially to the floor, catching himself on the dresser near the door. When he tried to get back to his feet he heard the bed creaking, and seconds later a cloud of omega scent engulfed him and he felt Dean’s hands under his arms and around his bare chest.

“There are better ways to get me to let you in here,” he muttered, shifting Sam’s weight onto him as much as he felt he could and half dragging him to the bed.

He got the alpha to sit down and pulled some tissues from the box on the nightstand before kneeling on the floor to assess the damage. Dean reached for the light, but Sam grabbed his wrist and shook his head, whispering, “Don’t. Head feels like it’s in two pieces.”

“Okay.” Dean took away the bloody baby wipe and replaced it with the tissues, tipping Sam’s head forward and moving one of the alpha’s hands into place to pinch his nostrils shut. “Keep your head tipped down. That’ll help.”

“Mmm,” was all Sam could manage, giving a small nod. “Was a dream about your dad…”

Dean shushed him, getting back up on the bed and settling in at Sam’s back, working his thumbs into the sides of Sam’s neck and pressing up to the base of his skull. It elicited a groan of thanks from the alpha, who felt the tremendous pressure in his head lessening with every stroke. The omega concentrated the massage on Sam’s neck and skull until Dean felt him begin to relax, then worked his way out to include Sam’s shoulders and eventually the length of his spine.

“Was the dream like the one about Adam?” Dean asked after Sam’s nose had finally stopped bleeding and he’d pulled the tissues away.

“No,” Sam told him. “It was weird, kinda like watching it through a funhouse mirror. But I think he was doing something really stupid, making some kind of really bad decision.”

Dean snorted.

“That’s John Winchester in a nutshell,” he said, working his knuckles into Sam’s lats. The alpha jostled a little with every push of Dean’s hand, his head feeling light and like it could float right off his shoulders. “Feel better?”

“If I say yes are you gonna send me back to the couch?”

He shot Dean a sleepy half smile over his shoulder and got a kiss on the corner of his mouth before Dean pulled him down to climb under the covers and wrap Sam’s arms around his middle. He got a slightly longer kiss once his head hit the pillow before Dean turned over to snuggle his back up against Sam’s front.

“That really was insulting, what you said about me and Benny.” Sam ran a hand across Dean’s abdomen and got a flurry of kicks welcoming Daddy to bed. “If I was a beta instead of an om it wouldn’t have even crossed your mind.”

“No, it wouldn’t have.” He tugged Dean up tight against his chest and nudged his nose behind his ear. “I’m really sorry about how it came out. I just figure everybody always wants you.”

“Oh, everybody does,” Dean threw over his shoulder. “That doesn’t mean _I_ want everybody.”

“Just me?” Sam ventured to ask, and Dean left him hanging for a few seconds because he deserved it.

“Just you, dork,” he finally agreed. “Now go to sleep. Lisa’s takin’ me to somethin’ called a Babies R Us tomorrow and it sounds like one of the circles of hell.”

“You want me to go with you?”

“Alphas aren’t allowed in the store, just omegas and betas. There’s a waiting area where you can buy one of your fancy coffees and then carry all my shit to the car.”

“Wouldn’t it be Elliott’s shit?”

“I’m sure they’ve got some throw pillows and fuzzy blankets in there somewhere.” Sam laughed softly, nipping at Dean’s earlobe and getting a sharp inhale in response. “Nope, we are not messing up Benny and Lisa’s sheets. I’ll never live it down.”

That got a real laugh out of the alpha, who gave his omega one more kiss before pressing in close and closing his eyes.

The dream about John did not return.

But the man with the beard and black suit haunted him all night.


	42. A Lifetime of Therapy Bills Ahead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean and Lisa and a Babies R Us.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have embellished Babies R Us just a little.
> 
> But only a just little.

Babies R Us was a big-ass store. A big-ass intimidating store, almost the size of an anchor store in a mall, and all of it filled with stuff _just_ for babies. There was a boy clothing section, a girl clothing section, a unisex clothing section, a furniture section, a toy section, a feeding section, an accessory section, a whole aisle just for pacifiers, another for diaper bags, and a third for baby carriers. Car seats alone took up two aisles, as did strollers, and then there was the aisle of diapers, diaper creams, and other pharmaceutical-type things including bulbs to suction mucus out of noses, rectal and forehead thermometers, baby toenail clippers, and so forth. It did not seem possible that a tiny little person could possibly need all of this to survive, but clearly someone thought so or Babies R Us would not exist.

At least Dean wasn’t alone in thinking the store was a bit much. Sam had frozen too when they parked the car behind Benny and Lisa’s Lexus LX, staring at the store slack-jawed as the Lafittes climbed out in a practiced routine, Benny collecting Ben as he sprang out of his booster seat while Lisa got Lizzie out of her car seat and into a stretchy baby wrap she’d put on under her coat before leaving the house. The good thing was alphas weren’t allowed in the store so Dean wouldn’t have any weird or dangerous scents to spook him. The bad thing was there was _so much store_.

The store had parking specifically for carrying omegas and betas, or oms and betas with newborns, so they were at least able to get a spot right up near the doors, which was where Lisa was headed at a fast clip through the light snowfall while Benny came over to the Lincoln to collect Sam and Dean. He straight-up laughed at the apprehension on both of their faces, assuring Dean it was as ridiculous a store as it looked from the outside, but the good news was Benny and Sam were going to head to an arcade farther down the shopping plaza to hang out with Ben. Dean’s scowl conveyed just how little comfort that “good news” was, getting another huge laugh out of the alpha. Sam was definitely starting to see why Dean liked the guy so much.

The two alphas did have to stop in at the front of the store before they got to run off to play Pacman and Mortal Kombat until Lisa and Dean texted they were done, and it was clear just at a glance through the glass panels and inner doors leading to the store proper that the place was excessive. Lisa walked Sam through the process to set Dean up with a prepaid card at the kiosk in the lobby area that would allow him to buy whatever he wanted without Sam needing to be present, and Dean, Lisa, and Benny all choked a little when Sam misinterpreted Lisa’s recommendation that he put “five” on the card as “thousand” rather than “hundred.” Sam blushed deeply, suggesting he could lower it if that was appropriate, but Lisa simply said, “Hell no,” snatched the card, and dragged Dean through the glass doors as he threw Sam a somewhat panicked look. The alpha’s protective instinct was to rush in after the omega, but the security guards at the door quickly dissuaded him from doing so. Benny clapped a meaty hand on his shoulder and said, “He’ll be fine. First time’s the worst. And Lisa’s got the layout committed to memory.”

“Come _on_ Dad!” Ben demanded, yanking on Benny’s hand.

“Calm down Ben, we’re goin’,” Benny told him, adding, “You’re scarin’ Sam,” with a wink to the younger man.

Sam was definitely not the one who was scared. That honor fell squarely under Dean’s umbrella as he stared around the store in utter horror, unsure where to even start. He followed Lisa blindly to an area where they set carrying omegas and betas up with a registry, even though Dean clearly wasn’t going to need a registry or a baby shower or, well, _anything_ since Sam could probably buy the entire store if he wanted to. Still, one of the lists they provided to browsers to walk around deciding what they needed would prove very helpful with all the merchandise to peruse.

“The first thing you need to know is that about eighty percent of the stuff in this store is stuff you don’t need,” Lisa said to Dean’s great relief, since he was looking at the five page list broken out into various sections and feeling like he might throw up. “Though you might not want to mention that to Sam if there’s something in here you’d really like that isn’t technically necessary, like wipe warmers. No one on the planet needs a wipe warmer or a pee-pee teepee.”

“What’s a...a pee-pee teepee?” Dean asked, quite sure he didn’t want the answer.

“You remember the first time you watched Ben and got sprayed when you changed his diaper?” Obviously he remembered that. It was hard to forget a kid peeing in your face. “Pee-pee teepees go over the little boy bits so that doesn’t happen.”

“Oh,” Dean mused, not entirely sure he would put that in the “not needed” category.

“The second thing you need to know is that every time you walk into this store somebody’s going to offer an opinion you didn’t ask for,” she continued. “Make sure you don’t take it personally.”

They were in the first aisle - diaper bags - and as if to prove Lisa’s point a heavily pregnant beta with a cart and a little boy strapped into the cart seat scowled over at them before saying, “Excuse me, but that baby looks a little young for a wrap carrier.”

“Thanks,” Lisa replied dismissively before turning back to Dean. “I don’t know if…”

“Babies have _suffocated_ in those, you know,” the woman insisted snidely before turning to Dean. “I _hope_ you’re not planning to use one of those, because babies have _suffocated_ in them.”

“We’re not deaf,” Lisa said with a tight smile, eliciting a huff from the woman before she pulled him to the next aisle, which contained various teat pumps, milk storage equipment, and nipple creams. “So I don’t know if you’re planning to teat feed…”

“No.” Dean didn’t even hesitate. “No, I...no.”

“Teat feeding is superior to bottle feeding, you know,” the Nosy Nelly piped up immediately.  Clearly she had nothing better to do with her time, because she’d followed them from the diaper bag aisle. She gave Dean a pointed look. “You really should reconsider.”

“And you really should shut up,” Lisa snapped before attempting for a third time to ignore her. “There are a couple styles of bottles I can recommend, I had a terrible case of mastitis with Ben and got an emergency temporary prescription.”

“What’s mastitis?” Dean asked, knowing anything that ended in “itis” was typically not a good thing.

“Something you’re not going to have to worry about,” she replied.

“Did you try cabbage leaves?”

Another beta with a baby in a carrier taking up the seat in the cart had stopped at the end of the aisle, apparently feeling it was going to take more than one sensible person to make these silly omegas understand basic English. Lisa grabbed Dean’s hand, saying, “Yeah, we’ll come back to bottles later,” and pulled him from the aisle.

“Cabbage leaves work miracles for mastitis,” the first beta said. “You really should have tried them if you didn’t instead of turning to _formula_.”

“I just don’t understand why anyone would feed a baby formula,” the second beta chimed in, speaking to the first beta but obviously saying it for Dean and Lisa’s benefit. “It’s basically poison.”

“The fuck, lady?” Dean snapped. “How the hell is this any of your business?”

Beta number one gasped at his outburst and hurried away with her cart and her kid as beta number two informed him with narrowed eyes, “It’s the responsibility of every citizen to ensure the least capable members of society are properly educated on child care and are prepared to put what’s best for the pup ahead of their own selfishness.” She laid a hand on Dean’s forearm, ignoring the dark look that crossed his face. “I understand as a male it probably seems strange to you, but it’s perfectly natural. Studies have even shown that bottle fed pups don’t form proper bonds with their parents.”

“Well that must suck for all the alphas who claim pups every year and don’t have any other choice but to use formula,” Lisa hissed, causing the beta to look her up and down like she was something the woman had stepped in.

“They’re just doing what’s necessary,” the beta said. “Any omega irresponsible enough to find themselves carrying without being claimed first _clearly_ doesn’t have the capacity to care for a child. They can’t even care for themselves!”

“Jesus.” The beta either didn’t notice how offended the two omegas were or she simply didn’t care. Dean would have bet money it was the latter given the sneer on her face when she was talking about alphas stealing pups from their mothers. He felt the flush rising to his cheeks as he began to shake, and focused on his breathing as he balled his hands into fists. “I’m gonna hit the bathroom, Lis. Hopefully I’m smart enough to figure out how my fly works.”

“I’ll meet you by the cribs,” Lisa told him, sparing only a few seconds to glare at the beta before stalking away.

The store only had a women’s room and a single seater handicapped bathroom, because male omegas apparently didn’t exist in Indiana, but at least it meant he got to have privacy while he splashed water on his face and attempted to slow down his breathing and racing heart. Some of the panic from the encounter with Samuel that he’d managed to push back from the forefront of his mind had been stirred up by the talk of alphas taking pups, and he ignored his omega’s insistence that he call Sam to come get him so he could curl up against his chest and be hidden away from the world. The last thing he was expecting as he tried to still the shaking in his hands was to raise his eyes to the mirror and see a man with a neatly trimmed beard in a well tailored black suit and overcoat standing behind him.

“Hester Pryne as I live and breathe,” the man said in a clipped British accent as Dean whirled around against the counter, reaching for the knife in his boot. “Honestly? Can’t we skip the part where you threaten me and I pretend to cower in fear before throwing you into a wall? It’s all become so... expected.”

“What are you?” Dean demanded, keeping the silver blade at his side just in case, but somehow knowing it was useless against the thing on the other side of the bathroom.

“‘What,’ not ‘who?’ I'm impressed. So you’re not just a pretty face. Can’t you tell by my scent?” He had closed the distance between them, and though he was quite a bit shorter than the omega, Dean still felt the threat of him as he stared up with a slimy grin. After regarding Dean for a moment he snapped his fingers and said, “That’s right. Wore my scent blockers today for that meeting with the Senator from New York. They’re illegal if you’re not an omega, of course, outside of certain professions, but so is what the Senator wanted. Just a sec.” He moved to the paper towel dispenser and tore off a single sheet, then went back to the sink. He leaned around Dean, trapping him where he stood, and wet the towel before pumping out some soap onto it. His grin receded slightly as he stared up at the omega, then he took two steps backwards and scrubbed his neck up to his ear. The room was instantly flooded with the smell of sulfur so strong Dean came dangerously close to being sick. “Name’s Crowley. I’m a friend of your dad’s.”

“Somehow I doubt that,” Dean snapped as he tried to estimate the distance to the door and whether he could make it at least to the hall or if there were some way he could send a text message to Sam without the demon knowing. Though even if he could get a hold of Sam they wouldn’t let him in the store.

“You’ve got me there, squirrel.” Crowley smiled again, though this one was more amused and less of a veiled threat. “We’re more like Eisenhower and MacArthur, but our tender feelings for each other are not why I’m here.”

“Then why?”

“Your big strong alpha has started showing some disturbing tendencies towards embracing the dark side, am I right?” The way Dean blanched was the only confirmation Crowley needed. “It’s to be expected, really. We do have cookies.”

“Sam’s had a couple of dreams,” Dean hedged, which drew a chuckle from the smaller man.

“If a couple of dreams include sending a demon down into the deepest, darkest recesses of Hell with his mind, then sure - he’s had a couple of dreams.” He straightened the cuffs of his shirt, wishing he’d come here with a bottle of Craig. “Oh don’t worry. His secret is safe with me. I despise Ruby. The longer it takes her to crawl out the better.”

“I’m guessing you have a point you wanna make? Or are you here to kill me?”

“Perish the thought. Were I going to do anything of that nature I’d be much more dramatic about it. Flay the skin from your bones among the nappies, for instance.”

Dean wasn’t quite sure what “nappies” were, but he certainly wasn’t interested in being flayed this morning. He also didn’t want to risk anything happening to Lisa and thought he should probably be as accommodating as possible, as long as the demon didn’t want him to burn off his still-healing tattoo so he could take the omega for a spin.

“So what is it then?” he asked. “You trying to warn me away from Anakin before he massacres the younglings?”

“Referencing the _prequels_?” Crowley looked genuinely shocked. “I thought you were the Winchester with a taste for the cinema.”

“Yeah, well, once I saw _The Phantom Menace_ I felt obligated to see them through.” He held the demon’s eyes, not wanting to press the point but needing to. “Am I in the ballpark?”

“Vaguely,” Crowley said. “Azazel has quite a few children like Sam, though none are _quite_ like Sam.”

“Meaning?”

“He’s the only one strong enough among them. The only one who can open the gate.”

“What gate?”

“The one that leads to Hell.” Crowley looked irritated that Dean had failed to piece it together on his own. “I’d have thought my presence here would make it obvious that we’re dealing with Hell.”

“Azazel wants to open the gateway to Hell, and what, unleash demon-kind on the planet?” Dean asked, half-laughing at how ridiculous that sounded.

“Give the boy a prize.”

While Dean knew demons couldn’t actually be trusted, Crowley didn’t look even slightly like someone who was kidding. Which meant that Azazel’s plans for Sam went way past precognition and telekinesis. This felt like something that was significantly above his pay grade, and even if it wasn’t how in the fuck was he supposed to handle keeping the gateway to Hell closed when he was having a baby in three months?

“So, what?” he said after he’d had a moment to process this frankly earth-shattering news. “You’re giving me a head’s up out of the goodness of your heart?”

“Good god, no,” Crowley scoffed. “I’m just in sales. My boss has a vested interest in keeping the gateway closed and you seem the best Plan B now that Ruby’s efforts to beat me to the punch have failed spectacularly.”

“What are you talking about?”

“She jump-started Marvel Girl’s powers. That first dream about Meg gutting your baby bro in the hospital was sent by Azazel, but after the incident at your local watering hole your big strong moose man is officially turned on. And not in the way that involves naughty bits.”

“And that means what, exactly?”

“It means big daddy’s going to have a lot more influence over him,” Crowley said. “It means at some point you may have to decide whether or not to stop him, in the permanent sense.” Dean felt he should probably grab hold of the sink for support, but didn’t dare make a move revealing such obvious weakness. “Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.”

“You’re telling me I may have to kill Sam?” Dean asked quietly.

“That’s the gist, Clytemnestra,” Crowley replied. “The choice, of course, will be yours, but it is one you’ll have to eventually make. Presuming your father is unable to handle Azazel beforehand.”

“Sam had a dream about Dad last night,” Dean said. “He was doing something stupid.”

“That lines up with what I know of John.” Crowley was surprised when the statement drew a chuckle from the omega, and even more surprised at how drawn he was to the man before him when he smiled. Strange. It was almost as if he were _feeling_ something. He couldn’t be sure, of course. He hadn’t felt anything in centuries. “It is actually quite important to my boss that the gate stays closed,” he explained, allowing Dean additional time to absorb everything. “Hell runs on souls, after all, and demons walking the earth is likely to drive a good portion of the populace to seek out salvation in whatever form they can find it. Fewer sinners means fewer souls. And we can’t have that.”

“So your interest in this has to do with numbers?”

“I did mention I was in sales,” Crowley said with a smile. “You’ll need to find a way to tell Sam all of this, of course. Or not, he did keep a sizable secret from you, after all. You’re welcome, by the way.”

“For what?”

“No one’s told you the unfortunate fate of the three Musketeers?” The smile turned into a laugh. “Wonder why he hasn’t mentioned it? Although I suppose ‘your rapists have been literally turned inside out’ isn’t the sort of thing you mention at brunch.”

Dean would have thought hearing Mark, Christian, and Tyler had met some kind of terrible fate to bring him joy, or some sense of relief, but strangely it didn’t. All he felt upon hearing the news was cold and a little shaken. He exhaled slowly and asked, “Anything else you wanna tell me to ruin my day?”

“Children of your pup’s generation are going to think the Titanic was just a movie.”

He gave a snap of his fingers and was gone.

Dean sank back against the counter and eventually found himself sitting on the floor with his head between his knees, not sure whether it was more likely that he would pass out or lose his breakfast. Not that he’d thought being infected by demon blood would be as simple as having the flu, but learning that Sam was apparently part of some grand scheme to open up Hell itself was a bit more than he was expecting. How was he going to tell the alpha what he’d learned? Could he even trust what he’d learned was accurate? Crowley was a demon, after all, and demons were always telling half truths and playing angles. Even his claim that he was working with John was suspect, though it would explain why John had been so adamant about needing to go right back out after Azazel. If he had some kind of deal with Crowley he wouldn’t have a choice. Before he told Sam anything, he decided he should find out if what Crowley said about the Campbell cousins was true. If he hadn’t made that up, it was possible the rest of what he told Dean was true as well.

He found Lisa in the furniture aisle talking with a sales associate when he was finally able to pull himself together enough to leave the bathroom. She clearly knew something had happened by the look she gave him when he reappeared, though she didn’t press the issue after the small head shake he gave her when she asked if something was wrong. Between the two holier-than-thou betas and whatever happened afterwards it was pretty clear the shopping trip was a total bust, so Lisa called Benny and told him to come pick them up at the front of the store.

Ben was complaining that they hadn’t been at the arcade as long as his dad had promised when Dean and Lisa came out through the front doors into the vestibule to meet the six year old and the two alphas. Dean had snagged a bright yellow pillow that had “Happy” embroidered on the front, and was crushing it to his chest when they came out. The snow had picked up, as had the wind, so it was just as well that the shopping trip was cut short. The weather forecast was talking about five to ten inches overnight, which was unusual for the area and would probably bring most things to a standstill until the morning. Lisa plastered a smile on her face for her mate’s benefit and gave him a long enough kiss to elicit an “Ewww!” from Ben.

“Everything all right?” Benny asked, eyeing the pillow clutched between Dean’s hands.

“We ran into some beta moms,” Lisa told him. “You know how they are.”

“Beta moms?” Sam said, his eyes fixed on Dean, certain he didn’t look that pale because of a run-in with some betas.

“They figure they know everything,” Lisa explained. “And are always willing to give unsolicited advice. What are we thinking for lunch?”

“Pizza!” Ben insisted, yanking on Lisa’s hand as he jumped up and down.

“That okay with you guys?” The omega had turned her attention to Sam and Dean, who hadn’t appeared to hear anything she said. Dean had moved against Sam’s chest and was scenting him, while Sam had pressed his lips to Dean’s forehead and was running his fingers through Dean’s hair. She very much wanted to know what had gone on in the handicapped stall.

“Raimondo’s isn’t too far from here.” Benny had noticed the interaction as well and threw his mate a concerned look. “We could pick somethin’ up and meet you two back at our place. ‘Less you’d like to hit up a diner. There are some good ones nearby.”

“Pizza’s fine,” Dean breathed into Sam’s neck as the first beta from the store came through the double doors with a cart full of bags, bundling her little boy into his coat, scarf, and mittens.

“Excuse me.” Of _course_ she couldn’t just mind her own business and was pushing the cart over to the group. She fixed her eyes on Sam, saying, “You really shouldn’t let him bottle feed. It’s unnatural.”

“I...what?” the alpha asked.

“I know the latest progressive trends are towards giving omegas a little more control over their lives, like letting them finish high school, but this is your pup we’re talking about,” she said. “If you really cared you wouldn’t let him even consider anything other than teat feeding.”

“I... _what_?” Sam repeated, moving Dean behind him without even thinking about it.

“Beta moms,” Benny said tersely. He took a quick sniff of the air and stared at the woman with disdain. “‘Specially ones with an alpha mate. They think it makes ‘em better ‘n everyone else, like they beat out an om to land a big, strong knothead, when they’re really just a consolation prize for alphas who couldn’t beat the odds.”

The look the beta gave him was priceless, and Lisa burst out laughing and didn’t stop until the woman had stormed out into the snowy parking lot, pursing her lips like she was constipated. Benny cracked a smile, throwing an arm around his omega’s shoulders and pressing a kiss to her hair while grabbing his son’s hand.

“Moments like these are why I accepted your claim,” she said, giving his butt an affectionate swat before they headed out to pack their two kids back into the car.

Dean hadn’t moved from behind Sam, a tremendous amount of tension still bleeding into his scent. He made no effort to hide it, probably wouldn’t have been able to, and honestly didn’t have the presence of mind to care. He’d figure out a way to ask Sam about his cousins without it seeming strange, but beyond confirming that they were actually dead he needed some way to verify the other things Crowley had told him before he said anything about Azazel’s plan to Sam. No need having them both panicking about it when it might not even be true.

“Hey…” Sam was tugging at his right hand, trying to pry it away from the pillow. “Where are you? Cuz you’re not here with me.”

“Aisle three with the pacifiers,” Dean said after a moment, giving Sam the best winning smile he could muster. “I don’t know if you can imagine a whole aisle _just_ for pacifiers, but it’s as bad as it sounds.”

Sam laughed, all dimples, and was caught completely off guard by the anguished kiss Dean pressed to his mouth, grabbing hold of Sam’s coat collar and letting the pillow fall to the ground. The alpha all but dissolved into the omega, who he was unapologetically beginning to think of as his without correcting himself, his fingers finding Dean’s waist to pull him in closer, lips slanting and tongue trying to determine how thoroughly he’d brushed this morning and whether Sam could still taste any of the Western omelette Lisa made them for breakfast. They absolutely would have continued like that until one of them passed out from lack of oxygen, but the cashier at the card loading kiosk coughed pointedly and they broke apart.

“What was that for?” Sam gasped, his pupils so wide there was barely any hazel left. “Not that I’m complaining.”

“I’ve just got a thing for dorks.” He scooped the pillow up from the floor as he dug into his pocket for the prepaid card, holding it out to Sam. “Hopefully they sell stuff online, cuz I’m never coming back to this store.”

They followed Benny and Lisa to the locally owned pizza place and sat around entertaining Ben and Lizzie while the couple ordered enough food for everyone, Benny refusing to allow Sam to pay for it despite his offer. The snow was really coming down by the time the two cars returned to the cul de sac, and the pizza had cooled off enough for everyone to dig in as soon as Benny got paper plates on the table. Dean got himself out of the follow-up game of Uno by claiming he needed a nap, and after getting tucked in and kissed senseless by Sam he pulled out his cell phone to call Adam. The phone rang a couple of times before the younger Winchester picked up, sounding groggy.

“ _Hey, it’s my favorite brother_ ,” he said, clearing his throat.

“That would mean more if I weren’t your only brother,” Dean told him, getting a chuckle. “You okay?”

“ _Yeah, was just takin’ a nap. What’s up_? _How’s Indiana_?”

“Snowy. So uh...that roommate you had back at school - Wayne?”

Adam chuckled at the old joke between them.

“ _Garth._ ”

“Right, Garth. He still tryin’ to play Bobby Jr. as far as you know?”

“ _Last time I talked to him. Why, you need help with researching somethin’ that you don’t want Bobby to know about_?”

“Kinda.”

“ _Sam know you’re researching somethin’_?”

“Just cuz we’re havin’ a kid together doesn’t mean I need his permission for everything.” That came out a lot more bitter than he’d meant it to and he sighed. “It’s about Sam. And his psychic thing. I don’t wanna ask Bobby because…”

“ _It’s worse than just the psychic thing and Bobby might not want Sam under his roof if he knew_?”

“Yeah.”

“ _You’re not giving Bobby enough credit_.”

Dean felt sufficiently chastised by his younger brother, not only because he didn’t think Bobby would kick Sam out for a second, but because he was flat out lying to Adam; and lying ran antithetical to every fiber of Dean’s being. He didn’t actually want to involve either Bobby _or_ Adam in this in case it sent up some kind of alert to Azazel, and though he didn’t exactly want to sacrifice Garth in his quest to learn which parts of Crowley’s intel were real and which weren’t, Garth was very much in the outer perimeter of the Winchester’s orbit. He was far less likely to draw negative attention his way if he started digging. Dean wouldn’t even be asking Adam for Garth’s number if there were another way to find him without Sam picking up on it.

This was also just the whitest of lies he was probably going to have to tell while untangling this. He’d already had a chance to talk to Sam about it in the car on the way back to Benny’s when he asked what exactly happened in the store that had left Dean so shaken, and instead of coming clean had gone the “withholding information” route. His stomach had been so twisted into knots at the hypocrisy that he’d barely been able to eat any lunch. Sam was probably going to start thinking he was sick between his lack of appetite and the claim to need a nap, which was just another lie piled on top of the one he’d already told. Christ this thing was already a mess, and he’d only known about the plan to open Hell’s gate for a couple of hours.

“I just...I want to keep this as much under wraps as possible,” he told his brother at last. “Bobby knows a lot of hunters. I don’t want anyone accidentally catching wind of this. There are a lot of loose cannons out there, and if they think there’s something wrong with Sam they might think...”

He was trying really hard not to think what Azazel’s plans meant for Elliott, and figured if he didn’t say it out loud he could pretend it just didn’t exist. He’d gotten really good at ignoring things that would otherwise leave him in a puddle on the floor these last few weeks with Sam, but Adam knew what he’d left unsaid.

“ _They might start to think about the baby_.”

“Yeah.”

“ _I’ll shoot you Garth’s information and let him know you’ll be calling._ ”

“Thanks, Runt.”

“ _And you should rethink keeping this from Sam._ ”

“I’m not…”

“ _Don’t lie to a liar, Dean. Trust me, I’m speaking from experience. Lies ruin everything_.”

Elliott felt the need to interject with a couple of roundhouse kicks straight into Dean’s ribs, making it clear how he or she felt about Mommy keeping things from Daddy. He knew Adam was right of course, having been on the other end of a Very Big Lie, but that still didn’t convince him to tell Sam about this until he was sure there was actually something to tell. He sighed heavily, feeling a headache coming on from the stress, and really was going to need a nap after this. At the very least he needed a change of topic, and asked, “How’re you feelin’ these days?”

“ _Tired. Sore. Had a check up yesterday afternoon. Things are still healing like they should_.”

“That’s good.”

“ _You talk to Dad at all_?”

“I’ve left him a couple of messages the last few weeks. Haven’t heard anything back. He’s finally changed his outgoing message, though. Told people to call Sam instead of me if it’s an emergency.”

“ _Sam’s been taking cases_?”

“Sam’s been ignoring cases. His phone’s gone off a couple of times but he never picks up. Makes me wonder who his message says to call.”

“ _At least he has his priorities straight_.” Dean laughed at that, noting how hollow it sounded, and tried to massage the pain in his forehead away. The idea that Sam should just let people die so he could babysit Dean and all his problems was far less comforting than it should have been. “ _It’ll be okay Dean_.”

“How? How could it possibly be okay?”

“ _Damned if I know. That’s just what you tell people when everything’s fucked_.”

Dean laughed again, with a little genuine humor at the idea of his brother finally becoming Mr. Honesty, and after a couple more minutes of small talk about Adam’s health and Bobby’s bad knee acting up they said their goodbyes. Dean laid down and was still trying to actually take a legitimate nap when Sam came back in, trying to open the door without it squeaking and peering over the blankets at the omega huddled up on his side.

“Still sleeping?” he asked softly, coming to sit on the edge of the bed when he saw Dean shake his head in the negative. “You feeling okay?”

“Got a headache,” Dean replied, glad he could at least answer something honestly, though it sure didn’t help with the guilt when Sam leaned over to rub his temples.

“The baby store really took a toll on you, huh?” the alpha said, pulling Dean a little closer and more into his lap.

“Yeah.” He enjoyed the feel of Sam’s fingers massaging away the headache for a bit, before clearing his throat and adding, “One of the...uh...the betas that we ran into said some stuff about unmated oms.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah…” God he hated lying, not only because it was wrong and it put people in danger but because he sucked at it, though at least he could ground his next thought in the truth of the really awful second woman who drove him to the bathroom. “Started me thinking about your family. You don’t think...you don’t think your granddad would contact Mark or Christian…”

“No,” Sam said instantly, his body going stiff. Dean could smell how hard he was trying to push away the rage, but it was no use, not with the way Sam felt about his cousins. “No, they’re...something killed them a couple of months ago.”

Dean felt very cold and suppressed a shiver and the dread he was feeling, instead running a tentative hand along Sam’s leg.

“Really? You never mentioned…”

“Well it…” Sam blushed, probably feeling that he was going to get threatened with another lamp or maybe a shoe, but Dean forced himself to be calm so Sam wouldn’t scent his underlying fear. “It hasn’t...I didn’t want to dredge anything up until you asked…”

“No, it’s okay Sammy.” Dean raised himself up on his elbows and gave the alpha a weak smile. “It’s not...it’s okay.” He scooted himself over so he could properly lay his head in Sam’s lap and get his temples rubbed again, even though at this point nothing was going to stop his head from pounding. “What happened to them?”

“I don’t...really know,” Sam said, tangling his fingers in Dean’s hair, which was already starting to get long again. “From what Samuel said, something turned them inside out.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning, and I quote, everything that should have been on the inside was on the outside.” Dean shivered and felt Sam’s arm close around his shoulders, giving him a strong squeeze. “You don’t have to worry about them.”

“Okay,” Dean said quietly, reaching up to twine Sam’s fingers in his. He hoped to god the alpha interpreted his shaking as some sort of post traumatic stress symptom, and he hoped to god he could get it under control before dinner. It simply wouldn’t do for him not to be able to get food into his mouth because he was trembling so terribly at the thought his baby’s father was at the top of Azazel’s list for basically unleashing Armageddon on the world.


	43. I Just Wanted to Make Sure You're Okay

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some nice couples time with the Lafittes.

If one good thing came out of the trip to the Babies R Us, it was that Benny and Sam had bonded over a shared love of classic arcade games. They played Pictionary after dinner once Ben and Lizzie were put to bed, and for the first round Benny and Sam teamed up on purpose without hesitation. They also smoked Lisa and Dean. Apparently Sam was a very good artist, something the omega had never known about him, and his efforts to draw out the clues were surprisingly realistic and spot on. Benny and Dean teamed up next, which Lisa insisted wasn’t fair since they could practically communicate telepathically, but she and Sam held their own and only lost by one clue. It was truly unfair when Benny and Lisa teamed up against Sam and Dean. They barely had to draw a line on the page and the other seemed able to guess what the clue was, which Lisa assured them happened when you’d been together since the beginning of time.

That first full day they were there Ben’s school had had teacher conferences so he’d been home, but the second day things were back to normal, with the six year old whining about getting up, inhaling breakfast and eventually missing the bus so Lisa had to drive him in. Benny had a jobsite he needed to check on, taking Sam along to see his business and snarking to Dean that he was going to reveal all of the omega’s deepest, darkest secrets, which left Dean alone with Lizzie for a little while and gave him a chance to call Garth. The beta answered with the typical homespun Gomer Pyle attitude he’d possessed as a kid, which had always given Dean a chuckle. Garth may have been a little weird, but he was a good egg.

“ _Dean_!” he said, and the omega could feel his smile. “ _Adam said you’d be callin’. How are ya man_? _How’re Sam and the baby_? _Not that you_ **_have_ ** _a baby yet. I was just wonderin’ how the pregnancy’s goin’_? _My understandin’ is it’s a real bitch for male oms. No offense._ ”

“Uh...none taken.” Dean’s mouth felt very dry at the immediate flood of questions from the beta, who seemed to know everything about his life. “How did you…”

“ _Oh, ran into Gwen Campbell a couple of weeks ago on a case. She mentioned her granddad was real pissed off about you and Sam bein’ a thing and bringin’ the next generation into the world._ ”

At the mention of one of the Campbell cousins Dean felt like he might be sick. Even if it was the one female alpha in the family, she was still an alpha. He thought he’d better sit down for the rest of the conversation in case there were any Double Whammies coming his way.

“Is that so?” he asked.

“ _Yeah_ ,” Garth said, oblivious to Dean’s distress, so it must not have leaked into his voice. “ _She wasn’t happy about it, either. I mean, about Samuel bein’ so pissy. She didn’t see what the big deal was. Guess she always thought you were okay back at school_.”

“Oh. That’s nice.”

“ _She’s a great gal._ ”

“If you say so. Anyway Garth, I wanted to talk to you about a...uh...a Prince of Hell. You ever hear of those?’

“ _A Prince of Hell_? _Course I’ve heard of ‘em, Dean. They were the first four demons Lucifer created. Well, after he created Lilith_.”

“Who’s Lilith?”

“ _One big, badass saleswoman. Runs the crossroads and oversees all the crossroads demons. Her main goal is to get as many dumbasses as possible to sell their souls downstairs. They’re worth more than the folks who just stumble down on roads paved with good intentions._ ”

“Worth more?” Wow, Garth knew a ridiculous amount about demons right off the top of his head. Lilith must be the boss Crowley had mentioned. Dean was glad he had Adam hook him up. “What does that mean?”

“ _Souls are power, Dean. You got a soul that’s just a little crispy ‘round the edges cuz of gettin’ high and runnin’ someone down, it’s not gonna be as powerful as a soul that’s burned all black cuz it was sold straight to Hell_. _The more burned black souls you have, the more powerful the place is_.”

That made a ridiculous amount of sense, lining up with the bearded demon’s explanation of why Azazel’s plan was not a good one to keep Hell juiced up. He should probably be concerned about how Garth had come by all this knowledge, or if he was even talking to Garth, but Lisa was going to be back soon from dropping Ben off and he needed as much information as he could get in as short an amount of time possible.

“So, you’ve got Lilith and then you’ve got these Princes of Hell,” he said. “And these are the big guns downstairs, right?”

“ _Right_.”

“What would happen if one of these...let’s say, if a Prince of Hell started tinkering around with people.”

“ _Tinkering_? _What do you mean by that_?”

“Well, let’s just say...adding a little demon blood to them when they were a baby. What do you think they’d want once the kid grew up?”

There was a very long pause on the other end of the phone, and then Garth said, dead serious, “ _Dean, do_ **_not_ ** _sell your baby to a demon. I don’t care_ **_what_ ** _they’ve offered you_.”

“It’s not…” Garth could be such a moron sometimes. Though for this conversation that was a good thing. “I have no intention of selling my baby to a demon, Garth. Give me a little credit.”

“ _Thank god_!” Garth sounded far too relieved. Dean got a little stuck on Garth thinking he’d do demon deals where Elliott was on the table, but the beta pressed on. “ _Someone like that, there’s no tellin’ the kind of powers it could unleash. Premonitions, superhuman strength, telekinesis, mind control - not to mention withstanding the opening of the Devil’s Gate. It would be a real -_ ”

“Wait, back up. What the hell’s the Devil’s Gate?”

“ _Well, what the Hell, literally. It’s supposedly a gateway that leads directly to Hell. Demons can’t open it, though. They need a helper on the other side._ ”

Dean’s stomach did a really uncomfortable flip, and he had to swallow down breakfast a second time.

“And if someone...if a person had demon blood in them...they’d qualify as a helper?”

“ _Well, sure. Demon blood would make them more susceptible to anger, lies, manipulation, an overinflated sense of self - and it would be easier for demons to trick them. They’d be kinda the perfect patsy to convince they were doing the right thing by opening the gate. But this is all hypothetical, Dean. As far as I’ve ever known the Devil’s Gate is a myth. Like the Fountain of Youth or El Dorado_.”

“But if it…” Jesus he didn’t want to ask this question. “If it _did_ exist, do you think you could find it?”

“ _Why_? _You know someone with demon blood in ‘em and you think they’re gonna wanna open the gate_?” He laughed for quite some time, until he realized that Dean wasn’t laughing. “ _Holy shit. You know someone with demon blood in ‘em and you think they’re gonna wanna open the gate_.”

“No I don’t...I don’t think that.” Dean was up off the couch as Lizzie started to fuss in the bouncer, picking her up in one arm and walking her around to jostle her. “This person...I don’t think they’re capable of goin’ darkside like that. They’re not exactly Darth Maul.”

“ _I_ **_knew_ ** _you’d watch the prequels_! _Adam owes me ten dollars_!”

“But I am concerned that they could be tricked,” Dean told him, trying to keep the conversation on track. “Like you just said, that the demon blood could make ‘em...impressionable. For instance, if one of these Princes, like Azazel…”

“ _Ooo. He’s the big brother_. _Azazel, Ramiel, Dagon, and Asmodeus are the four. If you’re thinkin’ you’re gonna have to go up against one of ‘em, you better pray for Asmodeus. The lore all says he’s a dick but pretty pathetic as far as Big Bads go._ ”

“ _Anyway_. Azazel. Like if he were tryin’ to get someone to open this gate for him, what could a person do to stop him?”

“ _Not much. There’s a gun that’s rumored to be able to kill almost anything, including a Prince of Hell, but I don’t think it exists._ ”

“Okay, magic gun that isn’t real. Anything else?”

“ _There’s the Book of the Damned. I know that’s real, but it’s been lost for about sixty years now_.”

A nonexistent magic gun and a lost book did not sound very helpful to Dean in preventing Azazel from turning Sam into an evil pawn.

“What else do you know about Azazel that could stop him? Hypothetically speaking?”

“ _He’s a real bastard, full of himself. Doesn’t like to play by the rules. The lore says that Lilith hates him. You want me to put my ears to the ground_? _See what I can find out for ya_?”

“Yeah, that would be great. Just...just be careful, Garth. Be real careful.”

“ _Careful is my middle name. I’ll let you know when I have somethin’_.”

“Okay. Thanks Garth.”

“ _Anytime, Dean_.”

The call clicked off just as Dean got Lizzie to sleep. Shit, this was not good. The confirmation that there was a gateway to Hell and that a demon would need a helper to open it brought his headache from the day before back, and now he really wasn’t sure what he was going to do. A part of him wanted to talk to Crowley again. Sure he was a demon, a crossroads demon by all of his talk of being in sales, but as far as demons went he seemed pretty benign. Of course that may have been because of the British accent making him sound more reasonable, he wasn’t entirely sure. He could believe the guy was in sales, as smooth and nonchalant as he’d been in the bathroom. Dean definitely didn’t automatically hate the guy the way he’d hated Ruby, which was probably one of his hooks. Although maybe he would have if he’d met Crowley at a diner while he was eating Sam’s bacon.

The thought of Ruby turned his already sour stomach until he really thought he might throw up, which would be a step in the wrong direction since he had decided he wasn’t going to be doing that anymore. He’d spent so much time with his face in a toilet the first couple of months of his pregnancy and figuring out what happened to him in Shreveport that he thought he must be good on vomiting for the rest of his life. He certainly didn’t want to start up again now over that bitch. Still, Sam had just sent her back somewhere, not killed her, and she was inevitably going to crawl back out and come after them again. Once Garth had dug up some information on Azazel maybe he’d see what he could find out about her.

Lisa was back shortly after he ended his conversation with the beta, giving Dean a sappy smile as she watched Lizzie sleeping in the crook of his arm. She made them some tea, assuring the man that a tiny bit of caffeine wasn’t going to hurt Elliott, so that they could chat about Sam, and how things were going, and why Dean didn’t have a claim mark yet. They talked a little bit about the rape, a lot about the lying, and how Sam and Adam had been so terribly wrong not to tell him, but that he’d come to realize that didn’t mean they weren’t right. He hadn’t been dealing with things very well at all until recently, and if he didn’t have Elliott taking up space in his abdominal cavity he probably would have been spending a lot of time at a lot of bars. He mentioned Jody, and how she’d been trying to get him to come to group therapy but that would seem to him like giving up. After digging a little into why he felt that way, and how he didn’t want to feel like he was weak, she pointed out how big of a hypocrite he was for complaining about how omegas were treated like second class citizens when he, himself, thought accepting he needed help would make him look like a weak little om. He needed to stop thinking being an omega made him less of a man somehow, and that he had to put on such a huge show of being as big and as bad as any alpha instead of just being his unabashed, throw-pillow-loving self, because there was nothing wrong with him as he was. Besides, he was already big and bad, _because_ of his designation, not in spite of it. She also said that Sam seemed to be a really great guy, who had made some terrible mistakes, and who, from what she could tell, was trying very hard to step up to the plate at a very young age. When Dean pointed out Sam was the age she was when she and Benny had Ben, she replied with a Cheshire Cat grin, “That’s how I know he’s very young for all of this.”

Benny and Sam were home for lunch, the job Benny’s company was on being just around the corner, and she saddled Sam with the baby the minute he walked in, shoving a giggling Lizzie into his arms and declaring, “Practice,” while she went to make sandwiches. The terror on the alpha’s face at being left in charge of an infant had Dean in stitches, and his amusement only mounted when Lizzie scrunched up her face and the room filled with the smell of fresh baby poop ( _lots and lots of fresh baby poop_ ) and Sam looked at Benny, panicked.

“Chere, Sam needs a diaper changin’ lesson,” Benny called into the kitchen, giving Dean a swat on the knee to get him moving in that direction. “We can finish the food.”

“You’re trading me sandwiches for diaper duty?” she said with a raised eyebrow as her mate and his best friend appeared. “How thoughtful of you.”

“Just makin’ sure you feel how much I love you every day,” Benny told her, getting a squeeze on the butt as she went past towards the living room. He grabbed the mayo and mustard from where she’d left them on the counter, slathering up the bread for the final sandwich she hadn’t gotten to yet. “Mated bliss, man. I’m tellin’ you, best thing in the world.”

“You say that like it’s the first time you’ve mentioned it,” Dean said with a smile, and Benny regarded him fondly.

“First time I’ve mentioned it that it looks like you might listen,” he replied. “Between Elliott and Sam, it seems like where you’re headed next anyway.”

“I should agree to mate someone just because there doesn’t appear to be another option?” Dean asked.

“Naw, you should agree to mate someone cuz you’re crazy about him an’ he’s crazy about you an’ he’d pull down the sun if that’s what you wanted.” He piled up the ham and cheese on top of the lettuce and tomato he’d already layered, laying the top slice of sourdough down and cutting it crosswise. “Course, I _am_ an alpha so I’m a bit biased to our cause.”

Dean huffed out a laugh, sitting on one of the stools at the center island.

“I see how it is,” he said with a smile. “You spend a couple hours bonding over power tools and he’s your new best friend.”

“He was mighty impressed with my air compressor,” Benny told him flatly, getting a true belly laugh out of the omega. “I’m just tellin’ you to think about it, Dean. I know how you are - ‘I don’t need an alpha, I’m strong enough on my own, no one’s gonna keep me in a kitchen…’”

“Well I don’t, and I am, and they’re not,” Dean insisted, taking the plate Benny held out for him.

“I know that, Dean,” Benny said gently. “So does Sam. Hell, so does anyone who _really_ knows you, ‘cept maybe your dad, but dads get funny about their kids. Believe me on that. You really think Sam’s the type who’s gonna want to keep you barefoot and pregnant?”

“I don’t...I don’t know what type Sam is,” Dean told him softly.

“Don’t you?” The alpha stood next to him, back leaned against the counter, and tipped Dean’s chin up to look at the purple splotches starting to fade from his neck. “Seems like the omega in you has decided you do.”

“It isn’t that simple, Benny.”

“Why not? Cuz he kept what happened from you for so long?”

“Not just that.”

“Look, I don’t know Sam, practically at all, but I know you, and I gotta tell you man…” He let out a long sigh, running a hand over his face. “It ain’t right that he kept it from you, but if I’d’ve been there...I don’t know how I’d have told you.” The admission got the green eyes to turn up to his watery blue ones, and he smiled at Dean sadly. “I really don’t. Somethin’ like that happenin’ to you...I wouldn’t know how to work up to it.”

“So you’d have lied to me too?” Dean asked quietly, and Benny scoffed.

“ _Hell_ no,” he replied. “I’m not a moron. I just love ya.” He slung his arm around Dean’s neck, pulling him into his side. “It’s hard to know how to tell someone you love somethin’ that’s gonna hurt ‘em that bad. _Really_ hard if you _in_ love with someone. _Really, really_ hard if you’re an alpha and that someone is an omega, cuz everything in you wants you to ‘protect,’ and there don’t seem to be a way to reconcile ‘protecting’ and ‘hurting’ at the same time. That’s all I’m sayin’.”

Dean nodded, tipping his face up a little to scent the alpha before turning to the plate in his hand and taking a bite out of the sandwich. He held it up with an appreciative nod.

“It’s good,” he said a little thickly. “Lucky you got the 'happy housewife' omega model to cook for you.”

“Please,” Benny snorted, moving back to the counter to grab one of the other sandwiches. “You think I could keep that woman home if she didn’t want to be here? I hit the jackpot when she wasn’t interested in goin’ back to the yoga studio after Ben was born.”

“God, I forgot she was a yoga instructor back then.”

Benny gave him a wicked grin, taking a bite of food.

“Bendiest week of my life,” he said, getting a huge laugh out of the omega.

“Now the truth comes out about why you really wanted her as your mate,” Dean chuckled. “Good thing for you she said yes.”

“More like it’s a good thing she decided I was the one for her. Oms ain’t really happy unless they’re mated, so that was workin’ in my favor at least,” Benny stated seriously, getting an irritated scowl out of Dean as he chewed. Benny shrugged, taking another bite. “It’s the truth man. Hate to be the bearer of bad news. If it makes you feel better, alphas ain’t really happy without a mate either. I know you think life is a cakewalk for us, but I used to wish I was a beta a lot of the time before I met Lisa. They can come and go through relationships, or not have ‘em if they don’t really want a mate. Sure, they can have the whole ‘love of your life’ thing too, but it’s not necessary for them. It is for us.”

Dean mulled that over as Elliott pounded on him ( _god that kid kicked and punched a lot; they were going to be in big trouble if that kept up after she or he was born_ ), finishing the sandwich just before Sam’s scent filled the kitchen. He swung around on the stool, snorting at the traumatized look on the alpha’s face, Lisa appearing behind him and trying not to laugh. He sat at the counter opposite Dean as Benny slid him some food.

“I don’t know how something so small can put out so much of something so nasty,” Sam said simply, and for several minutes Dean was worried he’d have to perform the Heimlich on Benny when he choked on his sandwich.

Benny and Sam headed back to the jobsite once Sam had finished his lunch and Benny had finished choking, leaving Dean to help Lisa with the laundry and the housework, though he was promised he’d get to go out with Benny tomorrow once the two alphas had finished bonding over the correct way to tile a shower. Around three o’clock they went to pick Ben up from school and did some grocery shopping, Lisa showing Dean how to properly wear the baby wrap so he could carry Lizzie around the store. It was a good thing they didn’t wait for a later visit, since he was really going to be too big to effectively wrap in a few week’s time, and Lisa was absolutely intent on preparing him as much as possible for impending motherhood while she had him in her clutches.

Dinner consisted of the steak and potatoes that Dean had failed to prepare for Sam the first night he arrived in Sioux Falls, surprising the alpha with just how well he knew his way around a kitchen. Sam was getting another run at watching Lizzie while Benny and Lisa hung out on the couch relaxing together for a change, and fortunately there were no poop-splosions like the one that had occurred in the afternoon. Lizzie still preferred her mother or her father, of course, but she was starting to get used to the strange, large men she was getting passed off to so frequently. Even Ben came in to pull Sam away to play with him after a while, which made Dean smile. He was definitely getting accepted into the Lafitte family, and that was important if he was going to be in Dean’s life long-term.

Wednesday Benny took Dean to the jobsite with him and Sam as planned, drawing some surprised looks from his crew, most of whom were betas and apparently thought male omegas were the stuff of legend. Benny muttered something about how these guys obviously slept through biology class before he set Sam up with a nail gun and Dean up with a chop saw. The omega balked at being given a job to do that anyone walking off the street could handle, but was quickly reminded by both alphas that he was pregnant and lucky to be allowed on a site at all. The irritated pout on his face got him a quick peck from Sam and a promise for some snuggling later if he played his cards right. Dean remembered the promise, and that led to some good practice after everyone had gone to bed on how to get almost to third base without waking up sleeping kids, and though Sam had whined a bit about Dean’s reassertion that he was honestly not messing up Benny and Lisa’s guest bedroom he respected the omega’s wishes and made a quick trip to the bathroom before settling in for the night.

They’d been planning to leave Thursday morning, but Benny had to run to the job again, leaving Sam and Dean with Lisa and Lizzie and pushing their departure back to lunch time, which was when things went all to hell. Hindsight being twenty-twenty, Dean would beat himself up about it the rest of the day, knowing that he should have realized things were going too well the last few days for their trip not to go to shit; but he hadn’t expected Benny to come up behind him while he was julienning carrots for the salad they were making for lunch, saying, “Come on over here, Dean,” and to suddenly find himself transported back to the stairway in Shreveport, feeling Tyler’s hand on his neck and mouth near his ear while he was being led towards the basement. He spun on the alpha with the knife, nearly slicing Benny’s palm open, and found himself trapped against the kitchen island when he lunged at his friend. Benny pinned him to the counter by his neck, grabbing the wrist with the knife, while Lisa screamed for Sam, who was in the living room playing with Lizzie. Dean struggled mightily against Benny, who had to practically throw himself down across the omega’s back to keep him from getting free as Lisa was trying to get Dean to look at her and realize where he was. She tried to run her hand down his face to calm him but only elicited a terrible scream from him while Sam was running in with the baby to pass to Lisa.

“Dean!” he exclaimed, grabbing the wrist with the knife and carefully switching places with Benny, getting Dean up off the counter with an arm around his chest to pin his free hand to his side. “Let go of the knife!”

Lisa was hurrying from the kitchen with Lizzie while Dean was roaring at Sam, Benny prying at his fingers to get the knife out of his hand. Once it clattered to the floor he kicked it away beyond the island, caressing the omega’s face as both he and Sam flooded the room with relaxing pheromones. It still took a very long time for Sam and Benny to convince Dean of where he was so he would stop struggling, and the minute Sam let him go he stormed off to the guest bedroom, red faced and breathing hard, refusing to come back out for lunch. When he finally did come out at Benny and Lisa’s insistence that everyone was okay and they understood the outburst and they just wanted to make sure he was all right, Dean had all of their bags packed, and promptly began moving them to the car, muttering apologies and holding back tears until Benny finally grabbed him by the doorway and pulled him into a bone crushing hug.

“I don’t wanna hear another word about what happened in the kitchen,” he said fiercely. “You’re gonna come back with Sam and Elliott in six months and we’re gonna do some real couples-type shit - campin’ or somethin’, okay?”

“I hate camping,” Dean whispered, crying into the collar of Benny’s shirt.

“Me too,” Benny assured him. “So we’ll hate it together.”

Lisa came forward to hug him too, repeating Benny’s assertion that they were all going to see each other again soon, that things would be better, and Dean went to sit in the car while Sam got a hug from Lisa and a handshake from Benny, with instructions to “be good”. Sam promised to have Dean text when they got to Sioux Falls, beeping at the couple waving from the doorway as they headed off down the street. Dean seemed determined to stare silently out the passenger side, so Sam let him, lacing their fingers together and giving the omega a reassuring squeeze. There was no rush to talk about whatever had caused the incident with the knife, not when they had an eleven and a half hour drive to Bobby’s house. He was learning that Adam’s advice back in Windom to let Dean process without pushing was the best way to get him to open up, so that’s what he would do. Besides, Sam had to figure out how he felt about the potential to do couples-type shit with Benny and Lisa. He was pretty sure he felt great.


	44. Shower Sex is Complicated

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam and Dean head back to Sioux Falls.

Gordon Walker could easily have been the greatest hunter in the nation if it weren’t for Sam Campbell. He thought about that nearly every day, thought about how different his life would be if that spoiled little rich boy hadn’t gotten him kicked out of Actaeon, cutting him off from important connections and guaranteeing he would never be offered a spot with the FDH. They wouldn’t even register him as a hunter, so all the kills he racked up weren’t catalogued anywhere, and his survival depended entirely on hustling and credit card scams - the way things used to be before the FDH was established and legitimized the lifestyle. It should have come as a shock to him when he started hearing whispers about Sam maybe having something evil coursing through his veins, but it didn’t. He’d always known something was off about that kid, the way he’d mooned after Dean Winchester from the minute that omega bitch enrolled in the school, like Sam knew how Dean was going to present years before.

What did shock Gordon was the source of the information. None other than John Winchester himself let it slip that Sam was potentially a very evil thing. John was the first time Gordon heard the words “demon blood” in connection with Sam, but other rumors were already swirling around the community that Dean had dropped off the map because he’d gone and gotten himself knocked up, and that his baby daddy was by coincidence the youngest Campbell. Still more gossip held that John and Sam had been hunting a Prince of Hell together for about a month or so before splitting up, so the odds were quite good that if these two situations were real - first that Sam Campbell had slid a puck past the goalie with Dean Winchester, and second that John and Sam had been hunting something very high up the demonic food chain - then John would probably know if Sam was destined to be a demon’s bitch. Gordon was just lucky enough to be in the same bar in Mississippi in late December when John got rip roaring drunk and started lamenting the state of his relationships with his two boys, Sam coming up naturally due to his connection to both Adam and Dean.

Further proof of Sam’s potential for evil came from whatever it was that had happened in a run down dive bar named Marge’s in Sioux Falls shortly before Christmas. There was talk among the FDH hunters of something to do with a demon, based on the damage to the walls and the large black spot they found on the bathroom floor when the paramedics went in to take both Sam and Dean to the hospital, but Gordon hadn’t thought anything of it until he ran into John and heard him babbling about Sam and worrying that he wasn’t going to be able to kill Azazel before he zeroed in on Dean and Adam. There had been an incident a few weeks before that in Minnesota that Gordon also hadn’t paid much attention to other than Sam and Bobby Singer being there, but with the second potential demon encounter in South Dakota and John’s ramblings a very dark puzzle had started to come together for the alpha who could have been a contender. He’d hated Sam anyway and figured a demon deal of some sort made sense to give the Campbells such a cushiony life, so he’d started digging into Sam’s background and found oh so many interesting things.

Things like Sam’s mother’s fuzzy relationship with John Winchester, a story the older generation of hunters were happy to talk about if you got enough whiskey into them. Things like the way Dean’s mother died - definitely by supernatural means but not any that were repeated in the area or could be identified by monster type. One offs were so rare in their world that a former hunter’s wife getting butchered in her bedroom along with the family pet should have raised alarms for anyone working the area at the time, but it had slipped under the radar and never been investigated beyond John’s obsession to find the thing that killed her. Things like Sam’s mother dying in the same manner as his college girlfriend and his sire ( _it took a while to find someone willing to verify that Steven Wandell_ **_was_ ** _in fact Sam’s sire_ ). That was a huge red flag that seemed to have been ignored simply because his grandfather was in such a prominent position with the FDH and could get just about anything swept under the rug. Then there was the demon Sam killed in Dean and Adam Winchester’s hospital room, which people in the know insisted Sam had thwarted because he had a nightmare that sent him running to the hospital, and the potential demon connection to whatever went on in the bathroom at Marge’s. All told there was just too much “there” there for Gordon to ignore it the way so many others in the community seemed to want to do.

All of these things had Gordon staking out Bobby’s house the minute he got word Adam was getting out of the CRC and coming to South Dakota to recuperate. It wasn’t hard to find out that Dean had been staying there right up until the Minnesota incident, nor was it hard to deduce he’d be coming back there as soon as he and Campbell got back from what appeared to be some kind of honeymoon in Chicago, even though as far as he could deduce they hadn’t mated. He’d have tried to track them down while they were there if Chicago weren’t so fucking expensive on top of being a main FDH headquarters and one that Samuel frequented. The man might be old, but he was dangerous, and Gordon sure as hell didn’t want him catching wind of the fact that Gordon was sniffing around after his grandson. Sioux Falls was a decidedly less expensive and less dangerous city to crash in until he could figure out his next move against Sam and how he could take him down without ending up in Samuel’s crosshairs.

He’d been there nearly three weeks and was starting to wonder if he’d need to rethink his strategy when a really nice rental SUV drove past the blind he’d set himself up in within a tenth of a mile from Bobby’s long driveway. It had Illinois plates, and while he was on the wrong side of the road to see who was driving he did notice that Dean Winchester was in the passenger seat. The rental was a Lincoln Navigator, the kind of high end car you only got if they gave you a free upgrade due to everything else being rented out or if you specified that make and model because you had the money to ask for it in the first place. It was getting close to the end of January, and he was sick of hiding out here every day waiting for Sam to show up because it was fucking cold outside, so he cast a prayer up to whoever was listening that Campbell was in the driver’s seat.

By the time Gordon made the quick run up to Bobby’s drive the dog was going nuts and the car’s occupants were out and arguing. It _had_ been Sam driving, and he was at the back of the SUV with the gate up, starting to pile bags out of the back and into the snow while Dean stood over by the porch steps, very clearly carrying if that bulge in his abdomen was to be believed. So, one piece of the rumor confirmed. The two were in the middle of a heated argument, what someone might even term a “lover’s quarrel,” so there was another piece confirmed.

“It’s not any of your _business_ whether I go to therapy!” Dean was shouting, his scent bleeding fury out into the woods. “Jody should’ve kept her fucking mouth _shut_!”

“How many times do I have to say she was _legally_ required to talk to me about this?” Sam snapped back, slamming the gate of the Lincoln. “And it _is_ my business, Dean! I _love_ you! I want you to get _help_!”

“I don’t need any fucking _help_ , Sam, I’m doin’ just _fine_!”

“ _Really_? Is that why you pulled a knife on Benny yesterday? You’re lucky I was there before one of you got hurt!”

“That was just a... _thing_ that happened, I haven’t had one of those episodes in a _while_ …”

“And what happens if you have an episode like that with Elliott, huh?”

Dean was off across the driveway and giving Sam a violent shove, his eyes glowing a dangerous gold.

“Fuck you, Sam,” he hissed.

“Dean, Jody’s helped me a _lot_ this last month and a half, that’s all I’m saying,” Sam insisted, causing the omega to scoff.

“Oh, _you’ve_ been talking to Jody?”

“Yes, Dean.”

“About me?”

“ _No_ , you asshat, about _me_!” The look of shock on Dean’s face told Gordon there was something very important he was missing in this conversation centered around this “Jody” person. His feet were starting to go a little numb, but losing a couple of toes was worth it for this kind of intel. Sam was pacing the driveway, scowling furiously. “Did you expect a demon possessing my...whatever we are to each other...and shoving her hand down my pants is something I’m just going to magically be okay with? I’m not a machine, Dean. What happened at Marge’s really fucked with my head. Do you think I could let you touch me if someone wasn’t helping me deal with it?”

So it _was_ a demon at Marge’s. Another part of the rumor confirmed. And by how close Dean seemed to be to crying, the encounter in the bathroom had been bad.

“I told you I tried to stop her…” he said, his voice rough. He shook off Sam’s hands when the alpha tried to soothe him.

“I know, Dean, but it was still your voice and your hands and your face,” Sam told him. “If what she was doing to me was something I could just snap my fingers and get over I wouldn’t have ended up going all _Carrie_ on you!”

And there was the final confirmation. Sam had some kind of psychic powers, psychic powers strong enough to stop a demon; to wreck the bathroom and put Dean in the hospital. Gordon didn’t need to hear anything else. He pulled the sawed off shotgun out from under his coat and stepped out into the driveway, firing twice at Sam and hitting him both times in the torso, then swinging around on Dean, who was running for the front of the car. The blast ripped through Dean’s side and Sam woke up in their hotel in Tomah, Wisconsin, shouting the omega’s name and drenched in sweat.

Dean’s hand was under his pillow instantly, drawing his Colt from where he’d stashed it before falling asleep and training it on the door to their room as he reached to switch on the table lamp beside the bed. They were halfway back to Sioux Falls after leaving Benny and Lisa’s, ending up in Tomah after about six hours. Dean had insisted they didn’t need to stop, but once they’d pulled off the interstate for dinner Sam had demanded they get a room; that they were done traveling for the day. Now they were sharing a king bed in a Hampton Inn and Sam was sitting next to him, blood gushing from his nose as he tried to catch most of it in his hands so as not to ruin the sheets. Dean was out of bed in less than a second, guiding Sam into the bathroom so he could lean over the sink. They left a messy trail behind them, but there wasn’t much to be done about it. Sam was more than a little disconcerted by not only the tremendous increase in blood flow from his nose but how comparatively mild his headache was this time. It was like his brain was becoming acclimated to these episodes. The thought was not comforting.

“What was the dream?” Dean asked as he wetted a washcloth to start cleaning the blood off of Sam’s chest and chin.

“Gordon Walker,” Sam said. “He knows about me.”

“What?” Dean remembered Gordon vividly from school, those first six months at Actaeon where they were roommates and the arrogant son of a bitch would haul off and punch him just for breathing, trying to beat Dean into submission. “How?”

“Your dad got a little deep in the tequila after Windom and let it slip,” Sam told him, tipping forward and pinching his nostrils shut with a handful of tissues. “It was detailed, way more than the one about the hospital. I knew what you were thinking in that one, what you were feeling, but it was all present tense. This one covered the last couple of months. He’s been looking into my background, decided I’m too close to being a monster to leave walking around. He’s got himself set up outside of Bobby’s house waiting for us to get back from Chicago.”

“He’s set up _outside_?” Dean said incredulously. “In _South Dakota_? In _January_?”

“Yeah.”

“Shit. That’s the kind of crazy you run from, fast and far.”

“That’s the kind of crazy that guns you down in Bobby’s driveway with a sawed off.”

“Seriously?” Dean got himself up on the counter so he could check the progress of staunching Sam’s bleeding. It had already slowed considerably, despite how heavy it had been at the onset. Dean wasn’t sure that was a good sign. “You saw him shoot you in Bobby’s driveway?”

“He shot us both,” Sam said. “We were arguing about you seeing Jody and that led to what happened with Ruby and that confirmed it for him.”

“I don’t need to see Jody,” Dean insisted bitterly, and Sam, having the benefit of dreaming how this played out, slotted himself between the omega’s knees before he could go anywhere.

“You almost took Benny’s hand off at lunch because of something he said.” Dean refused to look at him and instead focused on cleaning the remaining blood off of Sam’s stomach and chest until the alpha gently took hold of his wrists. “No one expects you to just be okay, except you.”

Logically Dean knew Sam was right, and it wasn’t that he hadn’t thought more than he’d ever admit about joining one of the group therapy sessions Jody mentioned after every appointment at the clinic - hell, he’d just been talking with Lisa about it a few days ago - but he just wasn’t ready to admit he wasn’t strong enough to get through this on his own. Getting through things on his own had been hard wired into him by John since his mother died. He’d gotten through Millie’s death without therapy, and he’d gotten through getting abandoned by his dad at school without therapy. There had been no therapists around to help him after the first time his dad used him as bait and he almost got taken out by a Djinn, who filled his head with a dream world in which his mother never died that he had to actively break free from by stabbing himself with a silver knife, no matter how badly he wanted to stay with her. There were no therapists to help him stop shaking or deal with the nightmares when Benny barely made it to him after that ogre tossed him against an overpass, breaking an arm and a leg and laying him up for weeks with nothing to do but replay the monster bearing down on him and flinging him around like a rag doll. There were no therapists the first time he and Adam hunted without John and they had both almost succumbed to a wraith in a juvenile detention facility for kids with violent mental problems. Getting drugged and raped should be small potatoes to move past compared to all the times he’d almost literally died, but he still found himself having to count at least to ten for doing basic things like getting out of an elevator by himself in a hotel lobby or seeking out single seat bathrooms so he could lock the door and not have to share with strangers. He thought he was really moving forward after the Peninsula, but trying to kill Benny had been a huge step back. It just wasn’t fair that this was still affecting him so deeply when he’d so successfully pushed away everything else.

“What are we going to do about Gordon?” he finally asked, resting his forehead against Sam’s chest and finding himself pulled forward into the alpha’s arms.

“Well, we’re definitely not talking about demons in Bobby’s driveway,” Sam replied, not a hint of humor in his voice. “Maybe call the Sheriff out? Get a restraining order?”

“For what? Sittin’ in the woods in the middle of winter? He hasn’t done anything yet. They don’t give out restraining orders just cuz someone’s creepy. My life would be a lot easier if they did. And _if_ they did, how would we tell them we knew he was out there? Because you had a psychic vision? Doesn’t seem like the best way to keep him from killing you for having psychic visions.” He tipped his face up into Sam’s neck, his hands creeping up the alpha’s back to lay flat against his shoulder blades and said, “Maybe you should go back out hunting that yellow eyed bastard with my dad.”

Sam pulled back from the omega’s hold, not sure he’d heard Dean correctly, asking, “What?”

“Maybe you should leave me at Bobby’s and go after Azazel,” Dean told him firmly, though he wouldn’t look up to meet the blue-green-gold eyes. “Ganking a Prince of Hell should go a long way to convincing Gordon you’re not Damien.”

“I’m not leaving you, Dean. I told you I was never leaving and I meant it.”

Sam’s jaw was set in a hard line, the muscle at the joint flexing, and Dean’s omega begged to kiss the tension away at the scent of the alpha’s rising irritation. He resisted, primarily because if he started kissing Sam he was going to get completely sidetracked. The lunch incident had really shaken him and he wanted to push through it and not get trapped in his own head by a humiliating flashback, but if he started pushing through it right now they might never come back to this.

“Then I’ll come with you.” He ran his hands along Sam’s arms, trying to soothe him into a more reasonable state. “We’ll get adjoining rooms like we had in Chicago and I’ll just sit around all day watching crappy TV and working on rebuilding my pecs so these things go away.” He gestured vaguely towards his moobs, hooking his feet around the back of Sam’s knees to lock him into place against the counter. “It’ll be like Laramie, but I’ll do all the research and you’ll kill all the monsters.”

“You know we can’t do that,” Sam said, though there was decidedly less irritation wafting off of him. “Even without your condition you’re going into your third trimester soon. You’re going to need a lot more doctor visits. You’re already overdue for one. We’ve been pushing our luck hanging out in Chicago and Fort Wayne. We should have gone right back to Bobby’s.”

“Well then I don’t know what else to do, Sam!” Dean snapped, grabbing the waistband of Sam’s pajama bottoms to pull him in so Dean could press his forehead against the alpha’s chest again. Every atom was shouting at him that he needed to tell Sam about Crowley, that if he didn’t take this opportunity everything might go to shit later on, but instead he pressed a kiss to the hollow of Sam’s throat, convincing the alpha to come back fully into his orbit. “I don’t know what else to do. I can’t lose you, Sammy. I just...I can’t.”

“I don’t…” Sam shivered at the feel of Dean’s lips resting against his shoulder, tightening his hold on the omega. “I can’t up and leave you with Bobby, Dean.”

“I’ll be okay on my own,” Dean said resolutely. “I know that sounds like crap after what happened at lunch, but I’ll be okay.”

“I won’t.” Sam ran a hand through Dean’s hair, tugging until he tipped his face up to meet the alpha’s eyes. “I’ve already tried it, and I’m not okay without you.”

For several moments Sam studied his omega’s face, running his fingers gently over the lines of his forehead, the curve of his cheek, the angle of his jaw, before covering the swell of Dean’s lower lip with his mouth and then tilting sideways, his fingertips still whisper soft against the older man’s skin. Sam felt Dean’s eyelashes flutter against his cheeks and Dean’s hands curl into his waist to pull the alpha in closer, and slid his hands up into the short, soft locks again in response. He could feel Dean growing hard against his stomach, his fingers tightening on Sam’s abs, heard the quiet whimpers in the back of Dean’s throat, and broke the kiss, remembering what Dr. Milton had said about knotting needing to be infrequent. He also wasn’t sure continuing anything was such a good idea when Dean had been swinging a kitchen knife earlier in the day, but it sure was hard to put the brakes on when Dean chased Sam’s mouth and twined his hands into Sam’s hair and slid off the counter to pull himself flush up against Sam’s chest and make sure he felt how interested the omega was in more than just kissing. Sam’s hands slipped down to Dean’s face, then his neck, and he carefully dislodged himself from the supple, sweet lips of the man he hopelessly wanted to claim.

“We need to see Dr. Milton before we go down this road again,” he breathed, trying to get his eyes straight from where they’d rolled back on him. “Find out what qualifies as too frequent.”

“Why you gotta be sensible?” Dean purred, scratching his nails against Sam’s scalp.

“It’s my burden as your alpha,” Sam said.

“Is that so?” Dean asked, cocking an eyebrow. He yelped when a giant hand grabbed his ass and squeezed.

“Absolutely. I’d even take on Arnold Schwarzenegger for you.”

“I’d be much more impressed by that if the guy weren’t pushing sixty.”

“First the throw pillows and now demands I fight men my own age.” He brushed his lips against Dean’s forehead, his heart skipping practically every other beat. “Who knew you were going to be so high maintenance?”

“I thought the fuzzy blankets were a dead giveaway.”

“Are you kidding? I love how much you love fuzzy blankets.”

Dean stared at the alpha’s dimpled smile for several moments, his pulse pounding out a stuttering rhythm. He hoped to god Garth couldn’t find anything on the Devil’s Gate, that Crowley had been exaggerating the hold Azazel would have over Sam, that Gordon would just go away. He knew the odds of any of those things coming to pass were practically nil, not with the rotten luck he’d had his whole life.

“I’m gonna call my dad when we get to Bobby’s,” he said quietly, brushing his fingers across Sam’s throat. “When he gets back to me - _if_ he gets back to me - you’re gonna go meet up with him and kill that yellow eyed bastard. And then Gordon will find somethin’ else to obsess over.” He passed ghosting kisses up the length of Sam’s neck to the base of his jaw, pushing him slowly back towards the shower. “Okay?”

“I feel like you’re trying to seduce me to get your way,” Sam said, his brain rapidly losing the war with his dick as the scent of his omega’s desire flooded the bathroom. Maybe he could click on the overhead fan and that might help his struggle to remember how to breathe instead of gasp.

“It’s my burden as your omega,” Dean told him, hooking his thumbs into Sam’s waistband to slide his pajamas off. With a glide of his foot he got them all the way down past the alpha’s knees, leaving Sam with the options of shedding them completely or falling bare ass backwards into the shower. He wisely chose the former. “Besides, your face is still bloody and my boxers are a mess.”

“Yeah?” Sam asked, wondering what he’d done that had Dean trying to kill him.

“Mm hm.”

Ten minutes later they’d figured out the proper angle to get three of Sam’s magic fingers buried deep inside the omega without either of them tumbling and dying under the warm jet massage from the showerhead, his fingertips flicking over just the right spot to have Dean panting and gasping and whining something unintelligible against Sam’s mouth that sounded kind of like “God” and “fuck” and “ _Sam_ ,” as he ground down to Sam’s knuckles as best he could without slipping. For his part, Sam was able to do little more than grunt, the ability to form coherent thought well beyond him with the way Dean had one leg wrapped around him, balanced on the toes of his other foot, stroking the whole length of Sam with a well practiced hand. Sam wasn’t entirely sure if holding onto the shower curtain rod was the best course of action, but Jesus he needed to hold onto _something_ because somehow he’d managed to land himself at bona fide sex god and he wasn’t sure his eyes were ever going to uncross. Dean came with a shout that undoubtedly woke up the guests next door, quite possibly everyone in this wing of the building, and when he’d finally stopped coming all over their stomachs he batted Sam’s hand down and out so he could lower his leg and push in closer to the alpha, attacking his mouth, ear, and neck ferociously as his ministrations became more urgent and Sam’s knot began to expand. Sam’s now-freed hand ran up the length of Dean’s spine and into his hair when the omega switched the focus of his mouth to the alpha’s nipple, which was all it took for Sam to come as well, babbling out a long string of “I love you”s until Dean silenced him with another long, deep, tongue-filled kiss, his hands tugging at Sam’s hair and clinging to his shoulders and stroking him through his release. The hot water was just beginning to run out when they finally managed to get themselves clean.

“Your kid’s a pervert,” Dean murmured against Sam’s neck at the pummeling his abdomen was taking while they curled up in clean, soft sweats and tees under the 400 thread count sheets, their legs tangled together and their hair still damp.

“Elliott, that was grown up stuff back there,” Sam admonished. “Go back to sleep.” He placed his hand on Dean’s skin and felt a barrage of punches and kicks, then shrugged at the omega. “I tried.”

“You better work on your ‘I mean it’ voice before we get to the broccoli eating stage,” Dean said.

Sam feigned surprise, demanding, “You know what broccoli is?!”

“Yeah,” Dean snarked. “Gross is what it is.”

It earned the omega a dimpled giggle and a nuzzle at the back of his ear, and after a bit Sam said, “You really want me hunting with your dad instead of being with you?”

“God no,” Dean replied seriously, rolling over to look at Sam so the alpha would know he meant it. “But it’s better than Gordon tracking you down because he thinks you’re the Antichrist or somethin’.”

“It might not stop him,” Sam said. “He _really_ hates me.”

“Maybe not, but it’ll stop Azazel from...doin’ whatever it is he wants you for.”

Dean could see Sam was wavering, and stopped burying his tension and fear over the situation, his anxious scent overwhelming every other aroma in the room. Sure it was manipulative as hell, but it was also how he really felt about the situation and Sam might as well know just how scared he was about Gordon and Azazel and the implications of Sam’s demon blood. It worked, too, which made his omega happier than it had a right to be. He could practically hear his primitive hindbrain gloating as the alpha immediately moved to soothe him, sliding in closer and kissing his face while stroking his neck and arms and in general cuddling the hell out of him. It made him wonder why he worked so hard at suppressing his emotions around Sam. This was a lot better, easier, and got much nicer results than constantly pushing things to the side.

“Okay,” Sam agreed after only a minute or so. “But I’m coming back for all your appointments. And if anything happens…”

Dean conquered his lips before Sam could go down that rabbit hole, not letting up until he was sure the alpha would be good and dizzy, saying, “I’ll be fine.”

“Okay,” Sam gasped, burying his nose in Dean’s hair as the omega curled his fingers into the warm cotton of Sam’s shirt and snuggled in to go to sleep.

Sam wasn’t sure how he could be expected to forego moments like this for sharing a room with Dean’s abrasive, know-it-all father, but if it got him more romantic interludes with Dean in showers and on other surfaces ( _he was compiling a mental list_ ), then he’d do just about anything the omega asked short of murder. Although no, under the right circumstances and with the right target, murder probably wasn’t off the table either. That thought should have scared him, but he didn’t see how it could when he was growing increasingly certain there was a house in Vermont in their future.


	45. I'm Not Supposed to Laugh, Right?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Getting re-acclimated to Sioux Falls.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last update (probably) before my show closes on Wednesday.

The Winchester-Campbell family ( _or maybe they’d go with Campbell-Winchester, or hell, maybe just Winchester; Sam was still mulling it over and wasn’t sure he wanted Elliott to be saddled with his crappy family name_ ) slept in the next morning, foregoing the hotel’s continental breakfast in favor of diner food, since they hadn’t hit up an actual diner once while they were in Chicago or Fort Wayne ( _of course Dean would be cataloguing the places they ate_ ), and ended up getting to Bobby’s later in the day than they had in Sam’s dream. He didn’t think for a second that meant Gordon wasn’t out there spying on them, but as long as no one went shouting about demon deals they should be safe at the house. On edge of course, because they were technically being stalked, but safe - at least for the moment.

Adam appeared on the front porch, bundled up in one of Bobby’s heavy winter coats and still looking pale, but a helluva lot better than the last time they’d seen him. Dean hurried across the driveway and up the steps to crush his brother in a hug, and for quite a long time it looked like Adam might break out crying. He really hadn’t thought he was ever going to get a “Dean hug” again, and he figured he’d probably spend the rest of his life making things up to his brother, but at least for right now they were together and things between them were okay. Sam came up behind them and gave Adam a hug as well before they all disappeared into the house, Adam and Sam coming back out a short while later to get the bags out of the car. Gordon settled himself in to wait, but they didn’t reappear until the next morning, Dean jingling the keys to one of Bobby’s trucks so they could return the rental. The pair chatted briefly by the Lincoln, Sam sitting on the driver’s seat with the door open, and after melting together for a kiss - Dean’s hands in Sam’s hair and Sam’s hands on Dean’s hips - they headed off for Sioux Falls.

If Gordon expected them not to notice the cherry red El Camino that appeared in the distance behind them after they left Bobby’s then Actaeon expelling him had been the smartest thing they’d ever done, as he clearly just wasn’t smart enough to be a hunter. Though both Sam and Dean suspected separately that he wanted to be seen; wanted Sam at least to know he was being watched. He’d always been the kind of guy who got off on that kind of sick, twisted shit. The best thing they could do was pretend they didn’t notice him and go about their day like he didn’t exist.

The first stop, of course, was the rental agency, after which they had a prenatal appointment where they got sternly lectured about missing appointments and Dean going on eleven hour car trips, even if they were split over two days. At Dean’s insistence, Dr. Milton gave him a list of exercises he could do to rebuild his pectoral muscles, which was basically any kind of inclined press that did not put him flat on his back. They got a better definition of “infrequent” ( _once a week would be fine_ ), though other activities were fine to pursue more frequently at this point, and got sent over for another ultrasound just to make sure Elliott was still doing well. Dr. Milton stressed that Dean was incredibly lucky, for while male oms had more complications during pregnancy, their larger, sturdier frames provided more protection for the pup in case the omega was injured, but he needed to stop taking for granted that his bigger bones were going to keep Elliott safe now that they were getting close to Dean’s last three months of carrying. Jody checked in with Dean on how he was handling things, not having heard from him on his feelings about having something literally take control of his body again and only knowing how it had affected Sam. He refused to discuss it, unwilling to poke at that particular wound when they had other things to do, but agreed to begin attending group therapy the following week.

They hit up a little Italian place for lunch at Sam’s insistence that they weren’t going to spend the day saturating Elliott in diner food grease, then they went to a car dealership, since Sam had long since gotten rid of the Hummer and needed to have something he could actually drive around in, plus he wanted to get Dean something more family friendly. That brought on a pretty serious argument about Baby’s worth as a family vehicle, though Dean did back down when Sam asked if he _really_ wanted to risk cleaning poop and puke out of the Impala’s leather seats. Sam zeroed in pretty quickly on a new 2006 Cadillac Escalade EXT at the luxury dealership, but Dean wouldn’t consider anything newer than a 2000, griping that automobiles ( _excluding Baby, of course_ ) were the worst investment anyone could ever make, and he didn’t want something he couldn’t work on himself. Still, Sam managed to get him interested in a BMW M5, which, while quite possibly less practical than the Impala, would at least comply with current car seat requirements. Plus it was a six speed and had four hundred horses under the hood. Once he saw the price tag on a five year old vehicle, however, he quickly lost interest and insisted they could figure out a car for him at a ( _much_ ) later date.

They could have driven the new Cadillac off the lot if they wanted to wait ( _this was apparently something obscenely wealthy people could actually_ **_do_ ** _and it made Dean all kinds of uncomfortable_ ), but Sam had promised Dean a memory foam mattress and they needed to take care of that before heading back to Bobby’s for dinner at six o’clock, so over they went to Comfort King. A mattress store was definitely more the omega’s speed, especially since they were getting a larger bed and that meant a whole new bedding set. Dean tried very hard to contain his glee at the thought of a trip to Bed, Bath & Beyond after selecting a mattress to have shipped out to Singer Salvage Yard and failed completely. That was mostly because he couldn’t shut up about what color bedding Sam wanted, and though Sam legitimately didn’t care nothing could stop Dean from rattling off the options and the various emotions different colors triggered and the types of fabrics bedding sets came in and did they want a set of flannel sheets for winter and then something with a higher thread count for the summer that would stay cool and crisp while he dragged Sam around to try out just about every mattress they had in the store. Much as Sam would have liked to get a California King neither of them thought that would actually fit in Dean’s room, so they settled on a queen mattress even though it would barely be big enough for Dean and Sam’s toes would officially hang off the end.

“What’d I tell you, Sammy?” Dean asked as they flopped down on the fifth queen mattress of their visit. “Memory foam is awesome.”

“Dean Winchester. Well, didn’t you grow up pretty?”

Dean and Sam froze at the sound of Gordon’s voice. They’d seen that he had followed them every place they went but hadn’t anticipated the hunter would have just walked up to them in a mattress store. He couldn’t possibly know about Sam’s dream, so what exactly was he playing at? Dean rolled over with just a little bit of difficulty, watching Gordon saunter across the showroom towards him and Sam.

“Gordon? Gordon Walker?” He swung his legs down and sat up, going for the best, “well, as I live and breathe” expression he could muster, all doe eyes and fluttering lashes. “Hey man, it’s been a long time.”

“It has indeed,” Gordon said, flashing him a bright white smile, his pupils dark. “If I’d have known this is what you’d look like in your prime I’d have been a whole lot nicer to you at school.” He raked his eyes over the omega lasciviously and all but licked his lips. He was obviously trying to rile Sam up, but even though Sam knew that he still couldn’t stop the growl that escaped him as he sat up at Dean’s back. Gordon’s smile never wavered and he only glanced away from the omega for a second as he asked, “Who’s your friend?”

“Hey Gordon.” Sam climbed off the bed and stood half in front of Dean, towering close to five inches over the other alpha. “Sam Campbell. Remember me? You broke my jaw the winter before I turned twelve.”

Something dangerous flashed through Gordon’s eyes and he said, “Riiiight. Sam. Course I remember you. You grew up a lot bigger than I’d have thought back then.”

“What brings you to Sioux Falls?” Sam casually moved his fingers through Dean’s hair, smiling at Gordon as he ensured his point about Dean’s unavailability was being made. “I haven’t seen anything come across the feed in this area.”

“Got wind of a potential rugaru in the suburbs,” Gordon told him. “Guy named Jack Montgomery. Hasn’t presented yet.”

“How do you know about him then?”

“One of John Winchester’s friends, actually. Fella name of Travis Williams. Got himself a broken arm and can’t work the case. Took out this guy’s father about thirty or so years ago; didn’t know his mate was carrying.” He glanced at Dean, smiling again in a way that looked more than a little predatory. “It’s a damn shame when someone’s carrying something evil and doesn’t know it.” He looked back to Sam. “Don’t suppose you want in on it?”

“I’d like to help out, but I’m a little busy.” He was still finger combing Dean’s hair, and while the omega would have liked to join the conversation he was feeling almost drunk and couldn’t do much more than purr and lean in as Sam massaged his scalp. “We’re staying up at Bobby Singer’s though. If you run into trouble give a call and I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thanks Sam.” He took a step in, nodding at the omega. “Dean.”

Sam gave him a thin smile, suppressing a snarl as the hunter headed towards the door, turning back with one last shark-like grin and giving the two of them a little wave before disappearing. He stepped sideways so Dean could easily get up if he wanted to, but the omega didn’t move from the bed, enjoying the easy touches as Sam sat down next to him.

“Next time why don’t you just pee on me?” he suggested.

“Public urination is a misdemeanor and I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t sell us a mattress if I used the showroom as a toilet,” Sam replied, planting a quick peck on the corner of Dean’s mouth before finally removing his hand from the dark blond locks and twining their fingers together instead. “Alphas like Gordon don’t understand subtle. He can scent we’re together, but that’s not the same as being mated. I needed to make a big show of not tolerating any advances towards you.”

Dean considered Sam’s statement and thought this was probably what being an actual princess felt like. It was incredibly irritating that there were people like Gordon in the world who refused to respect him as a person unless someone like Sam stood as a barrier between them. At the same time, his omega just wanted to giggle and do a happy little dance that he had such a big, strong alpha who wasn’t going to put up with any of that shit. He leaned over to just enjoy the smell of Sam for a minute before saying, “Let’s go buy a mattress so we can go buy a bed.”

“Don’t you mean bedding?” Sam asked with a smirk, getting a shoulder bump out of Dean.

“Shut up.”

Gordon sat in his El Camino across the street, watching the couple through the storefront windows as they paid for a bed and box spring set and gave the delivery address, then bundled back up as they headed out towards the parking lot. At least they didn’t take as long in Comfort King as they did at the omega clinic or that ridiculous luxury automobile dealership, though the upside there was the coffee shop that had been across the street, giving him a chance to warm up while he kept surveillance on Campbell. Even if he didn’t have demon blood in him, the sheer excess of Sam’s lifestyle when so many other hunters struggled to make ends meet was enough for Gordon to want to end him. That and the way he flaunted Dean but didn’t seem interested in claiming him, like he considered them to be equals or something ridiculous like that; like he didn’t appreciate how lucky he was to have found an omega instead of having to settle for a beta as most alphas did. He definitely had plenty of reasons to want Sam dead. It would just be easier to rationalize to other hunters if he could point a finger and label him “monster.” It would also be easier explaining why he had to kill Dean as well, or at least make sure the pup didn’t survive. That was a real shame. Winchester had always been pretty, but now that he was carrying he was downright mouthwatering.

He followed them from the mattress store to Unclaimed Freight, wondering with a laugh to himself if Sam was getting hives from having to slum it all afternoon with Dean. After that it was to a Bed, Bath & Beyond, where they spent more time than any human being ever needed to spend in a Bed, Bath & Beyond, and came out with an obscene number of bags. Part of him wondered if Sam were onto him and trying to do as many boring, ordinary things as possible to prove he was just like everyone else. If they started going grocery shopping he’d be convinced that’s what they were up to, but if that was Sam’s game he wasn’t going to buy it. Instead they headed back out of the city towards Singer Salvage Yard as the sun was beginning to set. He followed them far enough to ensure that’s where they were actually going, then doubled back into the city to get a room in a motel. He was sick of sitting on his ass in a makeshift camp in the snow, and it certainly didn’t seem like Campbell was going anywhere when he was making a big show of playing house with the omega up at Bobby Singer’s.

The boys could smell the roasting chicken and potatoes from out on the front porch and Dean couldn’t stop the groan that escaped him as he scrambled for the door. They’d grabbed a snack between Comfort King and Unclaimed Freight but he was obviously going to need to start carrying food with him at this rate. It was like Elliott had a line plugged straight into his stomach and was sucking up all the food before Dean could absorb any calories. Bobby had apparently been in full on domestic mode because there was freshly baked bread on the table and an apple pie cooling on the counter. Bobby was at his desk reading a book on Greek mythology while Adam was on the couch with one of his nursing textbooks. He’d missed all of his exams, which meant he’d failed most classes, and was having to take the semester off to recover. Fortunately the school recognized his extenuating circumstances and wasn’t taking his scholarship, but he didn’t want to forget everything before the summer semester started and he could begin catching up.

“You’re the best housewife ever, Bobby,” Dean said, grabbing a slice of the bread and shoving it in his mouth.

“You’re gonna ruin your appetite,” the old hunter warned, but Dean shook his head.

“Not possible,” Dean assured him. “I feel like I could eat for days.”

“Where’s Sam?”

“Getting stuff out of the car.”

“What about Mrs. Voorhees?” Adam asked from the couch. “Still hanging out in the woods?”

“I don’t think so,” Dean replied. “I saw his headlights turn around a ways back. He came up to us while we were shoppin’, though. Not sure what he was playing at.”

“Dean, I don’t think we got enough stuff,” Sam said as he came through the door with the boatload of bags containing the new bedding items. Adam saw the name on the bags and burst out laughing. Even Bobby snickered. Sam kicked the door closed, demanding, “What?”

“I _told_ you the Bed, Bath  & Beyond story and you _still_ took him there!” Adam cackled. “Man, he’s got you wrapped around his little finger!”

“He does _not_ ,” Sam exclaimed as Dean was asking, “What Bed, Bath & Beyond story?”

“The haunting we worked in Macon?” Adam said, raising an eyebrow at his older brother, who flushed so red he turned almost purple.

“They had just put out their new satin collection of sheets and comforters, Adam,” he snapped, but Adam just laughed so hard he almost fell off the couch. “It was all _new_ , and the color palette had just changed for the season...”

Sam set the bags down at the foot of the stairs and went over into the kitchen, trying not to smile too broadly as he ran his hands up and down Dean’s arms.

“Baby, you’re not helping your case,” he said, and the omega looked up at him, perturbed.

“The color palette had _just_ changed, Sam!” Dean insisted. “It went from navy to turquoise! How was I supposed to just walk _past_ that?”

“Maybe cuz your kid brother was getting strangled by a towel a couple of aisles over?” Adam suggested.

Dean glared at him, looking about three seconds from stomping his foot at no one else understanding the importance of turquoise coming back into fashion when it created emotional balance and stability, but was distracted by the soft alpha lips that were suddenly on his as Sam ran a hand through his hair and down his cheek, his tongue tracing a line asking for entrance into Dean’s mouth. Dean clutched at the front of his coat, a small whimper escaping from him, and completely forgot why turquoise mattered, until Bobby cleared his throat.

“You boys’ve got a door, and you got a bunch of socks,” he groused, staring pointedly at the two while Adam tried to bury himself in his textbook.

“Awkward,” Adam muttered under his breath slinking down further on the couch.

“Sorry,” Sam said, flustered, as Dean hoped embarrassment could actually prove fatal. “I was just…”

“I get it, Sam,” Bobby told him. “You two are ‘mooning. But it’s gonna be a lot more comfortable for everyone if you can keep the PDA confined to the upstairs.”

“Mooning?”

“Babymooning,” Bobby directed to the omega who had piped up behind Sam’s back. “There’s a whole chapter on it in the omega edition of _What to Expect When You’re Expecting_. I gave that to you to read months ago.”

“Yeah…” Dean blushed again. “I’ve been meanin’ to get to that…”

“Lord, you idjits would kill yourselves brushin’ your teeth if it weren’t for me,” he snapped, digging the copy of the book with the sleeping baby on the cover out from under a couple of books on the desk and tossing it across the room to them. “Babymooning is chapter four, I think. I expect one of you to read it all the way through.” He looked fixedly at Sam as the timer went off. “Chicken should be done. Dean, you wanna turn the oven down to warm and heat up the peas and carrots while Sam and Adam set the table?”

“Yes sir,” all three young men said in tandem, moving into the kitchen to finish getting dinner ready.

Dean was on his second piece of pie after polishing off a sizeable portion of chicken and potatoes ( _he was going to need to start writing down Bobby’s recipes_ ) when the talk swung around from the prenatal appointment and car shopping and how Dean genuinely did need another vehicle besides the Impala to Gordon’s strange appearance at the mattress store. Sam hadn’t been able to figure it out any more than Dean had. Generally speaking if you were trying to stake someone out you didn’t want them knowing about it. Gordon just walking straight up to them wasn’t something you did unless you were incredibly stupid or incredibly full of yourself, or quite possibly a psychopath. Bobby thought it was probably a mixture of all three, which wasn’t exactly reassuring.

“Sounds to me like he was sizing you up,” the old beta said reasonably, adjusting his belt so his pants were a little more comfortable against his full stomach. “When’s the last time he saw you proper?”

“I dunno.” Sam really thought about it. Gordon had been out of official hunting circles since he got expelled. Sam recognized the particular stink of Gordon’s scent because he’d been seventeen when he’d pummeled Sam, so he’d have known Gordon anywhere. But Gordon had been long gone by the time Sam presented, and even though he’d been looking into Sam’s past and background that wasn’t the same as meeting face to face. “I guess we haven’t seen each other since I was eleven and a half-ish.”

“He knew who I was,” Dean said around a mouthful of pie.

“Everyone knows who you are,” Sam told him, wiping a bit of pie filling off the corner of Dean’s mouth with his thumb and then licking it off.

“Really?”

Dean looked dumbfounded by this, enough that he actually stopped eating his pie. Bobby and Adam both raised an eyebrow at him.

“Son, you’re the only omega in the country who hunts,” Bobby said. “Sam’s right. Everybody knows who you are. Well, everybody who’s any good, and from what I found out about Gordon today he’s very good. He’d be a real asset to the Department if he knew how to get along with anyone. You’re gonna have a helluva time shakin’ him now that he’s honed in on you, Sam.”

“Then I won’t try to shake him,” Sam said. “If he wants to come after me he can. I’d rather meet him head-on anyway.”

“That’s dumb,” Dean told him flatly, pushing the last remnants of his pie away. “Besides, we already agreed on what we’re gonna do.”

“That was before he looked at you the way he looked at you in Comfort King,” Sam snapped, scowling as the omega growled at him.

“People look at me all the time, Sam.”

“Well they’re going to have to stop.”

“Because that’s reasonable.”

“Okay, Adam’s gonna help me with the clean-up while you two go upstairs to argue so I don’t need to worry about anyone havin’ make-up sex in my kitchen,” Bobby declared, pushing his chair away from the table and starting to grab plates. “Make sure you take the book with you and someone reads that chapter. I dogeared it a while ago.”

“Thanks Bobby,” Sam said, throwing a glare at Dean as he stalked off for the stairs, grabbing the book from where he’d tossed it down before dinner and then dragging all the bags upstairs to Dean’s room.

“How am I the one getting all the nasty looks here?” Dean demanded, storming after him and slamming the door.

“Thank god the bathroom is between their room and mine,” Adam groaned, dropping his head into his hands.

“How do you think I feel?” Bobby asked. “My room’s right _under_ them.”

“So what’s babymooning?” Adam said, gathering up the leftovers to transfer into tupperware containers. “Unless I don’t want to know…”

“First coupla months an omega is carryin’ a bonded pair will spend a lot of time...reaffirming the bond.” He gave the youngest Winchester a meaningful look and Adam was instantly sorry he’d asked. “And I ain’t talkin’ about the kind of bonding you do talkin’ about movies or fixin’ a car with a new friend. Bonded pair connections are just about unbreakable but it ain’t the same as bein’ mated. Babymooning encourages the alpha to claim the omega and the omega to accept the claim if they’re hesitant. They missed the first coupla months so it’s gonna be more intense.”

“So it’s what, all hormones?” Adam didn’t like the idea that the way his brother was feeling might not be completely within his control, especially when mating came into the picture. Dean had never wanted a mate; had recoiled against the idea ever since he presented. Not that Adam thought Sam would ever force the issue, but if Sam wasn’t really in control of himself either, how were either of them supposed to stay out of that trap? “All that stuff in the kitchen? And...whatever they’re doing upstairs, which clearly isn’t arguing cuz I don’t hear any shouting and I don’t wanna think about what else is going on?”

“It’s not _all_ hormones.” Bobby was scraping some of the leftovers onto a plate before going to let Rumsfeld up out of the basement. The old dog attacked the food, wolfing the whole thing down in just a few mouthfuls. “It don’t create a bond, it just makes it a helluva lot stronger.” He picked the plate up off the floor and took it over to the sink where Adam had started in on the dishes, clapping a hand on the young beta’s shoulder. “It ain’t gonna make an om that doesn’t want to be claimed want to be claimed, it’ll just make the idea a little more palatable if they’re a stubborn idjit who thinks being mated makes ‘em weaker instead of stronger. It’s also not gonna make an alpha claim an omega they didn’t already want.”

Dean’s bedroom door opened and Sam emerged, looking thoroughly rumpled and a little dazed, his hair a mess, lips swollen, and shirt on inside out. He’d gotten out of his shoes and somehow lost a sock. He came into the kitchen, trying to look as casual as he could and headed for the refrigerator. Bobby and Adam immediately looked anywhere else, Adam’s face turning red and Bobby struggling desperately to contain a snicker. Sam turned around, the pie tin in his hand, and upon noticing them said lamely, “Dean wanted pie.”

“Forks are in the top drawer by the sink,” Bobby informed him, and after Sam had rummaged around for a minute and grabbed one the alpha added, “You know how much he...uh...loves pie.”

“Someone kill me now,” Adam muttered, and Sam retreated quickly back upstairs as Bobby lost his fight to hold in his laughter.

They heard the door open upstairs and Dean ask, “Why is Bobby laughing?” and that just made Bobby laugh harder. Adam really did look like he was about to die of mortification, which was the icing on the cake for the old hunter. With everything they’d been through these last couple of months and now crazy Gordon Walker looming over them, Bobby had started worrying he might never laugh again. He heard Sam tutting at the omega and headed out into the living room as the door shut behind the alpha, pleased to have located Sam’s other sock on the doorknob.


	46. Well, Lighten Up a Little, Sammy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Buying a car is stressful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Show's going well, but I'm feeling on the ill side so probably nothing after this until late in the week.

“You know I’m havin’ enough trouble with you over there. If you keep the light on to read that book I’m never gonna get to sleep.”

Sam looked over from where he was poring through the chapter on babymooning via flashlight, having already finished the first three chapters just in case there was any necessary background information on fetal development or maternal hormones. There wasn’t and now he was about halfway through a chapter dealing exclusively with how alphas and omegas related in the early stages of pregnancy _because_ of the pregnancy. The book was written with a type of cutesy, stereotypical language that Sam found quite irritating, even if the information was good, and it made the chapter on babymooning seem like some kind of wonderful erotic fairy tale filled with months of hugging and kissing and lots and lots and _lots_ of knotting, topped with omegas getting claimed and living happily ever after, popping out a dozen or so more pups along the way. To Sam it read more like a tragedy, where the prince could become convinced the princess loved him, but it was just a trick of biology cast by a vengeful deity who had decided the prince must suffer eternally for the sins of his mother. There was no happy ending to be found, just terrible disappointment when the babymoon was over and the omega ultimately realized nothing he felt had been real and moved on, unless his hormones had overtaken him and he had mated himself to an alpha he never would have chosen otherwise, leading them both to a miserable, unhappy life tied together by a truly unwanted claim.

“Sam?”

The alpha clicked off the flashlight and closed the book, setting it on the window seat from where he was laying on the daybed, Dean looking at him from the full sized bed where he was laying curled around one of the body pillows with Sam’s undershirt pulled down over it. He wanted to say something, but he was too busy trying to make sure he’d collected all the pieces of his broken heart from up off the floor so he could pretend everything was fine at least long enough for John to call them back and for him to go meet up with the Winchester patriarch. Perhaps he’d luck out and Azazel would kill him while Dean still thought he honestly cared about the alpha, and then he’d at least get a couple of tears shed for him at his funeral. He was glad Dean had left his father a message while they were out and about earlier, and that he’d bought that new Escalade, because he was going to have to get out of Sioux Falls soon before Dean noticed he was falling apart.

“Yeah, sorry.” He tried to get comfortable with the omega’s assessing gaze on him and to suppress the despair he felt. No wonder Bobby wanted them to read that chapter before they went and did something stupid. He’d certainly come close to claiming Dean more than once in the last few days, and there had been a couple of times when he was sure Dean would have accepted him. Shit, he needed to find a bottle of something and drown in it. “Interesting chapter.”

“Yeah?” Sam bit his lip and nodded, focusing everything he had on locking any emotion out of his scent. “What’s wrong?”

“Just...worried.”

“About Gordon?”

“About a lot of things.”

Dean regarded the alpha for quite some time, trying to deduce what was going on with him. He’d been fine before he started reading that stupid _What to Expect…_ book, which Dr. Milton had told him would be helpful for some things but mostly useless, as it had a decided bent towards the experiences of female omegas, who were as fundamentally different from male omegas as males and females of the other designations were different from each other. He knew Bobby had read the whole thing front to back and marked sections he thought would be helpful, but Dean had been avoiding reading it because he knew he should take everything with a grain of salt. When you got right down to it, male omegas had more in common with male betas than they did with female omegas, something the female beta who’d written that book clearly didn’t want to acknowledge, opting instead to slot omegas all into one neat little box.

“Come over here,” Dean said at last, sitting up and moving over against the wall.

“There isn’t enough room,” Sam told him, but seeing the pout the omega purposely affixed to his face, lit by the cold blue of the winter moon, the alpha caved and moved into the other bed. He was right, there wasn’t enough room ( _at least not to sleep, it was plenty big enough for the other things they’d gotten up to that evening, and god, he had loved the way the omega’s naked skin glowed silver in the moonlight as he moved over the alpha_ ), but Dean seemed determined to make sure they both fit on the far-too-small space, purposely tangling his legs and arms up with Sam’s. “You can’t expect us to sleep like this.”

“Can’t I?” Dean waggled his eyebrows with a wide grin, nudging at Sam’s nose with his. “Come on. Spill it.”

“I’m just…” Sam sighed, leaning his forehead against Dean’s. “I’m worried about what’s going to happen if your dad calls back and I take off on you.”

“I’ll manage,” Dean said softly. “Adam’s never gonna let another alpha touch me. He promised.”

“When did he promise that?”

“When he had me in the bathtub. At your grandfather’s house.” Sam was surprised at how open Dean’s emotions were when he was choosing to bring up something this painful. Typically he clamped them down tight whenever something about Shreveport came up, but right now Sam could scent his sadness, hurt, and fear as clearly as if he they were his own. He was helpless in the face of his distressed omega, running a hand down Dean’s face and neck to soothe him. “I think you were...locking up? It was just the sound on the tape at that point but...anyway he promised he’d keep me safe so, you know, it’s not like you’re leaving me here without anyone.” He gave Sam a watery smile, his eyes glistening. “So what is it you’re really worried about?”

“I…” Sam wiped away the tear that trailed its way to the tip of Dean’s nose. “When you have a chance, read chapter four. I’d just...like your opinion on it.”

Dean gave a ragged laugh, sniffing, and asked, “That’s what you come back with? Chapter four?”

“Please.” Dean had no idea what the babymoon chapter could possibly say that would make Sam look so serious about it, but there was distress in Sam’s scent as well now. He nodded, and closed his eyes as Sam leaned in to kiss him, whispering, “I love you.”

“Yeah…” Dean butted his nose up against Sam’s neck, breathing deeply of his green tea and books. “Still haven’t figured out why.” A series of punches landed to Dean’s abdomen so furiously that Sam could feel them where he was pressed up against the alpha’s stomach. Dean glanced down between them and growled slightly. “Come on Elliott, it’s bedtime.”

Sam shifted onto his back, pulling Dean half onto him so the omega’s head was on his shoulder and he could bury his nose in Dean’s hair. He could still feel Elliott pummeling away on Dean’s abdomen, and Dean immediately trapped Sam’s left leg with his own, sighing and drumming out a rhythm on Sam’s ribs with his fingertips before sliding his hand up to lay it over the alpha’s heart. The omega was asleep long before him, and Sam hoped to god chapter four was wrong. There was no way he could ever get over this if it wasn’t.

The next day was Sunday and it snowed all day, which meant a day indoors watching TV, doing laundry, and helping Bobby do research. Sam was in a funk most of the day, something Dean chalked up to cabin fever. He was getting a touch of it himself, since they’d just spent a couple of weeks cooped up in a hotel and now they were cooped up at Bobby’s. Eventually Sam went outside to chop some wood, which was more fun to observe than Dean would have imagined, but there really was something appealing on an animalistic level about watching the giant alpha take an axe to hunks of wood and split them like slicing a hot knife through butter. He certainly enjoyed the way Sam’s shoulders moved and the curve of his back and ass, and blushed when Bobby caught him at the kitchen window and asked if he was enjoying the show. He was still bright red when Sam came inside, covered in snow, and shook his hair off like a St. Bernard, getting water everywhere. The movement highlighted the length of Sam’s neck, and Dean had trouble suppressing the urge to pounce on him from across the room and bite. Fuck, he was turning into an actual girl.

On Monday Sam, Dean, and Adam headed back out to Sioux Falls in Bobby’s truck while Bobby broke down Dean’s old bed to make room for the new one that was supposed to be delivered in the afternoon. Sam needed to pick up the Escalade, then he was going to head back to Bobby’s to move the old bed frame and mattress down to the basement while they waited for the delivery truck. Dean was taking Adam to get an anti-possession tattoo, since he was well enough that he’d be venturing off of Bobby’s heavily warded property soon to get a job, and while Bobby had given Adam one of his charms as soon as he got there from Chicago, Dean wasn’t inclined to take chances with his baby brother. Then they were going to hit up a couple of regular car dealerships to see if Dean could find a vehicle he might not necessarily like but would at least tolerate ( _Sam gave Adam specific instructions not to let him walk away without finding something sensible while Dean was in the bathroom peeing for the second time that morning_ ), and then maybe take another run at the local Babies R Us, since Adam was a beta and could go inside with him. That was a big “maybe,” though.

The salesman at the luxury car dealership was a damn sight more accommodating to the giant alpha and his omega when they came in this morning than he’d been two days before, spotting Bobby’s old, beat up truck pulling onto the lot. The flash of the AmEx Black Card in Sam’s wallet when he pulled out his driver’s license had gone a long way towards getting the beta to fall all over himself to sell Sam something on the lot, and today Dean was surprised the guy hadn’t found a red carpet to roll out with the way he was behaving around them. He was even treating Dean like an actual _person_ instead of just an omega, chatting him up about the M5 that had made Dean’s mouth water. Adam suggested casually that Sam could always buy it for _him_ if he really wanted to keep the BMW in the family, but his older brother squelched that the second he saw Sam about to say, “Sure.” Dean had no idea how much money Sam had, but it certainly couldn’t be _limitless_ , and he was far too accustomed to never having enough of anything that he wasn’t about to let Sam just go around buying everyone in his life a car. Elliott would probably go to college eventually, since he or she sure as hell wasn’t going to be a hunter if Dean had anything to say about it, and college was expensive. Not that he’d ever thought he would have been thinking a couple of decades into the future about saving money for college, but now he definitely was, and trying at the same time to wrap his mind around becoming a guy who thought about his kid going to college in eighteen years instead of hoping he made it to his next birthday with all his limbs intact.

Sam’s mood had been off all morning, still apparently unsettled by whatever scary message chapter four held, which Dean decided he’d get around to reading eventually but wasn’t too terribly worried about at the moment. Knowing his dad’s propensity for not returning phone calls, Sam was probably going to be with them at Bobby’s for a while so they had time to sort it out. And anyway, it gave the omega an excuse to be overly cuddly in public, which he did typically try to avoid so as not to come off as a stereotype, but each snuggle, nudge behind the ear, and kiss to the jaw got a bit of a wider grin out of the alpha so it was worth it. It also made Adam super uncomfortable and that was just a big bonus to the whole thing. By the time Sam had everything he needed to drive his new truck off the lot he was in a much better mood, making sure to leave the omega with lips puffy from kissing and messy hair before he left the brothers for the day.

“Yeah...I think I’m gonna have to get my own apartment…” Adam said as he watched the gorgeous black Cadillac drive off the lot. “You’re my brother, and I love ya, but that’s just gross.”

“He’s not gonna be staying,” Dean replied, already feeling slightly anxious at being out of the alpha’s presence. Not unmanageably anxious, but he was definitely going to have to really work on clamping that down. “He’s gonna go back out hunting with Dad. If Dad ever checks his voice messages.”

“What?” Adam demanded, instantly irate at his kinda-sorta-but-not-really brother-in-law. “Why the fuck would he leave you here by yourself?”

“It’s the best plan we could think up to get Gordon away from Bobby’s,” Dean said, noting it didn’t do anything to change the scowl on his brother’s face.

“Well it’s a stupid plan,” Adam snapped. “And Dad better realize that and not call you back. Come on, let’s go get me this tattoo.”

Adam opted to get inked on his chest the way Sam was, and after about an hour of feeling like the artist was scraping his skin off with a needle they headed over to Marge’s to get something to eat. It made Dean terribly uncomfortable to go back there after what transpired with Ruby and Sam, but he’d known Marge and Bill too long to not stop in and let them know he was okay. The bar owner and cook actually broke down in tears upon seeing Dean, having had no idea what happened when Bill found them, and Dean got thwacked again with the notepad for not calling her to tell her he was okay when he got out of the hospital. She took a shine to Adam immediately, since she’d heard random stories of Dean’s “idiot kid brother who was smart to get out of hunting so he didn’t get himself killed,” sliding him a beer with a wink and letting him know it was the only one he was getting until his next birthday when he was legal. Elliott woke up as soon as Dean started eating so they got to feel the baby kicking, and by the time they were done Dean had promised they’d come back more often so Marge could keep adequate tabs on him, though that promise fell under the “I’ll call you sometime” umbrella for him. It wasn’t that his feelings towards Marge had changed, but his feelings towards her bar, and especially her bathroom, definitely had. She mentioned the upstairs apartment to him should things not work out with Sam, but he assured her things with Sam were fine before they said their goodbyes and headed off to go car shopping.

Even though they were in a normal dealership and not the luxury dealer he’d been to with Sam the day before, the experience of car shopping with Adam was inarguably worse. As a young beta Adam did not begin to get the kind of automatic respect that was given to Sam, and walking around with a pregnant omega at his side appeared to lower their status even further. They’d been wandering around in the show room of the first dealership for twenty minutes before any of the sales people even acknowledged their presence, and even then they spoke only to Adam, treating Dean like a child who couldn’t possibly understand the ins and outs of something as complex as an automobile. Despite Dean asking specific questions about horsepower, ease of maintenance, warranty, reliability, and common repairs or complaints, the answers were still directed towards Adam, as if he were obviously humoring Dean by allowing him to rattle off a series of questions he’d memorized so he would sound halfway intelligent. Adam was quite nastily insistent that Dean understood English and didn’t need a translator, which got them treated with open disdain. Coupled with the stares they were getting from other shoppers and the occasional sniff of the air, Dean’s anxiety level was soon rocketing off the charts. They’d been to three dealerships already before they found one that treated them decently, and by that time Dean was clinging to Adam’s side, his brother’s hand clasped in a death grip while he struggled to keep himself from shaking. The New Old Dean realized he should have strapped on at least his boot knife as a type of security blanket before heading off on this shopping spree, but he hadn’t expected to be on the receiving end of this level of contempt. He almost thought it would have been better if someone was physically threatening him. He knew what to do with that. The constant belittling was hitting him on a completely different level, making him feel dirty and cheap, and he hadn’t mentally prepared for it. He’d know better next time. Dean was worried that his brother might bristle at being asked for constant touch in public, but Adam took it all in stride. More than that, Adam would have been happy to take Dean for a piggyback ride if that helped him calm down, and decided he would ask Sam for some soothing tips he could use to keep Dean from reverting to a quivering shell of himself if their dad did in fact call back and whisked the alpha away and he got blindsided like he obviously was right now.

They were in the last dealership they planned to visit, the one where they were actually being treated like people who wanted to plunk down a lot of money to buy something, when Dean caught a whiff of the air as the door to the showroom opened and a gust of wind blew in. He stiffened, clenching Adam’s hand so tightly his brother almost yelped, and was working furiously to pull his, “everything is right with the world” expression onto his face as Gordon called, “Dean!” from across the room. He _really_ regretted not strapping on at least one knife. Adam cast a glance over his shoulder, trying to place the dark skinned man striding across the dealership towards them, and muttered, “Is that Gordon?”

“Yeah,” Dean whispered back.

“He’s got some balls on him, I’ll give him that,” Adam said before his brother turned around with a smile.

“Hey Gordon,” the omega managed, sounding only slightly strained. “Imagine seeing you twice in just a couple of days. It’s like you’re following me or somethin’.”

He forced a laugh, which Gordon joined in on, flashing his shark smile again. Dean could see Adam’s anger out of the corner of his eye and gave his brother’s hand a squeeze to caution him against doing anything that would provoke the alpha.

“Not following you, just lucky I guess.” He raked his eyes up and down Dean unabashedly and Adam immediately understood why Sam had been so upset about him at dinner on Saturday. If Adam had his gun this guy wouldn’t be walking out of here. “Where’s Sam? You seemed pretty attached at the hip.”

“He’s home waiting for _their_ new bed to arrive,” Adam told him with a cold smile. “You probably don’t remember me, I’m Dean’s brother, Adam.”

Gordon turned his dark eyes on the pale young man and said, “No, I remember you. Could tell even when you were pint sized you were a beta. Sucks getting kicked out of Actaeon, doesn’t it?”

“Actually they let me stay and graduate. Top of my class,” Adam told him, which made the alpha’s nostrils flare. Dean tried squeezing his hand again, but Adam had no interest whatsoever in backing down. “Is there something we can help you with? We were in the middle of buying a car.”

“Can’t a man say hello to an old friend?” Gordon asked, ice in his tone as he sized up the beta who had an inch in height on him.

“Not one he used to give split lips and black eyes,” Adam replied, and steered Dean to look back at the saleswoman ( _Janet_ ), adding, “Excuse us.”

Dean was surprised at how effective Adam was at being a barrier between him and the world. He definitely still had to squelch the desire to run home and bury himself in Sam’s neck, but Adam had stared Gordon down and not even broken a sweat. If they hadn’t run into him at the end of an awful day, the New Old Dean decided he would probably be fine right now knowing his kid brother had his back. The way Adam had flat out dismissed the alpha seemed to have gotten them a lot of respect from the sales staff, too, which was good because Dean had found a black ‘02 F150 SuperCrew XLT that he supposed wasn’t _completely_ horrible, even if he worried that Baby would never forgive him for looking twice at a Ford product. Whoever owned it before trading it in had added a bed cover, making it practical for storing weapons, and just because he was probably going to have to officially go into some kind of semi-retirement after popping out Elliott there was no way he was ever driving around in a vehicle that didn’t have a boatload of weapons in the back. It was also old enough that he could work on it himself, but not so old that the mileage was high. As he explained to his brother, they hadn’t started futzing around with the mechanics until ‘04, when you practically couldn’t touch anything without pulling the engine ( _because of course he knew that off the top of his head, Adam didn’t even know why he’d asked_ ), and he liked the idea of getting under the hood to modify it himself. They wanted to find out what they needed to put a hold on it until Sam could get into the city to plunk down some cash or write out a check or whatever it was required to take the thing home with them, but with Dean being an omega and Adam being a broke beta college student the best Janet could do was recommend they sit in the truck until Sam came back out from Bobby’s to make sure no one bought it off the lot.

A quick call to Sam got him back out on the road, though it meant the bed, which had just been delivered, wasn’t getting put together until they all got back home. Dean had minor heart failure hearing how much the alpha delivery guy had wanted to check out his room, but Sam assured him it had remained untarnished by the smell of a foreign knothead. The guy had gotten a little mouthy until Sam informed him the only tip he’d be getting for the delivery would be a couple of missing teeth if he didn’t back the fuck down right now, which had Dean’s stressed, nervous omega singing Disney love songs because one, Sam and all his wonderful Sam smell was headed to the dealership, where Gordon was pointedly lurking, and two, Dean just had the biggest, bestest, strongest alpha _ever_ . He really would have been completely humiliated at his own internal monologue sounding like a fourteen year old gushing over a boy band but he was just too exhausted from having to deal with all the salespeople today without going to pieces. Also, Adam was starting to look a little like he was out of energy for the day and again, Gordon was still lurking. The sooner the biggest, bestest, strongest alpha _ever_ could get there for some moral support the better.

It took about forty minutes with traffic and the light snow that was falling for Sam to come in through the showroom doors, by which point Adam really looked like he needed a nap and Gordon’s lurking was bordering on obscene. Janet had at least started the paperwork with them once she knew the alpha was coming so there wouldn’t be much left for Sam to do besides pay for the thing, and the paperwork would technically hold it for an hour or so. Dean might have minded the idea of asking Sam to spend thousands and thousands of dollars on a truck for him if it hadn’t been Sam’s idea in the first place and if it weren’t a fraction of the cost of the M5 he still really sorta kinda wanted _badly_. He scented Sam before he saw him, managing just barely not to run from Janet’s cubicle, particularly when he caught the irritation flooding through the dealership. Clearly Sam had spotted Gordon.

Sure enough, as he rounded the corner to the main showroom area, followed by Adam and Janet, he saw Sam and Gordon in a bit of a standoff over a brand new silver ‘06 GT that had initially caught Dean’s eye when they came in ( _come_ **_on_ ** _, the thing had 550 hp, plus it was soooo pretty, how was he not gonna at least look?_ ). Though he was sure they both scented him neither of them looked his way. Dean half hoped the overhead sound system would start playing Etta James belting out _At Last_ but the gods weren’t with him today.

“Hey Sammy,” he said easily as the alpha reached a hand out, his eyes still fixed on Gordon. As soon as he slid his palm into Sam’s the younger man pulled him tight against his side and took a quick sniff of his hair. For a second Dean thought Sam might actually lick him and had been sorry he joked about getting peed on Saturday, as that seemed to be a distinct possibility as well right now. “We’ve pretty much got the paperwork filled out. Come on.”

“I’ll be there in a second,” Sam told him, still not looking away from Gordon.

“Hey Dean-o,” Gordon said, purposefully looking from Sam over to the omega pressed into his side. “Tell your boyfriend you don’t need him home tonight so he can come out and play. As I was just explaining to him, I figured out the location of that job and could really use some back up.”

“And as I was just explaining to Gordon, my date book for this evening is all full up,” Sam growled, which drew the dark eyes back over to him. “Sorry. Gotta put a bed together.”

“He’s really got you whipped, huh? Must taste as good as he smells.”

Gordon smiled lewdly as Sam’s eyes rimmed red, and Dean moved between Sam and the car, turning his back on the other alpha and laying his free hand on Sam’s chest.

“Sammy?” he said quietly, pressing in as close as he could with his ever-increasing baby bump. “The truck?”

“Come on Sam,” Adam called from where he stood farther across the showroom floor.

Gradually Sam began to come down enough from the boiling rage that he was just barely managing to keep from filling the room with to become aware of his surroundings. The entire showroom had come to a standstill over the two alphas posturing by the very expensive, barely street legal supercar and it looked like at least one of the salespeople was poised to call the police if necessary. He knew exactly what Gordon was trying to do; of course he did. He was ramping things up after the encounter in the mattress store on Saturday when Sam hadn’t taken the bait, wanting to goad Sam into a fight, maybe thinking if he pushed hard enough Sam would unleash whatever powers he had, maybe expecting he could break Sam’s jaw again like he was still a little kid, but knowing all that didn’t help Sam calm down. There was a deep, dark, violently angry pit at his center demanding Gordon’s head on a pike. It was terrifying not being able to turn this much anger down more than just a little, and there was the real possibility for the confrontation to turn bloody until Dean pressed his face against Sam’s neck, inhaling deeply before cooing, “Come on, you’re stinkin’ up the place.”

The feel of the omega’s breath against his skin managed to snap him out of the blind, murderous fury that had almost overtaken him, and he blinked and stared at Dean as if he’d just noticed he was there. He looked down into Dean’s openly concerned green eyes for a long moment, feeling the blood that had been pounding in his ears subside, and then shamelessly planted the most possessive kiss on him he was able to muster, deep and hungry and open mouthed, his hands in the omega’s hair so Sam could fiercely press their lips together. Dean clutched at the front of Sam’s coat, needing something to keep his knees from buckling, trying not to pull Sam backwards with him onto the top of the GT as he whimpered. Sam moved one hand down to the small of Dean’s back, the other still cradling the back of his head, and pulled him in as close as he could without hurting Elliott, only releasing the smaller man when he was sure his point had been made about his status in relation to Dean and everyone in the dealership would be blushing.

Dean actually thought for a moment that he might pass out, because goddamn, Sam sure knew how to kiss when properly motivated, and he couldn’t see straight or feel his face, but eventually he managed to stammer out, “The um...truck…?”

“Sure,” Sam replied, trying to remember why he was so upset about the contents of the baby book two nights before. The way Dean was looking at him like he hung the moon was definitely real, and the way he wanted to forget about the dealership and go try out the new bed with his omega was definitely real, and the way Elliott was punching him through Dean’s abdomen was definitely real. The way Janet cleared her throat and Adam coughed was also real, and he managed to tear himself away from the pale skin and freckles in front of him. “Right.”

“They’re babymooning,” Adam told her quietly, and she replied, “I have no idea what that is,” as the pair headed over.

A few moments later a security guard was escorting Gordon out of the building while Sam finalized the purchase of Dean’s new truck back in Janet’s cubicle, glaring back as he stormed through the snow to his car. After the encounter in the dealership there were exactly two things Gordon was sure of. First, Sam Campbell definitely had something very dark in him, judging by the unnatural rage he’d been fighting back there. And second, in order to get to Sam he was either going to have to go around - or through - Dean. Frankly, he was just fine with that.


	47. We're Going Into this Deal Blind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Evening at Singer Salvage Yard.

It definitely was a new experience driving a car right off the lot, and Dean wasn’t going to pretend it didn’t send a little thrill through him, even if he still hadn’t decided how he felt about Sam just walking into a dealership and buying him a truck. Adam had mentioned the M5 a couple of more times until his older brother finally kicked him in the shin to shut him up, which got a huge laugh out of Sam and finally convinced Janet the alpha was sane after what had happened by the GT. Caravanning back to Bobby’s in a vehicle so much higher off the ground than the Impala was definitely weird and something Dean was going to have to get used to, but he had to admit he appreciated the four wheel drive as they made their way back on the snowy roads.

What he didn’t appreciate was the man sitting at Bobby’s kitchen table when they came in through the front door, Bobby sitting next to him with a shotgun across his knees, as he was hungry and tired and wanted to get the new bed put together much more than he wanted to talk to his grandfather. Why the guy was here he didn’t know and didn’t particularly care. Not that he had anything against Henry, the man had simply made it clear there wasn’t much he could do for Dean and Dean didn’t have the energy at the moment to expend on someone who couldn’t do anything for him.

He did not expect the shocked look on Sam’s face, or for him to blurt out, “Henry!” upon seeing the dark haired alpha in his trademark suit and hat.

“Sam, Dean,” Henry said, rising to his feet. When he spotted the younger Winchester closing the front door he crossed over to him, adding, “You must be Adam.”

Adam of course had no idea who the man was, but much like his older brother he didn’t have the energy or patience for strangers. They’d been gone almost all day and it had been very tiring. He wanted to lay down on the couch and watch some bad TV until he fell asleep. Still, it did arouse his curiosity to be looking into the face of a man who had his eyes.

“Yeah,” the beta said, slightly unnerved by the way the guy was studying him. “And you are?”

Sam beat Dean to it.

“That’s your grandfather,” he told Adam, which had Adam’s eyebrows rocketing off towards the top of his forehead.

“So I can put this away?” Bobby asked of the shotgun, and Sam nodded. He stopped as he headed to slot the gun back where it belonged in the kitchen broom closet, saying to Henry, “Sorry about that. Forty year old man shows up sayin’ he’s John Winchester’s father it makes a fella twitchy.”

“Of course,” Henry told him. “I wouldn’t have expected less.”

“How the hell do you know he’s my grandfather?” Dean demanded quietly of Sam, who realized suddenly that shit, he hadn’t mentioned either conversation he’d had with Henry to the omega, and that was certainly going to be seen as withholding information.

“Sam and I have spoken before,” Henry replied simply. “When you were in the hospital in Minnesota and then again in Chicago.”

“Really?”

The look on Dean’s face made it clear to Sam that he’d either better find a florist in town who had a boatload of lillies this time of year or he would not be enjoying the brand new bed this evening, and the alpha flushed, his cheeks turning a deep red. It was true that the first time he’d met Henry he had decided not to bother to tell Dean about it, but the second time had been right before they’d left the Peninsula for the Holiday Inn, and between the trip to Benny’s and the mess with Gordon and, to be honest, the new and fun and amazing directions their physical relationship had gone, he’d just flat out forgotten about the offer of the bunker. He tentatively reached for Dean’s hand, and though he heard a low growl the omega didn’t pull away when Sam started to rub little circles into his wrist with his thumb.

“I didn’t tell you about Windom because it was the same day you had your surgery and Henry wasn’t there to help get you out,” Sam said, giving Dean a little tug to pull him closer. Reluctantly the smaller man went. “There just didn’t seem to be a point, I figured the conversation was one and done. He showed up again our last day at the Peninsula and I’ve been thinking of other things since then.”

He dared to run his other thumb along Dean’s lower lip, and the omega officially stopped growling, his scowl turning into an indignant and adorable little pout.

“I hope you’re not blaming me for you keepin’ stuff from me again,” Dean said, though he sounded more sulky than angry, and certainly not threatening in any way.

“You are very distracting,” Sam informed him, and the scowl came back. Still, Dean now kind of looked like a kitten someone had given a bath instead of a tiger with a thorn in his paw; irritated, but he’d live, so Sam thought he probably had fair to good odds of sleeping among far too many throw pillows tonight.

“You haven’t had a chance to discuss my offer with Dean, then?” Henry asked, the only one in the room completely unaffected by how close the two young men were standing or the serious bedroom eyes they were starting to flash at each other. Bobby had retreated to the kitchen to clean something, even though he’d only made a sandwich for lunch and had already washed the plate and knife he’d used to make it, while Adam had clicked on the television _and_ buried himself in a book on Asian spirits and the lore surrounding them.

“What offer?” Dean said, stepping out of Sam’s bubble and turning to his grandfather.

“I asked Sam to join the Men of Letters as an initiate,” Henry replied. “We have a bunker outside of Lebanon that you could make your home once you’ve mated.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Dean asked, pulling his hand from Sam’s and moving towards the kitchen.

“As we’ve discussed, only alphas can join the organization, but as Sam’s mate you would be welcomed at the bunker and would have full access to any of its contents.” He doubled over as he had in the gym, and Sam rushed over to help him sit in one of the kitchen chairs. “Sorry, still flaring a bit.”

Henry’s partial collapse had caught Adam’s attention, and he got up from the couch, saying, “What’s wrong?”

“Diverticulitis,” Henry told him, a thin sheen of sweat breaking out on his forehead. “It comes and goes.”

“How frequently?” Adam asked, coming over to check his abdomen. Henry immediately grabbed his wrists to stop him, his eyes a vivid scarlet warning. “I’m in school to become a nurse. You should let me at least take a look.”

“A nurse?” Henry tried not to scoff but was in too much pain to contain his disappointment. “John must be so proud.”

“My mother was a nurse,” Adam snapped, getting an appropriately embarrassed and apologetic look from his grandfather. Henry didn’t need to know Adam had decided on his career before he even knew his mother was a nurse, so long as he put the man in his place. Alphas could be so fucking arrogant. “You shouldn’t just ignore bouts of diverticulitis. You can get a serious infection and end up in surgery. When was the last time you saw your doctor?”

“It’s fine, Adam,” Henry insisted. “I appreciate the concern, but it’s fine.”

“Suit yourself,” the beta grumbled before heading back to the couch.

“So...let me get this straight.” Dean had followed Henry to the kitchen and was sitting down at the end of the table. “You want Sam in your club.”

“Obviously I would prefer my own grandsons, but neither of you are eligible.”

“Right, because sexism,” Dean snarked. “And you have some kind of bunker you want him to live in? Back where Dad and I lived when I was little?”

“Exactly,” Henry replied, and rattled off the list of amenities to Dean that he’d already told Sam about, plus a few more he hadn’t mentioned, watching as the omega’s face lit up.

“So you’re offering us the Batcave,” Dean said when Henry was finished, trying very hard to contain his excitement at this news.

“I suppose?” Henry looked from Dean to Adam to Sam. “John was never a real reader of comic books.”

Dean was on his feet, striding over to Sam, who hadn’t in any way expected he would be so thrilled about this discussion. The omega grabbed Sam by the neck and planted a huge kiss on his mouth that almost had the alpha falling over from not expecting to be dragged forward so suddenly, then broke away and smacked him on the shoulder.

“Fuck, Sammy, we’re getting offered the fuckin’ _Batcave_!” he exclaimed, and actually laughed. “The _Batcave_! How could you forget about the fucking _Batcave_?” He looked like he might start dancing right in the middle of the living room, his glee filling the air like a big, happy, pink cloud. “Best. Day. _Ever_.”

“Dean…” Sam started, afraid he was going to get swept up and not think through the actual implications of accepting what Henry was offering. He was right.

“We’ll take it,” Dean told Henry without hesitation. “What do you need from us? Downpayment? Blood oath? First born child? It’ll be a couple of months before we can provide that last one…”

“Dean, stop,” Sam insisted, bringing the omega’s attention back to him. “Did you even hear what he said about the place?”

“That it’s got a twenty car garage and an armory?” Dean asked, jade eyes twinkling. “Yeah, I heard him Sam.”

“No, the part where you’d have to be my mate in order to actually live there,” Sam said, earning him a shrug from the omega.

“Yeah? So? That’s what you want anyway, isn’t it?” Dean was too wrapped up in the idea of the bunker to really notice the shocked and somewhat dismayed look on the alpha’s face. “So you claim me and we move into a fully warded bunker with a _shooting range_ , Sammy. What’s the big deal?”

Somehow Dean still completely managed to miss the way Sam was staring at him, which was impressive considering both Adam and Bobby had picked up immediately on how Sam was feeling even without the ability to scent him. Henry was too thrilled to hear his grandson agreeing to live in the bunker to register anything either, and stood as the pain in his side ebbed. He stepped towards Sam, holding out his hand.

“You’ll join us then?” he asked, smiling at the tall, upset alpha in front of him.

“No,” Sam said, moving back towards the stairs. “Dean and I still need to discuss this.”

“What is there to discuss?” Dean laughed, which just made Sam retreat further.

“Things,” the alpha said tersely. “I need to go put your bed together.”

Sam turned on his heel and stormed up the stairs, the door to Dean’s room closing behind him with a definitive slam that made everyone downstairs jump. Dean stood staring up after him, at an utter loss of what the hell had just happened, while his omega screamed to run upstairs and soothe before the big, strong alpha went off and made everything all smelly with his evident unhappiness. Instead he turned to the other men with giant, confused eyes and a pit in his stomach.

“What the hell was that?” he asked to no one in particular, hoping one of them would be able to answer him.

“Are you serious?” Adam demanded flatly. “A guy brings up matehood with you and your response is ‘sure, what’s the big deal’?”

“What?” Dean still wasn’t getting it, which just had Adam shaking his head. “ _What_? It’s the fucking _Batcave_ , Adam! Matehood seems like a pretty small price to pay for the _Batcave_!”

“ _Jesus_ …” Adam was glaring at his older brother now, getting off the couch and heading for the stairs. “Do _not_ say that to Sam. _Ever_.”

“ _What_?” Dean demanded, irritated now that no one would simply tell him what he’d said or done wrong.

“Idjit,” Bobby muttered, and headed down to the basement to work on the panic room he was building.

Dean turned to the only person left in the room, utterly baffled as he stared at Henry, who gave him a shrug. As far as he was concerned his grandson had made the logical, rational choice, which should have paved the way for them packing their belongings and heading for Lebanon. Why this was happening he had no idea.

“I’m sure whatever the problem is you’ll sort it all out,” Henry told him, bundling himself up in a long wool overcoat, gloves, and scarf. “Let me know when you need directions and access to the bunker. Sam knows how to contact me.” He picked his briefcase up from beside the kitchen table and headed for the door, turning back with a smile. “Since I haven’t said it, carrying agrees with you, Dean. I’m sure it’s very strange, but you really do look well.”

The omega certainly hadn’t expected that from Henry, and he certainly wouldn’t have thought he’d find the remark so touching. It might just be hormones, but it genuinely made him happy to have someone comment favorably on his appearance. Most people just stared or sniffed, undoubtedly seeing a pregnant male omega for the first time given how rare male omegas were. It was nice to be seen as a person and not some kind of novelty or sideshow freak.

“Thanks Henry,” he said quietly, and with a nod his grandfather let himself out into the cold January dusk.

Gordon had reinforced his campsite after the encounter with Sam at the dealership and crept up to the outer perimeter of the yard behind a pile of wrecks after the three trucks returned from town. Thankfully it was too cold outside for Bobby to leave his old mutt in his doghouse, or Rumsfeld would have alerted everyone to his presence. As it was, he’d been able to observe much of what was going on through the living room windows with an ordinary pair of binoculars, wondering who the dark haired man in the vintage suit was. His fingers were starting to freeze when everyone but Dean scattered to other parts of the house, Adam and Sam heading upstairs and Bobby heading downstairs, and the man with the dark hair left. The hunter expected the man to have a car, probably around the back of the house since the three trucks were taking up the front driveway, and was thoroughly shocked when instead he headed over among the junkers dangerously close to where Gordon was. Thank god he’d gotten his hands on some illegal scent blockers and loaded up or the man would surely smell him. When the man started checking mirrors on cars and then setting himself up with a bowl and a bunch of ingredients Gordon almost went for his knife. If he was setting up a spell there was a very real possibility the guy was a witch, and if that were the case the knife wouldn’t stop him but it would slow him down to give Gordon a head start back to his camp where the rest of his gear was. It would also be more proof that Sam and Dean were dealing with very dark things.

The man poured various ingredients into the bowl and spoke a few words in Latin before lighting it, his eyes intently focused on the side mirror of the car he was huddled next to. A few moments later the hunter was startled by the sound of another man, looking around for him and eventually determining that the voice was coming from the car’s mirror, and that the man from the house was having a conversation with him.

“ _Very well done, Henry_.”

“I told you the way to get to Sam was through Dean. We could have saved a lot of time if you’d listened to me in the first place. And for the love of god, stop twisting the binding tie every time I mention allowing Dean in the bunker. I can’t keep passing the pain off as diverticulitis.”

“ _It was enough when you told Sam how to overcome the bunker’s defense systems. Practically inviting Dean to get his omega hands all over our research and collections…_ ”

“Does it matter that much? It’s not like there’s anyone else to go through it all. Would you rather it just sit there collecting dust?”

“ _I would rather you secured a date when they planned to move in. Sam seemed to be wavering towards the end of the conversation, even as the omega was accepting his claim_.”

“That went a bit wrong at the end. I don’t know what happened, but I’m sure Dean will smooth things out. He’s more interested than Sam, and wherever he goes Sam will follow.”

“ _You’re sure of that_?”

“Absolutely.”

“ _Well then, it seems our time together may finally be drawing to a close, Henry. I’ll have the alpha with the demon blood and you’ll have your freedom_.”

Gordon gave an involuntary start at hearing the comment that could only possibly be about Sam, knocking against the side mirror of the car he was huddled behind. It snapped off, and though he managed to catch it the sound was plenty loud enough to alert the man in the vintage clothing to his presence. The man paused, straightening slightly, and took a distinct sniff of the air.

“ _What was that_?”

“I don’t think I’m alone.”

He moved a few steps towards Gordon’s hiding spot, but the hunter was already laying flat on his back in the snow and slowly sliding under the car, holding his breath as he went and pulling his knife as quietly as he could.

“ _Get back here then. We can talk more when you return._ ”

“All right.”

The man dumped the contents of the bowl, effectively putting out the fire and then kicking snow over the ashes. Hastily he reset the bowl with new ingredients, whispering different words before touching a match to the contents. The sky seemed to bend in front of him, rippling like water, and he picked up the bowl and his briefcase and walked through the ripple. Before Gordon could get out from under the car the ripple was gone.

So. He had his confirmation. Sam was a barely human monster. A creature that needed to be dealt with. The question was “how.” He couldn’t take him on at Bobby’s. The man may be retired and old, but he was still one hell of an obstacle to getting at the demon thing sleeping upstairs with an omega that was carrying the demon thing’s pup. Adam had also proved he would be more formidable than Gordon would have expected from a beta, as he hadn’t been the slightest bit intimidated this afternoon. That might just be false bravado or the stupidity of youth, but he’d be willing to bet the younger Winchester would go down swinging. Then there was the older Winchester, who was obviously closer to the end of carrying than the beginning but didn’t look helpless by any stretch of the imagination. He was the only thing that kept Sam reined in back in town, and if he decided to unleash the infected alpha it might not be as easy to fight him off as it had been back at school. He waited in the snow for a few more minutes to make sure the man with the briefcase wasn’t coming back, then crept back out of the yard to his car. He needed to get back to his hotel and warm up enough for his brain to get back to functioning and he could think of a plan.

Bobby was back up from the basement and letting Rumsfeld out to do his business when Gordon slunk his way through the fence at the far end of the lot. It set the dog off barking, but the beta couldn’t see anything in the fading daylight to worry about. Still, he went inside for his shotgun and binoculars just in case he was missing something. A quick survey of the property later and he was certain Rumsfeld was just being cranky because of the snow and called the mutt back inside. Sam and Adam were still upstairs while Dean sat on the couch looking at his phone. Part of him wanted to clue the young man in to just how stupid he had been earlier with Sam, but another part of him thought he should probably let the omega figure it out for himself. Dean didn’t have any real experience with relationships, beyond that one beta female he was with for a couple of weeks over in Athens, Ohio. A couple of weeks with a beta female wasn’t even in the ballpark of matehood with an alpha male. Hell, no one had convinced Bobby yet that alpha males and beta females were even from the same planet. How those relationships worked out he’d never understood, but that’s probably why there was a book floating around out there about male alpha and female beta relationships called _Men are From Mars, Women are from Venus_. He’d never read it, but it wouldn’t surprise him if the author were being literal. Still, he didn’t want the boys stewing, because that wouldn’t be good for either of them, and it would probably be worse for Bobby and Adam trying to navigate all the alpha-omega landmines the two kept laying for each other until they finally made up, at which point the betas would probably need to get a hotel room for a couple of days. After watching the freckled blond work his jaw on the couch for a few minutes he headed into the living room to take up residence in his easy chair and tipped his trucker cap back a bit.

“You’re gonna pull somethin’, thinkin’ that hard,” he said at length.

“Dad called,” Dean told him quietly. “There’s a goblin infestation in Muskogee, Oklahoma that he could use help with.”

“Oh.” He ducked his head a little to try to get a better read on the young man, who was staring at the floor, his cheeks turning pink. “When does he want Sam to come out?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Did you point out that tomorrow is your birthday?”

“Why?” Dean looked up him, his eyes wet, and swiped away at the sudden drop of moisture on his cheek. “What good was that gonna do? It’s only a birthday, and people are dyin’.”

“People are always dyin’, Dean,” Bobby said, trying to control the anger rising in his chest. It wasn’t good for his blood pressure or his acid reflux. “I think after the year you’ve had you’re allowed to have your alpha around on your birthday.”

“He’s not…”

“ _Fine_ , so he’s not technically yours in the sense of bein’ mated, but he’s about as yours as someone can get,” the beta snapped. “And if you two weren’t just so damned stupid and stubborn you’d have figured this all out a long time ago, but y’are, so you’re gonna tell him to go off an’ hunt with your dad, who shoulda had enough damn sense to wait a day to call you back. But if there’s one thing anyone can credibly accuse John Winchester of, it’s not having a lick of sense in his head.” Dean swiped at his face again, a little harder this time, sniffing as he did so. Bobby huffed in annoyance, saying, “Well, go tell him. Might as well rip the bandaid off fast.”

Dean nodded, his breath starting to come in little choked gasps, and climbed the stairs to his room. He paused a minute, struggling to get himself under control so that he wouldn’t just fall apart as soon as he opened the door. He doubted he managed it, but Bobby was right, no point in delaying the inevitable - might as well get it over with and start the blubbering. Besides, it would probably get Sam to forgive him for whatever it was he’d done wrong downstairs earlier.

His room was drastically rearranged when he opened it, so much so that he might have bristled at having his space messed with if he hadn’t been so upset by John’s phone call and the fact that his father had absolutely no clue that he wanted Sam to meet up with him on his son’s twenty-seventh birthday. The full bed was replaced by the queen bed, of course, but it was turned sideways with one side up against the window seat so the headboard of the bed didn’t block the window. The daybed was gone, hauled down to the basement with the full bed, and the dresser was moved next to the queen, the desk to where the dresser had been. In place of the desk was an incline bench and a dumbell kit with corresponding rack, which Adam was loading up with weights while Sam got the mattress onto the box spring. They both stopped at the sound of the door, clearly prepared to be irritated with anyone who walked through it that had a name starting with anything other than a “B,” but immediately softened at the flushed omega folding in on himself in the doorway.

“Just talked to Dad,” he said quietly, clearing his throat. “He gave me an address where he wants you to meet him tomorrow, Sam.”

“ _Tomorrow_?” Adam demanded before Sam could speak. “Tomorrow is your _birthday_ , Dean.”

“I know, Runt.”

“Does _he_?” The young man was furious while the alpha was too dumbstruck by the sight of how crushed his omega was to move. Adam whirled towards the bed and glared at Sam. “You’re not fucking going. He can wait a fucking day. Jesus _Christ_ what is wrong with that man?” He stalked over to Dean, his hand out, and said, “Give me your phone so I can call him and tell him he’s going to have to wait a day.”

“It’s okay, Adam,” Dean told him quietly, and found his younger brother right in his face, outraged.

“Dean, if I ever hear you say the kind of shit that Dad pulls is okay again I’m going to punch you right in your goddamned face,” he snapped. “Give me your fucking phone!” Dean did as his brother ordered, his face breaking and big ugly sobs escaping him, and Adam was instantly wrapping him in a hug and almost immediately crying as well. He couldn’t stand seeing his brother this way. Never had been able to. It physically pained him. How could their dad keep doing these kinds of things to Dean and just not care how badly he ended up hurt? “I didn’t mean that, I’m so sorry, I just can’t believe he wants Sam to leave on your birthday, I’m sorry Dean, god, Dad’s such an asshole…”

“Baby…” Sam called quietly from across the room, and Dean pulled away from Adam to crush himself into the alpha’s chest, clinging to his back and soaking his shirt as Sam smoothed his hair and massaged his spine. “Shh, it’s all right.” Dean sniveled something completely unintelligible against Sam’s shoulder, drawing in high-pitched, ragged breaths. “Adam’s gonna call your dad and tell him I’ll meet up with him the day after tomorrow.” He nodded to the beta, who was pulling up John’s number on the phone as he headed out of Dean’s room while wiping a hand over his face and trying to get his breathing under control. “John can handle whatever it is on his own for another day.” Dean shook his head, but Sam was insistent. “Yes, he can. And if he can’t he can find someone else to call and I’ll meet up with him later. I’m not leaving on your birthday, Dean. It’s just not gonna happen, okay?” Dean nodded, slotting his face up against Sam’s neck and ear so he would have at least some chance at getting a hold of himself. “You wanna help me put the new bedding on here?”

Dean half choked with all the snot and tears running out of him, and pulled a little out of Sam’s grasp, telling him, “No, we gotta wash it all first.”

“Okay, then you wanna help me wash it all?”

“Sure.”

Sam grabbed the box of tissues from the top of the dresser, keeping one hand on Dean as he moved, then went to get the bedding and sheet sets they’d bought on Saturday while the omega blew his nose and tried to make his face look a little less tear streaked and splotchy. Sam set the bedding on the mattress for a second, running his hands up and down the smaller man’s arms as he said, “You know it’s gonna be different for us, right? We’ll take road trips when we can, cuz I doubt you could stay still unless someone chained you to a wall, but we’re not gonna be living out of a car, expecting Elliott to put up with forgotten birthdays. We’re not raising our kid to be a hunter and just suck it up.”

“I know,” Dean said quietly, curling his fingers in the front of the alpha’s shirt.

“Good,” Sam told him, brushing his lips against Dean’s forehead before grabbing the bedding again and leading him out of the room.

Bobby was starting to make dinner with Adam’s help when they made it downstairs and headed for the laundry room at the back of the house. As he chopped the peppers for the chili he called to them, “Bobby was on the phone with Dad already. He’s not expecting Sam tomorrow. Also, he said ‘happy birthday’ and ‘sorry Dean.’”

The omega snorted bitterly, his entire relationship with his father wrapped up in the words “sorry Dean.” Once he calmed down he was going to talk to Sam again about that bunker in Lebanon, Kansas. He figured if anyone deserved the Batcave, it was definitely them.


	48. As Long As I'm Around, Nothing Bad is Gonna Happen to You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's Dean's birthday!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last update (probably) before Monday. Recording an audio drama over the weekend.

Dean and Sam didn’t get out of bed the next day until a little before noon. Bobby had planned to sleep on the couch the night before, not really wanting to find out if the new bed creaked, but the two young men had stayed up cuddling on the couch until well after midnight, watching an old horror movie marathon. Sam had even managed to get a few ( _very few_ ) giggles out of the omega, who had been very quiet during dinner and seemed to be so stuck anticipating the alpha’s departure he was unable to enjoy his presence. But Sam’s Boris Karloff imitation was pretty spot on, and he had apparently seen _Bride of Frankenstein_ enough times that he had every grunt and scream and hiss down pat from the ending scene where the monster finally met his bride, and it got him called a dork with an affectionate grin. As it was there wasn’t any creaking, just a bunch of muffled crying, and Bobby really expected that Sam was going to call John up and tell him to go screw himself because things had changed. That didn’t happen. Bobby also really expected that when they finally came downstairs Dean would have a brand new, permanent bite scar on his neck. That didn’t happen either.

It wasn’t that Sam hadn’t wanted to claim Dean, or that Dean hadn’t wanted to be claimed, but the alpha was still thinking of the day before and how readily Dean had been willing to accept Sam as a mate just so he could move into the bunker. It was exactly how Sam didn’t want things to go between them. He didn’t see the point in becoming mates if one of them was doing it because he wanted a war room and dungeons. It would be hard for them to survive as a couple if Sam felt like he had mated Dean while Dean had mated the bunker. Sam had finally gotten Dean to agree to wait until after Elliott was born, and if he still felt like he wanted Sam to claim him he would, but before then Dean had to read chapter four of the baby book.

It seemed a reasonable enough if somewhat silly request to the omega. He was coming to realize that despite their messy history Sam really was it for him, and the whole “claiming” thing had always struck him as a ridiculous formality that a truly happy couple wouldn’t need. But Sam wanted to claim him, and he didn’t see the point in denying the alpha something he really wanted that just didn’t matter enough to Dean to keep saying “no” to. Still, if it made Sam feel better he’d agree to wait until after he was changing diapers instead of getting his bladder beaten up and read whatever Sam wanted him to read. He wasn’t going to read it today though. Today he was going to try to enjoy his birthday and ignore the fact that Sam was leaving the next day and he was already a mess about it.

Bobby and Adam made brunch, having baked a cake that morning, which wasn’t exactly brunch food but Sam was taking Dean out to make sure everything was squared away with his truck and he wouldn’t have any problems with the legality while Sam was out of town. That was probably going to take most of the day, since it meant dealing with the DMV, and then Dean wanted to find a dive bar somewhere that they could have some greasy food and play darts, maybe make out in a booth. He wasn’t sure what else you were supposed to do on your birthday, since he didn’t really celebrate them regularly and half the time he was on a case on his birthday anyway, and Sam had already given him the weight set so he could work on his pecs without needing a gym membership, which took care of presents for him. When he was younger and he had the night to himself he’d typically gotten drunk and/or laid, and he kind of hoped he’d get a chance to do the latter but didn’t want to push anything after he’d pretty much just been a puddle the night before when he and Sam finally went to bed. Still, it would be nice to get another shower session in before he faced an unknown number of weeks with no one willing to scrub his back.

The DMV did pretty much take all day. There were extra forms for everything they needed to register the car to an omega and allow him to legally drive it without an alpha present, since the title was in Sam’s name. He’d wanted to put it in Dean and Adam’s names the way the Impala was, but because the car was being sold in South Dakota and the omega was the only official South Dakota resident it needed to go in the purchaser’s name. Janet had helpfully recommended that Sam simply claim Dean, which was the same recommendation they gave him at the DMV as if that had never occurred to the pair. They needed to call back the insurance agency to triple the premiums for a primary omega driver, then Dean needed to take a written test to prove he understood South Dakota traffic laws even though he already had a driver’s license, then he needed to take an eye and a hearing test, and finally after plunking down $250 for a supplemental “temporary solitary driver’s” license ( _which was the point at which Dean surely would have given up in frustration if the alpha hadn’t been right there with his wallet_ ) he needed to schedule a time to take a road test the following week. It was a very eye opening experience for Sam, who knew that omegas weren’t treated equally but had never imagined they could be treated _that_ unequally. At least all the silent fuming he did while at the government offices meant Dean was ridiculously affectionate the entire time, for once not even trying to suppress his omega’s instinctive need to calm and soothe the irritated alpha and to be soothed in return. Despite the whole process being completely fucked up in its injustice, it was a lovely way to spend the afternoon out in public with a beautiful omega snuggled up against him kissing and cooing and purring while he played the hero and told a bunch of stupid bureaucrats just how stupid their stupid rules were and they just had to sit there stupidly and take it because no one was stupid enough to talk back to a towering, angry, powerful alpha. Stupid DMV.

The sun was well on its way to setting by the time they managed to get everything filed for Dean not to be trapped at Bobby’s through lack of a vehicle capable of handling winter roads, and they headed over to the frozen falls as the dusk gave way to evening, necking furiously in Sam’s truck in a hormone overdrive that would have made sixteen year olds blush. Sam suggested they stay over in the city until tomorrow, but got a shocked, “What kind of girl do you think I am?” from Dean, complete with eyebrow waggling, and instead they decided to try to find the kind of dive Dean was looking for to have dinner before they skipped straight to dessert. They landed at a bar called McCarthy’s, a place that was going for an Irish pub angle but had too many American touches to really pull it off. The music was also not in line with what they would have expected from an Irish pub, leaning more towards modern rock when Dean was hoping to hear The Pogues. At least McCarthy’s did have dart boards and a pool table, plus a pretty extensive menu of greasy food that Elliott was certainly going to make him pay for eating later, giving the omega pretty much everything he expected to get.

There were no booths available so they decided to play darts for a bit to see if anything opened up. Dean was beginning to think Sam was letting him win after the fifth game where the alpha couldn’t even keep up and suggested they switch to pool. Sam wanted to know if he was going to get hustled, but Dean assured him that Elliott was probably going to greatly complicate his ability to get off a decent shot. After getting thoroughly schooled the first game without the baby bump giving the omega even the slightest difficulty in trouncing the alpha, they ended up sitting together at the bar, where they ordered food and beverages and Dean watched with mounting irritation as the bartender kept trying to flirt with Sam.

“He knows we’re together, right?” Dean asked after the third time the muscular blond beta with the chiseled features stopped to ask the alpha if he needed a refill on the pint of Guinness he was nursing, completely ignoring the omega’s empty glass of ginger ale as _Mr. Brightside_ echoed in the background and they argued over The Killers’ likelihood of lasting past their debut album.

“Maybe he thinks we’re brothers,” Sam suggested, snagging a fry off of Dean’s plate.

“Seriously? Just two brothers, one of ‘em with a bun in the oven, hangin’ out at a bar?” He slapped Sam’s hand away when he went for Dean’s pickle. “Would you stop?”

“You’re cute when you’re jealous,” Sam told him, and made a point of leaning in to kiss him when the bartender started over again, sliding off his bar stool to stand between the omega’s knees and running the tips of his fingers down Dean’s jaw. They both felt the breeze as the beta hurried past them as quickly as he could, and laughed.

“Well, if he thought we were brothers he’s very confused now,” Dean said, leaning in for another kiss when there was a bit of an outburst where the bar butted up against the door to the kitchen.

“I’m not going back down there, Don!” a small brunette beta was telling a large, dark haired alpha who looked by his clothing to be one of the managers as they came out of the back. She was clearly a member of the waitstaff, wearing the white shirt and black pants of the rest of the waiters and waitresses working the floor, a black apron with a notepad tied around her waist. “That shelf almost fell on me, and after all the other crap that’s been happening down there you can forget it!”

“Maggie, would you please keep your voice down in front of the guests?” Don hissed. “A shelf did not fall on you, they’re all anchored. There is nothing wrong with the basement.”

“Nothing wrong with the basement?” Maggie was definitely not keeping her voice down and instead was attracting a lot of attention from the patrons sitting at the bar. “The lights flash all the time, it’s always freezing, there are strange noises, and four people have fallen down the stairs! Camille even said it felt like someone pushed her!”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Don snapped as Dean shot Sam an expectant look. There was a ghost in the basement. He knew it, and he knew Sam knew it, and he really, _really_ wanted to go talk to these people.

“No,” Sam said as Don convinced Maggie to take their conversation back into the kitchen. “We are not looking into this.”

“Come on Sammy…” the omega begged, practically bouncing in his seat. “It’s my _birthday_! I’ve even got my EMF meter on me!”

“You do not,” the alpha huffed, taking a sip from his pint glass. Immediately Dean was reaching to his coat where he had laid it across his lap and flashing the contents of his inside pocket. Sam leaned in and lowered his voice. “Why do you have an EMF meter with you?”

“I never leave home without it,” Dean replied logically.

“Why does it look like a busted up walkman?”

“Cuz that’s what I made it out of. It’s homemade.”

Sam raised an eyebrow at him, leaning in again to kiss away the little pout that turned down the omega’s pretty mouth at his ingenuity going unrecognized. It didn’t work, and Dean looked just as pouty when Sam pulled away.

“Baby, we are not checking out a haunted basement with the EMF meter you brilliantly MacGyvered out of a walkman,” he said.

“But it’s my _birthday_!” Dean repeated petulantly, tugging at Sam’s shirt like a little kid who wanted to stay up an extra half hour at bedtime. “ _Please_ Sam?”

Sam tried to maintain his resolve on the subject, but knew it was going to be a struggle. Despite the many obvious reasons they should not be checking out a potentially haunted basement, not the least of which was that it was a _basement_ , it _was_ Dean’s birthday, and Jesus he was just adorable with his big eyes and eager expression, like Sam could make or break the entire day for him. When he leaned in and actually batted his eyelashes like Marilyn Monroe discussing tenor sax players in _Some Like it Hot_ Sam knew it was over. It didn’t help that the driving guitar riff and drums of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs were playing overhead, like _Maps_ was trying to psyche them up to head down to look into whatever vengeful spirit was shoving people down the basement stairs.

“We are just going to verify that something’s here, and then we’re phoning it in,” Sam told him firmly, earning a thank you kiss that might have been a little extra passionate because the bartender was walking by again.

Dean and Sam caught up with Don and Maggie in the kitchen, where they were still arguing, and Sam flashed his FDH credentials quickly, explaining that they were hunters and they overheard the conversation a few moments ago. The last thing Don wanted was to get hunters involved, as that could ruin his business’ reputation, but Maggie was more than eager to list off all the weird stuff that had been going on not only in the basement but in the bar while they were closed. Things were constantly getting moved, bottles and glasses broken, once the cook came in to find the fryer was on and could have burned the place down overnight, when he knew he’d turned it off before he left. Then there were the people who had fallen down the basement stairs, Camille the most recent one. The others had come away with just some bumps and bruises but Camille had broken her arm. Clearly whoever was haunting the place was getting angrier. Maggie was also more than willing to show them where they needed to check with Dean’s homemade EMF meter, and when Don objected she simply flipped him the bird. That brought them to the metal door that lead downstairs, which is where Dean froze.

“I can go down alone,” Sam told him, watching as the color drained from the omega’s face. “One of us should stay up here anyway, we don’t have any weapons in case we get into trouble down there.”

“Yeah, but then one of us is down there in trouble alone without weapons,” Dean said, trying to ignore how lightheaded he felt from the frantic pounding of his heart. “There’s gotta be something iron around here, maybe one of the skillets…”

“Maybe…”

Sam was off through the kitchen and immediately glad they’d decided on an Irish pub for their greasy dinner, and that the one truly authentic thing the owner had invested in were an array of cast iron skillets for making the shepherd’s pie. He grabbed two in one hand and then snagged a couple containers of salt before heading back to where he’d left Dean by the basement door. The omega hadn’t moved, and if it were possible he might have been paler than he was when Sam left him.

“Here,” he said, holding out one of the skillets and then shoving the salt into Dean’s back pocket, since he already had his EMF meter in one hand. “Unless you want to stay up here, which you can.”

“No.” Dean’s voice was small but determined. “You can’t go down there alone.”

“Okay.” He ran a hand through Dean’s hair, sending out as many soothing pheromones as he could, and kissed his forehead, feeling how the omega trembled as he did so. Sam really wanted to order Dean to stay upstairs but could tell it was important to him to overcome this, so he pulled the smaller man against him and said, “Listen, Jody told me the first time I called her about Marge’s…”

“The _first_ time? You…you called her about that more than once?”

The admission managed to get Dean’s focus off of the stairwell, though judging by the hurt in his eyes Sam wasn’t sure that was an improvement. He smiled gently to try to soften the idea of Jody knowing even more of their business, to try to make it seem like no big deal.

“I needed to, Dean,” Sam told him softly. “It was really hard to be around you right after, and I didn’t want it to be. Not when it’s _you_. And I couldn’t just ignore it, so I’ve been talking to her and she’s given me a lot of good advice. Anyway, she said that it can help when something reminds you of what happened to focus on what’s different, instead of what’s the same. What’s different about this basement?”

“I don’t...I don’t know…” Dean whispered, his voice shaking. “I don’t really remember what it looked like.”

“All right, well I do. First the door wasn’t metal, so it’s a different door,” Sam told him, turning Dean away from the doorway so he could get a look down at the basement. “The stairs are different. These are concrete, not wood. The lighting is different, too, these are fluorescents. And I can see that it’s all beer and liquor down here, instead of storage bins. Not even close to the same. Okay?”

“Yeah,” Dean said, nodding against Sam’s shoulder. “Yeah, that helps. Not the same.”

“Nope.”

“Okay. I can do this.”

His heart still pounded far too loudly in his ears as Sam released him, giving his hand a squeeze, and he stood a little closer to the alpha than was technically necessary as they headed slowly down the stairs, clicking his EMF meter on as they went. They hadn’t even made it all the way to the last step when it started beeping like crazy, the lights along the top flashing all the way over to red and the high pitched whirring staying steady. At the bottom Sam made Dean stop and despite his protests drew a salt circle around him, then took the EMF and scoped out the basement. Everywhere he turned the meter whirred loudly, providing more than enough confirmation that there was a very active spirit in residence. As he turned back to the omega to steer him upstairs one of the bottles of scotch on the shelving behind Sam flew for his head, and at Dean’s frantic, “ _Sam_!” he just barely managed to get the skillet up in time to avoid a direct hit to his temple. The bottle smashed against the cast iron, splashing Sam with alcohol, and another bottle followed it immediately. Whatever was down here did not like them at all, and was far more likely to be a poltergeist than a simple vengeful spirit.

“Dean, get upstairs!” he ordered, batting away two more bottles as he retreated towards the steps.

Dean didn’t budge until Sam had reached him and then they made a run for it together as the lights flickered, reaching the top right as the door slammed shut. It sent the omega into an immediate panic, pounding and yelling for Don or Maggie. Sam stopped one step below him, doing his best to shield Dean with his body as the omega threw his shoulder violently against the door.

“Dean, stop!” Sam cried, swinging as two more bottles came at them, but Dean didn’t seem able to hear him. He was panting, little sobs escaping him as he just continued to ram his side against the door. This had been such a bad idea, Dean seemed completely unaware of him, there was too much adrenaline coursing through him to try to soothe the omega, and Sam finally didn’t have any choice. Getting soaked as he smashed a bottle of vodka coming at them with the skillet, he ordered in his alpha voice, “ _Dean, stop_! _Get down_!”  

Dean complied like a switch had been flipped, crouching down to cower on the small landing between Sam and the exit. The bottles just kept coming, even as Sam could hear Maggie and Don pounding on the other side of the door, and he couldn’t hit all of them, having to simply start ducking as they sailed over his and Dean’s heads and smashed against the metal barrier. They were both getting soaked in alcohol and there were small cuts on Sam’s hands and face from the flying glass, but he was far more concerned about Dean, who was close to hyperventilating and looked to be on the brink of catatonia. When Sam spotted one of the heavy metal shelving units downstairs begin to rock, like something was trying to pry it out of where it was anchored into the floor, he realized just how much danger they were in. There were at least a dozen of those metal shelves down here, and two other units began to rock like the first one. They were about to have three large metal projectiles flung at them, and he squatted down, covering Dean with his larger frame and keeping the skillet angled behind him to protect his head and neck.

“Get away from the door!” he shouted to the people outside, and when he heard footsteps hurrying away on the other side he concentrated every molecule in his body on the door lock and the hinges, placed his free hand on the door, and pushed.

His head pounded and he felt the nosebleed start, but both were considerably milder than they had been yet, which would have had him scared to death if he weren’t already there, and the heavy metal basement door blew out and flew to the far wall, leaving a huge dent where it hit the drywall before it crashed to the floor. Sam grabbed Dean and scrambled out of the basement and to the side into the kitchen as all three metal shelving units broke free of the floor and flew up the stairs to slam into the cracked drywall, the structures twisting as they hit and several pieces getting stuck in the wall. Sam had landed on top of Dean, who was on his side on the floor, eyes wide as a terrified rabbit, and he grabbed him again and dragged him to his feet and towards the main section of the restaurant as the enraged spirit started flinging knives everywhere. The three cooks grabbed their own cookware to deflect the hits, racing for the back door, and Maggie was already halfway out the exit, but Don took a butcher’s knife straight to the eye, falling dead to the floor with a look of total shock on his face. By the time the hunters burst through the door from the back to the front of the house people were scrambling for the exit as bottles, glasses, darts, and balls were flung around the room. Sam took a pool cue to the base of his spine as he snatched his and Dean’s coats from their stools, knowing he should make sure all the civilians were getting out of the building but far too worried about Dean and Elliott to care. Luckily it was a Tuesday so the place wasn’t packed like it would have been on a weekend, or the situation could have been much worse than the handful of people Sam spotted with bloody noses, cuts, or nursing an arm or a leg. Once they were outside the alpha turned back, watching the lights flash as the doors slammed open and shut, furniture flying around the dining room. It continued for several more minutes before the spirit had apparently decided its point had been made and everything stopped.

Sam had hauled Dean over around the far side of his truck so the vehicle would be between them and the building, crouching down with him again in the frigid evening air and enveloping him with his frame just in case something came out after them. Nothing did. The only thing happening in the parking lot was the total panic of the restaurant patrons as they scrambled to get in their cars and flee. Dean had come back to himself enough to have a white knuckled grip on Sam’s shirt, and the alpha wrapped an arm around his back to pull him in tight, using his other hand to dig out his cell phone from his back pocket and report the incident to the FDH. He could barely make it through the call with how badly Dean was shaking against him and how cold he could feel the omega getting. Even the alpha was starting to lose feeling in his fingertips. They needed to get into Sam’s truck as soon as possible.

The minute the call was done Sam was pulling away from Dean just enough to fumble in his coat pockets for the car keys, the omega chasing after him to keep them pressed together. He unlocked the doors with the fob and practically lifted Dean into the passenger seat, throwing both of their coats over him to help keep him warm, then ran to the other side and climbed in himself. He started up the engine so he could turn on the heater and within seconds found an omega in his lap, clinging to him one handed and trembling. Sam still couldn’t feel his fingertips, but having Dean against him again was helping his core warm up, and he rubbed every inch of Dean’s arms and back he could reach to get his blood flowing again. The omega’s nose felt like an ice cube pressed up against the base of Sam’s jaw, which reminded Sam of his nosebleed. He checked it in the visor mirror, noticing it was already stopping, and reached into the glove compartment where he’d stashed a packet of tissues after picking up the car from the dealership, holding Dean flush against him with his other hand. After an agonizing wait the engine was warm enough to turn on the heater and blast them both with hot air.

“Are you hurt?” Sam asked when Dean had thawed a little and his breathing had slowed somewhat.

“I think I dislocated my shoulder,” the omega replied numbly, his breath catching as Sam ran a hand into his hair and wrapped the other around his waist. “And I probably re-broke at least one rib. Hurts to breathe.”

“Christ…” Sam was getting him into the passenger seat, pulling Dean’s coat around his shoulders but not trying to get either arm in and then strapping him in with the seatbelt. “We’re going to the hospital to get you checked out.”

“No, please, not another hospital,” Dean begged, unable to breathe well enough to really put any weight behind the request. “Someone’s gonna decide I’m not fit to be a mom if I keep ending up in the hospital.”

“Dean, we can’t just not have you checked out,” Sam said, ending the discussion. “I’ll be right there with you, I won’t let them keep you any longer than they have to to set your shoulder or take x-rays or whatever, and _no one_ is going to try to say you’re unfit.”

“Okay Sammy.” Dean drew in a rattling breath, wincing. “Hurts too much to argue anyway. I just hope we don’t get pulled over. We smell like a couple of winos.”

“Yeah.”

Sam ran a hand down Dean’s face, needing reassurance that he was here and alive, even if he was shivering and far too pale. Still, the alpha could feel his chest swelling with pride at how well Dean had done right up until the door slammed shut. He’d gone down there when he didn’t need to and was in control for almost the whole encounter. Frankly, no one could have expected him to remain calm in the face of being trapped in a basement, so those moments of panic didn’t even count in Sam’s book. He could scent Dean’s mounting distress and figured he’d probably be a mess by the time they got to the emergency room, but for the moment he hoped his omega understood how amazing he’d been. That’s definitely what he intended to focus on for the next few hours, and not how he’d thrown the door off its hinges. He hoped Dean had been too out of it to remember that part, because Sam sure as hell didn’t want to deal with the implications of how rapidly he was developing new abilities and how quickly his body was acclimating to each new skill, or what would happen if anyone other than Gordon and John got wind of the things he could do. Sam gave Dean a kiss to comfort them both and threw the truck into drive.


	49. It's Too Much

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The basement was a bad idea.

Hospitals really were just the worst, and they really had been in too many of them recently. Sam understood exactly why Dean hadn’t wanted to go to the emergency room to have his shoulder and ribs checked, because emergency rooms were awful and he had come to hate them as well, but by the time they got a bed at Sioux Falls General Dean was in considerable pain, his breathing was labored, and he hadn’t felt Elliott move for quite some time. The mounting panic he was feeling over the last concern was making the first two issues much worse, and Sam was afraid they wouldn’t be able to avoid having him admitted yet again if a doctor didn’t come see them soon to confirm the baby had just decided to sleep through the poltergeist and its aftermath and give the omega the reassurance he needed to calm down.

The first thing they did after taking his blood pressure and temperature was to hook him to a fetal monitor and slather some gel on his abdomen to take an ultrasound. Dean was starting to think they should just buy one of each to keep at Bobby’s house so if anyone wondered how the baby was he could just strap himself in for an hour or so and send them a printout of Elliott’s heartbeat. Still, it was a tremendous relief to have the nursing staff confirm that the baby was perfectly fine and was in fact sleeping. Both expectant parents found that a little weird, given how active the kid typically was, but they were assured that Elliott was probably just experiencing a growth spurt, and that pups in utero just like little kids and teenagers did a lot of sleeping when they were growing. They needed to wait on the attending Om-OB/GYN to come check his cerclage just in case, and at the end of a quick, humiliating exam that had Dean shaking all over again the doctor confirmed everything was fine downstairs. Having checked on the baby they wheeled him off for x-rays, which confirmed that he was right; he had dislocated his left shoulder. Though he hadn’t re-broken either of the two ribs on his left side he had cracked a third, and it looked like he’d given himself a contusion on his lung, which accounted for the difficulty breathing. A slew of tests were ordered to make sure it wasn’t too severe and there wasn’t any fluid build-up, and as he was hooked up to an oxygen monitor the odds of him going home instead of ending his birthday in the hospital had officially dropped to zero.

Sam gave Bobby and Adam a quick call to update them on what had happened at McCarthy’s, getting an earful from Bobby about being a damned idjit for letting Dean down in the basement, then settled himself into the recliner along side Dean’s bed in the maternity wing. Initially they hadn’t wanted to let him up, since Dean was not his mate, but when they checked the omega’s records they saw of course that Sam was the pup’s sire and they couldn’t legally keep him out. Besides, they’d popped Dean’s shoulder back into place but that had landed him in a sling, and the petite nurses on the ward decided pretty quickly a towering alpha would have an easier time helping the omega get to the bathroom or move around than they would. By the time midnight rolled around and the doctors and nurses finally stopped coming in to poke and prod at him they were both utterly exhausted, and after figuring out how to get around all the things hooked up to Dean and beeping, Sam climbed next to the omega and wrapped him in his arms as best as he was able so they could sleep.

The nurses only came in once to check on the omega’s vitals, and Elliott didn’t stir all night, which meant the pair were somewhat well rested when a bald black man in a suit with a perfectly trimmed beard edging his jaw entered the room, flanked by two security guards. He carried a briefcase and a manila folder, taking a seat in the recliner as Sam stirred, peering over from where he was spooning Dean. He had his hand splayed across Dean’s belly, hoping to feel Elliott wake up, and after the initial jolt of the three men staring at them he shook Dean lightly, tightening his hold and suppressing a growl.

“Baby, wake up,” he said softly, his eyes locked on the security guards.

“‘M tired, Sammy,” Dean murmured, jarring himself awake anyway when he tried to roll onto his back. “Fuck, that hurts.”

“Dean,” Sam said with a bit more urgency, working hard to curb his instinct to throw Dean behind him and attack the intruders.

“What?” Dean demanded, hissing as he drew in a pained breath.

“Good morning Dean,” the bald man said, causing the omega’s head to whip around to look at him, green eyes wide and immediately wary. “I’m Agent Henricksen with South Dakota Omega Protective Services.”

“You’re who with what?” Dean asked, pressing back into Sam’s ever-tightening hold as if he could disappear inside the alpha if he tried hard enough.

“I’m with Omega Protective Services,” Agent Henricksen repeated. “The ER referred your case to us last night for review.”

“My ‘case?’ What ‘case?’”

“The one Windom Memorial opened a little over a month and a half ago.” Henricksen opened the manilla folder with beautifully manicured hands and began to read the report it contained. “In early December the omega was admitted with his younger brother, both listed by Sam Campbell…” He gave Sam a hard look. “That would be you...and one John Winchester - their father - as victims of a ghoul attack. The omega had a deep laceration over his right ribs that required fifty-three stitches to close and he was diagnosed and treated for an incompetent cervix, which is a serious complication that could have resulted in a miscarriage. While in the hospital he escaped a demon attack because you, Sam, magically knew to show up and managed to kill said demon. He was sent home to Sioux Falls by the Federal Department of Hunters, an agency where you are professionally employed as a hunter. Two weeks later you joined him and the very next day you encountered some sort of supernatural event in a bathroom at a local bar and restaurant, which resulted in the omega suffering four broken ribs, a cracked skull, and a bruised kidney. After treatment at the FDH’s Chicago Recovery Center you spent a couple of weeks recuperating in Illinois, and now, just a few days after your return to Sioux Falls the omega is in the hospital with a dislocated shoulder, a new cracked rib, and a lung contusion as the result of an encounter with a poltergeist at _another_ local bar and restaurant. So in the last six or so weeks as the result of being in your proximity, Sam, a carrying omega has landed in the hospital with serious injuries that could threaten both him and the pup on three separate occasions, despite his doctor’s explicit instructions to reduce his stress and limit strenuous activity in order to avoid premature delivery or loss of the pup.” He closed the folder and set it on the nightstand by the bed. “I’m sure you can see why we’re concerned that your presence in Dean’s life may not be the best thing for him at this time.”

“Okay, first, the ghoul thing was not Sam’s fault,” Dean said, sitting up with Sam’s help and a great deal of difficulty. “My brother asked me to go look into his mom’s disappearance. We were planning to phone it into the FDH but Sam and my dad were already there. Us running into the ghouls was a fluke.”

“Dean…” Henrickson began, sounding tired and frustrated already.

“And the thing last night was my own damn fault,” Dean pressed on. “We overheard one of the waitresses talking, we thought it was just a haunting, we were _only_ going to confirm it and then call it in.”

“Dean…”

“Sam didn’t even want me down in the basement!”

“Dean.” Henrickson’s tone made it pretty darned clear the omega was fighting an uphill battle and should probably shut up until he heard everything the agent had to say and could figure out how best to refute these claims. “It isn’t just that Sam was there or that these were freak incidents. It’s that Sam appears to be actively encouraging you to act like a hunter when you’re a civilian, and it’s our job to protect you from him.”

It was news to both young men that Dean was a civilian, and Dean said, “What?” at the same moment Sam insisted, “He’s a hunter.”

“He’s not a hunter, Sam,” Henricksen said with a terrible finality.

“He is!” Sam insisted. “He’s the best damn hunter in the country! What the hell do you mean he’s not a hunter?”

“The FDH has no record of him,” Henricksen replied coolly. “So while you may like to indulge his fantasies of joining you on the road and being some kind of monster killing Bonnie and Clyde, what you’re actually doing is endangering him.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Dean demanded furiously, trying to ignore the pain in his side every time he took a breath. “I’ve been registered with the agency and working jobs ever since I was sixteen! My dad registered me as soon as I got outta school!”

“No, Dean, he didn’t,” Henricksen said.

“Yeah he fucking did,” Dean snapped. “I think I would know. I _was_ there. If he didn’t I wouldn’t have been able to get paid by the Department, and they’ve been payin’ me pretty steadily for the last ten years.”

“Dean, we requested all FDH records associated with your name and there are none.”

“Bull. Shit.”

“My grandfather.” Sam felt his temper flaring and climbed from the bed to pace the room. “That bastard.”

“What?” Dean had turned his jade eyes on the increasingly angry alpha, whose own eyes were glowing red as he struggled to tamp down his growing fury. “You think he did this? Removed me from the system?”

“You don’t?” Sam asked. “He’s the Assistant Director. If he wanted to scrub your history he could.”

“The fact remains,” Henricksen cut in, “that there is no record of Dean being _allowed_ on these hunts, and as an alpha your primary responsibility is to protect him, Sam. You’re doing a piss poor job of it, and seem to be deliberately endangering him instead.”

“I’m a _hunter_ ,” Dean hissed. “Yeah, I’m not active right now for obvious reasons, but danger comes with the territory! Last night we were just planning to walk through a basement, check the EMF, and hand it off to the Department! We weren’t expecting a poltergeist! And _I’m_ the one who wanted to check it out!”

“Please, Agent Henricksen, you have to listen to me,” Sam said, moving around in front of Dean to stand between him and the side chair. “My grandfather is a very powerful man and he’s obviously done some things to skew the way this looks. Dean _is_ a hunter. You can ask his father if you don’t believe us. They’ve worked a ton of cases together.”

“We’ve tried contacting his father,” Henricksen told them. “His phone says to call you, Sam.”

“Benny.” Dean pushed at Sam to dig his phone out of the plastic hospital bag that had his belongings in it. “Benny Lafitte. He’s mostly out of the life now, but he’s still registered so he can pick up small jobs close to home or verify bigger jobs for other people to handle. I’ve hunted with him a lot since I got out of school, too. Every time my dad ditched me somewhere Benny and I would pick up a case. You can ask him. He’ll confirm my status.” Sam had found his phone and Dean had already pressed the “call” button over Benny’s cell number. It rang a couple of times and then went to voicemail. He switched to their home phone, but got the answering machine. “Shit. He’s not picking up.”

“We were just there visiting him last week,” Sam offered, as Henricksen eyed the two of them skeptically. “We’re not lying, call Benny.”

“He’s known me since high school,” Dean added. “I was his second at Actaeon. Do a search on our names, we set a bunch of national qualification records. He’ll vouch for me.”

“Lafitte, you said?”

“Yes,” Dean said, holding out his phone so Henricksen could take down Benny’s phone numbers. “If you don’t wanna trust the numbers I have you can look him up in the FDH system. Benjamin Horatio Lafitte. He lives at 59 Sunset Trail, Fort Wayne, Indiana.”

Henricksen still looked very skeptical, but he pulled a notepad out of the inside pocket of his jacket and jotted down Benny’s name and address. He tucked the pen back in and gave the alpha and omega a hard stare.

“I’m going to go check into this,” he said at length. “If I can confirm with this Lafitte guy that Dean is a legitimate hunter we may be able to do something about this, but if not I’ll be filing a restraining order against you, Sam. You’ll be required by law to stay away from Dean until after the pup has been whelped, at which point your case can be reviewed and you may be granted visitation rights under supervision for a probationary period of a year.”

“ _What_?” Sam thundered, his rage filling the room as he moved right into Henricksen’s space between him and Dean, a terrifying growl emanating from his throat. The two security guards immediately stepped forward with tasers trained on him.

“Careful, Sam,” Henricksen warned, standing and taking a small step back. “You don’t want to make this worse.”

“Call Benny,” Dean insisted in a very shaky voice from behind the incensed alpha. “Just...call him. He’ll tell you. Sam?”

The sharp scent of omega fear and distress had Sam instantly turning his back to Henricksen and the guards to soothe the injured man in the bed. He somehow made himself look much smaller and completely unthreatening and crawled in to hold Dean and press kisses to his forehead and hair, being careful of his shoulder and ribs. Dean’s good arm clung desperately to Sam’s back, his hand fisted in Sam’s whiskey-soaked tee shirt.

“These two gentlemen are going to stay with you while I go see if I can track down this friend of yours Dean,” Henricksen said, taking up the folder and briefcase and heading from the room in swift, confident steps.

As soon as he was gone Sam got on the phone with Bobby and Adam, telling them to haul ass down to Sioux Falls General in case Agent Henricksen had a hard time getting in touch with Benny. Bobby suggested using him as a reference, but his time with the Department didn’t overlap with Dean’s, and Adam of course had never been in the system at all. Sam needed to get out hunting Azazel before John dropped off the map again, but he didn’t dare leave Sioux Falls if this wasn’t resolved and he came back to discover he wasn’t allowed near Dean. Their only real hope in keeping Sam with Dean if Benny continued to not pick up the phone was John, and John could never be relied on to respond _now_ when he figured a problem could just be fixed at a later date.

They also needed clothes that didn’t smell like they’d fallen into a vat at a distillery, and Sam sure wasn’t leaving Dean alone to make a clothing run. Sam planned to get Dean into the shower once the betas arrived to keep an eye on the two security guards, but he didn’t want to get done cleaning himself off just to turn around and get back into clothes that stank. They had become accustomed to it enough that they’d been able to sleep, but this was not a workable situation until Dean was released. He also didn’t want Dean having to wear disgusting clothes home when they finally let him out, and debated just tossing or maybe burning what they’d worn the night before.

It took about forty-five minutes for Bobby and Adam to get there, clean clothes in hand and a deck of cards so the four of them could play poker. Sam got his showering plan in motion, helping Dean in and getting them both stripped down and under the water. He washed himself quickly, scrubbing the remaining whiskey and vodka out of his hair and cleaning the cuts on his face and arms a little more thoroughly, then turned his attention to carefully wiping Dean down, avoiding the I.V. and being extra gentle in getting under his injured shoulder and along his cracked ribs. Elliott gave a couple of punches while he was delicately washing Dean’s stomach and chest, hesitating when the omega sucked in an uncomfortable breath, his eyes squeezing shut. Softly Sam said, “Tell me what’s different about me touching you.”

“Um…” Dean’s breath stuttered as he counted to twelve, then he replied, “I’m standing up.”

“Okay. What else?”

“I can open my eyes.”

He did, fixing them on Sam’s face and getting an encouraging smile in return.

“And?”

“The water. And soap. And it smells like you in here.”

“Anything else?”

“Well, I got this growth on my stomach and these moobs.” That got him a flash of the dimples. “I really don’t like the moobs, for the record.”

“So can I keep going?”

Dean nodded, relaxing enough that Sam could finish washing him down, then the alpha slung a towel around his waist and helped the omega painfully back into his hospital gown and a pair of fresh boxers. Once Dean was dressed Sam got himself toweled off, relishing the clean underwear and clothes, and decided there was definitely no point in keeping anything they were wearing the night before. Everything just stank too badly, which was obvious now that they were clean.

They were watching _Nosferatu_ on PBS with the two security guards still standing by the door, Bobby and Adam having taken off for the cafeteria, when Agent Henricksen returned around one o’clock, minus the briefcase but still with a folder in his hands. The alpha was back up on the bed and when he saw the man pushing the door open he shot to his feet, creating a wall between Henricksen and his omega. The security guards took another step forward, but Henricksen held up a hand to keep them back, his expression very different from this morning. Then he had come in brash, confident, and in command. Now he looked reticent and almost empathetic.

“Well?” Sam demanded.

“I looked into your friend,” Henricksen said quietly. “Did a search like you suggested, Dean. Those are some pretty impressive records the two of you held. Most of ‘em are still on the books.”

“And?” Dean asked impatiently. “What did Benny say when you talked to him?”

Henricksen stared at the two of them for a length of time that was honestly frightening, then held out the folder.

“I’m very sorry,” he said as Sam took the folder from him and opened it to look at the contents. Immediately he was off across the room away from Dean.

“What are you sorry about?” Dean said, looking from Henricksen, who was tight-lipped, to where Sam stood by the windows engrossed in the folder. “What did Benny say? Sam?”

Sam was dead silent, and had completely locked down his emotions so nothing would leak into his scent, which was not even slightly reassuring to the omega. Henricksen wasn’t saying anything either, but appeared to be waiting for the alpha to respond to Dean. After several agonizing minutes Dean climbed out of bed with considerable difficulty, removing his oxygen monitor and grabbing his I.V. stand to pad across the floor to the windows in his slipper socks.

“Sam?” he demanded, taking a step back when the alpha turned to him, his eyes welling with tears. He held the folder out towards the omega, who instinctively recoiled from it.

“Dean…” was all Sam could manage, keeping the folder extended between them as the smaller man stared at him in terror.

“What?” he said. “ _What_?”

Sam didn’t say anything, but held the folder out until Dean had gotten up the courage to snatch it away and look at the contents. The first few pages were from a police report, with the date and time and descriptions of the scene, and behind that were photos of the Lexus, the booster seat, the snow on the side of a road, and so much blood. The folder shook in his hands as he looked up at the OPS agent.

“What is this?” he demanded, his eyes wide and wet. “What the hell _is_ this?!”

“That’s a police report, Dean,” Henricksen replied calmly.

“I know it’s a police report, I want to know what the hell it _is_?” Dean shouted. “Why are Ben and Lisa’s names in here? Why is _Benny’s_ name in here?!”

“They pulled over for a flat tire Friday evening,” Henricksen said patiently.

“Don’t,” Dean ordered, his chin quivering.

“Benny got out to change it and was the first one attacked,” the agent continued

“You fucking shut your mouth…”

“Lisa tried to shield Ben…”

“ _Stop talking_.”

“They think it was at least two vampires. It’s already been reported to the FDH.”

A terrible silence enveloped the room as Dean stood staring at Henricksen, his face pale and tormented, until finally he stalked to the far side of the bed, keeping it a barrier between him and the creature that was talking about vampires and attacks and had brought in this stack of bullshit that had tipped the world off its axis.

“Liar,” he spat, flinging the folder at him. “You’re a fucking liar. Those pictures are good, I’ll give you that, but there’s no way a vamp would get the drop on Benny. Not on Benny.”

“They were on their way home from a movie,” Henricksen explained. “ _The Incredibles_. Lisa had the ticket stubs in her pocket. The babysitter called the police at midnight when they didn’t come home. She was expecting them by nine o’clock and Lisa hadn’t left enough milk behind for the baby.”

“ _Why_ ,” the omega screamed, “ _are you_ **_lying_**?!”

“I’m not lying, Dean,” Henricksen said simply. “And I’m very sorry for your loss.”

Dean was after him across the mattress, ripping the I.V. out of his arm, and would have almost certainly got his hands on the man’s throat if Sam hadn’t sprung forward to get his arms around Dean’s chest, pulling him back as he roared. His eyes were gleaming gold, canines descended, as he kicked violently towards Henricksen, who wisely took several rapid steps backwards while Sam dragged Dean the other way across the room. Dean was pretty sure he heard his shoulder pop again, but he couldn’t feel anything beyond the deep, sharp, empty pain stabbing through his sternum as the contents of the folder scattered across the floor. Henricksen stayed rooted where he was as Sam kept Dean in a bear hug while the omega tried to buck him off, shrieking a long list of obscenities in the OPS Agent’s direction and continuing to insist he was lying. Sam was trying desperately to get him to calm down, struggling to keep him restrained without hurting him further, but even Elliott finally waking up fully and starting to kick like Bruce Lee did nothing to ease the omega’s distress. No fewer than three nurses and an orderly came running in to investigate the noise, Adam and Bobby right behind them as Dean was threatening to kill Henricksen.

“What the hell…” Bobby sputtered as Sam finally got Dean to stop trying to mule kick and keep his feet on the ground.

“Benny,” Sam choked, pressing his face into Dean’s hair. “Please, baby, you’ve got to stop.”

Adam had found the folder on the floor and was looking through the pictures with shaking hands. Benny sprawled out at the back of the vehicle, tire iron clenched in his hand, skin almost white as the snow above the long line of blood on his neck. Lisa half across Ben in the back seat, the hood of her coat tinged red. Ben hanging out the car door that had been ripped off its hinges, his seatbelt still on, a small red stain in the snow below his head. He sat, shaking, in the chair by the hospital bed and asked to the room in general the same thing his brother had wanted to know: “What is this?”

“Vampires,” Sam told him as Dean keened, his knees buckling.

Adam looked shaken to his core, watching Sam turn his brother into his chest and try to hold him up. It was a hopeless cause and the two ended up on the floor, Dean crushed against Sam and looking impossibly small.

“When?” Adam whispered, struggling to speak around the swell of emotion clogging his throat.

“Last Friday night,” Henricksen told him, and Adam looked up, glassy eyed.

“But...they just saw them on Thursday,” Adam said dumbly, as if that could somehow make the reality of the situation an impossible one.

“The funeral is Friday in Muncie, where Lisa’s father lives,” Henricksen told them. “One o’clock. I can delay the paperwork until Monday, if you can track down John. It may not be good enough, since he’s Dean’s father and they might consider his statement suspect, but it’s the best I can do.”

“Get out,” Bobby ordered quietly, his eyes fixed on Dean, and the agent complied, gathering up the folder contents and waving the security guards away with him.

The nurses tried as gently as they could to get Dean up and into bed, but the alpha whose arms he was in was very clearly not going to let any of them near him. Adam told them to get someone who could draw up the forms to get the omega released from the hospital, pointing out that as his next of kin he was legally allowed to take him when they objected. Sam managed to get Dean up off the floor and into his clean clothing in anticipation of the forms coming back, showing Adam how to stroke his brother’s face from his hair all the way down his shoulder when the younger Winchester wanted to know how to help comfort him. Dean had stopped sobbing after about twenty minutes, but the eerie way he was just staring ahead and crying silently while the two young men dressed and soothed him was definitely not any better than the sobs had been.

It took about an hour and a half before they were on the road back to Bobby’s, Adam popping Dean’s shoulder back in himself so he wouldn’t be kept longer, the old hunter having gone ahead with Sam’s AmEx card to plot a route to Muncie and then book hotel rooms for Sam, Dean, and Adam along the way. Bobby also needed to look up the obituaries so they knew where they were going for the funeral on Friday. When they got back to the house Bobby gave them their reservations for Wednesday night in Waterloo, Iowa and then Thursday night in Bloomington, Illinois. Sam quickly packed Dean some clothes, then put together a couple duffels for himself and a hunting kit to throw into his truck. He gave Adam his Visa and the keys to Dean’s truck so they could start the trip and Adam could stop if he needed to without the two trucks slowing each other down. Then he called the Director of the FDH personally to get the details on the Lafitte case in Indiana and advised that it was his; no one else was to touch it. Finally he called John and left a message to meet him in Fort Wayne by Sunday, that whatever was going on with the goblins could wait because they had vampires to hunt.

Dean never said a word.


	50. I Don't Like Getting Singled Out at Birthday Parties

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grief is a circular staircase.

Dean didn’t understand why anyone would find comfort in the idea of an almighty God at the funeral of a six year old whose throat was ripped out on the side of a highway towards the end of January after watching a Pixar film with his parents, now also deceased. It wasn’t necessarily that he didn’t believe in an almighty God - he’d seen enough to know that gods existed, hell, he’d even ganked a couple pagan ones. It was more that people would look towards some grand heavenly Poobah, whether it be male, female, or neither, and find solace in anything they had to offer. Because from everything he’d seen in his twenty-seven years on the planet, and from where he was sitting in the front row next to Lisa’s white haired, devastated alpha father, if there was a big “g” god out there, he/she/it clearly didn’t care about what was going on down on planet Earth. He/She/It wasn’t interested in alleviating human suffering or rewarding good behavior. He/She/It walked away a long, long time ago.

This made it especially difficult for him to sit next to Sam, Adam on his alpha’s other side, and listen to the utter bullshit the Methodist minister was spewing at the church full of people who had come to mourn Lisa and Ben. Benny had requested a hunter’s funeral, which meant that after Dean had been required to endure all this crap about paradise and Lisa and Ben being in a better place free from suffering, and the reception at Lisa’s dad’s house afterwards where undoubtedly he would have to put up with total strangers wanting to know how he knew the couple ( _Lisa’s family knew him, of course - Benny had no surviving relatives left_ ), he was going to have to trek out to the hill above the cemetery, where they’d gotten a special permit from the town for the funeral pyre, and set his best friend on fire that evening. If there were any kind of all knowing, all loving big “g” god out there, certainly he/she/it could have spared Dean Winchester from having to do that after Dean had thus far devoted his entire life to saving people and hunting things. In fact, the least this big “g” god could have done was kill the battery to Dean’s phone before he got the call while they were on the road on Wednesday from Lisa’s second cousin, Nora, who had been trying to reach him to let him know what happened to the Lafittes, but hadn’t been able to find his number until the police released Benny and Lisa’s cell phones. Nora told him that Lisa’s father wanted Dean sitting with the family in the front, meaning he had to get to the church an hour ahead of the funeral so they could make some sort of grand entrance after the other mourners had arrived, like putting their grief on display would somehow make the event more bearable for the bereaved. He understood that it was all ritual, and rituals were important to many people in helping the healing process, but he was not one of those people, and he hated being trotted out as some sort of walking, talking illustration of despair to make everyone else feel better, because at least they weren’t taking it as hard as those poor people in the front two rows.

To make it all the worse, Dean was fairly certain that Mr. Braeden was relying on his presence to keep from falling into a million pieces, and Dean had just barely found enough Elmer’s glue and chewing gum to hold himself together as it was. He had nothing to offer to anyone who might need him to be “the strong one,” not even Lisa’s elderly father who looked in this moment to be made of glass. Lisa was his only child, his mate and Lisa’s sister having died in a car accident when Lisa was in preschool, and based on his pallor and inability to engage anyone in a meaningful way it was a wonder this hadn’t killed him. Although maybe it had. He certainly moved around like a ghost.

The minister finished speaking and members from the attendees came up to tell stories about Lisa and Ben, read various passages from the Bible, and “celebrate the bright lives that had been lost.” Nora had explained when she called that the family wanted him to say a few words, but it was all Dean could do to manage, “Hello” when the phone had rung, and once she’d said who she was and gotten to the point where she was repeating the horrible news Henricksen had already broken he’d needed to hand the phone to Sam so he could have a little while longer of pretending none of this was real. Sam told her politely that Dean would prefer not to speak, which had led to a lengthy discussion of why Dean would prefer not to speak, which had resulted in Dean pulling the phone out of Sam’s hand and hanging up on her when it was clear she wasn’t planning to take “No” for an answer. Dean only kinda sorta remembered which second cousin Nora was from one of Benny and Lisa’s barbecues after they moved into their house in Fort Wayne, but he was pretty sure she was the one beta who always seemed to be in some kind of one upmanship with Lisa, even though Lisa wasn’t in any kind of one upmanship with her. When they’d gotten to the church she’d been easy to spot by her perfect hair and perfect nails and perfect pearls, and had clearly elected herself the person in charge in the face of Mr. Braeden’s inability to function. She was telling everyone where to stand and where to sit and what order they were going to come in, and had attempted to stick Dean in the second row, at the end of the family line, until Mr. Braeden said quietly and firmly, “Dean is sitting with me.” He’d repeated it even more firmly, his voice shaking but his intent clear, when she tried to talk him out of having someone who wasn’t an actual family member right next to him, and Dean decided he’d better avoid her for the rest of the day or they were going to have problems. She was the sort of person he had enough trouble tolerating on a normal day. On this day he had no energy to waste on being polite to someone like her.

Lisa and Ben had been cremated of course, so there were no caskets, just two lovely wooden boxes up in the front enclosed in a glass case, a picture of Lisa and Benny on one side, Ben’s first grade class picture on the other. At the end of the service the ushers came to bring Mr. Braeden and Dean to the front to collect the boxes to carry out of the church, which officially became the most awful moment of the omega’s life to date when he was pointed towards the smaller of the two. He was pretty sure the entire congregation could see how terribly his hands shook when he picked up what was left of Ben, but he just didn’t have it in him to care. His ability to experience any emotion beyond numbness had been slowly leaking out through his tear ducts the last few days, and he expected it to go right on leaking for some time. Every now and then he’d feel a sharp stab of pain in his chest where there now seemed to be a big black hole, but mostly it was just him and the total lack of feeling anything beyond the occasional need to eat. He thought dimly that he was probably scaring the shit out of Sam and Adam, what with the incapability to say anything that wasn’t monosyllabic, and the difficulty sleeping, and the random staring off into space, and while he _wanted_ that to matter to him it just _didn’t_.

The boxes weren’t being interred, considering it was the end of January and the ground was frozen solid, which left Sam, Dean, and Lisa’s father traveling back to Mr. Braeden’s house in silence in Sam’s truck, “Lisa” and “Ben” clutched tightly by the omega and the old man while a procession of cars from the church followed back to continue mourning and reminiscing and closing the ritual for the people whose lives would go on a little sadder, but remain generally unscathed by the loss. Nora had arranged for catering ( _she’d made sure to mention that while choreographing the family’s entrance at the church_ ) and it was supposed to already be set up by the time they got back, though even the promise of two tables full of food to graze on throughout the afternoon was little comfort, despite how loudly Dean’s stomach was rumbling. Elliott had been kicking up a storm ever since the hospital, apparently missing the sound of Mommy’s voice, and when Sam reached over to squeeze Dean’s hand he transferred the alpha’s palm to his abdomen so he could try to get the kid to stop. Sam got the message, sweeping his hand over the little feet ( _Elliott really had gone through a growth spurt, he could now clearly feel the difference between feet and fists_ ) with just enough pressure to prove to the baby someone was still there and paying attention. After a while the feet stilled, and Sam was back to squeezing Dean’s hand.

Dean and Mr. Braeden took up residence on the couch because that’s apparently where people expected to come to repeat to the family how sorry they were for their loss, while Adam sat beside his brother, stroking his face and his arm and trying to keep people from poking at him too much. In addition to being emotionally fragile he was still very physically delicate from the encounter with the poltergeist, and no matter how much Sam and Adam had insisted, he’d refused to wear the sling for his shoulder and look like “some kind of cripple” when so many people were going to be staring at him. Sam was put on food duty pretty quickly after the first of Lisa’s friends came to ask how Dean knew the couple and got a little too enthusiastic about him being the “dragonslayer” Lisa told them about years ago. It was clear they just wanted to share a happy memory of her with him, but the spike of anguish in the omega’s scent had Sam growling and demanding that they leave. He knew his response to them was completely inappropriate under the circumstances, but for the last three days the only emotion that had bled out into Dean’s scent had been an agony so severe that Sam had left Adam with his brother the day before, under the guise of needing to get a suit jacket for the funeral and not wanting to drag the omega to a store, so he could call Jody.

After enduring the lecture about how he should have called before they left Sioux Falls she gave him the name and number of a friend of hers who was a grief counselor. Donna Hanscum sure sounded too chipper to be a grief counselor when she answered the phone, but after explaining who he was, that he’d gotten her number from Jody, and the situation she’d been very concerned and eager to help in any way she could. After getting the details of how long Benny and Dean had known each other, of Dean’s troubled relationship with his father, of his brother’s beta designation, and of Benny’s lack of any living relatives, she’d said that from the sounds of it Dean and Benny had been a bonded pair. Typically bonds happened between siblings of the same designation - a pair of alpha brothers or omega sisters - and always happened rapidly when an alpha or omega had found their mate, but sometimes a platonic bond would form between an alpha and an omega, even when there was no desire between them to mate. It was even likely given his relationship to Benny and how long he’d known the couple that Dean and Lisa had bonded as well, since Lisa’s only close living relative was her father, creating a new “pack” for themselves that was naturally extended to include Benny and Lisa’s children, and after the last week tentatively Sam. To have essentially lost his entire pack in one fell swoop would be extremely difficult for the omega to process. She was shocked that Dean was functioning even at a base level, as most omegas wouldn’t be able to after something this catastrophic, and he needed to be given a lot of time and space to mourn. The people at Mr. Braeden’s house certainly weren’t giving him time or space, but Sam still got shooed away to the kitchen by Adam after the first growl so he didn’t get himself kicked right out of the house.

He was busy putting together a third plate of food for the omega when an attractive alpha female with dark hair and dark eyes approached him, a briefcase clutched in her hand. Sam had grown wary of briefcases after the encounter with Henricksen in Sioux Falls, and found himself growling again as he set the plate down on the buffet table with a clatter loud enough to draw the attention of several nearby mourners. She quickly held up her free hand as his vision flashed red, suppressing her own natural instinct to bristle in response to his aggression.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to sneak up on you,” she said, presuming that was the cause for his rising irritation. “You’re Dean Winchester’s alpha, right?”

“Sam.” He didn’t even bother with the “I’m not”s anymore. “Campbell.”

“Pamela Barnes,” she told him, extending a hand. “I’m Benny’s attorney.”

“Oh!” Not what he had been expecting, though he noticed now her dark attire was actually a crisp business suit. Killing two birds with one stone, apparently. “What can I do for you Ms. Barnes?”

“I uh...I need to speak with Dean.” She seemed acutely aware of the omega’s distress, almost sorry that she was talking with Sam. “I know how difficult this must be for him, but it’s very important. I’ve been trying to reach him for the last two days but I keep getting his voicemail.”

“He turned his phone off,” Sam told her. “After Lisa’s cousin called about the funeral he just...couldn’t talk to anyone else.”

“I understand, but this really can’t wait. Do you think you could pull him away from the couch and meet me in the kitchen?”

“Um...sure. Yeah, sure, give me a minute.”

She shot him an unhappy smile as he headed back to where Dean was still sitting with Mr. Braeden on the couch, both of them looking lost as the minister was trying to make small talk with Adam. The beta was doing an excellent job of constantly massaging his brother’s arm and back, but Dean seemed only dimly aware of him, or of anyone other than Lisa’s father, who had one of the omega’s hands clenched between both of his. Sam sat down on the coffee table in front of Dean, running a hand along his leg to get the green eyes focused on him, and asked quietly, “Can you come into the kitchen with me for a sec?”

“Okay,” the omega replied after processing the request for about a minute, allowing himself to be gently pulled up off the couch and led towards the buffet. He stopped Sam dead in his tracks when he said, “Lisa’s dad has stage four pancreatic cancer. He hadn’t told her yet. He doesn’t figure he’ll do chemo now.”

“Oh.” Sam ran a hand through Dean’s hair, wiping away the tear that spilled down the omega’s cheek when Dean closed his eyes and sighed at the touch. “I’m sorry.”

“It is what it is,” Dean said, tightening his grip on Sam’s hand as they proceeded past the food and around into the kitchen.

There were a couple of betas standing by the sink when they entered, and Pamela moved from her position by the fridge to ask them politely to leave, her body language asserting her authority as an alpha to encourage them along when they hesitated. She’d already placed her briefcase on the kitchen table, and after shutting the door came over to snap it open, quickly removing some documents from the inside pocket as Dean noticed a photo from Christmas of the Lafittes stuck to the fridge and seemed to forget where he was and that he wasn’t alone. Pamela watched him pick it up from under the Statue of Liberty magnet, looking to Sam as omega distress flooded the room.

“Baby, come over here and sit down,” the alpha instructed, swinging Dean around and into one of the chairs, pulling a second chair around to sit next to him as Pamela took up the seat opposite them.

“Hi Dean, I’m Benny’s attorney, Pamela,” she said, getting Dean to look up from the photo at last, though he didn’t appear to really see her. “I’m sorry to do this now, I realize how terrible a time this is for you, but I needed to talk to you about Elizabeth.”

“Oh.” Dean became aware of her presence and blinked at her, moisture clinging to his lashes. “Yeah. Where is she? I uh...I didn’t think they’d bring her to the funeral but uh...is she upstairs?”

“No, she’s with Pup and Child Protective Services in Fort Wayne,” Pamela told him, taking his hand when he flinched. “It’s fine, it’s standard procedure when something like this happens. They’ve got her with a very nice family at the moment, she’s perfectly safe.”

“Can I...can I see her?” Dean asked softly, and she withdrew her hand to take up the papers she’d drawn out and pull a pen out of the briefcase, which she then clicked closed.

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.” She laid the pen down and took both of his hands again, sweeping her thumbs over his knuckles as she sent soothing pheromones in his direction. “Benny left explicit instructions that should anything happen to him and Lisa he wanted you to have the children.”

“What?” Sam said, since Dean seemed incapable of speech.

“I’ve spoken with Lisa’s father and he doesn’t plan to challenge it,” she explained. “I don’t know if he’s told you, but he’s gravely ill and only has a few months left.”

“He...um...he told me,” Dean said, feeling his entire body beginning to tremble and having no idea how to stop it.

“Benny wanted you to have everything, Dean,” she continued. “Lisa and Ben were the initial benefactors, but you are the third in the event of their deaths. He hadn’t had time to update his will to include Elizabeth so the house, the business, the car - they’re all yours now. As is Lizzie if you’re willing to sign these custody papers.”

She slid them across the table to him with the pen, her face a careful mask of detachment. Sam sat there in utter shock, watching as Dean pulled the papers to him with hands shaking so badly he could barely grasp them. Dean read through them as best he could, his vision all blurry and occasional droplets of saline splashing onto the pages, but it seemed pretty straightforward and ironclad. Sires legally possessed the ability to leave their offspring to anyone they wanted if the children were minors, even someone other than the mother or outside the family if they chose. The papers in front of Dean stated very clearly that in the event of Benny’s death, Dean was to be the primary caregiver to any of his children should Lisa have predeceased him or been rendered unable through mental or medical incapacity to care for them herself. This was more than he could handle. He didn’t know how he was supposed to be expected to deal with this. He felt the hysteria building in his chest, his breathing and heart rate quickening as he looked at the signature line on the final page that had Benny’s name neatly penned and a place for Dean to sign his. A far away voice that sounded like his said, “Okay,” and a violently shaking hand that looked like his signed his name to the page, but he thought it might all be a dream, because he felt like he was floating out of his body. He hoped it was a dream at any rate. At least that would mean he had a chance of waking up.

Pamela was collecting the papers and putting them into her briefcase, saying she would go fax them over to Fort Wayne and was sure they could arrange to have Elizabeth brought down the next day to give Dean some time to adjust to this, and he heard that same far away voice say, “Now. I want her now.” He needed to figure out who it was that was talking so he could tell them to shut up because he couldn’t think straight between the breathing and the blood pounding and the ringing that had started in his ears, and Pamela was assuring him she could make that happen and get the baby here before Benny’s funeral in the evening, in addition to getting the formula prescription transferred into his name. When it came to honoring these kinds of last requests by sires regarding their children, Indiana liked to move as quickly as possible anyway. Fort Wayne was only an hour and a half away, and the couple watching her were expecting the call to bring her to Dean. There were two Walmarts within an easy drive of the Braeden residence, and there would be enough time to make a supply run before they had a three month old to keep alive. She handed her card to Sam, telling him to call her tomorrow to arrange the details of getting into the house and picking up the formula prescription, as well as getting access to Lizzie’s medical and immunization records. There would be more than enough time for Dean to get up to Benny and Lisa’s to gather together more of Lizzie’s belongings and make arrangements for whatever he wanted to do with the house and the business, though Pamela expected he would want to junk the car, given the circumstances. He nodded at her numbly, gradually becoming aware that he was crying again, and that Sam was holding him, and that he was saying he needed to go lie down.

Sam steered him back through the living room to where Mr. Braeden was sitting, doing his best to shield the omega from the stares he was getting for obviously being in the middle of a major breakdown, and was grateful when he got directed to the den on the other side of the foyer where he could get Dean down on a couch. He’d been dreading the prospect of having to get the omega upstairs, because he probably would have had to carry him and that just would have made even more people stare. He got the handful of people in the den to leave with a low growl, and set Dean up with a pillow and a blanket before closing the door to keep out anyone who got curious so Dean could sleep or cry or scream or do whatever he needed to do in private. He left Adam standing guard and got directions to the closest Walmart, taking off to buy a car seat and some of the obvious necessities they were going to need in the short term. He was thankful Lisa had ordered him to “practice” so frequently the previous week, so he at least had an idea of what he should get.

Only a few of Lisa’s cousins were lingering by the time Sam got back with two car seats, a Pack ‘N Play, jumbo pack of diapers, wipes, a travel bassinet, and a boatload of clothes and bedding as the Jorgesons arrived to drop off Lizzie around three hours later. Dean had fallen asleep in the den and Mr. Braeden had gone upstairs to lie down as well, leaving Adam to help clean up with a group of strangers who clearly thought he was likely to swipe the silverware if he was left alone for even a minute. Nora was among those who stayed behind, still giving orders as if no one would be able to figure out how to use Saran Wrap if it wasn’t for her presence. She answered the doorbell on the first ring before Adam had a chance to get there, and was in the middle of trying to convince the couple that they could leave the baby with her because the omega was a bit unstable at the moment when Dean appeared in the doorway to the den, looking a little rumpled and a lot incensed after catching the tail end of the conversation.

For several very tense moments it seemed quite probable that Nora was going to get a personal lesson in the abnormal strength omegas possessed, even those who were severely emotionally compromised and had only one good working arm, but Sam had shown up with far too many bags and quickly got the situation under control. Nora backed off and Mrs. Jorgeson gave a very upset Lizzie and her diaper bag to Dean, and Adam went out to get the car seats properly set up in Sam and Dean’s trucks so they could find a hotel and get checked in before it was time to head back to the cemetery. Dean vanished upstairs with Lizzie to let Lisa’s father know they were leaving, but would see him later, while Sam made sure Nora was very clear on her place in the baby’s life; specifically that she didn’t have one.

By the time they got checked into a pair of rooms at the Fairfield Inn both Dean and Lizzie needed food badly, which led to a meltdown in the nearby IHOP when the omega couldn’t figure out how much formula a three month old needed and automatically went to call Lisa to ask, falling into huge, body wracking sobs when he realized what he was doing. Fortunately there was an alpha in the pancake chain who had claimed a pup from its mother and was willing to give Sam advice on bottle feeding, followed immediately by advice on claiming a pup from an incompetent om. If they hadn’t really needed food and been on a tight schedule to make it to the hunter’s funeral for Benny the guy would have gotten his teeth knocked out, but instead Sam just thanked him brusquely so everyone could eat.

A surprising number of people had congregated at the pyre when Dean, Sam, and Adam arrived, Lizzie bundled up in a snowsuit and then wrapped in a blanket to protect her from the cold. It looked like Benny’s entire company had made the trip from Fort Wayne, and there were a number of hunters that Sam and Dean recognized who had worked with Benny on odd jobs over the years. Mr. Braeden was there, of course, a handful of Lisa’s extended family, and quite a few of the other mourners from the church. It was unusual for a hunter to have this many people in attendance when their body was salted and burned, but most hunters never got out of the life long enough to make the kind of connections Benny had. They all appeared to have been waiting for Dean to arrive, which was to be expected given their history, not that it made the omega any more comfortable. There was something especially bitter about the fact that it had taken Benny dying for anyone in the community to respect Dean’s standing as a hunter.

The lead carpenter, plumber, and electrician on Benny’s crew - all betas Sam and Dean recognized from the week before - carried his shrouded body from the back of the hearse to lay atop the wood that had been carefully stacked to about chest height. Mr. Braeden came delicately forward with the two boxes they’d taken from the church, laying them down on Benny’s chest, then Benny’s foreman moved forward to salt the body and the boxes and pour kerosene over everything. Either these men had done their research or Benny had told them how hunters’ funerals were carried out, because they had everything down pat. It would have been just like him, Dean thought, to sit around laughing about what kind of funeral he wanted and then regale everyone who worked for him with the spectacle that went into laying a hunter to rest. Finally the foreman dumped the last of the kerosene on a torch wrapped with some of the fabric from the shroud and lit it before extending it to Dean.

For a long moment it seemed to everyone that the funeral was going to come to a standstill as the omega stared at the torch like taking it would kill him and didn’t make a move beyond holding a sleeping Elizabeth more tightly to his chest with one hand and crushing the fingers of the enormous alpha standing next to him with the other. Eventually he released a huge, shuddering breath, carefully passing the baby off to his younger brother and releasing Sam’s hand, and determinedly took the torch from the foreman, giving him a curt nod of thanks. The foreman nodded back, his jaw working furiously as he swiped at his eyes before returning to stand by his coworkers. Dean froze a second time, knowing everyone was waiting for him to say something profound and having nothing profound to say. Still, he would have to come up with at least a few words for the last time he’d get the chance to talk to Benny.

“So,” he started, struggling to control his breathing and how horribly his voice quaked. “I know we both hate camping but...you coulda just said you really didn’t wanna go. There’s a lot of other couples shit to do in the summer. We coulda figured out somethin’ else, like goin’ to Disney World. Even though we’d have to be crazy to go to Florida in the summer, it woulda been better than camping. This whole gettin’ yourself killed thing is kinda drastic.” He stopped, swallowing back the misery that was rising up to drown him and violently clenching his fist around the torch. “And I know you like to pretend you’re the brains of the two of us, but you really didn’t think this through very well. I mean, how are you supposed to meet my kid now? Or have us over for barbecues? Or give Sam tips on how to get out of the dog house when he does somethin’ stupid cuz he’s an alpha and you knotheads are always doing somethin’ stupid - like dyin’ on me, for example? God...How could you go and die on me, Benny?”

The tears were starting now, which is what he hadn’t wanted to happen, not in front of all these people, because he was afraid that once they started he was never going to get them to stop, and he really felt like he was drowning now under everything that was beginning to pour out of him. He tried unsuccessfully to choke it all back, thinking his heart was going to stop beating any second with the awful pressure in his chest. He wished someone would take pity on him and come forward to finish this, but they were all just patiently waiting for him to continue. This was so much worse than the church had been. The church seemed like a family reunion compared to this. Faintly he became aware of Sam running a hand through his hair and kissing his cheek, but it was like they were separated by a thick fog and the only thing he was really sure existed was Benny wrapped in a white cloth with two boxes of human ashes on his chest. It seemed like years had passed before he could get his voice to come back to him and get enough air into his lungs to finish.

“I don’t know what I’m gonna do now without you to text that I made it home safe and didn’t get sold into the sex trade,” he said at last. “Who am I gonna get to laugh at all my jokes? No one else is gonna admit how inspired vampirates was.” He felt Sam’s hand squeeze his, and he managed to weakly return the squeeze, adding with a rasp, “Sam and I will take care of Lizzie, I promise you. You won’t regret givin’ her to me. And I’ll make sure she knows about you and Lisa and Ben.” He scrubbed a hand down over his face, a sob catching in his throat. “I’ll miss you, ‘til the day I die, and that’s the truth.”

Sam slid a hand around his waist, pulling him in a little tighter as the fog started to lift. He could hear Lizzie fussing and Adam talking to her softly, while Elliott started to punch him, demanding attention. He clenched the torch one last time, then tossed it onto the pyre and watched it catch and blaze, feeling so cold that he was sure he could have been mistaken for dead. Dean shoved one hand into the pocket of his coat, grabbing Sam’s arm with the other just to reassure himself he was still among the land of the living. A part of him wished he weren’t.

“Bye Benny,” he whispered. “Be good.”


	51. So, We Got Another Wrinkle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time to start hunting vampires.

After the fire had burned down to ash, Dean was finally relieved of his role as a bean chaointe, and though the hunters who knew him and Sam wanted to take them out for a round of drinks ( _assuring Dean they wouldn’t hold it against him for ordering Shirley Temples_ ) he just wanted to get back to the hotel, get his arm up in his sling, and go to sleep. Sam, Adam, and Elizabeth were more than on board with that, since it was close to ten thirty by that point and it had been an extremely long day for everyone. The Old Dean was long since dead and now the New Old Dean had burned away with Benny and Lisa and Ben, and he didn’t know who he was going to be after this, now that he couldn’t be who he once was or who he had been becoming. The only thing he did know was that he was heartbroken and wanted to crawl into bed for at least a week and wasn’t going to get to do that because he had an infant to care for now.

The foreman wanted to talk to Dean about potentially buying out the business from him, as an announcement had been made that the company was left to the omega who’d been in using the chop saw two days before the family was killed, and Sam promised they’d be in touch very soon, just not right now. Dean almost collapsed on the way back to the car between the pain in his arm and being completely emotionally spent, but Sam was able to help him get control of himself while Adam was snapping Lizzie into her new car seat and starting up Sam’s truck to keep her warm. When they finally got back to the hotel they hauled everything inside, everyone being too tired and the weather being too cold for the men to sort through what they really needed and what they didn’t, and after getting the baby changed and her travel bassinet set up Adam headed two doors down to his room while Sam got Dean carefully out of his clothes and into his pajama bottoms. Not wearing the sling to the funerals had been a really big mistake, and he couldn’t even manage to make a bottle for Lizzie without fire shooting through his shoulder and down his back. Sam took over and finished up for him as he got himself settled on the couch with the little girl, and after she sleep-ate a couple of ounces the alpha got her settled into the bassinet and helped Dean try to find a comfortable position so they could all go to sleep.

Lizzie woke a little before three in the morning, needing a diaper change and another feeding, and though Dean had started to get up Sam shushed him and went to blearily take care of making the formula and digging through the diaper bag for the wipes and a fresh Huggie. By the time he got back to bed the omega was pretty wide awake, having carefully watched the proceedings, and almost as soon as Sam slid under the covers Dean was kissing him in earnest, tugging at the alpha’s tee shirt with his good hand and flicking his thumb over Sam’s nipples. Sam hadn’t expected Dean would be up for anything intimate for a long time after what he’d been through this week, and particularly the day before, and he was very concerned about Dean’s physical injuries but the omega was insistent that his shoulder and ribs didn’t matter; he needed desperately to feel something that reminded him why being alive could be a good thing, because he really didn’t know anymore. His eyes were already glistening, and he was practically biting through his lower lip to stop it from quivering as he sniffed back tears, so Sam whispered, “Okay,” and peppered Dean’s face and neck with slow kisses, his shirt ending up somewhere on the far side of the room near Lizzie’s bassinet and their pajama bottoms and boxers ending up shoved down to the foot of the bed under the sheets. They were careful and quiet, not wanting to wake the baby, and after they were tied together Dean had cried for a long time, scenting the alpha until he could finally fall asleep in his arms.

Sam woke up alone in the hotel with a crying Lizzie and a note right next to his face that read:

_Went to get breakfast with Adam. Don’t freak out. - D_

The travel bassinet had been moved right up against Sam’s side, and he rocked it a little as he tried to shush her and find his boxers and pajama bottoms. The baby was doing a lot to dampen his blissful post coital haze, which was particularly thick this morning, as he wondered how Dean had been able to get himself dressed and out of the room without assistance or waking Sam. Of course, Dean hadn’t eaten much the day before so his hunger had probably overridden any pain he was in to drive him downstairs to the continental breakfast, and though Sam had been gentle a few hours before they’d still burned some calories Dean would need to replenish.

A quick check of his phone showed it was nine o’clock already, meaning the baby was probably either hungry or dirty or both, and a quick sniff of her confirmed it was at least the latter. Getting a hand under her he could feel how heavy her diaper was, and there was something sticky on the back of her sleep sack. Upon picking her up he discovered the whole back of her was covered in gross yellow-brown poop, and he suppressed the urge to vomit as he stripped her down quickly, leaving everything in the ruined bassinet. The whole thing was officially toast only one day into him and Dean being parents, and he was definitely finding a dumpster and hauling it down before he bothered with breakfast. No wonder people said babies were expensive if there were going to be times when it just wasn’t worth trying to save an item that hadn’t exactly been cheap. They should have expected this after the incident last week when he’d gotten a crash course in how to clean up a messy baby girl ( _“Always wipe from front to back, Sam”_ ), since Lizzie had been switched from breast milk to formula and Lisa had explained that babies were like puppies and whenever their diet changed it upset their tummies for a while. Last week Lisa figured it had been her eating the pepperoni pizza and the spices passing into her milk. Now it was probably just Sam and Dean struggling to figure out how to make formula at the correct temperature and the right amount without it ending up lumpy or too watery.

The good thing about the poop-tastrophe at Lisa and Benny’s had been the advice the alpha had gotten that sometimes the best thing to do was just strip down with the kid and climb in the shower, that the downstairs plumbing didn’t matter to really little babies, and it wasn’t going to scar an infant for life if they had to shower with a parent of the opposite gender once or twice. In fact, it was the only way Lisa had managed to ever get a shower in the first couple of months after she’d had Ben, since he wasn’t one for naps and didn’t like to be put down. He sure did like peeing on her though the minute the water started. Sam’s chest tightened at the memory of the conversation as he held Lizzie to his pecs with one thoroughly diarrhea covered arm and shucked his boxers and pajama bottoms before turning on the shower and making sure it was a safe, lukewarm temperature. Of course he immediately realized that he hadn’t gotten any baby wash, and he could only hope there was nothing in the hotel soap that would react with her skin, but there wasn’t much to be done about it now because she was a disgusting mess and he had poop all over his arm and chest and she was starting to pee on him and they were both naked. Plus she was still crying, which _he_ really wanted to do, too, but being the adult in this equation he didn’t think that was reasonable when he was only facing giving a baby a bath. It seemed even in death Lisa and Benny had found a way to get Sam to “practice.”

Somehow they both survived the shower and Sam managed to get dried off enough to pull on a pair of boxers one-handed, keeping Lizzie tucked against him in the biggest, fluffiest hotel towel there was in the bathroom and then scrambling to get out the diapers and some cream so she wouldn’t get a rash from having awakened in a puddle of poop, pulling out the bottom drawer on the room’s dresser to lay her down in while he got himself dressed and pulled out one of her new outfits to tear off the tags. He was pretty sure he should wash it first, but he had a poop covered bassinet to dispose of and a mostly naked baby who was probably cold and was _really_ crying now and needed a bottle, and it was all he could do to suppress the growing sense of panic that he felt at how daunting a task it seemed to be, keeping an infant alive. He thought all new parents probably felt this way, but he didn’t know any new parents now that Lisa and Benny were gone, and he didn’t have parents himself to ask, and this really was quite overwhelming. She was so tiny as he tried to dress her with his massive hands, the little snaps on the clean onesie so small he just gave up trying to close them and left it hanging over her little leggings like a tunic, hurrying over to get water from the tap into one of the bottles the Jorgesons had given them and warming it in the hotel microwave for twenty seconds before adding the scoop of formula and violently shaking it. Whoever was on the other side of their wall must absolutely hate him right now, and he half expected the hotel staff to appear at any moment to demand he get the crying baby under control because they were getting complaints. Finally he had the bottle ready and scooped her up out of the dresser drawer, grabbing one of the burp cloths from the diaper bag, and sat down with her on the couch to pop the rubber nipple in her mouth. As she sucked away happily he regarded the hotel room, which looked like there had been a struggle to the death in it between the covers kicked off the bed, the utterly ruined bassinet and clothes, the diaper bag contents strewn everywhere, the open dresser drawer, and the bathroom towels flung around.

Jesus, he was so unprepared for this.

Lizzie was back in the dresser drawer while he tried to clean up some of the disaster when the hotel room door clicked and Adam swung it open for Dean, who was carrying a coffee in his good hand and did look to be in considerable pain. His clothes were slightly disheveled and his hair was a bit of a mess, and his unhealthy pallor was solid evidence that he should have gotten Sam up to help him this morning rather than letting him sleep in. The brothers stopped in complete shock at the state of the room, listening to Lizzie burble away in the dresser.

“Well,” Adam said as he moved past his older brother and into the room with the food they’d brought back for the alpha, “Lizzie one, Sam zero.”

“Shut up,” Sam grumbled as he finished collapsing the bassinet. “This needs to find its forever home in a dumpster.”

“I’m on it,” Adam told him, wincing at the smell and carefully picking it up by the legs. “You think we could get Ted Danson or Tom Selleck on the phone to give us some advice?”

“No, but Steve Guttenberg might take our call,” Sam replied, getting a snort out of the beta as he headed from the room. Dean was already moving across the room, wincing, to kneel down and get Lizzie out of the drawer. “Hey, let me do that.”

“I gotta get used to takin’ care of her myself, Sam,” Dean said, sucking in a pained breath when he leaned down to get his right arm under her.

“No you don’t.”

Sam carefully got Dean up off the floor and onto the couch before scooping the little girl up and depositing her on his good arm as the omega breathed out, “Fuuuuuck.”

“Language, or I’m going to have to break out a swear jar,” Sam told him. “Why didn’t you wake me up this morning so I could help you?”

“I couldn’t sleep, you could,” Dean replied, allowing the alpha to fuss over him, fix his clothes, and try to do something with the mess that was his hair. “No reason both of us had to be awake.”

“I wish you’d stop acting like you’re in this alone,” Sam said gently.

Lizzie cooed up at Dean, swiping at his nose as he lifted her as high as he could to smell her hair. It obviously hurt him much more than just physically to do so, and Sam wanted to take her back from him but thought that would probably just make him feel worse. After a few moments he kissed her forehead and said, “Elliott’s kicking me on my left side, can you come and let him know not to be jealous of Lizzie?”

“So we think it’s a boy now?” Sam asked, sliding onto the couch next to the omega and rubbing the skin where he was getting beaten up until Elliott subsided some.

“Today I do. Tomorrow I’ll probably be calling him ‘her.’” He leaned in as Sam stroked his hair and sighed deeply. “Dad called while we were down at breakfast. He’s meeting us in Fort Wayne later. Told him we’d text him the address once we figured out where we were stayin’.”

“You want to go to Benny’s or…”

“No.” The answer was quick and firm, and Dean turned his face into Sam’s neck to breathe him in and try to calm down before his emotions got the better of him. He had a three month old now, and in another three months he was going to have a newborn. He needed to lock this shit down. He had no idea who the New New Dean was or how to be him, but whoever he was the poor bastard didn’t have the luxury of grieving. “I figure Adam and I can go tomorrow while you and Dad are hunting. Gonna call Pamela in a little bit. Thought we could pack up here and get up to Fort Wayne and hit up the Babies R Us again. There’s gotta be some books in there or somethin’ on infant care.”

“You’re sure you want to try the Babies R Us again?” Sam asked, genuinely concerned as he got Lizzie to grab onto his pinky while he played with Dean’s hair. It probably needed a trim, but he intended to enjoy its length until Dean decided a trip to the barber was really necessary. “Those beta moms did a number on you the first time.”

“It wasn’t…” Dean sighed, sliding as close to the alpha as he could without hurting himself. “It wasn’t just the beta moms.”

“What was it?”

“You guys better not be naked in there,” Adam called from the hallway, pounding on the other side of the door. “We gotta get moving. It’s almost ten o’clock.”

Sam groaned, telling the omega, “Your brother has awful timing,” before giving Dean a soft kiss and heading to the door to coordinate packing up the trucks with Adam. They had a whole lot more than they’d left Sioux Falls with, and now they had to get all of it back downstairs and distribute it between the vehicles. If Dean really did want to make another run at Babies R Us they were going to end up with even more stuff to cart around and would have to coordinate so the baby didn’t end up stuffed in the back seat in the middle of a bunch of bags. Adam got his things packed while Sam worked on gathering his and Dean’s belongings and making sure they didn’t leave the hotel room a complete disaster. Dean managed to get Lizzie’s onesie on her properly, get her into her car seat, and pack up her diaper bag one handed while the other two men were working on everything else, but once he tried to help beyond that he got ordered to go down to the lobby to wait with the baby and their coats, as well as instructions to call Pamela and stop trying to lift things with his bad arm. He bristled slightly at being told what to do - a great relief to the alpha to start seeing a little bit of the omega’s obstinance come roaring back - and Adam got shoved out of the room for a moment so Sam could softly kiss Dean into submission against the hotel room door, careful not to crush his shoulder or require dropping the car seat while making it clear who was in charge of this operation. Adam shouted something about nakedness again and Sam let him back in, nudging Dean out into the hall with another quick, sloppy kiss.

Dean hadn’t expected having a baby with him to work so well at keeping curious alphas at a distance, but apparently Lizzie functioned as a sort of foreign alpha deterrent. It probably had something to do with smelling like Sam as well, but between being thoroughly marked and having a three month old with him no one was even giving him a second glance. Maybe this was why omegas tended to pop out children like slices of toast - instant asshole repellent. He stuck Lizzie’s car seat on the chair next to him and dug his phone out of his pocket, scrolling down to where Sam had punched Pamela’s number into his contacts. A quick conversation with her later and she was set to meet up with him for lunch to thoroughly go over Benny’s will and all the associated paperwork and to get everything transferred over to him. Some of it would be trickier, like the house since omegas weren’t allowed to own property, but as long as he had Adam to co-sign everything there wouldn’t be any problems getting it all into his name.

It took a pretty big argument in the lobby of the Fairfield to convince Sam to drive on ahead to Fort Wayne, find them a hotel, and start researching what happened to Benny, Lisa, and Ben. In addition to needing to handle things on his own without the alpha’s constant hovering, which was only going to make it harder to keep his emotions in check, Dean wanted to swing by and see how Lisa’s father was doing before they left the area, and that would be a waste of Sam’s time when there was a vampire nest to track down. Dean only prevailed after giving Lizzie to Adam with instructions to take her out to his truck, then dragging Sam behind a potted plant to leave him breathless, untucked, and messy-haired, impressively managing it one handed. He even succeeded in masking the dreadful pain in his shoulder and side as well as walling off the desire to burst into tears against Sam’s throat so the alpha’s protective instincts wouldn’t kick in and override his hormones, which at the moment were playing for Dean’s team.

Sam hated the idea of leaving Dean and Lizzie behind in Muncie, even with Adam there, but he had to admit it made sense for him to go ahead when it wasn’t like he could sign any of the paperwork anyway since he and Dean weren’t mated, and he had to poke into the city’s history for similar cases, get a look at the coroner’s report and photos from the scene, plus find out if there were any witnesses to interview. A pregnant omega, a beta, and a baby were only going to slow him down, particularly when he would be extremely distracted by two out of the three. Besides that he needed to hook up with John and then of course there were the vampires to kill. He’d been fresh out of dead man’s blood when he packed up his kit in Sioux Falls and he wanted to be able to get some before they found the nest.

He booked a pair of rooms at the Hyatt Place and sent the address to both Dean and John before heading to the library’s computer room to look into local newspapers and see if there were any other reports of vampiric activity. Benny and Lisa’s case in the FDH feed listed them as the only victims and weren’t connected to any other cases in the system, open or closed, so either it was a new nest that had move into the area or they were very good at hiding. He had to go back twenty years and look into three surrounding counties to find any kind of pattern, but every five years there would be a rash of deaths - three or four families - followed by nothing. Well, at least no human kills. In the interim there would be a spate of animals deaths reported within the triangle of Fort Wayne, Butler, and Topeka, Indiana. Besides the animal deaths there was a sharp increase in the number of people reported missing in each of the townships, leading Sam to suspect the nest had been building its numbers, perhaps trying to reinforce the vampire ranks that had been dwindling ever since the formation of the FDH. The relative center of the triangle was a small town called Avilla, where the first round of attacks was reported back in 1985. So the nest was either mobile or working in a pattern from the center.

Dean got back to him first, of course. Sam only half expected John to call before showing up, though he hoped he would so he could let him know Sam had roomed him with Adam. He knew things between them were rocky, and their relationship wasn’t any of his business of course, but it made no sense to have them spread out as easier targets between three rooms. Much as he would hate it, he and Adam could always switch places and Dean and Lizzie could stay with the younger Winchester if the case got hairy and they were worried about something following them back to the hotel. At any rate, they were finished up with the lawyer and had the keys to Benny’s house and the formula prescription. The brothers were probably going to have to come back to the area in a few weeks after all the paperwork got filed in the event there were any questions or problems, but right now the omega was tired and they were planning to meet Sam at the hotel.

Sam printed out a bunch of the newspaper articles he’d found online and headed out to grab some food before going back to wait for Adam and Dean, stopping in his tracks inside the library vestibule at the sight of the red El Camino parked across the street behind his Escalade. It was sandwiched between Sam’s truck and a black Sierra Grande that he knew well after travelling around in it for weeks. He dug out his phone to shoot Dean a text letting him know about this turn of events when he smelled Gordon’s particularly strong and more than a little offensive scent filling the space around him.

“Sammy!” He could hear the man’s icy smile in the way he said the name, turning to find Gordon’s nearly black eyes trained on him. Curiously, John stood with him, though Sam hadn’t been able to scent him. Gordon was moving towards him before he had too much time to think about it. “Glad you could make it.”

“I’m sorry,” Sam said, glancing between the two alphas. “What are you doing here, Gordon?”

“Well, after I took care of that rugaru in Sioux Falls I got a call from John,” Gordon replied. “Seems you ditched him on a goblin hunt and he needed someone to watch his back. Then of course I heard about Benny and was happy to lend a hand.”

“Great.” Sam gave him a thin smile as John came down the steps, clenching his jaw. “Glad to have the help.”

“Can I talk to you a minute in private, Sam?” John said, taking hold of the young alpha’s arm to steer him away from the older man who still had the cold, dead stare fixed on him. He made sure they’d moved a good distance away before turning his back on Gordon and lowering his voice. “Listen, I’m sorry about this, I know he can be a loose cannon, but I really needed backup on the goblin job and I’ve burned a lot of bridges. If I’d known about Benny before I called him…”

“It’s fine, John,” Sam cut in. Clearly he was just going to have to accept this. There was no way he could tell John to get rid of Gordon without telling him _why_ , and he didn’t think John would take the psychic dreams and demon expulsion nearly as well as his son had. “Why are you wearing blockers?”

“Picked up a job just after New Year’s. Series of people in Mississippi were getting torn to shreds. Thought it was a black dog at first. Turned out to be a hellhound and they’d all sold their souls a decade ago.” He rubbed the back of his neck and let out a weary sigh. He looked every day of his fifty-one years. “I got the last guy out of his deal, but the bitch that came for him has my scent. Just trying to dodge her until I can figure out a way to get her off my trail.”

“And the odds that this hellhound will be coming after the people you work with?” the young alpha demanded. “Or, I don’t know, your sons?”

“That’s not how hellhounds operate,” John assured him. “I’m a legitimate target cuz I pissed off the crossroads demon that controls this one. But going after Adam and Dean would be against protocol. Crossroads demons are sticklers for their protocols.”

“You two done with your date yet?” Gordon called from across the vestibule. “We should get a move on, see if we can get a lead on this nest. John and I were just checking the archives and we’re thinking Avilla is our best bet.”

“Yeah.” Sam held up the stack of papers. “Same here.”

“How about we hit the road then?” John suggested. “You said you got rooms at the Hyatt.”

“Only two,” Sam told him firmly. “I was thinking it would just be the four of us.”

“Dean’s still in town then?” Gordon asked, arching an eyebrow. “I don’t mind takin’ the couch.”

“I’m sure we can get a rollaway cot,” John said, looking between the two young alphas and hoping to put an end to the posturing by establishing his dominance.

“Sure,” Sam agreed with a nod after a few seconds, wanting to argue but feeling his anger building beyond the point of rationality. John’s suggestion was ridiculous, but Sam could tell if he didn’t back down now he wouldn’t be able to stop himself and would end up literally murdering Gordon right here in the library. “Shouldn’t be a problem. I just need to call the hotel real quick.”

“Great!” Gordon was smiling that same sick, bright smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “We’ll see you there then and we’ll figure out how to gank these sons of bitches.”

He clapped Sam on the back and headed out into the winter air towards his completely impractical car, leaving the young alpha clenching his fists and suppressing a growl. He doubted Adam would be up for bunking with his dad _and_ Gordon, and obviously Gordon was not bunking with him, Dean, and Lizzie, which left either the possibility that John, Sam, and Gordon share a room ( _something he thought would be likely to get him killed_ ), or he get another room for Adam, Dean, and Lizzie ( _even though he figured Dean wouldn’t want to be in the same hotel with Gordon_ ), or he try to convince Dean to stay with Adam and Lizzie at Benny and Lisa’s house. None of the options were appealing.

“He’s got a real thing for vampires. Gonna be a great asset on this job,” John said as a way to placate the young man, though he knew he didn’t have any real chance of doing so. “We can ditch him after and keep looking for that yellow eyed bastard. I’ve got a few solid leads. That’s if you’re still coming with me.”

Sam hadn’t even thought of going with John since they found out about Benny. Even if he and Dean hadn’t discussed it yet, it had seemed a given that they would abandon the idea of him running off and leaving the omega alone, especially now that they had Lizzie. Having Gordon show up definitely complicated things.

“Dean and I have to talk about that,” he replied, not sure how he was going to broach this subject with Dean and needing to get to his car so he could do so. “Did you get a chance to call that guy back? Henricksen?”

“The OPS guy? Yeah, I called him back yesterday, told him Dean had been with the agency for the last ten years. You two should be okay.”

“Thanks.”

John smiled and gave Sam’s shoulder a squeeze, saying, “Anything for Dean,” before heading for his truck. The Winchester patriarch’s assertion should have brought him some kind of relief, but he couldn’t shake the feelings that things were about to go terribly wrong.


	52. We Can Q&A After We Kill All the Damn Vampires

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alphas do not play well together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last update before the weekend.

However Sam thought Dean was going to react to the news that Gordon Walker had shown up in Fort Wayne with Dean’s dad and was not only expecting in on the case, but that he would be staying in one of their rooms, it certainly wasn’t that the omega would throw an outright fit that bordered on a temper tantrum. A temper tantrum with the real possibility of gunplay being the end result if Sam couldn’t get Dean calmed down. He’d tried to call while they were on the road from Muncie, but Dean had turned his phone off so he could take a nap in the back seat with Lizzie. New New Dean was the kind of guy who didn’t have it in him to care if someone died while he was taking a nap, because New New Dean struggled under a blanket of constant physical and emotional exhaustion. When he’d gotten to the room, baby carrier in hand while Adam brought in the bags, and discovered John was already there going over the case with Sam, things had been fine. Then he smelled Gordon coming down the hall and he lost it, kicking John out and wishing his shoulder wasn’t a mess so he could slam the door behind him.

“What the fuck is he doing here?” he demanded, moving past Sam to set Lizzie’s car seat in the center of the bed and shrugging her diaper bag down off his shoulder.

“Your dad called him when I bailed on the goblin job,” Sam said, trying to stay calm and reasonable.

“ _And_?” A pair of increasingly angry juniper eyes were focused on the alpha. Dean was already starting off at an eleven on the one-to-ten angry scale and appeared poised to head for the stratosphere. In addition to being spent from having to fight back the urge to cry every few minutes, New New Dean apparently had no tolerance for bullshit. “The goblin job was in Oklahoma. This ain’t Oklahoma, Sam.”

“Dean…” Sam started, moving to unbuckle Lizzie from her car seat.

“Don’t unbuckle the kid,” Dean snapped. “I’m not convinced we’re stayin’ yet.”

“Gordon was working with your dad when John found out about Benny and got my call to come up on the vamp hunt,” Sam explained. “I ran into them in the library and John had already told him where we were staying.”

“So we’ll stay somewhere else. It’s not like there’s a dearth of hotel rooms in Fort Wayne.”

“A dearth of hotel rooms?”

“Yes, Sam, a dearth of hotel rooms. It means scarcity.”

“I know what dearth means, Dean.”

“That’s surprising since I’m using words a whole lot more common than ‘dearth’ and you don’t seem to be understanding anything comin’ out of my mouth right now.” Dean was flinging his coat off the best he could one-handed, getting his arm stuck and fighting to get his hand out of the cuff in a way that would have been downright lovable if it weren’t for how furiously he was pacing the room. “Why would you bring him here? Why wouldn’t you just tell him no?”

“Your dad had already told him yes.”

“Well my dad’s name isn’t on the credit card paying for this room.” He finally got the coat off his hand, watching it fly across the room and land in a pool of fabric, and plopped down on the couch while Sam finished getting Lizzie out of her car seat. “What am I supposed to do knowin’ that guy’s on this hunt with you and I’m laid up in this hotel with a baby and a bad shoulder? You can’t expect me to trust he’s gonna have your back in a vamp nest.”

“Keep your friends close but your enemies closer,” Sam told him, settling into an easy rocking motion with the baby who was grabbing at his shirt. “It seemed like a good idea to know where he is now that he’s here than to just hope I’m going to have another dream cluing me in on his plans.”

“I sleep with a gun under my pillow, Sam,” Dean snapped. “I think we could’ve managed to keep you alive with him in another hotel.”

“It isn’t just that.” Sam took the chance of moving closer to the omega to run a soothing hand through his hair. “Your best friend and his family were killed - someone who trusted you enough to leave his daughter with you. John would have wanted a better explanation of why I wouldn’t want all the help we can get on this case beyond just ‘I don’t like him.’ And I didn’t know how to tell Gordon he wasn’t staying with us without tipping my hand to being onto him.”

“ _Staying_ with us? What, does he think he’s just going to sleep on a roll-away cot in one of our rooms?” The alpha’s tightly pursed lips had the omega on his feet and pressing in close to him, incredulous. “He thinks he’s sleeping on a roll-away cot in one of our rooms?!”

“Dean, calm down.”

Sam knew instantly it was the wrong thing to say and wanted to pull the words back into his mouth, but The Wrong Thing was already out there hanging between them and Dean was pissed.

“You want me to calm down when there’s a fucking _psychopath_ in the hallway between me, my kid, and the elevator and you’ve _paid_ for a roll-away cot so he can be right up in my fucking space?” he hissed. “I’m sorry, have you _met_ me?”

“Look,” Sam sighed, holding out a hand to try to calm the furious omega whose eyes were hinting at gold around the edges. “I don’t want him here any more than you do, but I was kind of blindsided at the library. Your dad suggested the cot and I couldn’t really come up with a good reason on the fly as to why he couldn’t bunk with us that didn’t involve me beating him to death with a stanchion or blurting out ‘he suspects I’m a freak and wants me dead.’”

“My dad knows about you! You could’ve said _something_!”

“He doesn’t know _everything_ , Dean.” Sam stared at him pointedly, eliciting a huff from the omega, who moved away across the room with a scowl darkening his face. “Frankly I’m not sure your father would be so supportive if he knew I was exorcising demons and throwing doors off hinges with my mind.”

“I don’t want him here, Sam,” Dean said, leaving no real room for compromise. “I don’t want him near you, Lizzie, or Adam. And he sure as hell ain’t sleepin’ on a roll-away cot in one of our rooms. _We_ have hotel rooms. _He_ can go get one of his own. In another hotel.”

“How am I supposed to tell him that now that John’s on his side?”

“You don’t have to. I’ll fuckin’ tell him.”

Lizzie started to make uncomfortable little noises, like she was just realizing she was either hungry or dirty but wasn’t yet in meltdown mode. Sam shifted his hold on her slightly to try to assess her diaper, and when it didn’t feel full he set her in the car seat and started rooting around in the diaper bag for the formula and a clean bottle. They hadn’t cleaned any of the bottles from the night before and were on their last one. His mind filed away the realization that they were going to have to get dish soap, as if the information were going to be of any help in getting Dean to relax a little. Dean was moving off towards the door to the room, adjusting the sling around his shoulder and trying not to flinch from the pain spreading through his lung, his eyes solid gold by now and his breath slightly labored. Sam grabbed for his good arm and got violently shaken off.

“Dean, wait…” Sam said helplessly as he moved into the bathroom to get water for the formula, but the omega was already yanking open the door to where John, Gordon, and Adam stood, Adam looking furious that the foreign hunter was there as well.

“Hey, Gordon, so here’s the thing,” Dean started with a smile. “You were an asshole who used to beat me up all the time when we were kids, plus you broke Sam’s jaw, and I don’t want you near my family so have a nice life.”

He slammed the door as his father was saying, “Dean…” and turned to look at the alpha who was warming up the bottle for Lizzie in the microwave as the baby was really starting to fuss.

“There,” he said. “See how easy that was?”

“Dean, we don’t want to get on Gordon’s bad side,” Sam admonished, getting the little girl up to feed.

“News flash, Sammy. We’re already on Gordon’s bad side. He’s obsessed with you and I don’t know what his thing is with _me_ but it makes me feel dirty just havin’ him look at me and I’m _not_ having’ him around me an’ Elliott an’ Lizzie. End of story.”

“Dean?” It was his father’s voice on the other side of the door as he knocked. “Open up. We need to talk.”

“No we don’t fucking need to talk, Dad,” Dean snapped. “I already did my talkin’.”

“Son, open the door,” John requested, sounding perfectly reasonable. It made Dean nuts, these two alphas who were staying so calm when there was an obvious threat in the hall and a baby in the room that needed to be protected from it. Especially Sam. He expected his dad to be a moron, but Sam was literally feeding a helpless infant and acting like Gordon was just there for some tea and cucumber sandwiches. “Dean, please.”

Dean made no move to answer John or open the door, and after a few moments Sam switched his hold on Lizzie, balancing the bottle in her mouth with his chin, and crossed the room to let the older alpha in. Dean moved between Sam and the door, warning in his gold-rimmed eyes that all the fuzzy blankets in the country weren’t going to get Sam out of this if he turned that knob. Sam drew in a deep breath through his nose, taking in the acrid irritation flowing off of the omega, and said, “Move, Dean.”

“I don’t want him here, Sammy,” Dean insisted. “He’s gonna throw you off your game.”

“Baby,” Sam said patiently, and Dean moved away from the door with a growl.

John came in quickly, the only one left in the hallway after Adam stormed off to his own room and Gordon had been convinced to wait in the lobby for John’s call. He looked annoyed and disappointed, like he’d just discovered one of his boys cheated on a history exam and had to dole out punishment for something they knew better than to do. Dean left the entry to sit on the couch, making no effort whatsoever to mask his own irritation. At this rate they were going to need to switch rooms because the place was really starting to stink from all the Winchester conflict.

“Dean, I get that you’re hormonal because you’re carrying…” John started, but stopped at the sight of the baby Sam was burping over his shoulder. John hadn’t really been paying attention when Dean came in and the car seat had been mostly behind the omega so the presence of a baby had eluded him completely. “Whose is that?”

“Benny’s,” Sam said quietly, glancing over at the omega’s reddening face. “He wanted Dean to take care of her.”

“Which makes her my responsibility to keep safe,” Dean interjected. “So you can take your ‘hormonal’ and shove it up your ass, Dad. Gordon is dangerous and I don’t want him around _either_ of my kids.”

“He’s not dangerous,” John insisted. “He’s a bit of a wild card, and I know he doesn’t play well with others, but he’s good at what he does. And everyone in the community knows he’s the best at hunting vamps, even if he’s outside the FDH. We could really use him on this hunt.”

“I’m not sayin’ don’t use him on this hunt, because I know you’re not gonna listen to me about hunting strategies - you never have,” Dean snapped, still completely baffled as to why he was the only one reacting logically towards the threat Gordon presented. “I’m just sayin’ he doesn’t need to stay with us here in _this_ hotel. That’s not unreasonable.”

“Logistically it makes the most sense to have us all in one place,” John told him. “He and Sam and I are going to have to coordinate to locate this nest and take it out. They’ve been at this for a couple of decades now just in this area. We probably aren’t dealing with a small group or newly turned. You know when it comes to vamps the more hunters you have on hand the better.”

“Dad, he smells like roadkill, okay? Literally, mildew and roadkill. I’ve got a baby to think about!” He gestured at Lizzie, and then down at Elliott kicking away. “Christ, I’ve got _two_ babies to think about and you’re talking to me like I’ve grown another head for not wantin’ someone who stinks of death down the hall from me, or in the same room with my brother and dad, or on this hunt with my...Sam!”

“ _I’ll_ stay in the room with him by myself if it makes you feel better,” John said, apparently having realized that he’d really pushed his oldest son too far, as he was shaking slightly and holding his left arm tightly to his chest. “I’ll go downstairs right now and get a third room for Adam.”

“What? No! I don’t want Adam by himself with Norman Bates walking around!”

“Then what, Dean?” John ran a hand down his son’s face, finally getting Dean to relax a little into his touch. “What’s gonna make you feel better that is also practical for the circumstances?”

“I’d say get Gordon his own goddamned room, but he’s a fucking adult who can pay for his own room if he wants to stay here so bad,” Dean told him, his irritation rising again despite his father’s efforts. “He’s already freeloadin’ staying with one of us. We’re not putting another room on Sam’s card. He’s not an ATM.”

“I can afford a third room for him, Dean,” Sam said, earning a glare from the omega.

“It’s the principle of the thing,” Dean snapped. “Work with me here Sam!”

“What if Sam switched this room for one with two queen beds?” John suggested. “Adam could stay with you, and I could stay with Gordon.”

“It’s a thought,” Sam said, bringing Lizzie over to hand to Dean. “Though I’m not sure Adam’s going to want to bunk with the two of us. He’s been pretty uncomfortable at Bobby’s.”

“Well it’s not like you’re gettin’ laid after this for a _long_ time so I don’t know why he’d have a problem,” Dean stated flatly, getting up to walk around with the baby for a bit, which made John laugh and Sam blush.

“Dean…”

The alpha stopped short as Dean glowered at him, then turned on his heel and left for the lobby, wondering if there were a way he could “accidentally” kill Gordon on this hunt and realizing Gordon was probably thinking the same thing about him.

Adam was indeed less than thrilled about the idea of sharing a room with his brother and Sam, the whole “babymooning” thing very fresh at the front of his mind despite being in town to finalize the affairs of Dean’s best friend and hunt the thing that butchered him and his family. Still, he was of the same mind as Dean that it was better than being in a room by himself, even though he considered Gordon more of a Michael Myers than a Norman Bates, and he certainly had no intention of rooming with his father and the freak that had been staking out Bobby’s house. Something about his dad seemed off, but he couldn’t put his finger on what it was until Dean asked what was going on with John’s scent. Their dad gave them an abbreviated story about a hellhound down in Mississippi and wearing blockers, which Adam thought must have been it. Like the standard generic dish soap scent all betas had to alphas and omegas, omegas all smelled like mint to betas while all alphas smelled like sage. He’d never realized how much he’d come to expect his father to smell like something besides his standard tequila and Selsun Blue until it wasn’t there anymore, and it would have been strange staying in a room with John that didn’t smell of sage. Or at least didn’t smell of his father’s sage. He thought this must be something like what life was like for his brother all the time, needing certain scents to feel like things were right with the world, which Adam certainly didn’t right now. The idea that he might honestly have been expected to share a room with Gordon on a roll-away cot made him wonder if John had hit his head on that hunt down in Mississippi. He really should have known better than to suggest something so ludicrous to his youngest child. With how damaged their relationship was the worst thing John could have done was to completely disregard Adam’s feelings on the matter, and the beta was glad to have avoided the inevitable argument that would have occurred from Gordon plunking his duffel down in Adam’s room. Or maybe John expected Adam to just roll over and agree with what he wanted to do; or maybe John had finally given up on having any kind of relationship with his youngest son and just didn’t care anymore. Whatever the case may be, bunking with Sam and Dean was preferable to the other options, but it still definitely sucked.

The brothers headed off to the Babies R Us so Dean could try again to pick up some baby things, this time with an actual baby in tow. They at least needed more diapers and bottles, and he didn’t really like the diaper bag the Jorgesons had left with him - it was far too girly and he needed something a little more rugged to work with. He also thought he should probably grab something to bathe Lizzie in and with, maybe some baby towels as well and that little ducky he remembered from last week that had a temperature gauge on the bottom that said “Too Hot” if the water would scald delicate skin. They’d bathed Lizzie in one side of the double kitchen sink for convenience at Benny’s, but Dean also remembered when Ben was little that there was a tub you could put right into the bath and fill with water to help keep an infant from drowning. One handed as he was, he thought anything that would help him keep Lizzie from drowning in the bathtub was probably a good idea.

While Adam and Dean were off shopping and dodging nosy beta moms who kept asking how old Lizzie was and how far along Dean was and then trying to figure out how that math was supposed to work, Sam was working to convince himself he shouldn’t just snap Gordon’s neck and be done with it, because that would be murder and they put you away for that. Hell, Indiana might even have the death penalty for murder; he really didn’t know. What he did know was the alpha with the bright white smile and coal black eyes had upset his omega and was far too cozy with John and was asking all kinds of questions about Dean and the baby ( _Elliott, not Lizzie - he didn’t seem interested in Lizzie in the slightest_ ) that he had no right to be asking, because Dean was not available to anyone, and certainly not to someone who smelled like roadkill. Either John had lost a couple of steps in the time since he’d left Windom or he was playing his cards extremely close to the vest, because he was letting Gordon make all kinds of comments about how gorgeous Dean looked carrying, and how he smelled so much better, and how he’d always known the man was built to take a knot, without saying a word to stop him. They were supposed to be meeting to decide how they were going to split up tracking the vamps but instead all they were doing was discussing Dean, and by the time the Winchester brothers met up with them after getting the stuff Lizzie was going to need over the next few days Sam was one hundred percent ready to rip Gordon’s throat out. By the look that flashed through Gordon’s eyes when Dean, Adam, and Lizzie caught up with them at Dora’s Diner, the feeling was mutual.

Sam had insisted Dean didn’t need to meet them at the diner built out of an old railway car, but the omega wasn’t about to leave Sam alone with Gordon and his dad, not after the way Gordon had been able to so easily get under Sam’s skin back in Sioux Falls. John was not the best at diffusing tense situations, and with his temper was likely to make things worse if the two young alphas decided to go at each other. Despite their earlier fight, Dean was quick to plant a serious kiss on Sam the minute Sam climbed out of the wraparound booth they’d grabbed to let Adam slide in to sit by John, Lizzie cooing in the car seat crooked over Dean’s arm. He remembered what Sam had said about Gordon not respecting subtle displays of possessiveness, and he wasn’t about to sit passively by this time while the alphas at the table started whipping ‘em out for a dick measuring contest. He’d much rather make his choice for an alpha abundantly clear right off the bat to everyone in the diner than sit there like some Stepford wife unable to speak for himself.

Adam immediately buried his face in a menu, noticing his father smiling at the couple and wondering if he’d taken up smoking pot. Maybe all alphas in a family got swept up in babymooning. He certainly never would have expected his dad to just let the kiss go on for a ridiculous amount of time without telling the two to break it up. Hell, he couldn’t picture John even tolerating Dean kissing someone like this in public in the past, yet here he was serenely waiting for Dean to finish making out with his - boyfriend? fiance? intended? betrothed? - without once coughing and telling them to break it up because there was work to be done. Perhaps John was just getting on in years and starting to think about the future, specifically whether he’d be around to have one. The realization left Adam a little bitter, that it would take Dean having a kid to bring John around to the idea of being a parent instead of a drill sergeant, but that seemed to be what was happening.

They surprisingly made it all the way through dinner without serious incident, despite the leers Gordon kept throwing Dean’s way, and it wasn’t until the check arrived that the evening took a significant turn. Gordon was adamant about paying for dinner, since Sam was paying for the hotel rooms, which with anyone else would have been innocent enough but in Gordon’s case seemed a pretty clear challenge to Sam’s role as Dean’s alpha. Had the omega not been present it wouldn’t have meant a thing, but the kind of posturing Gordon had been doing throughout the meal - trying to talk about “old times” at school with the omega, bringing up stories about him and Benny that Gordon knew because he was in the year between Benny and Dean, asking about the cases they’d worked after Dean left school - was too blatant an attempt to flirt with the omega, whose distress mounted with every question, that it left Sam seeing literal red. Whipping out a stack of cash and thumbing slowly through it to count out enough twenties to cover the bill was practically alpha code for showing he would be as good of a provider as Sam. Piled on top of how clear Dean had made it when he entered that he was with Sam, and how upset Dean had been to learn that Gordon was in Fort Wayne, and how he had continued to upset Dean by pressing the “Benny” angle at dinner, it was a good thing the booth was by the door, so that when Sam said, “Gordon, could I see you outside for a moment?” they had a very short distance to travel. Otherwise he might have broken more than one restaurant chair across Gordon’s back before they even made it to the dark parking lot.

Gordon was barely down off the steps leading up to the raised train car when Sam was on him, landing a solid hit to his jaw that sent Gordon careening backwards into the railing and knocking into the snow-covered potted plants that lined the stairs. Gordon took a second to catch his breath and spit out part of a cracked tooth, looking at Sam and laughing before launching himself into the younger alpha’s stomach, driving them both back across the asphalt and into a Prius, denting the door and setting off the alarm. Sam slammed a barrage of punches into Gordon’s ribs, and when he didn’t loosen his grip got his arms around the alpha’s waist to lift him off the ground with a roar, twisting to slam him into the fender and hood. Gordon lost his hold and fell to the asphalt, taking a couple of Sam’s heavy boots to the chest before he grabbed Sam’s foot and twisted. Pain shot through the young man’s ankle and up his shin, and he caught himself against the Prius’ roof to keep from falling. Gordon was halfway up and tackled Sam to the ground, getting in a right and then a left hook the minute they landed and bouncing Sam’s head back against the blacktop. Bright white spots popped in front of the alpha’s eyes as the planet pitched sideways and he was momentarily relieved that he was already on the ground so he wouldn’t fall over, but then Gordon’s hands were around his throat, cutting off his air and leaving him gasping. He pried at the older alpha’s hands for a few seconds before driving the heel of his palm flat up into the tip of Gordon’s nose, snapping his head back as blood gushed out onto Sam’s face and shirt. It didn’t get Gordon all the way off of him, but he lost his grip on Sam’s neck and gave the younger man a chance to buck him off with a knee to the groin, rolling away and using the Prius to help get him to his feet as he struggled to breathe. Distantly he became aware of the large group of civilians who had gathered inside the front of the restaurant, none of them willing to brave the January cold to get between two young, strong alphas obviously in the middle of a battle for dominance. Even John was staying out of it, and Adam was physically restraining Dean, wisely concluding that letting an omega into the mix was only going to make the fight much worse. Besides, Sam was bigger and stronger than Gordon, and jumping to his rescue was only going to undermine his status with Dean and make the omega look available to the handful of very interested alphas patiently awaiting the outcome of the fight in the diner.

Sam was just recovering his equilibrium when he caught the flash of something metallic out of the corner of his eye and leaned back out of the way of the butterfly knife Gordon had in his hand, swinging it with the intent of connecting with Sam’s torso and neck. The younger man ducked and pivoted, getting his palm slashed open when he tried to grab Gordon’s wrist to disarm him. Sam shrugged out of his overshirt to stretch it between his hands, and after a few more swipes he got it wrapped around Gordon’s arm, using it to swing him around again into the Prius, launching him all the way over the hood and into the windshield, the butterfly knife clattering away under another parked car. Gordon got himself onto his feet on the opposite side of the Toyota, grabbing hold of the fabric and yanking Sam into the passenger’s side, leaving the side mirror cracked, before a pair of fast-moving figures darted forth out of the darker recesses of the lot, one tackling Gordon behind the Prius and the other throwing Sam into the back gate of a Kia Sorrento hard enough to smash the glass. Sam’s back exploded in agony, the wind going right out of him as he was sure he heard something crack, and as he was crumpling to the ground he felt a new hand close around his throat; a cold hand, like that of a corpse, with long, sharp fingernails. He could hear Gordon shouting and screams coming from the diner as he looked up into the platinum eyes and piranha teeth of the dark haired female vampire pinning him in place. He felt around for anything he could get his hands on to try to stop from becoming dinner at the diner as he heard Dean frantically yell, “ _Sam_!” amid the shrieking and metallic “whoosh”ing and “thwump”ing that typically accompanied decapitation. As the edges of his vision started to go dark he found himself really pissed off at the idea that Dean was killing monsters with a dislocated shoulder and contusion on his left lung. He was just about to pass out when the “whoosh” and “thwump” took off the head of the vampire strangling him and he saw Adam standing over him, covered in blood.

“Jesus, good thing Dean wore his machete,” Adam snapped, helping the alpha to his feet. “He said you guys would probably be too hyped up on hormones to remember we’re hunting fucking vampires.”

Sam took a second to breathe and look around the parking lot, where there were now four dead vampires and a slew of injured civilians who’d decided to make a run for it and now had neck wounds to put pressure on, a couple of them looking quite serious. Dean was striding across the lot with a crying Lizzie tucked in his coat, and Sam didn’t care how pissed off he looked with his gleaming golden eyes. He was safe and unscathed, not a drop of blood on him, the most difficult thing he had to deal with at the moment an upset infant.

“What the hell, Sammy?” he shouted, and Sam was grateful Dean didn’t have a good free hand to shove him with, or he probably would have made the dent in the Sorrento much worse. “Not _one_ of you thought you should _maybe_ carry a big enough knife to handle a vamp when we were meeting up after dark?”

“Sorry,” Sam said, unable to keep the smile from his face over Dean doing the smart thing for once and not endangering himself. “Guess you were right about Gordon throwing me off my game.” He couldn’t suppress an “oof” when the omega pressed into his chest to take several deep breaths against his neck, gently wrapping his arms around Dean’s shoulders so as not to crush Lizzie, who was still quite upset. “Where is he, by the way?”

“Dad ran off after him,” Adam said, wiping the blade off in the snow and then lifting the back of Dean’s coat and tunic shirt to resheath the machete. Dean hissed at the touch of the cold blade against his skin, shivering in closer to Sam. “Two of them were dragging him away when I got out here and started slicing.”

“You did a great job.” Sam looked around the parking lot again at the dead vamps strewn everywhere. “Took me all the way back to blade training. Sure you want to go back to Duke?”

“Yes,” Adam replied without hesitation. “But if Dad can’t get Gordon back, you can definitely count me in on this hunt.”


	53. I Know How it is Walking Around with Something Evil Inside You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This ain't Twilight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies in advance for probably very sporadic updates this week. One of our dogs is very sick and a lot of my free time is probably going to be spent giving her medicine and trying to keep her from dying on us.

Gordon couldn’t really see or hear anything when he woke after what seemed like a very long time, his head pounding and his hands and feet numb. Wherever he was it was cold and drafty, and after several moments of giving his eyes a chance to adjust he could see dim light filtering through the slats of the ceiling above him. He was bound with his hands behind his back to a heavy wooden post, sitting on a dirt floor that felt half frozen, and could detect the faint smells of old hay and manure. He quickly deduced that was in some sort of barn, likely in the basement by the faint outline of a set of stairs that he could barely make out across the room. He could hear footsteps moving above him and music playing faintly - _People Are Strange_ , but not the original by The Doors - as well as talking and laughing. Whoever it was up there was having a grand old time. His head throbbed as he tried to figure out what had happened. He’d been fighting with Sam in the parking lot, having finally pushed him to the point of lashing out and starting a fight in front of plenty of witnesses. It had occurred to him after the two encounters in Sioux Falls that the easiest way to get rid of Campbell without arousing suspicion was to claim self defense. Alphas routinely killed each other when fighting for an omega, and though some of the northeastern states had started passing stricter laws on what did and did not constitute necessary deadly force, Indiana's laws were pretty lax. Sam was clearly bigger and stronger, and after he threw Gordon into the car it would have been easy enough to say he feared for his life and had to draw his blade on the younger man. Even Dean would have had to admit how riled up Sam was if the police asked him, and few things would have stood up better in a court of law than an omega’s statement that his alpha was out of control. Gordon hadn’t expected they would be gang rushed in the middle of their fight, and had been flipped on his back almost immediately so he had no idea who or what had grabbed him.

It seemed like he’d been down there for ages, struggling against his restraints as his arms fell asleep, when a hatch opened in the ceiling above the stairwell and a woman with long, dark auburn hair came down, followed by a man with black hair. Enough light bled down through the hatch that he could get a really good look at them, and saw immediately that they were walking cliches. Either that or Hollywood had a really good read on what vampires looked like. They both wore jeans and heavy black boots, with flashy jewelry and tight, layered tee shirts, topped off with leather jackets. They looked like something that stepped out of _The Lost Boys_. Gordon redoubled his efforts on getting out of the ropes binding his hands, scanning what he could see of the basement in the light for anything he could use as a weapon.

“I told you,” the female cooed, smiling up at the male. By the way she sidled up to him he guessed they were mates. “Caught his scent yesterday at The Drunken Monkey.”

“Gordon Walker,” the male said, crossing the floor with his eyes gleaming almost white-gold in the dark. “Well. I never thought we’d meet face to face.” He took a sharp, deep inhale of Gordon’s neck all the way from his shoulder to his ear as the female strode over to stand behind him, then regarded him with his knife-like secondary row of teeth descended. “This may be the best present you’ve ever given me, Kate.”

“I did good?” she asked, clearly pleased with herself.

“You did great, baby,” he said, rising up to capture her mouth in a deep, passionate kiss.

It became obvious the longer they stayed attached at the lips, thrusting their tongues down each other’s throats, that the two of them weren’t going to break apart anytime soon, and the last thing Gordon wanted was to end up watching two vampires fucking in the dirt of the basement of an old cattle or horse barn, so he called out, “You have me at a disadvantage. You know who I am, but I have no idea who you are. Besides a filthy parasite and his bloodsucking whore.”

That certainly got the male’s attention, and he turned to the hunter and was across the room at his side in the literal blink of an eye.

“You’re going to want to apologize to my mate,” the vampire snarled, his hand on Gordon’s face to turn his head to the side and expose his neck. “I’m very old and have my urges well controlled. I could feed on you for a month or more before you finally succumbed to the blood loss. It’s a terrible way to go, believe me.”

Gordon looked from the male over to the female and said after a long time, “Sorry you’re a bloodsucking whore, Kate.”

The male vampire had backhanded him without Gordon even seeing him move, drawing a long line of blood down the length of Gordon’s cheek with the ring on his index finger, leaning in just as quickly to lick the blood away with his rough almost reptilian tongue. Gordon tried to turn away, bile rising in his throat, but the vampire was holding his face again, digging his thumbnail into the wound. A grin turned up the corners of his mouth as he stared into the alpha’s eyes.

“You don’t seem to appreciate the position you’re in, Mr. Walker,” he hissed. “Your reputation precedes you. There isn’t a nest in the country that hasn’t heard of the rogue hunter who has made it his life’s mission to eradicate vampires. You’ve got an impressive kill list for only having been after us for a decade or so. The name Gordon Walker is at the top of every nest’s Most Wanted list. And we’re the ones who have you.”

“You still haven’t told me your name,” Gordon spat, wincing as the thumbnail sunk deeper into the cut on his face. “I always like to know the name of the vampires I kill. I keep them in a journal under my mattress.”

“Luther,” the vampire replied, smiling and showing the secondary row of teeth again. “I appreciate your efforts to intimidate me, but I’ve been around a very, very long time. All the nests in the Midwest have sprung from me and mine. We’ve been in this location for sixty years and your precious Federal Department of Hunters has never even noticed us.”

“Well I hope you’ve enjoyed your run, because it’s coming to an end,” Gordon told him, returning the smile. “You killed a hunter and his family last week. You’re on the Department’s radar now, and hunters aren’t going to stop coming until all of you mindless, bloodthirsty animals are dead.”

“Mindless?” Luther looked at Gordon with the kind of curiosity that a child might have towards an ant hill right before pouring boiling water on it. “We managed to catch you, didn’t we? Sure, we suffered some losses at the diner, but it was worth it to get our hands on one of the greatest living vampire hunters there is and pick up the scent of your companions. Especially that omega. He does smell delicious.”

“I’ve got to say,” Gordon sighed, “your threats of being slowly bled to death seem downright preferable to all this chit chat. I never realized a vampire could be that in love with the sound of his own voice.”

“Funny,” Luther said, standing and leering down at him. “For someone who’s one of the best at hunting us, you don’t seem to know much about us at all.” He smiled again, something dangerous flashing through his eyes beyond the bloodlust that was always simmering just beneath the surface, then turned to Kate and held out a hand. “That gives me an idea.”

Kate seemed intuitively to understand what it was Luther wanted. Gordon had heard mated vampires shared a psychic bond, and from the way these two moved together he definitely believed it. She shrugged off her jacket as she came forward, her breath blowing out in little white puffs in the frigid night air, and extended a bare forearm towards Luther. He took his sharpened thumbnail and ran it down the length of her arm, sucking the blood away and then kissing her, full and open mouthed until their lips and tongues were stained red. When they broke apart their eyes were shimmering, and Kate turned to the hunter with a frightening gleam in her eye. She moved towards him slowly, sucking her own blood into her mouth from the wound, and then was on him, her mouth working across his, forcing his lips open, and spitting her blood onto his tongue. Gordon screamed into her, but she was far too strong for him to move his head away, to get away from the virus she was forcing on him. She held the kiss until she was sure he’d been well dosed with her blood, then stood back up from him with a laugh and sent him back into unconsciousness with a right hook.

It was twenty minutes before John returned to the diner, by which point the police had shown up to cordon off the area and make sure everyone had given their statements surrounding the vampire attack. A couple sets of ambulances were treating the wounded, one teenager having been taken to the hospital with life threatening injuries, and Sam’s hand had been neatly stitched up so he could talk to the victims who had been assaulted without bleeding over all his notes. Everything about the evening had been very strange, from a pair of vamps taking Gordon to striking such a heavy populated area to swarming a parking lot in the early evening, since most attacks happened after midnight, when the moon was high, the sky was black, and easy targets would be wandering out of bars and into dark alleys. The fact that Adam killed four of them alone pointed to a particularly large nest, and even though he’d been an ass and Sam had been trying to beat him to death not long before, losing Gordon from the hunt was definitely going to make this case harder to close.

Adam was relieved at the prospect of being able to move back into John’s room, presuming all had been forgiven between the alpha and the omega as far as Dean was concerned by how closely he stayed to Sam the rest of the night. The kissing and goo-goo eyes he was having to ignore at Bobby’s house were bad enough, but at the moment they were moving into public snuggling and nuzzling and it was pretty unbearable being around his brother and his best friend now that the two of them were...well, he still didn’t know what they actually were, but they were very clearly _something_ , and very clearly _together_. He guessed that since they had a real live baby to take care of, even one that wasn’t technically theirs, it was kicking the babymooning into high gear. He would have grabbed another copy of that _What to Expect_ … book at that super crazy baby store, but they didn’t have any copies of the omega version. A call to Bobby might be in order to find out what he was in for, and then maybe he could get Marge’s number from Dean to see if that apartment over her bar was still for rent. A part of him really hoped that Sam was still planning to go off with John, selfish as it was, just so he could get a break from all the cuddling.

If Adam hadn’t been a beta he would have been able to scent Dean’s distress that was the cause for all the public snuggling. It was flooding the restaurant in the aftermath of the attack and proving very distracting for the other alphas in the area, both patrons and the members of the EMS and police staff checking everyone over. He’d been secretly thrilled when Sam finally took Gordon outside to beat the snot out of him, as all the talk of Benny was making it very hard for him to keep his grief locked into the box that he’d thrown to the bottom of a deep, dark well so he could function and take care of an infant. Feeling it creep up the well walls in long black tendrils, like some kind of infection bent on possessing him and shutting him back down as Gordon hammered on all the happy memories of “the good old days” had left him suffocating as he tried to eat his mac and cheese, which he hadn’t even thought twice about ordering until Gordon wouldn’t shut up, and then all he could think of was their first night visiting Benny, when Lisa made chicken fingers and mac and cheese because Ben had turned into a picky eater. He was torn now between being really pissed off at his dad for not speaking up once to get Gordon to shut up and inviting him on this hunt in the first place, and really pissed off at Sam for not putting his foot down in the library and flat out telling Gordon “No” when he expected to stay in their hotel, and really fucking happy Sam hadn’t taken a hit to his throat with that butterfly knife and was instead able to sit with him and Lizzie and soothe the shit out of the omega, making him feel calm and safe despite being on the verge of breaking down in the middle of a diner full of people all painfully aware of his designation and emotional state. He wanted his shoulder and ribs to be healed, and he wanted to not be staring at three more months of carrying, and he wanted the thought of Benny, Lisa, and Ben to not hurt anymore, but he wasn’t going to get any of those things so he’d take being able to slot his face up against Sam’s neck, getting held and petted in the meantime.

“Where’d you lose his scent?” Sam was asking as John finished up his own follow-up interviews with the restaurant patrons, having double checked to make sure no one had been bled on. Sam knew he should have checked that the first time, but his head was still a little foggy from coming in contact with the black top, Goron’s fists, and the Sorrento, plus he was very distracted by the need to comfort Dean.

“Followed it for a while, about three blocks and down an alley before it just disappeared,” John replied, running a hand through his hair. “Smelled two vamps all the way over, then two more where the trail died. You doin’ okay, Dean?”

Dean nodded against Sam’s neck, jostling Lizzie in his arm, and said quietly, “I just wanna go back to the hotel. It’s been a long fucking day.”

“Sure. We’ll get everything packed up and regroup there. Lizzie’s fine?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay.”

Adam watched his father interact with his brother and decided he was going to have to ask him what the hell was going on with him when they got back to their room. He had never shown this much concern for Dean or been so soft towards him. Hell, right after Dean found out about Shreveport John up and left him alone. Bobby had filled Adam in on everything that happened while he was at school once Adam got back from Chicago and had stopped sleeping most of the time. It was possible his dad wasn’t smoking pot but had some sort of terminal illness and only a couple of months to live. He certainly was acting like a man running on borrowed time who wanted to make amends before he took the long dirt nap. He definitely wasn’t going to address it now though, and helped Dean get Lizzie back into her car seat to take out to the Ford so they could all get back to the hotel and come down a bit from the adrenaline rush.

Even though they all knew time was of the essence, no one pushed the issue when Dean insisted they were going to wait until the morning to go over the events at the diner, that he was tired and Sam had been thrown into a couple of cars and Lizzie had been in a wet diaper for too long and needed a bath. The alphas instinctively capitulated to an upset, carrying omega with a baby in the crook of his arm, and it wasn’t hard for the beta to follow suit. Dean looked utterly drained and not in any kind of mood to deal with John’s go-to “but people are dying” argument, plus the low growl that was reverberating out from his throat was a strong enough warning not to force the issue with him. The attack at Dora’s showed up on the ten o’clock news anyway, so people in the area were aware there was a vampire problem and knew to stay indoors after dark. Everything could wait until breakfast.

Sam was by himself in the dining room, looking a little groggy and pained, wincing every now and then when he twisted the wrong way, when John and Adam made their way down the next morning. He was pretty sure he’d cracked a rib, but at this point he wasn’t going back to the hospital unless one of his limbs had been hacked off and needed to be reattached. It was Sunday by now and Dean had changed his mind about going to the house, opting for room service so he could spend the day relaxing and hopefully encourage his shoulder to stop killing him, having decided to head over to Benny’s on Monday. Lizzie was just starting to get used to him and Sam, and though it was boring as hell being stuck with a bum shoulder and broken ribs, hanging out all day with an infant seemed a good way to practice for what true retirement was going to be like once Elliott arrived. That was obviously going to have to be a major facet of whoever New New Dean turned out to be - “I am” getting traded in for “I was” when it came to his relationship with hunting. Adam and John had spent the evening researching the list of missing persons Sam had printed off from the library, and they quickly split up the people in the area to interview associated with each one, deciding they’d each take a town. Sam would stay in Fort Wayne in case Dean needed anything and planned to hit up a funeral home to get some more dead man’s blood, Adam would head up to Topeka, and John would head out to Butler. Once they had their intel, they’d go to Avilla together while Dean was at Benny and Lisa’s and hopefully get a lead on where the nest was.

Gordon woke the next morning to the uncomfortable feel of sunlight on his skin. It was just a thin ray shining down through the floorboards, but it felt like he’d spent a full day at the beach without sunblock on. It was not a pleasant sensation at all, and he wanted to recoil but was still bound to the post. More unpleasant was the way everything sounded. He could hear a loud pounding and rushing of liquid in his ears, with a strange reverberation that physically hurt. It was almost as if every sound was underscored by the distant clanging of a gong, shaking his body to its core, and the way everything smelled was enough to make him vomit. The old hay was overpowering, as was the manure; he could clearly tell the barn used to house both cows and goats, and for the first time in his life he could smell _himself_. He could also see now, despite how little light was still shining into the basement through the slats above him. Everything around him was clear and distinct, though he noticed as he turned his head that the light moved differently. Every time he turned from a ray of sunlight the bright waves would trail after, like ribbons. Eventually he heard something that must have been a watch ticking, but it sounded like gunshots. A bird flew by outside and he wished his hands were free so he could cover his ears against the echo of the flapping wings. His skin was infinitely more sensitive as well. He could feel every drop of sweat beaded up on his forehead, and despite being in the unheated basement of a barn in Indiana at the end of January he felt hot and flushed, his blood on fire.

More than anything else he was feeling, he was hungry. Thirsty. Starving. Each time he heard the pounding and whooshing of his own heart and blood he grew hungrier and thirstier, until he felt like he was going to lose his mind. It was like the most uncomfortable high he could imagine, like mixing PCP, cocaine, and LSD. He needed to get out of this basement, to get outside, to find an icy river to plunge himself in to overcome the heat building in his stomach and then find something he could use to scrape off his skin. He thought desperately that if he could find some way to set himself on fire it would ease the feeling; that it would be such a relief if he could burn down to literal ash. Desperate to bring himself out of this overdrive of senses he yanked against the ropes binding him and found they snapped easily, like they were nothing more than paper. Standing brought on all new uncomfortable sensations, as his equilibrium was entirely different. He felt lighter, faster, like he could fly. When he moved to cross to the stairs he found himself there in an instant, traveling so quickly he completely smashed the bottom step. Upstairs he heard movement and froze, able to smell now the scent of decay all around him; of blood and rot and gore; of vampires. His alpha senses had always allowed him to smell a vamp when it was nearby or had been in an area recently, but he now felt soaked in the odor. It was a disgusting feeling and enraged him. He was monster now, a thing to be hunted and destroyed. Gordon knew he would have to find a way to take his own life, but not before he took Sam Campbell’s and Dean Winchester’s.

Breaking the hatch out required only a small push, and though he would have liked to take out the nest as the vampires lounging around the barn in hammocks and on pallets topped with hay bales and blankets, there were too many of them, he had no weapons, and there was more sunlight peeking through the sides of the barn. Though the creatures stirred at the sound of the hatch giving way they were lethargic, in the middle of their sleep cycle, and none of them were fast enough to catch him before he burst out the back door of the barn. Once he was outside the burning sensation from the sunlight increased in intensity tenfold, and he took off for the woods near the barn, his feet flying across the snow so fast he left only the hint of footprints. He listened for the sound of breaking branches behind him that would have indicated someone was in pursuit but heard nothing, and after running for what must have been at least a mile found the hollow at a base of a tree to duck himself into, listening to the sounds of the forest around him and hoping the leafless trees would provide him enough protection from the sun. He guessed he was in Avilla, but having not gotten very far into the investigation it gave him no idea how to get back to Fort Wayne. He’s have to wait until dark to try to figure out where he was and maybe steal a car to travel back to the Hyatt. It crossed his mind that he might be able to fly there, but his hunger was so great at this point he didn’t dare attempt that before he found something to eat, and he could smell plenty of farm animals in close proximity to the woods. Besides, he needed to find a way to get his hands on some saffron, skunk’s cabbage, and trillium to try to mask his scent from Luther and his nest. Though it was entirely possible it would make him too ill to use it on himself, given how strong his sense of smell was now.

He managed to hold back the hunger until after dark, scenting the air to see if he could detect the presence of anyone from the nest. He’d gotten a good noseful of them when he burst into the barn, and didn’t think he’d ever be able to forget their stench. The heat in his blood had reached a boiling point, and the sounds ringing in his ears brought him out of the woods and to a small farmhouse where it looked like they grew soy. There was a small barn as well and he could hear several cows lowing and growing anxious as they smelled his approach. He would just kill one and drink what he needed, he was determined to control this need to feed on something living until he had taken care of the alpha and omega and then he could save the world from himself, but as he approached the barn in the moonlight he caught the whiff of something absolutely delicious. A beta girl inside the farmhouse. She smelled young and sweet, so much more potent than betas had ever smelled when he was just an alpha, hints of lavender and rose oil floating his way, as well as the smell of blood. She was menstruating, as all betas did every month. It made his mouth water, which made him feel filthy down into his bones, but he couldn’t continue on to the cattle with such a sumptuous meal waiting for him in the house. He crept across the lawn, watching her and her family through their kitchen window - a mother, a father, and a younger brother. He could hear each of their hearts beating, and oh my, they all smelled wonderful. He felt his second row of teeth descending through his gums, and it was painful for just a moment, but it was a good pain; a thrilling pain that sent pleasure through him at the same time. He managed to hold the hunger off for only a few seconds before it consumed him.

He smashed through the picture window of the dining room, landing on the lucious daughter first, sinking his teeth into her neck and ripping her open so he could drain the blood from her quickly. He had grabbed the little boy on the way down and had him pinned to the floor, turning to sink his teeth into the child’s neck once the daughter was all but empty. Instinctively he knew not to drink them dry, that once the heart stopped the blood would instantly sour, and the girl’s heart had grown faint and was pulsing out its last beats. The mother was screaming, the sound unearthly to his heightened sense of sound, and he felt the blasts from the shotgun the father had run to get, but they felt like bee stings in his back and didn’t deter him from his need to quench his thirst. The mother grabbed a carving knife from the table and sprang at him, but he reached up to punch a hand straight through her stomach, drawing back his bloody fist to observe it curiously as she stared at him, her eyes shocked in her tear streaked face. The father had begun to scream as well, still pumping the action of the shotgun and emptying round after round into the hunter-turned-vampire, who whirled on him and sprang across the room with a terrible hiss, sinking into his throat and tearing back with his teeth, causing arterial spray to paint the walls of the dining room. Gordon again covered the would with his mouth, sucking down the blood like lemonade on a scorching hot day, and once he was fully sated he rose to his feet and stared at the carnage around him.

Something niggling in the back of his mind tried to press him to be horrified, to recognize how grotesque he had become, what he must look like covered in the blood of four innocent civilians, but he couldn’t pay attention to it when he felt so blissfully full. Nothing in his life had felt as amazing as this, or brought him this much satisfaction. He was already looking forward to the feel of Campbell’s blood running down his throat, wondering how different the demon blood might make it taste, of licking Winchester’s sweet skin before having him for dessert. But now he could scent the other vampires on his trail and knew he would need to evade them until the morning; that if he were able to do that Sam and Dean would be dead the next day. It brought a smile to his lips, stained red with the life essence of the farmer’s daughter and her family, as he took off again through the woods.


	54. Occasionally I Miss Boring

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean heads to Benny and Lisa's.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact - I've broken Google Drive working on this story. This is the last chapter it would save. So now I've got two Google docs, which makes reviewing for consistency *fun*.
> 
> Also, there is some trigger-y stuff in here.

“I know you can take care of yourself, Dean. I just don’t think it’s a good idea for you to go to Benny’s alone. There’s no reason you can’t wait a couple of days until we’re done with this hunt.”

Sam was trying very hard not to be a knothead as Dean was feeding Lizzie before they went their separate ways for the day, but shit it was hard to see him as a fully capable human being who didn’t need his hand held twenty-four-seven when this was the first day since the funeral that he wasn’t wearing a sling, he was still experiencing some pain breathing, and he was going to be on his own with an infant while getting kicked by Sam’s offspring, not to mention how tightly wound he was as he worked to keep his grief in check, even though it clearly hummed just beneath the surface of everything he did. It was like some divine entity sat down to think about all the things that would drive an alpha’s protective instincts into overdrive, zeroed in on Dean, and started checking items off the list. Dean was a little better off emotionally than he’d been on Saturday with all the Gordon crap, so taking Sunday to just relax had definitely helped, but heading off to Benny and Lisa’s house when Benny and Lisa were never going to be there again was obviously bound to be incredibly difficult for him. Besides that his shoulder was nowhere near fifty percent, never mind one hundred. He’d needed Sam to help him put on the baby wrap he’d bought so he could wear Lizzie instead of having to drag the carseat around the house and between the two of them and Youtube it had taken a full twenty minutes to get it on right with Dean’s limited range of motion in his shoulder and increasingly large belly. Added in to his planned trip to Home Depot to pick up boxes and packaging tape and Sam had the distinct feeling he was going to push himself too hard, lift something too heavy, and _really_ injure himself with no one there to tell him to slow down.

Dean knew somewhere in the deep recesses of his mind that weren’t going numb from the prospect of going to Benny and Lisa’s house that Sam was just trying to look out for him; that Sam loved him and didn’t want him to think he had to face these kinds of things alone anymore, but if Dean was sure about one thing now it was that he needed to be completely self sufficient. His dad had been right to raise him to expect everyone to always leave him, because clearly they would, even if they didn’t want to and hadn’t meant to. He’d come to believe that Sam would never leave him of his own accord, but Sam was still a hunter and there was no way Dean would allow himself to trust Sam would always come home. Just two nights ago Sam could have been killed by Gordon or a vampire, and Dean wouldn’t have been able to stop it. Hell, even civilians died all the time in accidents - car crashes, drownings, slips and falls in the bathtub, choking to death on breakfast sausage. It didn’t matter how much he was dreading going to Benny and Lisa’s, or how tightly his chest clenched just at the thought of boxing up Lizzie’s things and being surrounded by the smell of the alpha and omega, knowing eventually their scents would dissipate and there would truly be nothing left of them. These were the sorts of things he was going to have to be able to do regardless of how much he didn’t want to or how much it hurt, and there was no guarantee he wouldn’t have to do them alone. Somewhere along the way he’d forgotten that lesson, one he’d learned at a very young age, so it was time to relearn it.

“You didn’t think it was a bad idea yesterday,” Dean pointed out calmly, getting the baby tucked into the carrier.

“I was all wrapped up in the case yesterday,” Sam stated, watching Dean carefully getting his coat onto his left arm and then his right. “I wasn’t really thinking about it. Now I have, and I’m allowed to change my mind.”

“Might as well drink the hemlock quick, Sam,” Dean said, giving Lizzie his pinky and ring fingers to play with and suck on so she’d stop tugging on his shirt and drooling on him. “It’s only going to get worse the longer I put it off.”

“It hasn’t even been a week.” Sam grabbed the diaper bag as the omega tried to sling it over his healthy shoulder, using it to pull Dean in closer to him. Dean went without too much of a fight, but still tried to steel himself against the feel of Sam’s thumb caressing his face. His omega already didn’t like the way he was hardening himself to the world and demanded he lean into the alpha’s touch. “I know I didn’t get your relationship with Benny for a long time, but I do now, and it hasn’t even been a _week_ since you lost him. Please just wait until we’ve got this case wrapped up.”

“I can’t.” Dean moved to shake him off, but Sam would not be deterred. Instead of moving farther away as Dean shoved at his chest, he moved in closer, nudging his nose against the omega’s ear. Sam was starting to get quite good at knocking down Dean’s walls, and though he tried to quickly reconstruct the one that had just toppled, it turned out he hadn’t actually built it out of brick, but out of dominos, and now the rest of his walls were starting to tumble in a line. “I’ve got to take a driver’s test before my temporary license expires, and I’ve got a prenatal appointment on Friday and I don’t want a speech from Dr. Milton and Jody for skippin’ it. I gotta get headed back to Bobby’s.”

“What?” Dean managed to suppress a flinch at the anger that burst out in the alpha’s scent. He gave in to his omega’s demands to placate, feeling too raw to try any posturing, and tucked his face against Sam’s neck, moving one of Sam’s giant hands onto his abdomen where Elliott was lazily kicking away. Lizzie burbled like she was in on the plan, and Dean could feel his - _mate_? - soften. “That’s an eleven hour drive. I’m not letting you and Lizzie make it alone.”

“Well, you’ve kind of got some vampires to kill,” Dean pointed out, carefully wrapping his left arm around Sam and running his fingers over the small of his back. He was having a hard time fighting his hindbrain’s desire to take off the baby wrap, send Lizzie down to Adam and his dad, and spend the whole day in bed with Sam, letting the alpha do his job of soothing and healing and making all the pain go away even just for a little while, and it was clear by the way Sam was dissolving against him he wanted to forego the hunt and do the same thing. “And then you gotta get back out on the road with my dad.”

“What?” Sam repeated, breaking Dean’s magnetic pull and stepping back, briefly considering checking the omega’s temperature to see if he’d been overcome by some kind of brain fever. “Gordon’s gone, Dean. Why would you ever think I’d go back out on the road when he’s not a threat anymore? You can’t possibly take care of Lizzie by yourself, your shoulder isn’t even going to be fully healed until Elliott is born.”

“Adam and Bobby can help me with Lizzie,” Dean said firmly. “You and dad need to find Azazel and stop him.”

“Dean…”

“Look, Sam, there’s somethin’ about that yellow eyed son of a bitch you don’t know.”

“Sam!” A grunt of frustration escaped the omega at the sound of his father banging on the door of the room. “We need to get on the road! There’s been an attack in Avilla!”

“We’re going to finish this when I get back,” Sam said, kissing Dean quickly before moving to let John in. The older alpha and his youngest son were geared up and ready to go, looking deadly serious as they stood in the doorway. “What happened?”

“Family of four,” Adam told him. “It went down sometime last night.”

“Neighbor came by to drive the kids to school,” John elaborated. “Some kind of carpooling arrangement and it was her week to take them. She found a real mess inside the house.”

“But that’s where we think the nest is,” Sam said. “Why would they strike so close to home? They’ve got to know that will bring the FDH right into their backyard.”

“Unless they’re not in Avilla,” Adam pointed out.

“We gotta get going,” John ordered, casting a glance at his older boy. “You gonna be okay for the day, Dean?”

“I’ll be fine,” the omega replied, swinging the diaper bag up onto his shoulder and grabbing his keycard. “I’ll walk you down.”

Unlike the night before, John _did_ tell Sam and Dean to break it up when they started to seriously get caught up in the goodbye kiss by Sam’s truck, Sam’s hands tracing the lines of Dean’s face and neck and Dean’s fingers winding their way inside Sam’s coat, Lizzie’s little hands snaking up to tangle in Sam’s scarf. Adam was already in Sam’s passenger seat, pointedly ignoring them, and for several long moments Dean’s rebellious omega pressed him to beg Sam to save him from himself, to let him go on the hunt, that he could just sit in the car with a machete in his lap and wait for them to be done finding and destroying the nest. Anything that would keep him from having to face 59 Sunset Trail alone. Sam murmured something about being back in time to put the baby to sleep and told Dean not to leave Fort Wayne until after they had a chance to talk about Azazel, then the hunters were gone and Dean was on his way to get the boxes to pack up Lizzie’s life.

Home Depot was definitely an experience with a baby in hand and another on the way. This was the kind of place he always went heavy on the blockers so as not to get swarmed by staff trying to direct him to the paint aisle when he was there for some power tools and chain, and with Lizzie sleeping against his chest it was even worse. A beta female associate latched onto him like a tick, apparently of the mindset that such a big store with so many manly things in it would clearly be overwhelming to a poor, pregnant omega without his alpha anywhere in sight. She practically took him by the hand to lead him to the aisle that had all the packing supplies, which he could have easily found by himself, thank you very much, and then called over another associate to bring a cart for him and then to pile in the boxes, packing tape, and roll of bubble wrap, since apparently Dean wasn’t capable of figuring out how to put any of these things into a large metal crate on wheels. She even pushed the cart over to the checkout line and placed his items onto the conveyor belt, and was about two seconds from calling someone over who could load everything into his truck when Dean finally stopped her. He probably should have been grateful to have less work for his shoulder to do, even if it was only picking up flattened boxes, but he was trying to keep his deflector shields up and that was very hard to do when being treated delicately by a perfectly nice beta in a home improvement store. Burying his current need for gentleness was difficult when a total stranger was being gentle with him.

He stopped to get something to eat on the way to Sunset Trail purely as a stall tactic, though Lizzie was legitimately hungry and in need of a diaper change. His waitress was a very nice middle aged woman with greying hair, and he wondered if he had some sort of neon sign hanging around his neck advertising the fact that he was in mourning and should be handled with care, because she, too, was soft with him, asking about the baby and giving him tips on burping, and just in general acting in a very motherly way that he found terribly unnerving. She even gave him an extra slice of pie on the house, noting that he looked a little pale and thin for being six plus months along and that the butter in the crust and the apple filling covered two of the necessary food groups anyway. He really wished now that he’d gone to Avilla with everyone else, or that he’d listened to Sam and waited until the hunt was over so he wasn’t doing this by himself.

It was around one o’clock when he finally ran out of reasons not to pull onto Benny and Lisa’s cul de sac and did his best to lock down the awful sadness that threatened to engulf him in a tsunami and drive him to the ground until he succumbed to it. He stopped in the driveway and took a few minutes to really tamp down the overwhelming desire to fall to pieces, breathing slowly and trying to focus on the sounds Lizzie was making in the back seat. When he felt he had himself sufficiently under control he opened up the glove compartment and fished around for the house keys he’d tossed there after meeting with Pamela on Saturday, then got out of the truck and lifted Lizzie out of her seat, tucking her into the baby wrap and pulling his coat around her against the cold. The street was silent, which was to be expected during working hours on a Monday, though he thought he saw the neighbor across the street peeking out of her curtains at him as he strode up the walk to the red front door.

The silence when he entered was dreadful. Dean had never been in this house when there wasn’t some sign of life inside; someone cooking or playing or coming out to hug him. It was awful, almost as bad as the church with the two wooden boxes, and he had to stop when he got the door shut behind him to just try to breathe. Someone had stopped by at some point to draw the curtains in the living room, throwing it into shadow, though the mirror on Lizzie’s play mat caught the light coming from the foyer and reflected it back in a bright stream that fell across the stairs. For a few really terrible minutes he thought he was going to turn into a puddle right there inside the door, but he screwed up his courage, set his jaw, and headed upstairs to drop Lizzie off in her crib so he could get the boxes, tape, and bubble wrap out of the truck. It was difficult getting her down onto the mattress in her pale purple nursery with the limited range of motion in his shoulder but he managed it, getting her out of her snowsuit so she wouldn’t be too hot, then headed back outside, scrubbing furiously at his face with his good hand. His eyes hadn’t gotten the memo that they were here on a mission that didn’t involve crying, and tears kept seeping out of them to obscure his vision and make him choke. He got the boxes out of the back in two trips, setting them inside the foyer, closing the door, and taking off his coat.

That was a mistake. He knew it as soon as he opened the hall closet to hang it up and was flooded with the smells of Lisa and Benny from all their coats, jackets, and winter gear still hanging there. Dean was suddenly glad Sam hadn’t come with him, because even though he’d finally gotten it through his head that Dean and Benny were just friends he probably still wouldn’t have taken it well to watch the omega press his face to one of Benny’s coats and inhale deeply, finally unable to control his sobs. He pulled the coat out of the closet, the hanger clattering to the floor on top of his own coat where he’d dropped it, grabbing the striped scarf that was one of Lisa’s favorites and practically collapsing onto the little bench beside the door, clutching the items to his chest and breathing in their scents. A very large part of him wanted to dig his cell phone out of the pocket of his coat and call Sam to come and get him, but he obviously couldn’t do that when Sam was on a hunt and people were literally dying, whereas Dean was only figuratively doing so. He felt terribly exposed sitting in one of the entry windows, even though he knew realistically no one could see him huddled there falling apart, and moved into the living room to curl up against the arm of the couch in the dark and cry into the fabric that smelled like his dead friends until his heart stopped breaking. He expected he would be there a long time.

The realization that there was a baby upstairs who needed to be checked on was what finally moved Dean up off the couch, leaving the coat and scarf draped over the bannister as he wiped his face on the sleeve of his shirt and tried to get his hiccups to stop. He grabbed the packaging tape and a couple of the boxes to take up with him, figuring he’d start off in Lizzie’s room and then box up some of Benny, Lisa, and Ben’s things as well so she’d know what her parents smelled like and have some things that belonged to her brother. He knew Benny had all their trophies and a scrapbook of their competitions and kills down in his mancave in the basement, and Dean wanted to make sure that all came with him, too. He couldn’t remember where Lisa had stashed their mating album and video or Ben’s baby book, but he had hours to go through the house and didn’t plan to leave those things behind. He could faintly hear Lizzie babbling away as he came to the top of the stairs, sounding happy to be home instead of staying in a Pack ‘N Play in a hotel, and the thought made him feel even more like he was dying. He put down the packing supplies and got the baby up and onto his shoulder, quietly singing _Wicked Game_ to her as he walked her around the nursery. It was her naptime and this whole thing would be a lot easier if she slept through it for him. He had to sing _Take on Me_ , _Heat of the Moment_ , and _Carry on Wayward Son_ as well before she finally settled in to sleep and he could put her back down, doing a quick diaper check to make sure she was still dry.

After a few minutes of watching her quietly huff air in and out he felt calm enough to begin packing and headed back down to bring up the rest of the boxes from inside the door. He grabbed them quickly and slapped them together up in the nursery, going through her toy chest and dresser to try to decide what he really needed to bring. There was a stuffed elephant with huge eyes laying in her crib and a stuffed brown dog with a white face in the rocking chair by the window, and he felt like those were definitely solid choices for taking with him. There was also a soft pink blanket over the bottom of her crib with a corner that looked like it had repeatedly been drooled on, so he tossed that in the same box as the elephant, the dog, and a bunch of her clothes. After that he just didn’t know what to grab; she had so much stuff, and it didn’t take long for him to feel completely overwhelmed by trying to decide what from her old life as part of a happy family was worth taking and what should be left behind. Finally he couldn’t take it and headed down the back stairwell into the kitchen, hoping there was still something to drink in the fridge that wasn’t expired because he needed something to help swallow the lump in his throat. The curtains hadn’t been drawn on the window over the kitchen sink and light streamed into the room, bleeding into the dining room, allowing him see the dishes in the dryer; probably from the babysitter since it was only a plate, a glass, and a baby bottle. He looked away from it quickly, going to the cupboard where the cups were kept and then to the fridge to see what liquid options he had. There was some orange juice and half of a gallon of milk left, both a day or so past their expiration date. He opened both and sniffed, deciding the milk smelled safer than the juice, then kicked the door closed and turned to put the mug down on the counter so he could pour without straining his shoulder.

He dropped the gallon of milk when he saw the alpha outlined in the dining room doorway leading into the dark family room. At least he guessed it was an alpha. He couldn’t smell anything, but the way the man was holding himself he gave off a definitive alpha vibe, and a beta wouldn’t have any need to block his scent.

“Hello Dean,” the man said, moving across the dining room towards the kitchen. Dean glanced to where the knife block was on the far side of the counter past the sink, trying to determine if he had a better chance going for that or the stairs. It had been a huge mistake deciding not to strap on his boot knife because his center of gravity was getting thrown off by Elliott, or bring his Colt or his Bowie because they screwed up the way the baby carrier wrapped around his back and side. “You really did grow up fine lookin’. I can see why my cousin likes you so very much.”

The man had moved into the room, his muscular arms bulging under his shirt and his grey eyes tinged with red around the iris. His dark, curly hair was close cropped, his high forehead and angled jaw giving him the appearance that he was taller than he was. Dean had a good half inch of height on him and had broader shoulders, but this alpha had spent a lot of time working on his physique, his biceps thick and his thighs massive. Dean figured that was probably because he had always been the smallest of the Campbell cousins besides Gwen, even all the way back at school, and needed to overcompensate. He carefully removed his overcoat and laid it over one of the stools at the kitchen island, his eyes never leaving the omega.

“Hey Johnny,” Dean said, keeping his voice calm and even as he tried to see if there was a fork nearby that he could get his hands on. “What are you doin’ in my house?”

“Great Uncle Samuel wanted me to try to talk some sense into you.” Johnny was moving towards him at a steady pace, swinging around slightly towards the far end of the island and effectively cutting off Dean’s ability to get to the knives. The stairs didn’t seem like a very good idea anymore either. Johnny was strong and the last thing Dean needed was for him to get one of his hands on Dean’s ankle to pull him down onto his stomach on the steps. “Been keeping tabs on you a while. Not the easiest thing of course - you're good at bein' a ghost if you want. When Sammy bought you that truck and there was a license plate to track it made it a whole lot simpler. And of course he gave you one of his credit cards to use when you got here, so it was a snap to set up an alert. Easy to tell it was you, too. Sam prefers the AmEx to the MasterCard. I was hoping we could chat yesterday but you spent the whole damn day in your room. Man, when you _finally_ left the hotel by yourself today it was like a gift. Then I lost you at the turnoff from the main road and had to drive around the entire development to figure out where the fuck you went. I thought I was never gonna be able to get you alone with Sam and your brother and your dad constantly hovering.”

“Well, now you got me Ahab,” Dean said. “And call me crazy, but somethin’ tells me you aren’t just here for my witty banter.”

“Samuel’s not an unreasonable man, Dean. He just wants to make sure your pup stays with its family.”

“My kid’s got a family. Me and Sam.”

“Sam has made it very clear your pup is off limits to us,” Johnny said, continuing to circle towards him. “So what Samuel figures is the only way you’re going to give up your rights is if you’re one of us, and don’t have a say in the matter. Sam can still claim the pup to keep it away from us, obviously, but that would mean taking it from you, and we all know he’s not gonna do that. Since Sam’s not rushing to claim you, and Samuel doesn’t want to get stabbed with another pair of chopsticks, the burden falls to me to clean up this mess.”

“Good luck with that.”

Dean flung the mug at Johnny’s head, then tore one of the drawers out of the island and chucked that at him too, potholders and trivets flying everywhere, the omega making a run for the dining room while the alpha was distracted. Johnny deflected the mug and then the drawer, though the latter hit the back of his hand with a loud “thwack” and sounded like it might have cracked a bone, then slipped on a trivet as he came back around the kitchen island. The alpha growled as he caught himself and was off after Dean, who tipped over a couple of the dining room chairs as he broke for the family room, slipping on Lizzie’s play mat, crashing into the coffee table and nearly toppling to the couch, then headed for the den on the opposite side of the foyer where Benny had one of his gun safes. He had gotten a couple of steps on Johnny, but stopped short at the sight of the dark haired, female alpha just coming in the front door.

“Hey Dean,” she said, sounding tired as she clicked the door closed behind her.

Dean didn’t wait for her to say anything else, but spun and sprinted for the stairs, the risk of falling less of a concern with the bannister to grab onto if necessary, and certainly preferable to being caught downstairs between two alpha Campbells. Benny had another small gun safe in the bedroom, and he just hoped it wasn’t so far under the bed he would have to lay down flat to get his hands on it to drag it out. As Johnny’s feet thudded behind him on the steps he heard the alpha snap, “I told you to stay outside, Gwen!”

“Johnny, what the hell are you doing?” Gwen demanded, starting up the stairs after them. “We’re only supposed to _talk_ to him!”

Johnny turned without warning and landed a left hook square on her jaw, sending her toppling down the stairs. She hit her head on the railing as she went down, landing in the foyer as blood started to pool beneath her hair. Dean had made it to the master bedroom, slamming and locking the door behind him, then diving for Benny’s side of the bed to get at the metal lockbox he knew was there. It was only about six inches under the dust ruffle so Dean didn’t need to get all the way down to the ground, and he hauled it out to punch in Ben’s birthday on the lock as Johnny threw his shoulder against the door to try to break it open. There was no way the alpha could have known that Benny had reinforced all the doors after they bought the house and trying to break it down was more likely to result in hurting himself than the door, but Dean did. He was on the fourth digit when he heard Lizzie awaken with a loud wail down the hall and froze, watching as Johnny’s feet stopped outside the door and then turned and went away fast towards the nursery. Dean cursed to himself, punching out the last two numbers with shaking hands and tore the box open to grab Benny’s Smith & Wesson. Both fourteen round magazines were in the safe with the gun, but neither were loaded. A box of 40 calibre bullets sat unopened in the safe and he tore at it, pushed seven bullets into one of the magazines and slapped it into the gun, stuffing the other magazine and a handful of bullets into the pocket of his pants. It wasn’t anything he’d ever tell anyone to try at home, but he was fucking desperate because Johnny hadn’t come back yet and Lizzie wasn’t crying anymore.

The omega unlocked and opened the door carefully, checking both ways down the hall before creeping along the wall, the pistol in his right hand with his elbow bent, left hand on the base of the gun to help steady it. The closer he got to the nursery the clearer he could hear Johnny’s voice as he spoke quietly to the baby. Dean’s heart raced, his breath trying to rebel against his efforts to keep himself calm so he could rely on muscle memory to deal with this threat. Mentally he was running through a list of how this was different from what happened at Shreveport, from being armed through being pregnant through being sober, but he was still having a hard time not hyperventilating when faced with one of the Campbells. He was so focused on getting to Lizzie and making sure she was safe that he forgot about the creaky board that ran straight across from the door to Ben’s room, and when he stepped on it he squeezed his eyes shut and swore silently, any hope of the element of surprise officially gone. He stood statue-like in the hallway for what felt like years until Johnny finally said, “Come on in here, Dean. I’ll order you if I have to.”

Dean was certain he could ignore any order Johnny gave him, but he didn’t want to let the alpha know that, so he very slowly walked the remaining feet to Lizzie’s door, gun still aimed and ready if he had any chance of getting a shot off. He didn’t. As soon as he cleared the doorway he saw Johnny sitting in the rocking chair with Lizzie in the crook of one arm, high up against his shoulder, a switchblade in his free hand that he was swirling around her face like a toy, trying to entice her to reach up one of her little hands and grab it. Immediately Dean held his hands up, wincing slightly at the pain in his shoulder, switching his hold on the gun so it dangled from his fingers by the grip.

“Hey, Johnny, come on,” he said, struggling to keep his voice even as he watched how close the tip of the knife was to the little girl’s pudgy hands and chest. “There’s no reason to bring a baby into this.”

“On the contrary, Dean,” Johnny told him with a leer, a slimy smile splitting his face. “From what my uncle says you’re a particularly stubborn om who needs a special type of persuasion. How about you put that gun over on the changing table?” Dean didn’t move, trying to figure out a way to get the knife out of Johnny’s hand so he could shoot him in the head and coming up empty. That was all it took to convince the last male Campbell cousin he needed to use his alpha voice. “ _Put the gun on the changing table, Dean_.”

Given how stressed he was it was harder than Dean expected to resist the command, but he could. Still, he did as Johnny ordered and moved to the changing table to lay down his gun. He clamped down on any emotions that might leak out into his scent, keeping the alpha in the dark about how he was feeling as much as possible. If he could keep Johnny off balance about what the omega was feeling and make him think he was in complete control with his alpha voice, an opportunity to flip the tables might present itself.

It became clear almost immediately that this was a good strategy for getting him and Lizzie out of here in one piece when he saw the slimy smile broaden and Johnny’s eyes glowed red. Obviously he bought Dean's ploy of being incapable of resistance. Dean swallowed back his vomit at the sight, determined to play along until he had the alpha close enough for hand to hand combat. Sure, he only had one trustworthy hand, but there were lots of things in the room small enough to pick up to use as a weapon and he could feel the adrenaline pumping through him. Johnny rose from the chair, moving slowly towards the crib with a lecherous gaze taking in every inch of the omega, and he ordered, “ _Up against the dresser with your back to me_.”

Despite his best efforts, Dean couldn’t stop himself from shaking as he moved to the dresser, watching Johnny from the corner of his eye as long as he could to make sure Lizzie ended up safely in her crib. The alpha was definitely moving to put her down before Dean had to tear his eyes from them and turn to face the dresser. He focused on the golden unicorn head table lamp with the heavy marble base as he heard Johnny move across the room to stand behind him. He needed the man closer before he could do anything and clenched his hands into fists at his side to stop from doing anything stupid before the time was right. The alpha tore the baby wrap and his flannel down off his shoulders, somewhat pinning Dean’s arms to his sides, and a few moments later Dean felt the cold edge of the switchblade trailing down the side of his face and neck. He couldn’t suppress a flinch when the alpha used the knife to slice open the left shoulder of his shirt, exposing everything from the his ear down to the curve of his bicep. Johnny took a long, slow sniff of his scent, inhaling deeply and then exhaling, his own scent growing thick with arousal.

“My god,” he purred. “Sammy did good for himself.” He ran his hand over the swell of Dean’s ass to the front of his pants, giving him a little squeeze, then up around over his belly, where Elliott was pounding away from all the movement. “Don’t worry Dean, I’m not going to rape you like my cousins. Indiana’s laws aren’t as forgiving as Louisiana’s. Unfortunately, that means this is going to hurt. _Stand still and don’t fight me_.”

Before Dean had a chance to move, Johnny’s teeth were bared and sunk deep into his shoulder. The entirety of Dean’s left side and neck felt like it had been set ablaze, like his soft tissue was melting off down to the bone, and he screamed in agony, both hands going forward onto the dresser. The alpha hadn’t had a chance to remove his canines or soothe the wound into a proper claim mark with his saliva before Dean had the unicorn in his hand and swung around, tearing his shoulder out of Johnny’s mouth and smashing him in the temple with the base of the lamp. A sizable chunk of muscle and skin was torn out in Johnny’s teeth, and Dean could feel the blood gushing down his chest, back, and arm as the alpha wheeled around with a roar and Dean struck him again with a backhanded swing. He hoped he was only dealing with a flesh wound, given how badly he was bleeding now and how lightheaded he was getting, and when the alpha raised himself up on his knees Dean hit him three more times with everything he had, connecting with the alpha’s skull with a loud crack. Johnny finally fell to the floor and laid still, and Dean hurried to grab the gun from the changing table to tuck in the back of his pants, the floor tipping dangerously beneath his feet, then went to get Lizzie up against him. Johnny wasn’t moving and with the baby safely in his arm his adrenaline kicked back into gear to get him out of the house. He ran for the stairs, stepping over Gwen, who was still unconscious on the floor, grabbed Benny’s coat from the bannister and his coat from where he had dropped it in front of the hall closet, his left arm obeying him but shooting pulses of molten fire through his body in response to his demands as he dug his phone out to dial 9-1-1, scenting Benny’s collar to try to calm himself down. Suddenly Gwen was stirring on the floor and he bolted from the house, then across the street to the neighbor who had peeked out from her curtains, banging on her front door and ringing the bell until she came to see who was interrupting her afternoon soaps. Dean barely had a chance to register the horror on her face before he collapsed forward onto her, fortunate that she was quick enough thinking to turn him to his side on the way down and keep the baby from hitting the ground as he went. The woman had no idea what to tell the dispatcher on the other end of Dean’s phone who was loudly asking what the emergency was, other than giving out her address and urging someone to get there quickly, because she had an unconscious pregnant omega in her hallway and he looked like he might be bleeding to death.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry to leave you on a cliffhanger. Will be updating again later this week. Thor (our dog, not the Norse god) may have hepatitis. Don't ask me how dogs get hepatitis, I haven't a clue.


	55. All You Really Want to Do is Kill Me Now

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vampires, vampires, VAMPIRES.

Avilla was the kind of town where nothing very interesting ever happened. It had a Main Street with a post office, an insurance agency, a coffee shop, a Quickstar, and not a whole lot else. Most of the houses in the town proper were single storey buildings that looked to have been built in the 1950s or 1960s, all the same boring shape in the same drab colors. The few two storey houses in the area were clearly much older, most of them abandoned or in desperate need of rehabilitation. Most of the people in the area worked at the WickFab plant where they produced industrial equipment, and there was a disturbing clown faced _thing_ on the elementary school playground that could be seen from the road through the leafless trees and gave Sam the willies. Jesus he hated clowns. With a population of only about 2,200 people, it was the sort of place you escaped when you were young while you had the chance, lest you end up trapped there from cradle to grave, and then moved back to in your old age to embrace a slower lifestyle and relive the rosy memories of youth. It certainly wasn’t the kind of town one would expect to find a vampire nest, but then that was the point.

The three hunters stopped at the coffee shop first thing when they got into town to see what they could find out about the family that had been attacked. News tended to travel fast in small towns, and it would be easy to find out if anyone saw or heard anything the night before that might have seemed odd, but not odd enough to connect to a vampire attack. No one had, though the proprietor said everyone in town was pretty spooked and had been running to the Super Walmart in Kendallville to buy garlic. None of the men who had come to rid their town of the evil things lurking in the shadow found it worthwhile to mention that garlic was useless against real undead vampires. There was no point in causing any undue alarm.

The pretty brunette beta behind the counter at the coffee shop who looked to be just shy of twenty and kept casually touching Sam’s arm the whole time they were there was happy to give them directions to the Collins family farm, scrawled onto a napkin with her phone number, insisting they could call any time if they had any questions. She even offered to take them out there herself once her shift had ended, because the cell tower serving the area had gone down a couple of weeks ago in a storm and the provider was taking their own sweet time getting a new one up. Folks in the area were thinking they might even drag their feet until spring. Those cell service providers knew they had rural areas by the shorthairs and were dicks about it, but she’d be happy to climb in Sam’s Cadillac and show him around the town, which Adam didn’t know whether to laugh at or be perturbed, because the girl was damned cute and Sam could at least throw some crumbs his way every now and then. Instead the alpha was politely but firmly refusing her offer, and the three were headed to the outskirts of town to check out the scene of the attack.

The house really was a bloody mess. Literally. Police tape blocked the door, outlines of where the bodies had been found were on the dining room floor, and sprays of blood stained the walls and furniture like some modern artist had come through and made huge sweeping arcs with red paint. Technicians were still going over everything in the dining room, which was freezing from the winter air blasting in through the broken window. Sam and John approached the sheriff watching the proceedings, FDH badges already out, as Adam followed behind taking in the scene.

“Sam Campbell, Federal Department of Hunters,” he said by way of introduction. “This is my partner, John Winchester.”

“Sheriff Devins,” the officer said, holding out a hand for Sam and John to shake. “That a college intern?”

“Trainee actually,” John replied of Adam. “Not officially with the Department yet. Can you tell us what happened?”

“I thought you were here to tell me what happened,” Devins said. “We figured it was a vamp because it’s so similar to that family over in Fort Wayne. There’s a single set of tracks in the snow that go all the way across the field to the woods to the north. There’s another single set of tracks that lead out and go across to the woods to the east. There’s a blood trail with that second set. I ordered my men not to follow into the woods, thought we’d better wait for you all in case there’s something out there. Whatever it was obviously came in through the window, but that’s about all we know for sure.”

“And there were four victims?” Adam asked.

“The parents and two kids, yes. It drained the kids and the dad, punched a hole through the mom. The dad got some rounds off but it didn’t slow the thing down from what we can tell. Seems to have caught 'em unawares. They had a guard dog, could have alerted them, but they called into the county Humane Society the day before yesterday to say she'd run off.”

"The dog wouldn't have helped," John stated simply. "Advance warning doesn't matter when you're not trained to fight. You'd just have four dead people _and_ a dead dog to clean up."

"Speaking of dogs, you're going to want to let people know to keep their animals inside overnight," Adam added. "Otherwise you might end up with a lot of residents panicking over their mangled pets."

"I'll add that to keeping their curtains closed and staying off the streets after dark. Anything else?"

“No, the best thing to do is keep people inside and calm. Thanks,” Sam said, and the officer moved back into the living room to talk to a couple of his deputies. Slowly Sam and John moved around the dining room, scenting the air, as Adam looked over the blood spray to try to determine the pattern of attack. “You smell that?”

“Barely,” John told him, moving closer to the window and scenting the frame. “Wind’s been blowing all night, I doubt we’ll pick up his trail now.”

“Whose?” Adam asked, counting the spent rounds from the shotgun and making a note.

“Gordon’s.” Sam looked at him grimly, pulling out his cell phone so he could shoot Dean a text to pick up the strongest scent blockers he could find. “They turned him. Dammit, coffee shop girl was right. No reception.”

“Gordon did this?”

“Smells like it,” John told his son. “It’s barely there under all the blood and undead smell, but it’s him.”

“It would make sense.” Sam was crouched down on the floor between the outlines of the daughter and son, taking a very deep inhale of the carpet. “The newly turned don’t know how to control their hunger yet. The first kill is usually brutal. And he wouldn’t have any protective instinct towards the nest.”

“Hell, he might even want to bring us down on them,” John surmised. “If there’s any of Gordon left inside the monster.” He looked at the younger alpha for a moment, running a hand over the back of his neck and sighing. “I’m sorry Sam. I should have listened to Dean and kicked him off the case when he was saying all those things at the diner. I just thought it would be a bad idea to step in and make it look like you were a weak alpha who couldn’t handle someone mouthing off about your omega. I figured you’d take him out to settle things a whole lot sooner than you did, though. That’s some serious self-restraint you’ve got.”

“It’s fine John.”

It really was. Now that Gordon was a vampire there was nothing to stop Sam from killing him - provided they could track him down. The thought was almost enough to make Sam smile after how horrible the last few days had been.

“So what now?” Adam asked, and Sam straightened, buttoning his coat.

“We take a walk,” he said.

Almost forty five minutes in ankle-deep snow and they’d followed Gordon’s trail as far as they could through the woods to the north. His scent had been exposed to the air for too long to rely on it, and too many other animals had been wandering around over the uneven ground to accurately pick out his footprints once they got deeper into the trees. He may have figured out some of his new abilities as well, since the few footprints they could clearly make out were light, as if he were almost hovering over the ground. They were able to determine the general direction he’d come from at least, but there wasn’t much more to be gleaned than that and they headed back to the house.

After doing a quick outside sweep they found the second set of tracks Devins had mentioned leading off to another clump of trees, droplets of blood darkening the snow every couple of feet. As with the first trail, once they got deep enough into the trees it was impossible to keep tracking him. What they did find interesting was the overlap of footprints right at the edge of the trees, as if two or three additional people had suddenly appeared and then disappeared. There were no tracks leading up to these prints or away from them, as if these people had dropped down from the sky and then departed. So. The vampires were looking for Gordon, too.

Sheriff Devins had gone back to the station by the time the three hunters were done exploring the surrounding fields and woods of the Collins family, which was good because their feet were frozen and they needed a chance to warm up and regroup before doing anything else. There would be no use trying to slice off vamp heads if they couldn’t feel their fingers. Devins was a good natured sort, telling them to help themselves to the coffee and giving suggestions right off the top of his head of where they should start looking if they really thought the nest was in Avilla. There were a number of abandoned farm houses past the outskirts of town, and a couple more barns that were tucked back pretty far off of the main roads. They were the kind that had been sitting empty for a couple of decades and no one would think to check them for trespassers. Hell, most people didn’t even know they were there, or thought they must have collapsed years ago from disuse, and maybe some of them had but they were still well worth looking into.

They headed first to the local pizza and sub shop for lunch, though after glancing at what the menu had to offer even the college student of the group, who was use to terrible cafeteria grub, decided the food looked too questionable to risk it and they headed back to the coffee shop. The counter girl ( _Amanda_? _Amelia_? _she kept going on about wanting to be a vet and was really irritating_ ) was just _thrilled_ to see them back and asked no fewer than five times if there was anything else she could get them while they were still trying to get feeling back into their fingers and plot out the different locations Devins gave them on a map to decide where to start looking. Sam made a point of calling Dean the last time he spotted her coming over, leaving a voicemail that started with “Hey baby” and included “see you tonight” and ended with “I love you,” which made Adam roll his eyes hard. But it had Amanda/Amelia scurrying away from the table with an annoyed huff and that’s all Sam was going for, thus he was counting it as a win.

The sun was going to have set by six o’clock so they needed to get a move on, deciding to start with the abandoned houses and barns to the north of the township, following the direction Gordon had come from. They layered up in the scent blockers John wore constantly now and added the mix of skunk’s cabbage, trillium, and saffron ash to help further block their scent. It was likely they at least knew what Adam and Sam smelled like, even though the youngest Winchester had managed to kill most of the horde that had attacked the parking lot. John didn’t like the idea of Adam charging straight into the nest when they found it since he’d been out of the life for two years, but knew his son had always been a crack shot on the archery field so they got him set up with a compound bow and quiver of arrows soaked in the blood of the old lady who had just been rolled into the mortuary back in Fort Wayne when Sam went to procure a donation. They cleared three abandoned houses and an old barn by five o’clock, figuring they had time for one more stop before the sun went down and they were in real danger. That led them to a large, ancient structure far back in a clearing surrounded by trees off a dirt trail that couldn’t even really be called a driveway anymore. It could barely be seen from the road, even with all the leaves off the trees, and spring through autumn would be completely hidden. They parked the trucks a good distance off and approached on foot as the sunlight began to wane, casting long shadows from the trees like skeletons across the snow covered ground.

They could smell the nest long before they reached it, the stench of the undead sharp enough that even Adam’s beta nose was able to detect it. The youngest Winchester notched an arrow in the bow’s string as Sam and John moved forward to the double doors at the front of the building, each pulling gently to see if they would slide open. Sam’s side was stuck, rusted in place after years exposed to the elements, but John’s side slid open with a faint whine, granting them access.

As quiet as they’d tried to be, the squeak of the door was enough to rouse the two vampires on hay bales nearest the entrance. They were clearly the sentries, with the other vamps deeper in the structure, and as they turned to hiss Adam loosed the first blood soaked arrow, then slotted another back and loosed a second. Both the sentries took the arrows directly through the chest, crying out and waking the rest of the nest as they fell to their knees in agony. With a pair of machete swings John took them both out as Adam moved forward, slotting the arrows and firing them off with deadly accuracy and amazing speed, Sam shadowing him and decapitating everything that came at them. Sam thought a bit smugly that it was too bad the archery quals were held in the end of sophomore year and weren’t something Adam would have been eligible to compete in until after he’d presented, by which point he was automatically disqualified from further competition, because that’s one record they’d surely have. Not that he thought anyone should _ever_ attempt a Robin Hood film again, but if they did they needed to cast Adam at least as a body double for all the archery scenes. The kid was fucking amazing with a bow. He didn’t even flinch when they hadn’t brought enough arrows to take out the nest, which was easily twice as large as a normal one, but dropped back to the first set of decapitated vamps to yank out the arrows and reuse them. The dead old lady blood wouldn’t be as potent the second time around, but it was still plenty strong enough to slow the creatures down.

The bodies piled up and the blood flowed, and at one point John got thrown against one of the supports of the structure, almost losing consciousness, and just as the sun was setting two final vampires leapt out of a stall at the back of the barn; a male and female who were clearly mated. The smell of the male was a mixture of very old death and burning power, so strong the air almost crackled around him. The female was across the room and on John’s throat with a hiss, Adam whirling around with the bow to shoot her as the male vampire went for Sam, flying him up into the hayloft as Adam pushed the female off his father and grabbed John’s machete from where it had fallen.

“Sam!” Adam shouted, taking off her head with a swing that would have landed him a home run in baseball. John was on the ground holding his bleeding neck, but he shrugged his son off towards the ladder that led up to loft. The bottom few rungs were rotted through and snapped when he tried to climb up, leaving him struggling to figure out how to affix the machete to his person so he could try to jump up and grab the rung just out of reach to hopefully pull himself up. “ _Sam_!”

The vampire - he’d introduced himself as Luther as if that was going to mean something to Sam - had the alpha at the back of the loft, over near the swinging door that could be opened to haul hay up into the loft. The machete had fallen away when they landed and Luther had thrown him across the floor, and now he was hovering a few inches over the ground, holding Sam up by his throat as he smiled.

“My goodness,” Luther said, his eyes silver white under his dark, shaggy hair as he sniffed the length of Sam’s torso. “You do smell interesting. What is that extra ingredient? A touch of demon blood perhaps?”

“Yeah,” Sam choked, his vision starting to blur as his lungs burned, demanding more oxygen than he was getting. “Too bad for you.”

It was almost too easy how he threw the vampire back and off of him with just the a little concentration, feeling a droplet of blood under his nose but no trace of a headache. Luther flew all the way across the barn as Sam crashed down into the loft, his ankle twisting painfully, though at least it didn’t snap. Luther did not look even slightly amused, and with a roar came streaking back to the hayloft to tear the alpha’s throat out. Sam fumbled for the machete amongst all the old, moldy hay, and when it became clear he wasn’t going to find it before Luther was on him again he threw a hand up, stopping the vampire mid-flight. He could hear Adam yelling to him from the ground floor, but it was distant behind the pounding in his ears and the vampire’s furious screams. He groped around for a few more moments and finally had his hand on the blade, swinging as he stood and taking Luther’s head off in the fading light of dusk. After a moment of breathing heavily to regain himself he realized Adam was still calling to him, though somewhat less urgently, and he scrubbed his sleeve across his face quickly to try to get rid of the blood coming from his nose. He didn’t spend long on it though before heading over to the ladder to look down at Dean’s brother.

“I’m okay,” he called down, watching relief wash over the beta. “I’m fine, he just got a lucky shot in.”

“Christ,” Adam breathed, looking like he hadn’t exhaled since Luther flew Sam up there. “Think you can handle clean-up? I gotta get Dad looked at by someone. His neck’s pretty bad.”

“Sure,” Sam said. He’d planned to just torch the place anyway. Two people weren’t needed for that. “I’ll see you back at the hotel. Then we can figure out what to do about Gordon.”

“Okay.” Adam was already getting John to his feet, helping to keep pressure on the wound. “Be careful Sam.”

“You too,” Sam called down, watching as Adam and John staggered out of the barn.

It only took about ten minutes for Sam to dump the kerosene on the hay inside the barn and set the place on fire, driving back down the road to try to get a signal to call the Sheriff and let him know what was going on so he could have the fire department come out to contain the blaze while making sure it burned to the ground. He only got one bar of service, which was enough for the phone to dial but not for it to connect. Sam was really starting to dislike this town. Or at least the cellular service provider that didn’t think it was worth their time or trouble to restore service to the area. He didn’t want to be responsible for starting a forest fire, he wanted to touch base with Adam, and he needed to talk to Dean. The last of these was the most pressing, as there was a terrible feeling of dread spreading slowly through his chest that he hadn’t spoken to the omega since this morning. He knew he was almost certainly just being paranoid, but he had honestly wanted to talk to him when they were having lunch beyond just pissing off Amelia/Amanda, and needed to make do with leaving Dean a voicemail. Not having any service since then to see if he had even called back was making him anxious. It was stupid, people used to get along just fine in the days before cell phones when someone would go off in the morning and you probably wouldn’t talk to them again until they got home, but now that the adrenaline from the hunt was winding down his inner alpha was demanding he find the omega _now_.

Sam was halfway back to the Sheriff’s station when a blinding light and searing pain behind his eyes forced him to pull abruptly to the side of the road so he didn’t crash the truck. He saw flashes of some kind of machinery, old and outdated, some of it rusted, and long lines of floor to ceiling windows, many of them smashed. It was some kind of old factory, with heavy rolling metal doors and concrete flooring, the early evening moonlight bleeding in and washing everything in a pale blue. There was a rusted metal staircase, several chains hanging from the ceiling, and a couple of piles of sheet metal. He caught a flash of a sign on the front - Random Alloys, Inc. - several of the letters half worn off with age, and a set of glowing silver white eyes in the recesses of one of the rooms. A few drops of blood fell from his nose, and Sam knew at once that he was seeing Gordon, and also that he was somewhere nearby. He wanted to call Adam in for backup but still had no service. He decided based on what he’d seen to drive down the road on the outskirts of town, East 4th Street, where the town’s main metal fabricating plant was, as there were several other smaller plants that appeared to be in the same business all around that area. There were even a few welding shops that he remembered from their exploratory drive this morning, having been shocked at how quickly they’d been able to scope out the entire town. As often as he’d been in small town America, Avilla was _really_ small town America and committing the layout of the place to memory had not been difficult.

When he made it back into town he found he had full bars again and tried calling Adam, but guessed he was in a pocket with no cell service because it just rang and rang before dumping him into voicemail. Sam left a message about thinking he had a lead on Gordon, being as vague as possible on what that lead was so he could come up with a solid lie at a later time that didn’t involve having a psychic vision while driving. Next he called Dean’s phone, discovering with some alarm that he must have it off, since it went right to voicemail this time. Though he probably shouldn’t be too concerned about that, as it was nearly seven o’clock now, so Dean would be feeding Lizzie, maybe needing to give her a bath, and if he’d been running around all day it was very possible his battery had died and he had to charge it. Still, Dean hadn’t returned his call from earlier in the day and his alpha wanted to abandon finding Gordon to run back to the hotel. He knew he couldn’t do that however, not when Gordon presented a serious threat now to more than just him, so Sam pushed away his rising fear and headed for East 4th Street.

The whole town appeared to have battened down the hatches for the evening, wisely heeding the warnings about being out after dark with suspected vampires in the area, but that just meant Sam was effectively driving around a ghost town as he made his way back to the so-called manufacturing district. Almost all of the street was bathed in shadow, with only a few street lamps lighting up the parking lots at each of the businesses. It made sense; nothing on this street was open after five o’clock, so there wasn’t much of a reason for the town to spend money lighting the area. Of course that meant this was the perfect place for a solitary vampire to hide out, and about halfway down the street Sam found the building he was looking for. It was indeed an old, abandoned plant of some kind with a big “For Sale” sign in front of a wall of mostly broken glass windows. The sign read “Random Alloys, Inc.” ( _not a big mystery why it had gone out of business with a cutesy name like that_ ) and the light in the parking light blinked on and off, an obvious warning to any dumbasses who came by the building after dark and wanted to poke around. Unfortunately the nature of the job required hunters to frequently be dumbasses and after putting more of the skunk’s cabbage, trillium, and saffron ash on his clothes he headed up the rickety staircase to the heavy metal door of the building, machete in hand.

It wasn’t locked, and as soon as he pushed it open Gordon’s scent bled out into the night, so strong as to be overwhelming. Sam had to cover his nose with his arm against it, wondering if Gordon had specifically been rubbing himself against the machinery and the walls to flood the building with the smell of him. It would be a smart move, making it clear to anyone who stumbled across the building that there was a vampire in residence and keeping them out while also making it all but impossible to pin down his location by scent if someone came specifically looking. The nest in the barn had been a logical home base for the vampires to work from, the hay and animals blankets naturally soaking up and dispersing the aroma of the monsters, but an industrial building with impermeable surfaces everywhere would need to be scented to distract hunters. The electricity was off, of course, the only light in the plant coming from the night sky outside and the faulty lamp post in the parking lot, and Sam was infinitely grateful for all the windows, even if they were letting in the cold January air.

“Gordon?” he called, sure the vampire already knew he was there. He moved carefully into the structure, stepping over the debris on the floor and feeling like he was bound to get tetanus just from breathing the air. “Why don’t you come on out so we can end this?”

“You found me a lot quicker than I thought you would, Sam,” Gordon responded, his voice echoing from somewhere deep within the building. “And you’re here by yourself. That was stupid.”

“Well, it’s just _you_ ,” Sam sniped, watching the shadows for movement. “Seemed like a simple enough gig to handle on my own.”

“Is that right?” The voice sounded much closer, and more off to the left than directly in front of him. Sam pivoted in the direction of the sound. Shit, Gordon had definitely figured out the vampire speed. “Maybe you’re thinking that infected blood of yours is going to give you an advantage?” Sam heard what sounded like the fluttering of fabric and whirled around, finding Gordon was now standing between him and the exit, his eyes shining in the dark. “That’s right. I know all about you, Sammy.”

“It’s Sam,” the alpha hissed, but the vampire was on him in a heartbeat, tossing him across the room like a paper airplane.

Sam crashed into some pallets across the plant floor, feeling a distinct sense of deja vu from just a little earlier in the evening. The machete had fallen away somewhere and he scanned the room for Gordon, who had vanished again. His phone buzzed in his pants pocket as he tried to locate both the machete and the vampire - probably either Dean or Adam calling him back - but he wasn’t in any position to answer the call. He had just got his hands on the machete when he felt Gordon on him again, tossing him deeper into the building and farther from the windows, where it was darker and even harder to see. Sam distinctly felt a rib break, his head pounding from coming in contact with a pile of sheet metal against the wall, and realized he’d lost his machete again. Damn, they needed to rethink how they handled these hunts; maybe attach their weapons to their wrists with bungee cords or something so they never went very far.

“I got to hand it to you, Sam,” Gordon said from the shadows. “You've got a lot of people fooled. Even Dean. Poor bastard. Killing him’s gonna hurt, and that’s the truth.”

At the mention of the omega the ringing in Sam’s ears subsided, replaced by a pulsing rage as his eyes went fully red instantly, his canines descending. The tinge to the room lessened the shadows, but he still couldn’t see the vampire anywhere.

“You stay the fuck away from Dean,” he snarled, getting his back to the wall and sliding along it with one hand outstretched to stop a direct assault and the other reaching around in search of any kind of weapon he could use.

“I _can’t_ stay away from Dean,” Gordon told him as if Sam were insane to suggest it. “See, I know the truth. I know what it’s like. We’re the same now, you and me. But Dean - did you even give him a choice before you put a demon in his belly? Did he know what you were?”

“And what am I?”

“Evil, Sam. It’s just too bad you won’t do the right thing and kill yourself. I’m gonna, as soon as I’m done with you and Dean. Three last good deeds. Killing you, killing your pup, and killing myself.”

He was on Sam again before the hunter had any time to adjust, tossing him across the room with one hand, pouncing after to grab him again, and then slamming him down on a work table. Gordon’s second set of teeth descended, any trace of humanity gone from his eyes, as he lunged forward towards Sam’s neck. The alpha grabbed him by the throat, straining against the terrible strength of the monster hovering over him, and with a great deal of concentration slowly began to push the vampire back, glancing frantically around for a weapon. His eyes landed on a piece of sheet metal leaning against the wall - not a large one, but certainly big enough for what he needed. With a grunt he shoved against Gordon and threw him back against the far wall. The former hunter laughed, straightening to stare at Sam on the table.

“See?” he said, triumphant as the alpha raised up on his elbows to glare back at him. “You’re just a monster.”

“Fuck you Gordon,” Sam snapped, dropping down flat on the table as he willed the sheet metal up and across the room, striking the astonished vampire in the neck and slicing his head clean off with the impact.

The metal impacted the far wall with such force it actually bent in half, Gordon’s head bouncing off and rolling across the floor. Sam sat up slowly, his head throbbing dully from having come in contact with several different surfaces in the past ten minutes, but surprisingly not from what he had just managed to do. Even the blood on his nose he knew was from getting thrown around and not from the exertion of throwing Gordon off and then sending the sheet metal at him. He felt deeply troubled by this turn of events, as well as the inferno that still burned at his core. He had managed to kill Gordon, yet he still felt enraged. The room was still tinged in red and he could feel his canines where they refused to recede. He would have been terrified if he were able to stop being angry for just two seconds to feel any other emotion.

He was still standing over Gordon’s body, feeling the intense need to tear it limb from limb with his bare hands, when his phone buzzed again in his pocket and he pulled it out to look at it. The screen was badly cracked, he was honestly surprised by the look of it that it was able to receive a call, and saw **Adam**  flashing there. He tried to pick up but couldn’t, the call button not responding when he pressed it to answer, and he was forced to let the call go to voicemail. He grabbed Gordon’s body to drag it outside to torch it, but his phone was ringing again immediately. Checking the screen it again said **Adam**. The anger finally started to dissipate, being replaced by a dreadful fear that something was terribly wrong. The call went to voicemail again and instead of worrying about Gordon, Sam simply waited. Sure enough, a few seconds later the phone buzzed and the screen lit up with **Adam**. Sam forgot the body and ran for his truck. Something had happened to Dean. He had no idea how he knew that, but he was certain of it. Sam tried to call out on the cell, thinking maybe he just couldn’t pick up, but discovered that no, his phone was completely shot. He chucked it across the seat, jamming his key into the ignition, and took off for IN-3 South to take him back down to Fort Wayne. He hoped to god Dean didn’t want to move into Benny and Lisa’s house, because between this and all the crap in Chicago, Sam was starting to hate the Midwest.


	56. There's Just Chaos and Violence, and Random Unpredictable Evil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam gets back to Fort Wayne.

Sam didn’t expect to find anyone in their hotel room when he got back to the Hyatt but he still had to suppress a wave of panic when he opened the door and saw it was dark and empty. He even turned on the light and called for Dean, because it gave him a few extra seconds of denial and he sorely needed that when he had no idea where his omega was and his stupid phone was broken and he’d had to come back here just so he could call Adam and find out what the hell was going on. When he got the beta on the phone and learned he needed to get to St. Mary’s Hospital because Dean was there badly injured, and Child Protective Services weren’t willing to give Lizzie back to anyone but the omega, who was currently unconscious, he very nearly threw up.  

St. Mary’s was used to dealing with upset alphas, being a hospital and all, but based on the reaction of the staff at patient information they had rarely dealt with as large and upset an alpha as Sam Campbell. Had he any ability to think rationally he would have realized their hesitancy to give him information was well founded, since he still smelled like the herb mixture from the barn and was pretty well covered in vampire blood and angry purple bruises from his fight with Gordon. Nothing about him said, “I am a sane human being who can be trusted with an omega in your hospital,” and when he gave them his name an anxious expression crossed the faces of all three attendants at the same time. It would have given him pause if he weren’t too frantic to notice, but one of them asked him to take a seat while she made a call upstairs.

The idea that he could or would sit down when he was being kept from his omega was just about the most ludicrous thing Sam had ever heard in his entire life, and he began to wear a hole in the linoleum, flooding the lobby with his increasingly worried and irate scent. He didn’t fail to notice when the security guards moved in a little closer, likely taking precautions as the people moving about the hospital were starting to give him a very wide berth. Everyone who had been sitting in the double row of chairs near his pacing had already moved, and he was really starting to lose his mind when the elevator doors opened and a female beta with very dark auburn hair pulled back in a French twist and icy blue eyes started for the reception desk. She had the same no-nonsense air about her as Jody, wearing a neat blue suit and striped shirt, and Sam somehow wasn’t surprised when the attendants all nodded in his direction in tandem. As she diverted course and moved towards him he caught the flash of a badge on her waistband and spotted the outline of a holster under her jacket. The presence of a police officer did absolutely nothing to make him feel better.

“Sam Campbell?” she asked, and he nodded, going numb with dread. “I’m Detective Kathleen Hudak,  homicide.”

Homicide. The word hit him like a fist to the solar plexus and he felt himself beginning to hyperventilate. Dean couldn’t be dead. Adam wouldn’t have told him to come to the hospital if he were dead. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t dying. Adam had been practically hysterical on the phone and hadn’t told him much. Dean could be lying brain dead upstairs in a room somewhere and they were just waiting for Sam to get there before they pulled the plug, because Adam wouldn’t have let them turn off life support without Sam there; and maybe they wanted to suggest keeping him on life support until Elliott had a few more weeks of growing and could be delivered. Could they even turn off life support on a pregnant omega without the alpha’s consent when they were this far along? He had no idea, but it wouldn’t surprise him if they needed his permission anyway, since even an extra month would give Elliott better odds of survival, even if he or she was born very premature, and Christ, how could he use Dean as an incubator like that? He reached for the far-too-low back of one of the chairs as Detective Hudak rushed forward to grab his arm.

“Hey, steady,” she said, guiding him into a chair as he began to violently shake. “Sit down before you fall down.”

“Dean…” Sam managed to choke out despite the fact that he sincerely couldn’t breathe.

“Oh, crap.” She really was helping him sit now, taking up the chair next to him quickly. “Crap, I’m so sorry. No, I’m not here because Dean’s dead. I thought his brother would have told you…”

“No...he…” Sam really didn’t want to cry in front of a total stranger, but Jesus he was just so relieved to feel his heart start beating again. “No.”

“I tried to call you earlier, but your cell phone wouldn’t pick up,” she said as he struggled to get himself under control, and he shook his head.

“I was on a hunt,” he told her, reaching shakily into his pocket for his identification and handing over the FDH badge. “I survived. My phone didn’t.”

“I see.” She appeared to be giving him some time to compose himself, which didn’t really help him compose himself any faster. Whatever she had to tell him was clearly bad enough that she wanted him to be calm. He pressed his hands to his knees and willed them to stop shaking. “Mr. Campbell, Dean was attacked this afternoon by your cousin Johnny.”

Instantly Sam’s alpha was out and enraged, his eyes a dangerous crimson and a growl thundering in his throat as he started to stand. Johnny had always hoped to be accepted into Mark, Christian, and Tyler’s little circle but instead ended up stuck with Gwen. He’d never been quite as sick as the other male Campbell cousins, but he still held a healthy disdain for omegas in general, male omegas in particular, and even to some extent female alphas. Sam should have expected something like this with the way Johnny always looked to Samuel for approval.

“What?” he demanded, the question coming out close to a snarl.

Hudak tightened her grip on his arm as a warning, keeping him in his seat.

“Apparently he followed Dean home,” she explained. “A house he recently inherited at 59 Sunset Trail.”

“He went there to get some of Lizzie’s things,” Sam told her, snatching her wrist up in a bone crushing hold when he remembered what Adam had said about CPS. “God, how do I get Lizzie back? Dean’s going to panic...”

“Dean’s heavily sedated right now, Mr. Campbell,” she said. “It was a very serious attack. Your cousin Gwen was also there, said they were just planning to talk to him and she doesn’t know why Johnny went after Dean. Johnny knocked her down the stairs and that’s the last thing she remembers. She’s been admitted with a broken wrist and a skull fracture.” She looked at him intently and gave his arm a squeeze. “It appears that he attempted to force a claim on Dean and Dean fought back with a lamp. I’m not here because Dean’s dead. I’m here because your cousin is.”

“Good.” The word came out of Sam automatically, his brain not even aware that he was speaking. He knew how that must sound, but he didn’t care. He meant it, too. Johnny had always been the runt of the litter, a little suck-up, and Sam couldn’t be happier that Dean got the upper hand on him. “Can I see Dean now?”

“Because the case involves your family it would be better for him if you didn’t, from a legal standpoint,” she said. “Until they let him out from under the sedation and he can give us his statement he’s in pretty hot water. Indiana doesn’t look too favorably on omegas killing alphas.”

Sam’s eyes were growing red again, and no amount of pressure on his arm could keep him from towering over her.

“You just said it was self defense!” he snapped, noticing how she reached for the pepper spray on her hip and sensing the security guards moving again.

“According to your cousin Gwen, yes. But if Dean tells a different story when he wakes up he could be looking at a manslaughter charge.”

“You can’t be serious.” He knew her statement should have scared him, but he was too furious to feel any other emotion. Dean had been attacked in Benny and Lisa’s home, mauled, possibly raped again - he had no way of knowing at this point - and they were considering charging him with manslaughter for fighting back. “What room is he in?”

“Mr. Campbell, I’m trying to help you here.”

“ _What room_?” Everyone in the lobby jumped at the sound of the alpha’s roar, and Detective Hudak sighed, resigned. “I don’t care about how it looks legally, I’ve got plenty of money to hire a fucking lawyer, _where is Dean_?”

“Fifty twenty-one,” she sighed. “The maternity ward. He’s under guard.”

“Thank you,” Sam spat, and stormed off to the elevator.

He should have taken the stairs. He really should have. The way the hospital was laid out the room numbers were assigned by floor, with a zero between the floor number and the room number, so fifty twenty-one was only on the fifth floor, and the elevator was so goddamn slow, stopping at each floor to let people on and off. By the time they got to the third floor he nearly bolted, but by that point it would be stupid to get off and walk up the two remaining flights, and besides his back and head were sore from the fight with Gordon at Random Alloys. He got a great many sidelong glances on the trip up, and everyone who got on the car was eager to give him space, a reaction undoubtedly to the combined anxiety rolling off of him and the stench of vampire blood. When the light for the fifth floor came on and the doors opened he elbowed his way past a couple of people getting off and all but ran for the maternity wing.

Sam didn’t even need to look at the room numbers to figure out where Dean was, he just had to glance down the hall and he saw the two officers on either side of the door. The urge to kill them both for standing between him and the omega and for behaving as if the omega were some kind of threat washed over him and he had a very difficult time tamping it down as he moved towards the room. Both officers became aware of him and were reaching for nightsticks, seeming to sense that he might be a very big problem for them if they couldn’t get him to calm down. He managed to get his breathing and anger under control long enough to convince them to let him into the room, and after they patted him down for weapons and removed his knife and gun, letting him know he could pick them up at the station tomorrow, he was finally let into the room with Dean.

A horrible feeling of deja vu flooded over him as he spotted the omega unconscious and pale in the bed, Adam beside himself in the chair farthest from the door, clinging to Dean’s hand. Detective Hudak hadn’t been kidding when she said they’d sedated him. Sam could barely smell the omega at all, and the only assurance he had that Elliott was okay was the sound of the fetal monitor tracking the baby’s heartbeat. A hideously large bandage was peeking out of the neckline of his hospital gown over his left shoulder. Dean was in a very deep sleep, his hair tousled over his forehead, chest rising and falling calmly, though occasionally he’d let out a little whine and shift slightly. It was so much like the basement that Sam thought he was going to collapse for a minute, the edges of his vision going fuzzy as his stomach flipped. Before he could move, John was on him, shoving him back up against the door, his neck bandaged from the vampire. Sam hadn’t even noticed him over in the corner.

“What the hell is wrong with your family, Sam?” John shouted, bringing the officers in immediately to pull him off the younger alpha. “Haven’t they done _enough_ to him?”

“Dad, stop!” Adam ordered as John’s canines descended and he fixed a look of unbridled rage on Sam, the officers telling the alpha in hushed tones that they were going to have to remove him if he couldn’t calm down.

“You think you can just do whatever you want, _take_ whatever you want because you’ve got a bank account and a couple of high limit credit cards to flash around?” John continued, though he had calmed enough for the officers to let him go.

Adam was up from the chair and over to his father, his face tear streaked and angry.

“Why don’t you go take a walk so I can talk to Sam?” he insisted.

“I’m not leaving Dean!”

“Huh. Well, I guess there really is a first time for everything, isn’t there?”

John stared at Adam, looking like he’d been slapped, but it got him to stop spouting off at Sam. He regarded his youngest son for a long moment, then his older son, and stormed out of the room in a huff, muttering something about getting coffee. The officers followed him out to stand guarding either side of the door. Sam was barely aware of any of them, already beside Dean on the bed, stroking his face and trying in vain to scent him, the violent shaking returning to his limbs when Dean didn’t even register his presence. He kissed the omega’s forehead and cheeks and hair, tears dropping off his lashes onto Dean’s face as Sam breathed out his name, trying to get some kind of reaction. He dropped a hand onto Dean’s abdomen, hoping to feel Elliott kicking, but obviously whatever they had Dean on would be putting the baby to sleep too, so there was nothing. Eventually it was too much waiting to feel a little foot and knowing he wouldn’t, and he switched to clutching Dean’s free hand.

“Do you know what happened?” Adam asked, and Sam nodded, pressing his face to Dean’s neck again.

“Ran into a Detective Hudak downstairs,” Sam replied thickly, nosing at Dean’s ear and trying to breathe in as much of him as possible. It wasn’t much.

“He wouldn’t stop screaming when they brought him in,” Adam explained quietly, sitting again and running a hand up his brother’s arm in one of the soothing gestures Sam had taught him. “His doctor’s actually really nice. I almost didn’t know what to do when she was explaining everything to me cuz she wasn’t being an ass about it. From what they could tell, Johnny was in the middle of the claim when Dean got free. He didn’t finish the mark but still, with him dead the next couple of days are going to be really bad while the first strains of the claim break. With all Dean’s other injuries they thought it would be better if he just slept through it.” Sam could hear Adam’s breath catching and took his eyes off of Dean long enough to glance over at him. The kid was an absolute mess and shaking almost as badly as Sam was. Clearly the alpha wasn’t the only one having deja vu over Dean drugged into unconsciousness in a bed. “They asked him, at least. They wanted him to know, since it would put the baby under too, and he told them to do it. He’s lucky, they don’t think he’d survive if Johnny had properly claimed him. The baby certainly wouldn’t. They won’t know if he’s got any nerve damage until he wakes up.”

The knowledge that Dean might have nerve damage brought with it a terrible kind of relief, and Sam gathered the omega up in his arms as best as he could with the obvious wound on his shoulder, the fetal monitor, the oxygen sensor on his finger, Dean’s heart rate monitor, and the IV. If the bite was bad enough to possibly cause nerve damage that meant Johnny had probably just bitten him and not been in the process of knotting him. At least he hoped not. He really didn’t want to ask, but needed to know.

“Did my cousin…” he started, and Adam knew exactly where the question was going, because it was the first thing he’d blurted out to the doctors when he got there.

“No. They did a kit on him after they put him under and no.”

“And Lizzie?”

“Fine. Apparently she’s back with the Jorgesons. They wouldn’t give her to me and dad. I tried.”

Sam nodded, mentally filing away the need to get Dean on board with making up a chain of custody document as soon as possible so something like this didn’t happen again. Until he and Dean were mated, which honestly he wouldn’t blame the omega for _never_ wanting after this, Sam would have no legal standing where the baby girl was concerned. They may have only had her a few days, but he already took his responsibility to her as an extension of Dean very seriously. He didn’t want to risk losing her like this again. He slotted his neck against Dean’s face, hoping the omega would smell him and know he was there, even if he couldn’t wake up, stroking his hair and massaging his back. His alpha was completely torn between the need to comfort Dean and avenge him, and with no sparkling green eyes looking back at him and no little punches coming from Dean’s abdomen, Sam really didn’t have any hope of fighting back his darker urges.

“So they’re going to keep him out for a couple of days?” he asked at last.

“Yeah,” Adam replied. “They said after about forty-eight hours they’d bring him out of it and see how he’s doing.”

“Okay.” Sam settled Dean back on his pillow, seeing the omega wince, though he showed no awareness at all of what was happening - it seemed to be more instinctive. Sam pressed his lips to Dean’s cheek and scented him again before standing up. “I’ll be back before he wakes up.”

“Wait…” Adam got to his feet, still holding his brother’s hand, as Sam moved towards the door. “Where are you going?”

The question made Sam pause as he struggled with the fury that was again starting to build at his core. It was really starting to frighten him, the way his temper flared so easily these days, but it served him in this purpose and he would hold it back but not fight it. Over his shoulder he said, “It’s better if you don’t know,” and left the room.

Gwen was on the third floor, which he had to go back down to the lobby to find out, and this time he did take the stairs back up because it was getting close to the time that visiting hours would be over and he wouldn’t be able to get into her room until the morning. He wasn’t about to spend another long elevator ride up to see her. It took him a bit to find room thirty sixty-four, but that was okay. What he had to talk to her about wasn’t going to take long. She was in a double suite with an old woman sleeping fitfully in the other bed, and was sleeping more deeply herself. Unlike Dean’s room she didn’t have a single guard on her - curious since she’d admitted to being one of two people that had trapped Dean at Benny’s house, the other one now dead - and he walked in without anyone giving him much of a second glance except for how badly he needed a change of clothes. He made sure the door was closed behind him and pulled the curtain between the two beds, closing them off from the view of the door, before assessing Gwen’s injuries and grabbing the wrist that was obviously broken. He took her fingers in his hand and bent them back against the cast until she woke up with a shape cry, at which point he took his other hand and closed it over her mouth and most of her nose, leaving her just one nostril to breathe through. She recognized his scent of course, and rolled her wide eyes to him, panic flowing off of her in sickening waves.

“Hey Gwen,” Sam hissed, his eyes rimmed red like a supernova. “I’m going to take my hand away to ask you some questions and you’re not going to scream, because if you do I’ll snap your neck. Are we on the same page?” She nodded, taking in little puffs of air, and he gave her a thin lipped smile. “You always were my favorite cousin. Do you know where I can find my grandfather?”

He removed his hand as he said he would, loosening his hold on her fingers, and she took in a couple gasps of air before managing to slow her racing pulse enough to answer him. Gwen had always had a distant but decent relationship with her youngest cousin, and while she’d never really done anything to defend him from Mark, Christian, and Tyler back in school she hadn’t ever joined in with them either. She hoped to god he remembered that they’d just kind of casually drifted around each other and she never had and never would behave maliciously towards him, or she was pretty sure she wasn’t making it out of this hospital alive.

“I’m so sorry about Dean,” she whispered when she had calmed down enough to respond to him. Sam’s hand was on her face, trying to crush her jaw, in under a second.

“You don’t get to say his name, Gwen,” he snarled. “Where is Samuel?”

“I don’t know,” she said as best she could while he continued to squeeze. “I swear to god. But I’ll call him for you and find out. _Please_ Sam. Samuel told me he just wanted us to talk to to Dean.” He had relaxed his grip some and tightened it at the mention of the omega. “We both know Johnny wouldn’t have thought of that on his own. I _swear_ I didn’t know what he wanted Johnny to do. I never would have agreed to something like that! Please Sam, you know me!”

Sam did know her, but that didn’t mean he trusted her. He held onto her fingers, keeping them pressed back in warning as he searched quickly around the bed for her bag of belongings to fish out her cell phone. Once he had it he scrolled through her contacts down to “Uncle Samuel” and pressed the call button, followed immediately by the speakerphone button as his grandfather’s phone began to ring. Gwen glanced up at him, noticing how hard her baby cousin’s face looked, and regretting tremendously that she’d helped put that look on his face. After three rings it picked up, and Sam had to suppress a growl as he heard his grandfather say thickly, “ _Gwen_?”

“Hey, Uncle Samuel,” she replied carefully, trying to keep her voice measured so he wouldn’t pick up on her fear. “I just wanted to check in with you before I went to sleep. It’s been a rough day.”

“ _God, Gwen_ …” Samuel was crying and slurring on the other end of the phone, probably half drunk. It made Sam feel intensely glad. “ _What that bitch did to Johnny…_ ”

“I know, Uncle Samuel, I know.”

“ _How are you feeling, sweetie_?”

Sam had a hard time holding in an indignant snort at the sound of his grandfather using a pet name with his cousin, of crying openly over Johnny’s death. Apparently Samuel _was_ capable of affection after all; just not when it came to Sam.

“Head hurts. They’re going to keep me here a while for observation. Should have been more careful on the stairs I guess.”

“ _You give your statement to the police yet_?”

“Yeah. Told them I didn’t really see what happened.”

“ _Well don’t worry Gwen. I’ve got people in the D.A.’s office up in Fort Wayne. Once we get the funeral squared away I’m going to get in touch with them and make sure Dean Winchester gets the book thrown at him. A couple of years in a male prison should be enough to break him_.”

“But...what about the pup? You don’t want it to be whelped in jail, do you?”

“ _You’re damn right I do._ _If it is, Sam will have to claim it, and he’s not exactly on good terms with the authorities right now. They’ll have to start looking into the next of kin. That pup will be raised a Campbell no matter what Sam wants_.”

Sam squeezed the phone so tightly at these words Gwen was genuinely worried he would break the phone before they found out where Samuel was staying. For her own part she felt the bile rising in her throat at what her great uncle was saying. She never thought him capable of the kind of things he’d clearly asked Johnny to do, and now what he was saying about using the D.A. against Dean frankly disgusted her. Part of her wished she’d never gotten involved in this while another part was glad she was there so she could tell the authorities the truth about what had happened on Sunset Trail.

“So is the funeral going to be the same as for Mark, Christian, and Tyler?” she asked, trying to ignore the way her skin crawled at needing to continue this conversation with someone so obviously as sick as Samuel.

“ _God, don’t mention your other cousins_.” He was crying again. Sam hadn’t thought it possible he could hate his grandfather more, but everything about this phone call was proving him wrong. “ _I’m heading out to Lawrence tomorrow. I should be in by noon._ ”

“What about Sam?”

“ _Sam’s dead to me, Gwennie. Siding with that bitch over his own family...he’s as bad as his mother_.”

“I’m sorry about all this, Uncle Samuel. Give me a call once you know more about Johnny’s funeral, okay?”

“ _Okay. You’re a good girl, Gwen. Always understood the importance of the pack_.”

“Yeah. Goodnight, sir.”

“ _Goodnight_.”

The call died and Sam carefully put the phone back in the bag of her possessions. She could feel the tightly coiled fury rolling off of him and couldn’t really fault the way he was feeling. She didn’t know how she was ever going to shake the cold dread of learning Sam’s grandfather was apparently some kind of sociopath. She looked up at the alpha towering at the side of her bed, trying desperately to figure out how to salvage something of a relationship with him. It was crystal clear to her now that she had been attaching herself to the wrong family members all her life.

“I’m not going to change my story, no matter how he tries to spin this,” she said firmly. “Johnny knocked me down the fucking stairs. He could have killed me. No way am I lying for him, even if he is dead. I don’t...I had no idea Samuel was like this.”

“If anyone asks, you never saw me,” Sam told her, and she nodded in agreement.

He headed back to the Hyatt, stopping at a convenience store on the way to pick up a burner phone, showered quickly and changed his clothes. A stillness had settled over him after hearing his grandfather talking to Gwen; a sort of cold, methodical certainty of what he had to do. He packed a small bag of clothes, a few weapons, and one of Dean’s dirty shirts so he would be able to sleep with the omega’s scent when he found a hotel on the way to Lawrence. Samuel had crossed right off the Obsessed Reservation and landed straight in Crazy Town. There was no reasoning with him. There was no running from him. There was no hope he would respect Sam’s decision not to force a claim on Dean just to keep Elliott in the family. Samuel was never going to stop until he was dead.

It was just too bad for Samuel that he’d made sure his grandson learned at a young age how to kill.


	57. This Ain't Going to Go Well

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time for a reckoning.

Samuel didn’t know how his family had come to this. He had known when his mate died, leaving him with a single pup, that the Campbell bloodline might falter, but his brother Jeremiah had sired four pups, all alphas, and those alphas had gone on to have alphas of their own. It was true that none of Jeremiah’s sons had sired more than two pups, and when William’s pup had turned out to be female there had been some concern she would be a beta like the his mate, but even Gwen had presented as an alpha. Surely, Samuel had believed, between Philip’s two sons, Mark and Christian, Andrew’s son Tyler, David’s son Johnny, and his own grandson the Campbell name would flourish. Now his brother’s grandsons were all dead, and all because of that bitch Sam had taken up with, had sired a pup with, and for whom he was turning his back on his family.

If Samuel could have found a way to kill Dean Winchester that wouldn’t look suspicious after the incident in Chicago, he would have. As it was, he was going to have to be satisfied with getting that little slut locked away so he could take the pup through legal means. He had already laid the groundwork for getting Sam barred from the omega, setting an email alert for any additional hospital admittances for either of them, then anonymously tipping off South Dakota Omega Protective Services to the case that had been started in Minnesota after scrubbing Dean’s name from the Department databases. If Sam had a restraining order against him and Dean landed himself in jail for manslaughter - well, taking their pup would be a piece of cake. Maybe Gwen could raise it, since she showed no interest in beta females and had yet to meet an omega that turned her head. It was just more dumb luck that his grandson was the switch hitter of the two remaining Campbell cousins. If Gwen couldn’t land herself a male omega she would probably never have her own pups. Yes, Gwen was the logical one to take Sam’s bastard pup once Samuel had wrestled it away from the Winchesters. She’d always been a good girl and loyal to the family, helping Johnny track Dean down, keeping him on task when he got a little flighty. He knew Johnny wasn’t the best on solo endeavors. Samuel just wished she’d stayed in the car like she was supposed to so they could have kept up the facade of just wanting to talk to Dean and played off the claiming as something that just happened in the heat of the moment. Gwen still had some delicate sensibilities and he hadn’t wanted her involved in the messiness at the end. She’d make a good alpha to a pup though. He’d be sure to talk to her about that as soon as she was well enough to join everyone at the family compound.

Jeremiah’s boys and their beta mates, except for William who was on his way to Fort Wayne to be with Gwen, were already at the compound when Samuel arrived, feeling more than a little hungover after a night of heavy drinking. He was getting too old to go to bed with a bottle of scotch and not feel the after effects, but it was the only way he could get to sleep anymore. David and Winnie were beside themselves with a pain Samuel knew well. To lose your only pup was something no alpha should have to endure. He’d certainly never recovered from the loss of his Mary, even if she had only been an omega. It gave him a perverse kind of pleasure knowing he would inflict the same kind of pain on his ungrateful, sorry excuse for a grandson in just a few short months, perhaps worse, since their pup would be alive but Samuel fully intended to poison the child against both its parents and ensure it would never want to know them.

Andrew and Philip did what they could to comfort their brother, despite still being deeply in mourning themselves for the lost generation of the Campbell clan, and when Samuel arrived they demanded to know what the patriarch planned to do about Dean Winchester. Jeremiah had been killed on a hunt nearly two decades ago, and Samuel was the clan’s alpha. Though grown men none of Jeremiah’s sons - save William - were strong alphas, preferring the comfortable desk jobs their uncle could provide at the FDH to forging their own paths. None had any drive or determination, skating by on the family name and taking only the easiest hunts even before the FDH was established, and without Samuel to lead them they would have been utterly lost.

Samuel wanted to comfort his nephews, to let them know he had a plan for taking care of the omega who had brought ruin to the Campbells, like a curse descending upon them to exact vengeance for how Samuel had rejected John Winchester as a potential mate for his daughter, but first he needed to get into the good scotch in his den and have another drink. He didn’t have the information at his fingertips for that beta in the Fort Wayne D.A.’s office who through pure dumb luck owed him a favor, and while he was sure he could fix this situation in their favor he didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up in case they had a long road ahead of them before justice was served in Johnny’s death. The beta mates were all off weeping somewhere on the property, since none of them could be trusted to keep their mouths shut about this kind of family business, while the alphas congregated in the house, but the Campbell patriarch closed the door to his den against all of them so he would have a few moments of peace to himself to collect his thoughts and chase away the pounding in his head with the hair of the dog that bit him the night before.

Because he was a terribly short-sighted man who had shoved his grandson away almost from the moment he was born and therefore knew nothing about him, Samuel was honestly surprised when he heard an argument out in the foyer between his nephews and someone that sounded exactly like Sam. He thought his mind must be playing tricks on him. He hadn’t spoken to Sam since Chicago so Sam would have no idea he was here, for one thing, and for another he couldn’t believe Sam would leave his slut alone up in Fort Wayne. A thought ran through his semi-drunken brain that maybe Johnny had been successful in attempting to claim the omega before Dean killed him and Sam had finally turned his back on the Winchester bitch and was returning to the family, having accepted he’d lost the fight with his grandfather.

When the reality of the situation literally came crashing through the door to the den in the form of David being pushed with such force the locking mechanism split, Samuel couldn’t do anything other than blink. David fell against one of the two leather arm chairs in front of the desk, nearly tipping it over, a look of total shock on his face as Sam strode into the den after him. Even with his teeth bared and eyes blazing, at just barely six feet tall David looked like a waif compared to Samuel’s enraged grandson, who all but filled the doorway, the rumbling growl echoing in his chest like rolling thunder. This was no child for Samuel to order around or cow into obedience. For the first time it occurred to the old man that he might have made a terrible mistake trying to come between Sam and his chosen mate.

“You going to get out of my way now, David?” Sam snarled, fury billowing off him like the blackest smoke and filling the room as Andrew and Philip came rushing in to try to stop the alpha from further violence.

Neither were anything close to Sam’s height, and he turned to catch Andrew by the throat, holding on as Philip plowed into the young alpha’s torso, driving him back into the other arm chair but unable to knock him off his feet. That Philip was able to move the concrete wall of Sam at all was due solely to Sam’s hold on Andrew, which was putting him slightly off balance. With Philip still around his waist Sam hurled Andrew across the room into David, who had just recovered himself somewhat, and having both hands free Sam drove a series of punches into Philip’s kidneys until he had no choice but to release the younger alpha. Now that Philip had let him go, Sam pushed a knee into his stomach and then lifted his foot to propel the first brother across the room into the doorjamb, which he struck hard enough to crack the moulding before he fell to the floor, wheezing. Andrew attempted the same move Philip had already tried, throwing himself at Sam, who pivoted and used Andrew’s momentum to shove him head first to the far wall against a built in bookshelf, a pile of hardcovers descending on him in an avalanche as he dropped to the floor, unconscious. David was on Sam next, trying to envelop Sam in a bear hug from behind, which Sam easily broke before turning to land a right hook followed by a left hook and a right jab, driving the smaller man backwards until he toppled over a coffee table in the reading nook, ending up half against another set of leather arm chairs near the window. The brawl was stopped by the sound of a gun cocking across the desk, but Sam was close enough to an arm chair that he was able to grab it and launch it across the mahogany before Samuel could get a clear shot off, the bullet going wide as the old alpha hurried out of the way of the chair. He really shouldn’t have had those three glasses of scotch, or the scotch the night before, because he had no hope of evading his grandson, who slid across the desk, papers and Samuel’s laptop scattering to the floor, and disarmed him before he even had his balance back. Sam released the magazine and then the slide, leaving the gun in three pieces, the bullets at his feet and the other parts tossed to opposite sides of the room in one fluid motion, before getting a hand on Samuel’s throat.

“You’re gonna want to tell those two to stand down unless you’re eager to find out how quickly I can crush your windpipe,” Sam hissed at his grandfather, watching Philip and David struggling to their feet in the old, gilded mirror hanging on the wall behind the desk. Andrew was still out cold on the far side of the room. Samuel gasped and quickly raised a hand to stop his nephews, who weren’t anywhere near ready to take on Sam again anyway. “I really can’t figure out how you thought your little stunt was going to play out,” Sam continued when he was sure the brothers weren’t going to move on him again. “Did you really think you could send _Johnny_ of all people after Dean and he’d come out of it alive? Maybe you did. Maybe Tyler, Mark, and Christian bragged to you about what they did to him, and you thought he’d be a pushover, since he’s _only_ an omega. The problem, Samuel, is that you’ve been sitting behind a desk for too long and you forgot the first rule in this life. Always do your research on what you’re hunting.”

“Shut your mouth about our boys,” Philip growled, the only one of them alert enough to really respond.

“Why?” Sam asked over his shoulder. “Does it bother you to know you raised a pack of thugs who liked drugging and raping people? You must be so proud.” He turned his full attention back to his grandfather, who was staring at him with a mixture of terror and disgust, and couldn’t keep a sneer from curling his lips. “Mark, Tyler, and Christian got what they had coming to them. But Johnny - that’s your fault, Samuel. You should have read Dean’s records before you deleted him from the system. Yeah, it wasn’t hard to figure out that was you. If you’d gone through his cases you’d have known just how good he is at what he does. Then you might have been smart enough to leave us alone and Johnny wouldn’t be worm food.”

“This isn’t my fault,” Samuel gasped, still unwilling to back down even faced with the distinct possibility that this was his last day on Earth. “You’re the one who brought that whore into our lives.”

Sam had to wonder if his grandfather had finally given up on life and was trying to get himself killed. He knew there were surveillance cameras all around the property and had no intention of doing something that would land him in jail for anything other than an assault charge, which would be easy to plead down to a misdemeanor given the circumstances. Still, the whole reason he had come here was to make sure Samuel never bothered them again, so he leaned in, staring straight into his grandfather’s eyes with a singular focus, and concentrated on his grandfather hearing his words, not feeling even the slightest surprise when he felt the blood start dripping from his nose. Samuel’s face twisted in horror, and had Sam glanced in the mirror on the wall he would have noticed that the irises of his eyes had shifted from bright red to black. Then again, if he had seen the change in that moment he likely would not have cared.

“You should do everyone a favor,” Sam hissed, dropping his voice low so only Samuel would hear him and really putting intent into every word that passed his lips, “and kill yourself.” Samuel’s face dropped all expression, becoming flat and robotic despite the violence of the last ten minutes. “Don’t press charges, don’t talk to the police, just put a gun in your mouth and pull the trigger. But before you do, put me back in the will. I’m feeling petty and have a house in Vermont I’d like to build.”

He released his grandfather, who dropped to the floor, choking for air, then turned and stalked out of the room just as the three beta wives were rushing towards the den. Sam growled at them fiercely, leaving them sidestepping him as they rushed in to check on their mates. Andrew was starting to rouse, Philip stretching his back out in agony and David sinking shakily into one of the chairs while Samuel sat in silence on the floor behind the desk.

For an hour Samuel tried to ignore what he grandson had said to him, to fight the urge to do exactly what he’d said, but it was like a bug inside his ear, buzzing away, unwilling to leave him alone. It pulsed at him to call his lawyer and reinstate Sam in the will, to tell the man to get over here as soon as he could to sign the papers, to find out what he could do legally in the interim to make sure Sam got his inheritance. He didn’t give a shit about whatever house in Vermont Sam was talking about, but the need to change his will was overwhelming. David, Andrew, and Philip had long since called the police, who had showed up to take their statements with the intent of putting out a warrant on Sam, but Samuel found himself refusing to cooperate and unwilling to pursue the matter further. The police assured the three brothers that they’d check the surveillance tape and see what they could do, but Samuel escorted them all from the den to talk in the foyer and closed the door behind them. Finally he couldn’t take it anymore and rang up his lawyer, getting the man there within forty-five minutes with all the necessary paperwork to leave everything he had to his grandson. Once he had done that the buzzing relented somewhat, giving him enough peace to have a few more glasses of scotch.

He was able to hold out for twenty minutes after the lawyer left before he couldn’t ignore the pieces of the pistol strewn about the room. The magazine held his attention like a magnet, the slide practically calling to him from across the room, the grip singing in the opposite corner. All of them beckoned to him to put the gun back together and put it in his mouth like Sam had told him to. He started with the magazine right at his feet, rolling it over in his hand and fighting against the desire to go and get the grip. He managed it for another ten minutes, but couldn’t contain his need to hold the heavy black metal base of the gun in his hands and went to find it. Once he had the grip and the magazine the slide was the next piece he yearned to retrieve, the desire to slot it back into place on the grip and then slide the magazine into the reassembled gun almost sexual. He resisted the pull of the slide for only five minutes, and once all three pieces were on his desk he put the Glock back together as quickly as he could, his hands trembling like a virgin after prom. Once the gun was in one piece he pulled back on the action to load a round into the chamber and put the barrel in his mouth with a deeply satisfied sigh. The thought that his grandson might be something very evil flashed through his mind, but he only really had a fraction of a second to contemplate it before pulling the trigger and spraying his brains across the mirror behind the desk.

Sam could sense the moment his grandfather died, thinking absently that he should be frightened of what he’d ordered Samuel to do a few hours ago or at least feel guilty about wanting back into Samuel’s will, given how little money truly meant to him and that he’d be just fine without being any more tainted by the Campbell family, but his alpha’s ire finally felt sated and he was already starting to calm down. He suspected it was a very real possibility that there was a warrant out for his arrest for assault at this point, but he had more pressing things with which to concern himself at the moment. Namely, when he checked the voicemail on his old phone he found a message from Ash, who appeared to have called him no more than half an hour after he left Lawrence, telling him to haul ass to the Roadhouse if he was anywhere near the area because the program he had been running had picked up on something huge and he needed to show it to Sam, “like, yesterday.” Sam had checked the time, deciding a side trip to the Roadhouse wasn’t going to hold him up from getting back to the hospital before Dean woke up, and headed out on the four and a half hour drive to talk to the mulleted computer genius.

When he pulled up on the Roadhouse - or rather, what remained of the Roadhouse - he was stunned. The entire place was leveled, burned completely to the ground, some of the remains still smoking in the crisp winter air. A handful of cars were still in the parking lot, owners never to return, and he didn’t do more than throw the Escalade into park before he was out of it, the driver’s door left wide open. He walked among the debris, literally nothing left, looking for any sign of Ellen, Jo, or Ash. The first two were clearly not there, the five or so bodies he found too large to be either of the betas, but then he spotted Ash’s watch in a pile of rubble. In pulling on it he discovered it was still attached to Ash’s very crispy arm. Ash’s very crispy laptop was half underneath Ash’s very crispy torso.

“Dammit,” Sam breathed, digging his cell phone out of his pocket and heading back to his truck, rifling through his memory banks to pull out any one of Bobby’s numbers to punch it in and hit the call button.

“ _Singer Salvage Yard_ ,” came the expected drawl on the other end of the line. Sam cut right to the chase.

“Bobby, have you heard from Ellen and Jo?”

“ _Sam_? _No, I ain’t heard from them in a couple of weeks. Why_?”

“I’m at the Roadhouse.”

“ _What the hell are you doin’ in Nebraska when Dean’s up in the hospital in Fort Wayne_?”

“It’s...I had something to take care of in Kansas. That’s not important, look, someone torched the Roadhouse. There’s nothing left.”

“ _What_?!

“Ash called me about an algorithm he had running for me. I found him but I don’t see Ellen or Jo, thought they might be on their way to you.”

“ _Jesus...No, I haven’t heard anything from either of them_.”

“You might want to call.” Sam felt the desperate urge to get back to Dean immediately, planning to break the land speed record if he had to. “I’m using a burner, so I can check my messages but I don’t have their cell numbers.”

“ _I’m on it. How’s Dean_?”

“As far as I know they’re still planning to keep him under until tomorrow. That’s the only reason I’m here.”

“ _Well get back_ **_there_ ** _and keep me in the loop. I’ll let you know if I get a hold of Ellen_.”

“Thanks Bobby,” Sam said, hanging up and heading off on the ten hour drive back to Fort Wayne.

With the knowledge of what had happened to the Roadhouse and no clue what Ash meant to tell him beyond it being very important, Sam began to replay the day’s events in his head and started to worry. It had really felt good telling his grandfather to kill himself and knowing deep down Samuel wouldn’t be able to resist the command, but now that he was outside the moment he was growing increasingly frightened of the implications. Not that he hadn’t been frightened for a while. Exorcising Ruby, blowing the door off its hinges, stopping the vampire, killing Gordon, not to mention the dreams; it really seemed like whatever the demon blood had done to him it was ramping up quickly. Up until now it had been easy to tell himself that he was in control of the things that were happening to him, that he was the one who decided whether to unlock whatever was hidden within him, but the knowledge that the first thing that had sprung into his mind when he heard what his grandfather had done was to convince Samuel to kill himself disturbed Sam deeply. As did remembering how full of wrath he’d been, and how good he felt afterwards. The demon blood definitely seemed to be trying to turn him into something that wasn’t strictly human anymore.

By the time he stopped at the Radisson in Moline, Illinois he was bone tired and ready to fall into bed. He’d been on the road until two o’clock this morning, only grabbing a couple hours of sleep before continuing the trek to Lawrence, and now after going to Nebraska and back up to Illinois he felt utterly exhausted. He grabbed a salad from TGI Friday’s, politely shooting down the twenty-something omega who tried to flirt with him ( _Madison, which gave him a laugh, because she’d introduced herself as “Madison at the Radisson”_ ), and staggered his way back to his room, trying to force his brain to shut down. He had begun doing the math and hoped he would make it back to the hospital before the doctors started to bring Dean out of sedation and worried he’d be cutting it very close. By the time he made it to bed it was almost eleven o’clock, and he didn’t even bother to get into his pajamas. He pulled Dean’s shirt out of his duffel like he’d done the night before, curled around it, and went to sleep.

The dream didn’t make sense. It was mostly the flash of a pair of yellow eyes and the sound of Dean saying things that were too indistinct for Sam to understand him. There was a wall and a window, a table, some other random glimpses of furniture, but not really anything else to indicate where it was happening. The Colt was there, a twisted smile, and then the window again with Dean pinned to the wall beside it. Sam could see the yellow eyes again and heard a voice he almost recognized say, “He’s gonna taste the iron in your blood,” and then Sam heard himself say, “The hospital is only ten minutes away,” and then the flash of so much blood and he woke, drenched in sweat, choking like something had been sitting on his chest. He felt only a small trickle of blood this time, and it had already stopped by the time Sam reached his hand up to his face.

Glancing over at the clock he saw it was only five in the morning, still dark outside, but six hours of sleep were going to have to be good enough to hold him over on the second half of the trip back to Fort Wayne. Whatever that had been had him officially scared shitless, and he shoved the clothes into his duffel, running into the bathroom to collect his toiletries. The continental breakfast wouldn’t be out yet, but he had spotted a twenty-four hour diner not far from the hotel, so he could run there and grab something quick to eat before hitting the road. He’d put in an order for the special ( _eggs benedict, sausage, toast, and hash browns_ ) when a comparatively short man in a dark suit and trim beard sat down next to him, smelling slightly of rotten meat. Sam moved slowly for his coat to grab the flask he kept inside the breast pocket, but was stopped when the man said simply, “Is that holy water in your pocket or are you just happy to see me, Sam?”

“Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus, omnis…” Sam began under his breath, but the demon pinched his fingers together and shut the alpha up abruptly.

“Really? You too? I don’t know why I keep putting myself out there with you big, beautiful lumbering piles of flannel when I get no respect.” The demon shook his head, throwing a smile at the waitress behind the counter as she came over and told her in his smooth British accent, “Nothing for me, darling. I’m just here for the conversation.” He separated his fingers, allowing Sam to gasp in a deep breath, and stole his cup of coffee right from in front of him. “Now, then, Sam. You’ve really got to stop with all this psychic _Ghost Whisperer_ mumbo jumbo. Jennifer-Love Hewitt has much nicer breasts than you, for starters, and it’s not doing you any favors. That last little trick you pulled with your granddad?” He snorted to himself. “He may have deserved it, but a mark like that is going to be hard to spit polish off your soul when all’s said and done.”

“And I should listen to you because?” Sam demanded, wishing he hadn’t left the Kurdish knife packed in the car.

“Because I’m here to help you.” He turned his nose up at the coffee, pulling out a flask of his own and pouring some Glencraig in to improve the flavor. “I work for the same demon that employs your old pal, Ruby.” At the mention of her name Sam went rigid, but the the James Bond knockoff dismissed his feelings with a handwave. “Relax. She’s still working on climbing out of the pit you plunged her into as far as I know. Of course I could be wrong. I have better things to do than babysit, after all. I’d keep that knife she gave you on your person twenty-four seven. Trust me - you never can be too sure.”

“You expect me to just trust a random demon?”

“Crowley’s the name. Your snuggle bunny hasn’t mentioned me yet?” He arched an eyebrow at Sam and smiled. Something about the way he said “snuggle bunny” made Sam feel very possessive, almost jealous, and while he didn’t like demons to begin with, he _really_ didn’t like this one. “No. Course he hasn’t. Be sure to tell him about this conversation when you see him. I’m sure it will be very enlightening for you. And if you would, let him know I’ll be sending along some onesies to apologize for startling him in the bathroom at the Babies R Us.”

Sam felt his cheeks flushing at the mention of the Babies R Us. Dean had tried to tell him about something that happened there but they’d gotten interrupted and never come back to the topic. Odds were good whoever this “Crowley” was had been the topic Dean wanted to discuss. He would have expected Dean to tell him immediately if he’d run into a demon after what happened with Ruby, but here Sam was with this smirking garden gnome who apparently had already been in touch with Dean and the omega hadn’t breathed a word of it.

“What is it you want, Crowley?”

“I already told you.” The demon huffed, taking a sip of the coffee. “I thought you were the smart one and Dean was the pretty one, but perhaps I have it backwards. At any rate, I’m just here to warn you off of all the fun and fascinating things you’re learning how to do. The more you give into it, the more big, black spots are going to end up all over your shiny little soul, until the big black spots are all that’s left.”

“Why would you care if my soul ends up all covered in big black spots?” Sam demanded, his irritation growing the longer the demon spoke. “You’re a demon. Don’t you like it when people’s souls end up covered in big black spots?”

“Typically, but not with you,” Crowley replied smoothly. “When it comes to you, Moose, it serves my boss’ purpose to have you play the role of Beethoven rather than Cujo.” Sam stared at him, confused, and the demon sighed. “I knew there was a reason I preferred your omega. He gets all my pop culture references.”

“Who’s this boss you keep mentioning? Ruby never said she worked for someone.”

“Well, she wouldn’t, would she? Knew you’d respond better to the idea of a demon gone rogue, striking out alone against the evils of Hell, just a Hermione in search of a Harry Potter to follow.”

“Does that make you Ron Weasley?” Sam suggested, and the demon snorted.

“Of course. _That_ reference you know.” He waved the waitress over for some more terrible coffee. “Lilith is our boss. You keep dancing to Azazel’s tune and you might have the displeasure of meeting her in person. Believe me or don’t, it’s up to you, but if you’re smart you’ll stop wandering through _The Dead Zone_ in your sleep. Tell Dean I said hello.”

The demon snapped his fingers and was gone, leaving Sam alone to wait on his eggs benedict and ponder this new information. He knew Ruby wouldn’t have told him the whole truth, but the idea that there was a demon above her calling the shots made him feel even stupider than he had before. Of course it was always a possibility that Crowley was making the whole thing up, but that would be easy enough to verify once Dean woke up. _If_ Dean woke up. If something drastic hadn’t changed while he was in Kansas and no one had called him because he had a new phone. He dug his burner out of his pocket and called his old phone to check the messages, his heart clenching at a particularly pissy one from Adam, saying Sam needed to get back to the hospital immediately because they were going to try to wake Dean up. The urge to drive ninety miles an hour all the way back to Fort Wayne rose up in his chest again, and he inhaled his breakfast and headed out. All this demon crap could wait until he knew his omega was okay. That was the only thing that really mattered.


	58. I Don't Even Know What's Gonna Happen Tomorrow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things are getting complicated.

Adam didn’t know where Sam had gone to, but holy fuck was he pissed. Sam had killed his phone on a vampire hunt, driven off to god knows where, and not even given Adam a number he could call if something changed with Dean’s condition. All he said was his stupid “You don’t want to know” and walked out the door, so Adam’s only way to reach him was leaving a message at his old number and hoping Sam was checking his voicemail. It was just about the stupidest thing Sam could have done, taking off like that. His dad, being his usual John asshole self, had been such a dick to the officers standing guard outside Dean’s room that he’d gotten himself kicked out of the hospital and banned until Dean’s release, when he would be allowed to come pick him up if he wanted. Then the night after Sam went off to wherever he had gone the doctor supervising Dean’s care came in to check on him and the baby and decided they needed to lessen the sedation, as Elliott’s vitals were starting to drop. This left Adam by himself with his semi-conscious older brother who was in serious pain and couldn’t stop flinching and whimpering, his body drenched in sweat as the last vestiges of the new claim broke. He’d been like that all night now, and Adam was just about at the end of what he could bear to watch his brother go through.

The doctor warned him it would be very unpleasant and he might not want to stay in the room, especially when an alpha’s presence would be much more soothing than a beta’s, but all the alphas Adam knew at the moment were complete and utter morons who apparently hadn’t paid attention to the fact that things could always change when you were dealing with someone who had been admitted to the hospital with the kind of injury Dean had and they probably shouldn’t wander very far. Especially when it came to a claim breaking, no matter whether it was one that hadn’t been completed. Even if Sam didn’t know much about claim marks, Adam would have expected his dad to know the kind of danger Dean was in. Omegas routinely died when claims were broken and the claim mark worked its way out of their systems, leading them into deep, suicidal depressions. Alphas could even die, though it was more likely for them to suffer a kind of emotional death. Claim marks that hadn’t formed properly caused intense physical pain like Dean was experiencing, and it wasn’t unheard of for an omega to purposely harm themselves in an attempt to have a different kind of pain to focus on. Whoever got back first - whether it was Sam from wherever he ran off to or John because Dean was getting released - was getting an earful from the youngest Winchester, that was for damn sure.

Detective Hudak had been back twice to check on Dean and see if he was up for an interview, her patience growing thinner each time she had to turn back because he could open his eyes but had no awareness of anyone else in the room. Adam suspected she was getting pressure from higher up, probably because of how rich and powerful Sam’s family was, and got even angrier with Sam for leaving. Still, things didn’t really go to shit until nine in the morning on Wednesday, when Agent Sheridan of Indiana Omega Protective Services showed up looking for Sam. The case from South Dakota had been routed to their agency for enforcement, John’s declaration that Dean was a hunter insufficient to override the evidence that Dean was a civilian omega who had repeatedly been endangered by Sam’s actions. Sam would have a week to appeal the ruling and provide evidence to support John’s claim, and if he was unsuccessful he would be barred from seeing Dean until the pup was whelped. Sam had picked the worst time possible to leave the hospital.

Dean was sort of somewhat aware that he was in the hospital and his brother was with him, but beyond those two vague notions of time and space he had no real idea of what was happening to him. His flesh burned and his organs were melting and he just wanted to curl up against someone big and firm who smelled like gunpowder and books but all he could scent was the harsh clinical smell of the antiseptic film clinging to everything. Somewhere way back in his memory banks he could recall an alpha who was _not_ his sinking their teeth into his shoulder, and for some reason he knew that’s what was causing all this pain, like it had contaminated his whole body. He didn’t understand even slightly why, if he was in a hospital, they weren’t able to make him stop hurting, except of course that hospitals were all crap and they probably didn’t care that his blood had turned to molten lava. He was only an omega after all, and no one cared about the comfort of omegas.

He had no idea how long he had been this way, but it felt like a couple of decades had passed before he became faintly aware of arguing somewhere nearby, the scent of impending violence hitting his nose in sharp, pungent waves. There was a lot of shouting, which hurt his head, made him feel like it was splitting open; a couple of men whose voices sounded foreign and that female voice he’d been hearing for a while that he thought was probably just conjured up by his overworked senses, but maybe she was real. She was almost as angry as the voice he recognized, the foreign men were backing down in whatever it was they were trying to assert, and the clear scent of green tea came crashing at him as he tried to say, “Sam” but only managed “S’m.”

“I’m here.” Dean felt himself crushed against something solid and warm, cool lips pressing against his forehead as hands so wonderfully chilled by the winter air slid between the ties on his hospital gown to caress his back that he shivered. “It’s okay baby, I’m here.”

“S’m,” he murmured again, trying to grab hold of the alpha’s shirt but discovering his fingers unwilling to comply.

“I’ve got you, Dean.” One of the hands left his back and he could hear something that sounded like fabric rustling before the hand returned, then the other hand let go and there was more fabric rustling before something fell to the floor. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“I’m making a note of this for the file, Mr. Campbell,” some man was saying, sounding highly irritated. Dean didn’t really understand the words he was hearing, but it didn’t matter because he could feel Sam’s neck against his nose and they were laying down and the burning sensation was subsiding just enough that he didn’t think he would die anytime soon anymore.

“Go right ahead,” Sam snarled, the rumble in his chest vibrating through Dean and calming him further. He was still sweating profusely, his breath slightly labored, and when Elliott shoved a fist against his side he whined in pain. The cool lips were back on his forehead, one of the big hands sweeping through his hair and another pressing against Elliott’s fist. “This is bullshit and you’re crazy if you think some stupid piece of paper is going to keep me from Dean.”

“Sam…” Dean heard his brother warn, but the woman’s voice was there.

“Agent Sheridan, I think I’ve made the situation perfectly clear,” she snapped. “My patient needs his alpha. You can save your posturing until after he’s recovered. I think you’ll find the law is on the hospital’s side in this instance. We have tremendous leeway in the lifesaving methods we’re allowed to employ when an omega is in the middle of a claim breaking.”

“Fine,” the man - Agent Sheridan - was saying snottily. None of it stuck in Dean’s head, instead sliding away like soap suds in a shower. “You have until February eighth to appeal, Mr. Campbell.”

There was a scrape of something against something else, a door, maybe? Yes, probably a door, since retreating footsteps preceded the sound, and Sam’s body was softening, the anger in his scent dissipating rapidly. He felt a nose nudging his ear and the deep inhale of breath, followed by a contented sigh. Despite the pain he was sure he could fall asleep like this. It seemed like a lifetime since he’d last slept.

“S’m…” he murmured again and drifted off, his breath coming in quick little pants and his forehead glistening with sweat even as he managed to relax against the younger man.

Sam was having a hard time keeping his alpha in check under the withering glare of both the doctor and Adam, who were clearly waiting for that jackhole from Omega Protective Services to leave before they could lay into him. It wasn’t like they really needed to. He was already feeling crushed under the weight of the guilt at having left Dean so he could deal with his grandfather. It had been necessary, he knew that, especially with Samuel planning to drum up charges against the omega, but he couldn’t tell that to the doctor and he wasn’t sure yet how far he should bring Adam into the mess. He still didn’t know if there was a warrant out on him in Kansas, or where Ellen and Jo were, and he hadn’t had a chance to check his voicemail to see if there was anything official about Samuel’s fate, plus as far as he knew Gwen was still here in the hospital and her father hadn’t been at the compound yesterday, meaning the odds were good he was here with her. William was the only Campbell on that side of the family who had ever been anything other than a douchenozzle, so maybe if his daughter told him what really happened at Benny’s house he’d try to convince his brothers to let the matter drop, especially since Johnny was the one who had landed her in the hospital too.

“I trust you’re not going to be leaving again, Mr. Campbell?” the doctor demanded harshly. “I realize I didn’t have a chance to talk to you in person about what your omega is experiencing so you would understand how serious his condition is, but that’s only because apparently you took off immediately after finding out he was here.”

Sam wanted to snark at her, to tell her that her bedside manner sucked, but he knew how it looked with him leaving to handle the problem in Lawrence, so instead he simply said, “I’m not going anywhere.”

“That’s good,” she snapped. “Because he has a long road ahead of him. We expect he’ll be through the worst of this by tomorrow, but we haven’t even begun to assess the damage to his shoulder given the state he’s been in, and with the stress this has put on his system and the baby he’s going to have to be confined to bed rest for the remainder of his term. His Om-OB/GYN will have to determine what his restrictions should be, but he will absolutely not be able to return to his normal daily activities. I’ve already been in contact with his doctor in Sioux Falls and she’s looking into recommendations to transfer his care here.”

“What?” Sam asked, pulling Dean in tighter against him.

“Sioux Falls is four hours by plane, eleven hours by car. He can’t possibly make either of those trips. Besides that, the hospital can only run interference for you with OPS for so long. It would be better for both of you if it didn’t look like you were running the minute he gets out of the hospital. I’d advise you to get a lawyer as soon as you can and a month-to-month lease on an apartment here, because you’re going to be in Fort Wayne for at least another three months. I’ll be back to check on him before my shift ends.”

She gave him quite the pointed look before storming out of the room, her lab coat billowing behind her. That left him alone with Adam, who had taken up an obstinate position in the chair by the bed, his arms crossed and lips pursed. Sam knew that look well and sighed. Adam probably had the most even temper of the three of them, but the bitch face he was pulling at the moment was usually the first sign of an outburst.

“Go ahead,” Sam said, and Adam stood up from the chair and slapped the alpha upside the back of his head. “Hey!”

“What. Thefuck, Sam?” the beta demanded. “Seriously, what the fuck. What the _fuck_ were you thinking just walking out when I don’t even have a fucking phone number for you that fucking works? Do you have _any_ idea what the fuck my brother has been through since you fucking left?”

Wow. Not that Adam was a choir boy, but that was a lot more fucks than Sam had heard him spew in a long time. Obviously he couldn’t keep Dean’s brother in the dark or he’d be getting exponentially more slaps upside the back of his head. Hell, he’d probably get a couple anyway when he explained everything, but it might be a lesser total at least. He’d have to leave out the part about instructing his grandfather to kill himself, but nothing else was so bad that he couldn’t bring it up. So he told him about talking with Gwen, taking off for Lawrence, convincing Samuel to leave them alone, and then getting the call from Ash that he’d stumbled across something important he needed to tell Sam. He kept that vague as well, but the knowledge that the Roadhouse burned down and Ellen and Jo were missing certainly got Adam off his back for a bit. It also had Adam reaching for his phone to call Bobby after getting Dean’s phone so Sam could call Pamela Barnes and see if she knew any lawyers in the area who could help him fight the charges leveled against him by the OPS. Adam went out into the hall for his conversation, getting a much needed change of scenery after being cooped up in the hospital room since yesterday, and Sam found the lawyer’s name in Dean’s contacts.

Pamela directed Sam to a woman named Annie Hawkins, who had helped Benny and Lisa out early on in their matehood. Pamela couldn’t give him all the details because he hadn’t been her client at the time, but she knew a similar charge had been leveled against Benny when they moved into their first apartment, which happened to have a vengeful spirit in residence. Sam thanked her for the lead and got Annie’s contact information, and after five rings left her a voicemail with a brief description of his problem and a request to call him back as soon as possible. By the time Adam came back Sam was trying to decide whether he needed lunch or a nap more, and what his odds were of convincing Adam to run down to the cafeteria since Sam clearly had no plans to leave the room.

“Ellen and Jo called Bobby last night,” the beta said, sounding relieved. “Took him a while to convince them they were really talking to him and it was safe to come on out to the house. They’ve been there for a couple of hours. Guess he gave them yours and Dean’s room for the time being so they’d have the bathroom to themselves.”

“They’re both okay though?” Sam asked, remembering the look and smell of extra crispy Ash.

“Yeah. Freaked out, but okay.”

“Do they have any idea what did it?”

“They’re pretty sure it was a demon,” Adam told him, missing the way Sam blanched as he took up his position in the side chair, which he’d been sitting in so long either the chair was molding to his ass or his ass was molding to the chair. Either way he was starting to fit it like a puzzle piece. “The building was already on fire when they were pulling up. They saw a woman with long blonde hair and black eyes. Ellen wasn’t as sure, but Jo was.”

“This demon,” Sam said, remembering what Crowley had warned about Ruby getting out of the pit and feeling ill. “Did they say anything else about her?”

“Besides being scary as hell and walking out of a burning bar unscathed?” Adam cocked an eyebrow at him. “Pretty sure they were too busy trying to think of the nearest place to get dry underwear.”

Sam nodded, nearly jumping out of his skin when Dean’s phone went off, buzzing in his hand and blaring out a cheesy hard rock guitar riff that Sam was definitely changing to something less obnoxious. That was all for later, however, because right now the caller ID was showing the name _Wayne_ and Sam had never heard of a Wayne in hunting circles. The omega stirred at the sound, whining a little and shifting uncomfortably against the alpha, who quickly handed the phone off to Adam.

“Who the hell is Wayne?” he asked, trying to help Dean find a restful position and shushing him, pushing his hair back off his forehead and kissing is temple. He needed to locate the call button so he could get the nurse to bring him a cool cloth or something.

Adam snorted as he took the phone from Sam and picked up the call.

“Hey Garth,” the beta said, shaking his head at how big of a dork is brother was. “What’s up?”

“ _Adam_! _Man_! _Long time no talk. How’re you doin’ buddy_?”

“Honestly, I’ve been better.”

“ _Yeah, I heard about Benny. How’s Dean_?”

Adam really missed Garth. He’d hated it when the guy got kicked out of school. He was one of the few people there who genuinely cared about people beyond what they could do for him status-wise. The beta ran a hand along Dean’s arm, helping Sam soothe him.

“He’s been better, too. I take it he called you about that thing?”

“ _He did. I found out some info for him. He around somewhere so I can talk to him_?”

“Actually no. He’s...he was hurt a couple of days ago. He’s not really up for a conversation right now.”

“ _Oh my god. Is he okay_?”

“He will be, just...what’d you find out for him?”

“ _Well, the Devil’s Gate is real, for one thing. You got a pen handy to take notes on this_?”

“Gimme a sec…” Adam rummaged around in Dean’s bag of things, looking for something to write with, even if he was only able to scratch it down on his palm. He came up empty and sighed. “Sorry man, I got nothin’. We’re in a hospital and there’s not exactly a ton of stationary. Could you send some of it by text?”

“ _Sure, but it’s gonna be a lot of text messages_.”

“That’s okay. It’ll be better than him trying to figure out my chicken scratch handwriting anyway.”

“ _All right then. Hey, the next time you’re near Wisconsin you should swing on by. I miss ya, man._ ”

“Will do. Later Garth.”

“ _Take it easy, Adam_.”

Adam clicked the call off and flipped the phone closed, turning the volume down so it wouldn’t beep every time Garth sent a text. Sam was watching him with a furrowed brow, Dean still restless against him.

“Garth?” he said. “As in your old roommate, Garth Fitzgerald?”

“Yeah,” Adam replied. “Dean called him about some stuff.”

“What stuff?”

Adam was spared from having to decide whether to lie or tell the truth ( _what little of it he knew_ ) by Dean’s phone vibrating and the caller ID lighting up with the number for the lawyer Sam had just called. He picked up the call rather than trying to figure out how to dodge the alpha.

“Hello?”

“ _Good afternoon. This is Annie Hawkins. I got a call from a Sam Campbell at this number asking me to call him back about an order of protection case with the South Dakota OPS_.”

“Yeah, just a sec.” He held the phone out to Sam, standing and stretching out his back. “It’s for you. I’m gonna grab some lunch. What do you want?”

“Food,” Sam replied simply, taking the phone as Adam left for the cafeteria. “Hello?”

“ _Sam Campbell_?”

“Speaking.”

“ _This is Annie Hawkins_. _I understand you have a problem and Pamela Barnes thinks I can help you with it._ ”

“Yeah. Shit - uh, sorry, just. Thank you for calling me back so quickly.”

“Sam…” Dean muttered, rolling away onto his back and gasping in pain.

“ _Is this a bad time_?”

“No…” Dean gasped again and whined as Sam started to look in earnest for the call button to get someone in the room to help. “Well, yes, but I need to talk to you as soon as possible so it is what it is.”

“ _It’s your dollar. You want to tell me about your situation_?”

“It’s...it’s complicated,” Sam told her, Dean’s whines getting more desperate as a nurse came in to answer the call. He turned the phone away from his mouth and asked, “Can you get a cool towel or something? He’s really uncomfortable.” The nurse nodded and headed back out as Sam returned to his conversation. “God, I’m so sorry, my...uh...boyfriend? I guess that’s the best way to put it. He’s in the hospital waiting for a claim to break…”

“ _And you need my help enforcing an OPS restraining order against his former alpha_?”

“No, _I’m_ his alpha.”

“ _I’m afraid I don’t understand, Mr. Campbell_.”

“Sam…” Dean whimpered, trying to grab his shirt.

“Come here, baby, try to sit up,” Sam murmured, sitting and getting Dean up against him with one arm. It had been hard enough to get into bed with him to begin with, what with all the machines he was hooked up to, and Sam had to do a lot of reconfiguring with all the wires, but it seemed to help a little. Dean settled as the nurse came back in with a bowl of ice water and a hand towel, which she drenched and then used to wipe down the back of Dean’s head and his neck. “Sorry,” Sam said to Annie. “He was attacked and the alpha tried to force a claim on him. He got away before the mark fully took.”

“ _I’m so sorry. That’s a terrible thing to recover from_. _So you hadn’t claimed him yet_?”

“No, and honestly, I’m not sure he’ll want me to after this.”

“ _But the OPS has decided to get involved. Why don’t you tell me what the issue is_?”

Sam thanked the nurse for the water and towel, shooing her out of the room as politely as he could, and explained the whole sordid mess to Ms. Hawkins. He started with Laramie; how the baby was an accident and he didn’t even know about it for months; that when he and Dean saw each other again it had been pure luck that they were working the same case and they weren’t even together; that he had been in the middle of being the ghouls’ dinner the first time Dean was injured and hadn’t brought him on the hunt; that the two demon encounters were beyond his control; and that the last incident was just supposed to be confirming the presence of a ghost and they weren’t going to follow it up at all but report it to the authorities. He explained that Dean’s status as a hunter had been scrubbed from the FDH database, probably by his grandfather; that they hadn’t believed John, and Benny - who would have readily corroborated Dean’s claim - had been killed. Sam had a week to appeal the ruling or he was going to be banned from seeing the omega until after the baby was born, and a year of probationary visitation after that if he couldn’t find some way to prove that Dean until very recently had been a government employee fully sanctioned to hunt monsters. She listened through the whole thing, asking for clarification at certain points, sighing in obvious frustration at others, and waiting patiently the few times he had to pause to re-wet the towel to run down Dean’s arms. Finally she told him, “ _You’ve gotten yourselves in quite a pickle there, Sam_.”

“I know,” he agreed as Dean finally started to settle again. “How do we get out of it?”

“ _Well, you’ve got three avenues that I can see. One: if you can find someone at the Department - preferably not just another hunter, but they’ll do in a pinch if you can’t find someone sitting behind a desk - who is willing to testify under oath that Dean was a known hunter on the payroll up until your uncle purged his records that would be sufficient for most Omega Court judges. Two: if you can get his bank records going back far enough to prove he had deposits from the Department into his account and get any copies of the pay stubs, or any other kind of paper trail like tax records, you’ll have proof he was at least a contract employee. That may not be enough for some judges, but it would definitely work in your favor, though you’re likely going to have to wait until he’s feeling better so he can contact the bank himself and you might not have enough time for that. Three: see if Benny kept any records of the hunts he worked with Dean. After the issue he had with Lisa when they were newly mated he kept meticulous records of his relationship with the Department so nothing like that could ever happen to him again._ ”

“Something happened with Lisa and Benny?” Sam asked, wishing Dean were lucid, because he probably knew all about it.

“ _I can’t really discuss it. Attorney-client privilege. But it was a big misunderstanding, much like what you’ve described, and he learned to cover his ass. If he and Dean were really that close, I wouldn’t be surprised if he kept records of Dean’s hunts to protect him as well. Benny was a good man like that._ ”

“Yeah, yeah he was. Are you able to represent me if I can pull this information together?”

“ _That depends. I’m not cheap, Mr. Campbell_.”

“I’m not poor, Ms. Hawkins.”

“ _Never say that to a lawyer, Sam. Why don’t you call me when you have a better idea of what’s happening with Dean_? _I don’t want to pull your attention away from him, though we do want to move quickly_.”

“That sounds like a plan. Oh, before I let you go, do you handle criminal cases? The alpha that attacked Dean...Dean killed him getting away. The police seem to be looking for a way to charge him with something.”

“ _Has he spoken with them yet_?”

“No, he can’t talk to anyone right now.”

“ _I have an associate you can contact. Lily Sunder. Do you have something to write with_?”

“Not on me. Can you text me her number?”

“ _Sure. Don’t let Dean talk to anyone until you’ve spoken with her._ ”

“Thanks. I’ll be in touch soon.”

He flipped the phone closed to end the call, turning his attention back fully to soothing the omega, who had shifted to press his face up against Sam’s neck again, breathing out soft, hot puffs of air onto the alpha’s collarbone. The bowl of ice water was hard to reach from where he was sitting, stuck on the nightstand on the other side of the bed, so he laid Dean down to move around behind him. The instant Sam let him go Dean started to pant in distress, a pained, high pitched whine erupting from him until Sam was back down next to him and touching him again, struggling with all the wires anew. He had just started to wash down Dean’s face and neck with the towel when there was a hesitant knock on the door and Gwen was rolled in by her father, confined to a wheelchair because she wasn’t yet able to walk without getting dizzy. Sam stiffened immediately, his fingers curling possessively around Dean’s side as he growled out a warning. William snarled in response but Gwen held up a hand to stop him.

“Dad, please,” she snapped, and the dark haired alpha behind her looked thoroughly chastened. She turned to Sam apologetically. “I just wanted to see how he was doing.”

“Well now you’ve seen, so you can leave,” Sam hissed, a whimper rising from the omega, who was attempting unsuccessfully to turn into his alpha’s chest. Sam moved him gently, trying not to hurt his shoulder, until he got Dean flush against him, one arm under the omega to keep him from pressing down into the mattress. Gwen looked horrified and William was watching the proceedings warily. “Why are you still here? Go!”

“Johnny did that?” William asked, his smooth baritone betraying a note of concern. “Because Uncle Samuel told him to?”

“Yeah, he did,” Sam replied coldly. “Any other questions?”

“Did the Lawrence police get in touch with you yet?” William’s face was inscrutable as he watched Mary’s son wipe down the agonized omega. “They said they’ve been trying to reach you.”

“I wrecked my phone on a hunt a couple of days ago,” Sam said. “I haven’t had a chance to check my voicemail. Been a little busy.”

“Samuel killed himself a couple of hours after you left the compound,” Gwen told him, her tone guarded. “They want to talk to you.”

“They’re going to have to get in line. Please go, your scent is upsetting Dean.”

An actual look of guilt passed over William’s face as he watched the semi-conscious omega struggling to crawl out of his skin and into Sam’s and managing neither. Gwen already looked sorry enough, had probably looked that way since she woke up in the hospital, and she tugged at her father’s hand to get him to wheel her back out. Before the door closed she looked at him again and said, “God, I’m sorry Sam. If there’s anything I can do…”

“You can go,” Sam told her, and with a nod they did.


	59. We Need to Get All Three of That Crap

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little bit of hospital drama to rival Dr. Sexy.

The doctor - Sands was her name - hadn’t been kidding about Dean needing an alpha’s presence to help him through the awful process of breaking Johnny’s attempted claim. He’d had another couple of episodes of pain and fever, but by four o’clock his temperature had gone down and he was sleeping quietly, slotted up underneath Sam’s chin while the alpha dozed. Adam brought him lunch and he’d gotten in touch with Lily Sunder, who was coming out the next day to talk to them both, then turned on the television to a _Twilight Zone_ marathon and eventually fallen asleep. Adam took the opportunity to stretch his legs, longing for the comfort of the Hyatt and finding it strange after his early childhood being spent in hotels that he desperately wanted to get back to one. He was still gone and Sam and Dean were still snuggled up together when Dr. Sands returned at the end of her shift, Dean and all his wires half sprawled across Sam’s chest, a little bit of pink starting to return to his cheeks, Sam snoring softly under him.

“Mr. Campbell,” she said quietly, giving Sam a little shake that caused him to jolt awake, earning a groan and a snuffle out of Dean before the smaller man rooted around with his nose to find the scent gland behind Sam’s ear and then sighed deeply. “I need you out of the bed so I can check Dean’s pain level when he doesn’t have contact with you.”

“Oh,” Sam managed blearily, rubbing at his eyes, voice hoarse and hair messy. He kept an arm around Dean but stretched out the other and his legs, turning instantly from a Cairn terrier into a Great Dane. “‘Kay.” He stretched again, really looking twice as large as he had appeared the first time Dr. Sands saw him, and tried to extricate his arm from underneath the omega. Dean groaned unhappily at the movement and tightened his hold on Sam’s shirt. “Dean, I need my arm back.”

“Nnno,” Dean muttered in response, which earned him a cautiously excited squeeze from Sam and had the doctor leaning in. “Wanna sleep S’mmy.”

“Dean?” Dr. Sands said as Sam finally managed to get out of the bed and Dean’s eyes blinked halfway open, lids still heavy with the need to sleep. “Welcome back. I’m Dr. Sands. Do you know where you are?”

“Hospital?” Dean was very clearly guessing, and he winced slightly, reaching out for Sam’s arm. “Sam…”

“Sam needs to stay where he is for right now, Dean,” she told him, though it was clearly said for Sam’s benefit as well. “I need to give you a once over before I head home for the day. It looks like your fever has finally broken. Are you experiencing any pain?”

“Yeah...” He shifted onto his back, face contorting as he did so and wetness growing at the corners of his scrunched shut eyes. “Shoulder.”

"How badly does it hurt on a scale of one to ten?”

“Twenny-six.”

“Nothing else though?”

“Shoulder’snough.”

“I’ll get the nurse in here to give you something for it.” She took a pocket light out of her lab coat and pulled his eyelids open to test his pupils, clearly satisfied with whatever she saw because she clicked the light back off after only a couple of sweeps on each eye and stowed it back in her pocket. “You were right that you’re in a hospital. Do you know why?” The omega shook his head, drawing in a sharp intake of breath and struggling to find a comfortable position. Dr. Sands caught Sam out of the corner of her eye, practically cracking his molars as he flexed his jaw and tried to will himself to keep back from the bed, and with the quick nod she gave him he was scrambling back in and getting Dean up to a sitting position again, massaging his back as a fine sheen of sweat broke out on his forehead. “Well, we’ve got time for that. Should only be a few more hours now and then you won’t feel pain like this anymore, okay Dean?”

“Mmhmm,” he grunted, already relaxing into the soothing wall of Sam’s chest.

“Dr. Trenton is on the overnight shift, he’ll be in around nine o’clock to see how you’re doing, okay?” she said, but Dean was already well on his way back to sleep.

“Mmhmm,” he grunted again as he took in a deep breath against Sam’s collarbone.

“Keep as much contact as you can with him throughout the evening,” she instructed Sam. “I’ll have an attendant bring you a menu so you can order from the kitchen and don’t have to leave for dinner. By tomorrow morning we should be able to assess his shoulder. I’ll also get someone from obstetrics up here to check on the pup. Have a good night.”

She actually gave Sam a small, approving nod on her way out, which he supposed was a big improvement over their first encounter today when it seemed that she’d have thrown him out of the hospital if she could. Dean was already well on his way back to sleep and Adam was still gone, leaving Sam with very little to do besides channel surf. He had done just about all the channel surfing he could stand for at least the next four or five decades, so he grabbed Dean’s cell phone to update his ringtone. After careful deliberation he decided on _Stacy’s Mom_ , trying not to wake the omega up with his giggling as he set it for the main sound. It was the kind of guilty pleasure song he doubted would really upset Dean, and one that might even coax a smile out of him, something Sam figured he wouldn’t be seeing much after everything that had happened in the last week. He paused his mission, utterly shocked as it registered that only a week had passed since they found out about Benny, Lisa, and Ben. It felt like so much longer. He was still lost in thought when the cell phone buzzed with a text message, and he checked to see who it was from. Not that he wanted to snoop in Dean’s phone or had any business doing so, he was merely bored and curious. When he flipped it open at the caller ID showing **Wayne** , whom he now knew to be Garth, and saw that Dean had thirty-seven text messages from him, Sam couldn’t stop himself from opening the first one and going from there.

Adam knew he probably shouldn’t be going against what Sam wanted, but Sam had been making some pretty stupid decisions lately and after what he’d told Adam the lawyer said, the alpha refusing the obvious solution had seemed to be nothing more than blustering pride. Well, perhaps blustering pride mixed with hunger and the need for sleep, since Sam had inhaled the two sandwiches, soup, and salad Adam brought him back from the cafeteria before settling in for a restless nap with Dean, who had passed out again. Whatever the reason Sam didn’t want to enlist Gwen and William’s help with the OPS, Adam thought it couldn’t hurt to at least ask them, or at least ask Gwen, who had been trying to paint the incident at Benny’s in as favorable a light for Dean as possible. So after he’d gotten a break from the hospital by running back to the hotel to take an actual shower here he was, walking into room thirty sixty-four and hoping he wasn’t about to make things worse.

“Adam,” Gwen said in shock immediately upon seeing him. She was alone at the moment, her mother and father having gone off to get something to eat and her roommate having died the day before. She’d barely registered the kid when he was at school, but recognized him from when he got to the emergency room with his father after the hospital called about Dean. “Hi.”

“Hey Gwen,” Adam replied, not sure whether he should just walk in or hang out by the door. Sam was going to be so pissed if this didn’t go well. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

“Sure.” She was immediately reaching for the remote to turn down the television, _The Princess Bride_ going mute in the background. A plume of awkwardness enveloped them both, thick enough to cut with a katana. “So…”

“Can I trust you?” the beta demanded, his mouth a grim line and his eyes deadly serious. “You always seemed to be the one Campbell besides Sam who wasn’t a complete dick, and I’m pretty sure whatever you told the cops is the only thing keeping Dean from being charged with murder, but your cousins have pretty much fucked up my brother’s life completely so I gotta ask if I can trust you to help unfuck it.”

Gwen considered him for a minute, her lips pursed as she pondered his question. She was still unnerved by the coincidence of Samuel killing himself shortly after seeing Sam, even if she also felt okay with her great uncle’s death after everything that had happened the last couple of days, and especially after seeing Dean earlier. She was an alpha, after all. She was hardwired to protect omegas. It had never made any sense to her that Mark, Christian, Tyler, and - apparently - Johnny had been hardwired to hurt them. Still, she’d been in this life for too long to trust coincidence. After all, accidents didn’t just happen accidentally most of the time.

“It depends,” she told him. “Will helping him require me killing someone?”

“No!” Adam looked genuinely horrified by the suggestion, taking a few steps into the room at last. “God, no, Gwen. Jesus, why would you even think that?”

“I’m a hunter, Adam,” Gwen said. “Killing is kind of my default setting.”

“I don’t want you to kill anyone. Or do anything else illegal. Shit, it’s nothing like that.”

“Then what?” When the beta hesitated, she added firmly, “You can trust me. I’m not like my family.”

She looked so sincere that Adam was really torn for quite a few moments. He’d thought it would be easy to just march down here and ask her to give a statement to the OPS that she personally knew Dean was a hunter, had been a hunter for a long time, and should have been in the system, but now that he was at the point of actually putting it into words he realized how stupid he was probably being. This could backfire so badly if she decided to go running back to her family. Though she wasn’t the only hunter who knew Dean, so even if she was a Mata Hari they could still contact other people to help. Pastor Jim was still alive as far as he knew, as was Rufus Turner and Martin Creaser. Gwen was just more convenient because she was right there, and the clock was running.

“Sam’s grandfather scrubbed Dean from the FDH database,” Adam told her at last. “And now Omega Protective Services in South Dakota has put out a restraining order against Sam for taking a civilian with him on hunts. We need active hunters who’ll give a statement that Dean is employed by the Department. My dad already gave them a statement but they won’t accept it because Dean’s his son.”

“Samuel did...what?”

"Deleted all of Dean’s files.” Adam sighed in frustration at the incredulous look on her face. This had clearly been a mistake. “You know what, forget I said anything. _Please_ , we don’t need more trouble from your family. You don’t have to help Dean, just please don’t hurt him anymore.”

“It’s not…it’s not that I don’t want to help him, it’s just…” She shook her head, running her hands through her hair. It was greasy and disgusting and she really hoped she could stand well enough to use the hospital shower today. She hated hospitals. “It’s a lot to take in. I never knew...Uncle Samuel was always just this really nice old man, Grandpa’s brother, you know? I mean, he used to have us over for the Fourth of July and Thanksgiving, and at Christmas he’d dress up as Santa Claus…”

“What?”

Adam was looking at her slack-jawed. She didn’t blame him for his disbelief, not after everything Samuel had done to his brother. And of course she knew her great uncle had never been that sweet and fun when it came to Sam, though she hadn’t ever really understood why.

“Mostly just me and Johnny,” she elaborated. “Mark, Christian, and Tyler stayed at school some of the time. Sometimes because their parents left them, sometimes because they wanted to.” She gave Adam a watery smile, her eyes growing moist as she thought back on her childhood, and how big of a lie it had all been. How the reality of her family was something she’d have to figure out how to live with rather than being proud of the name Campbell, like finding out she was related to Charles Manson. “I don’t know what happened to Johnny. He used to be so sweet. When he chased your brother up the stairs...It was like watching an animal.” She wiped at her face and shrugged a shoulder as Adam regarded her carefully. “Sam’s lucky his grandfather kept him away. He might’ve ended up like the rest of us.”

“You’re not like them,” Adam murmured, and she laughed ruefully.

“No, I’m not, but I can’t help you,” she said. “I wish I could, but I’m Sam’s cousin. I don’t think they’d take my word any more than they’d take your dad’s.”

Adam closed his eyes and sighed again before dropping his chin to his chest. She was probably right. That hadn’t even occurred to him. A court wouldn’t care that Sam was ostracized from his whole family. They’d look at the fact that Gwen was Sam’s cousin, that she was a witness to another one of their cousins attacking Dean, and figure she was just acting out of guilt. Her father, too, if he’d even listen to anything Adam had to say, which was in no way a given. The beta shook his head at his own stupidity and wishful thinking and muttered, “Shit.”

“Unless…” Gwen was reaching for her cell phone where it was charging on the nightstand by her bed, grabbing it to start scrolling through the contacts. “There’s this kid I know at the Department, in IT. Real boy wonder. I guarantee he can figure out what Samuel did to Dean’s records and recover them. Don’t know how long it’ll take, though.”

“This kid, you can trust him?”

“Kevin?” She laughed. “Yeah, Kevin’s great. A little squirrely and high strung, but a good kid. Really advanced for his age, was in all the AP classes in school. His mom wasn’t too happy with him skipping college to come straight to work for the Department. She wanted him to be a doctor or something. Anyway, I helped her out with a gremlin that had built a nest in her garage a couple months ago so he owes me a favor.”

“You really think he can hack the FDH?”

“Oh yeah. The last couple of years that I’ve been at the Department I noticed I’ve been way late to getting notices about hunts, even though I’ve got alerts set up.” She shook her head, hitting the call button. “Kevin looked into it for me and in about five minutes found that someone had turned everything off. Samuel, of course. I thought he was just looking out for me. I got his voicemail, hang on...Kevin Tran, my man! It’s your mom’s favorite hunter. I need to call in that favor you owe me. Give me a call back as soon as you can. It’s urgent.” She hung up the phone and looked at Adam, stretching a hand out. “Hand me your cell phone.”

The beta obeyed, fascinated as he watched her typing away efficiently with the number pad on his phone. She clearly wasn’t like the rest of the family; from what she’d said had been kept a bit at arms’ length herself, handled differently than her male alpha cousins. Treating Sam like an outcast may not have been the only mistake Samuel made when he had obviously ostracized Gwen as well, just in more subtle ways.

“I’m in your contacts now. When you get a chance, shoot me a text message from your phone so I’ve got your number. I’ll let you know when Kevin gets back to me,” she told him, extending his phone back. “He works out of the Chicago office so it won’t be a bad drive if he needs to print off records for you. When does Sam need this stuff by?”

“The eighth.”

“Okay, I’ll let him know.”

“Thanks Gwen,” Adam said, and he really meant it. He wasn’t sure how he was going to bring this up with Sam, but at least being in the hospital with Dean reduced the odds that he was going to end up getting decked. He was just turning to head out the door when he remembered his conversation with Bobby from earlier in the day, and as he heard the volume on the television coming back up, Vizzini talking about land wars in Asia being a classic blunder, he pulled down the neckline of his shirt so he could get a photo of his left pectoral. He pulled up the number Gwen had just put into his phone, saying, “I’m sending you a picture. You need to get it inked on you as soon as you get out of this place, okay?”

“Uh...sure…” She raised an eyebrow at him as her phone buzzed, and she checked the text message then smirked. “Is this your way of asking me out on a date?”

“What? No!” The beta blushed, his face turning beet red, and she burst out laughing. “It...it’s an anti-possession tattoo…”

“Relax, I’m joking,” she assured him, waving her hand at him. “You’re really cute, but betas aren’t my thing. I’ll be in touch.”

Adam wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or insulted, settling at last on simply grateful. Gwen had a connection at the FDH who could help them. Sam was meeting with Annie Hawkins to go over the case tomorrow. For once something might actually work out for them, though he probably shouldn’t dare to think that or he’d jinx them. He checked his phone and saw it was almost six o’clock and headed for the cafeteria, thinking he’d grab something for both him and Sam again; a nice heavy meal so the alpha would be halfway to a food coma when Adam mentioned everything he’d just talked about with Gwen.

Dean was sleeping curled up against Sam, much the same as he’d been when Adam headed back to the hotel several hours earlier, but Sam was awake, staring intently at the television, his jaw clenching and unclenching as he absentmindedly ran a hand up and down the omega’s back. Something was off, Adam could tell, and all the lines he’d been rehearsing of what he was going to say about talking to Gwen died on his lips. He would have snickered to himself that Sam was also watching _The Princess Bride_ if Sam had looked even slightly like he was enjoying it. Instead he plunked the styrofoam take-out container from the cafeteria down in the side chair nearest the door in an attempt to catch Sam’s eye. It didn’t work.

“Brought you a big salad,” he said. Sam still didn’t acknowledge him. “Lots of chicken on it.”

“Thanks,” Sam replied finally, his eyes sliding over to the beta. “Why is Garth texting Dean about demons and something called a Devil’s Gate?”

“I don’t know,” Adam told him, not liking the flash of anger that blew through Sam’s eyes like a fast moving storm. “I don’t, Sam. All I know is Dean wanted to talk to Garth about your psychic stuff. I told him not to keep it from you. I’m sorry if he did.” Sam’s jaw worked some more, and the younger Winchester added, “It’s not like we’ve never kept anything from him before.”

Adam pointing out the simple truth of the situation slapped Sam back to reality. The more of the text messages he’d read the angrier he’d gotten, even knowing how much Dean needed him to be calm. It was like he couldn’t control it. There was some kind of switch in him that was getting easier and easier to flip, and once it was turned on it was almost impossible to turn off. Clearly that demon, Crowley, had been telling the truth about speaking with Dean, otherwise Garth wouldn’t be texting about Lilith in addition to Azazel and whatever this Devil’s Gate thing was. But he still shouldn’t be having to actively subdue the kind of intense rage that was trying to build in his core. It should be going away on its own. That it wasn’t was disconcerting.

“You’re right,” he said when he had pulled back the reins on the fury rising within him, like a kelpie trying to entice him to fall into the mindless black depths of wrath. “I’m just scared about this Omega Protective Services thing. If they find out Dean’s researching demons…”

“I’m sure he wasn’t planning to go after anything,” Adam cut in. “My brother can be stupid sometimes, but he’s not _that_ stupid. And anyway, I think I’ve found a way to help with that.”

There really was no point in avoiding it, no matter how angry Sam had obviously just been, because he’d brought up the topic of the OPS and telling the alpha he’d talked to Gwen was the obviously thing to do. He wouldn’t have had any excuse for not mentioning it when Sam had just voiced his valid concerns, so Adam launched into the discussion he and the last remaining Campbell cousin had had, complete with profuse apologies for ignoring what Sam wanted to do, but also assertions that he’d made the right call, because Gwen could help them. More than that, Gwen _would_ help them. She knew someone in IT at the FDH who could hopefully look up all of Dean’s records, and even if he couldn’t it was worth it to at least have him try. There were lots of hunters who knew Dean, but getting any of them to agree to testify for him would be difficult, given how many would love to see the omega out of the Department entirely. Even if they could find hunters who’d vouch for Dean they’d have to get them to Fort Wayne in time to put together an appeal, and with the nomadic lifestyle hunters lived that was like trying to pin down a flea. At the end of it Sam was glad Adam had taken it upon himself to approach Gwen, squelching the fire that tried building again in his belly, and dug into his salad.

It was almost nine o’clock when the doctor on the overnight shift came in to check on Dean, his bedside manner decidedly worse that Dr. Sands’. Adam had gone back to the hotel by that point at Sam’s insistence that he could handle things on his own, though he wondered if that may have been a mistake when faced with the alpha who was only a year or two older than Dean. Dr. Trenton definitely had a cockiness about him that had Sam suppressing a growl within minutes of him being in the room, even though he hadn’t really done anything besides act like the Earth rotated at his whim. It was profoundly disturbing, how short his fuse was all of a sudden. Between his ire at the text messages on Dean’s phone earlier, his immediate instinct to jump to anger when Adam said he’d talked to Gwen, and now the urge to tear the doctor’s head off when all he’d done was tell Sam he needed to untangle from the sleeping omega and get out of the bed in a cocky tone, Sam was starting to worry that something was terribly wrong with him.

The examination took quite a bit longer than the one with Dr. Sands earlier in the day, largely because it was a lot harder for Dr. Trenton to wake Dean up and get him to respond to questions about his pain level, knowledge of where he was, and even who was with him in the room. His casual dismissal of this as something to be expected now that the claim had finished breaking as well as a side effect of the pain medication didn’t improve Sam’s opinion of him. Once he’d checked Dean’s pupils and vitals and was satisfied that the only pain Dean was still experiencing was due to the dislocated shoulder and the torn muscle and skin from the bite, he told Sam everything looked fine and Dr. Sands would be in the next day, but that should anything change he’d be on call. Sam thanked him tersely, climbed carefully back into the bed with Dean - who didn’t seem to be aware of him at the moment - and settled in to spend the night.

Dean hadn’t really been dreaming much for the past few days, which his overworked body seemed to need, allowing him to plunge into a wonderful inky blackness the last eight hours or so since Dr. Sands had last checked on him. His brain hadn’t really been able to process anything that had gone on, not even knowing where he was beyond in a hospital, or who was with him beyond the homey smell of Sam coupled with the comforting warmth of him. He had no idea what had happened, but god he was happy Sam was there. Sam always made everything better, even when he was being an idiot. Growing up on the road and then in a boarding school and then on the road again he never thought he’d end up here, tangled up against a colossal alpha who was not only willing to protect him against the world, but made him feel okay for _wanting_ someone to protect him against the world. Sam may be young, but he was definitely the kind of provider Dean’s omega yearned for, his primitive hindbrain purring contentedly at the knowledge of how safe Sam would make their home, how safe he would make Dean, how safe he would make their children -

He jolted awake with a panicked gasp, feeling his lungs constrict as a swell of hysteria engulfed him. Sam was right in front of him, sleeping soundly facing the omega, his lips up against Dean’s forehead, but it did nothing to calm him down. He couldn’t breathe, his throat closing up on him, grabbing and tugging on Sam’s shirt to wake him up since there was no way he could speak when he felt so close to passing out. Sam’s eyes snapped open with a start at the feel of Dean’s hands clutching desperately at him, having to suppress his own desire to panic at the sight of Dean’s already pale face draining even further of color as he stared at Sam’s throat, trying to force words out of his mouth but making no sound beyond a terrifying wheezing.

“Liz...zie…” he choked, fighting and failing to draw in air as his oxygen sensor started to go off. “Where’s…”

“The Jorgesons have her,” Sam said, trying frantically to soothe him. Dean’s pupils were blown so wide that Sam couldn’t even be sure the omega was seeing him and not just relying on scent to know he was there. “She’s fine, Dean, I swear…”

“Get...her...back…” Dean rasped as a pair of nurses rushed in, disentangling Sam from him and forcing the alpha away from the bed so they could roll Dean onto his back. “Sam…”

“We’ll get her back,” Sam insisted as the nurses were getting an oxygen mask over the omega’s face and urging him to calm down in hushed tones. Dean’s eyes squeezed shut as a pained, strangled grunt escaped him and he clutched his right hand to his chest. “Dean!”

“What happened?” Dr. Trenton asked as he strode into the room, pushing his way past Sam to assess the omega who was still struggling to breathe.

“Our daughter…” It was the simplest thing to say without having to get into a long explanation of the situation that wasn’t really going to help it this instance anyway. “She was with him when he was attacked, but she’s okay...”

“Dean,” Dr. Trenton said in a slightly raised voice, trying to get Dean to stop looking over to where Sam was and focus on him instead. “My name is Dr. Trenton. Your daughter is all right, but you’re having a panic attack and that’s very bad for the pup you’re carrying. I need you to calm down, okay?” Dean’s eyes slammed shut again as a high pitched whine broke free from his throat, tears running from the corners of his eyes to soak his pillow. Dr. Trenton kept his eyes fixed on Dean but said over his shoulder, “You need to order him to calm down right now.”

“I don’t order him…” Sam started, but the doctor didn’t want to hear it.

“I really don’t care what you do in your relationship outside this hospital. After what he’s just been through this kind of stress is very dangerous for him and your pup. You’re his alpha. Order him to calm down.”

“ _Dean stop_. _Look at me_.” Wide green eyes snapped open and focused on Sam at the sound of his alpha voice. “ _Breathe_.”

“Dean…” Dr. Trenton tried again now that the omega was breathing as he had been commanded to, and Dean was able to drag his eyes over to the doctor’s face. “I know that you’re frightened and confused, but I need you to listen to me, all right?” Dean managed to nod, the sensor’s beeping fading away now that he was breathing evenly. “Your daughter is fine. She can’t be with you right now because you’re in the hospital, but she’s fine. Can you tell me if anything hurts?”

“Chest…” Dean gripped his hospital gown tighter in his fist. “Here…”

“That’s because you’re having an anxiety attack,” Dr. Trenton told him calmly.

“Sam…”

“I’m right here, baby.”

“Can you calm down for me if Sam comes back over, Dean?” Dr. Trenton asked, getting the green eyes focused back on him from where they’d slid away to Sam. “Otherwise I’m going to have to sedate you again and I don’t want to do that.” Dean nodded vigorously, though his eyes closed tightly once more and a sob rose up from his lungs. “Your daughter is safe, but your pup isn’t when you’re in this state. It’s okay to cry if you need to, but no panicking, all right?”

“‘Kay,” Dean said, taking him up on his offer and breaking down completely, giant tears bursting from him as the mixed scent of fear and relief filled the room. Dr. Trenton stepped back from the bed quickly to make room for Sam, who slid back down onto the mattress to envelope Dean. “Sam…”

“I’m here baby,” the alpha murmured against his hair, dragging his lips across the omega’s face to press feathery kisses to his forehead, cheeks, and eyelids.

“I want him checked hourly to make sure he doesn’t go into another attack,” Dr. Trenton told the nurses. “Both his vitals and the fetal monitor.” The nurses nodded their assent and he turned to Sam. “I’ll be back to see how he’s doing in a few hours. If he starts like that again I expect you to order him to stop. Is that clear?”

Like the nurses Sam merely nodded, and the doctor straightened his lab coat and left the room. It took the better part of an hour to really calm the omega down to a state where he could fall back into a restless sleep, and only then because Sam ordered him to, his leg thrown over Dean’s and his hands pressing inside the back of the hospital gown across Dean’s smooth, goosebump covered flesh. Tomorrow they were going to have to deal with both Annie Hawkins and Lily Sunder, and as Sam felt himself drifting off he added Pamela Barnes to the lawyer list. He didn’t want to say anything to Dean, but he had been worried that between the OPS restraining order and whatever was going on with the investigation into Johnny’s timely death they might find themselves in a custody battle as well. He hoped Gwen’s contact came through with employment records for Dean, because as far as Sam was concerned it was the least his family owed the omega by now. Hell, the remaining members of the Campbell clan should be pitching in to buy him a tropical island at this point. Once they had Lizzie back and Elliott was born he was taking Dean somewhere far away from all of this crap for at least a month, like Tahiti or Bora Bora and they were going to sit around with their toes in the sand and not do a damn thing outside of taking care of babies and maybe making another one. He pulled a sleeping Dean tighter to his chest and closed his eyes, dreaming of drinks with little umbrellas in them and long nights full of kisses and sex under the stars. The traitorous portion of his brain that clung to reality even in sleep tried to intrude with protestations that hunters didn’t get those kinds of happily ever afters, but he locked it away and enjoyed the fantasy for a while. After all, a guy could dream.


	60. I Prefer Ladies with Experience

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time for Sam and Dean to lawyer up.

The next day was a barrage of doctors, appointments, and phone calls, Dean having missed two full days already to try to deal with the many legal issues they were now facing and leaving them with a pressing need to get their ducks in a row as soon as possible so the omega could concentrate on healing instead of being potentially dragged into the police station or to court every time he turned around. Lily Sunder was the first of the lawyers to meet them at the hospital and she was clearly a force to be reckoned with, which was an excellent way to start off the day. A beautiful omega with vibrant red hair, she knew self defense case law inside and out, having practically grown up in her father’s law firm before winning a discrimination lawsuit against Harvard so she could attend. She never ended up going, opting to get her degree from DePaul instead, as her goal had really been to strike a blow for equality against one of the premiere private universities in the country. Dean liked her immediately.

Sam worried it would be too much for Dean to talk to her at ten o’clock in the morning, but it was the only availability she had that day and if they didn’t jump on it they’d have to wait until the following Monday to talk to her. Both of them agreed that was entirely too long to wait before trying to deal with the potential for him to be charged with a crime in Johnny’s death. They were pretty sure that the longer he dragged his feet the harder they’d look into the case for something out of order instead of chalking it up to the clear-cut case of self defense that it was, assuming he had something to hide. Dean had already been examined by Dr. Sands the minute her shift started and then by the Om-OB/GYN who needed to do the scheduled check on Elliott ( _Dr. Hess, a British woman who was definitely not going to be their doctor here since she reminded Dean far too much of Dr. Ketch and his superiority complex back at the CRC_ ), and while Dr. Hess had stressed him more than he expected he wasn’t about to reschedule with Lily. By that point he was particularly desperate to put an end to the whole thing with Johnny and get the two police guards off his door so when they released him in a couple of days it wouldn’t be to go straight to a jail cell. Lily advised Sam over the phone already to tell Detective Hudak that they would schedule at time for Dean to be interviewed after he’d spoken with his attorney should she come back to try to interview him, which of course she had. Sam followed her instructions to the letter when the officer showed up not fifteen minutes before the lawyer, and though it was clear she was annoyed there was nothing she could legally do once Dean insisted Lily needed to be present before they spoke. No wonder Actaeon had always instructed its students to “lawyer up” if they ever came in contact with police on a hunt.

Lily assured Dean at the onset of their conversation that it was okay if he didn’t remember all the details of the assault at the moment, that it was natural for the mind to try to protect itself in instances like this, but Dean was a hunter, and one of the things that had been drilled into him was remembering details from traumatic events clearly and concisely. He could never be too sure when a tiny detail from an encounter could be the key to taking down the thing he was hunting, or could be the key to avoiding life threatening mistakes in the future. It was like the muscle memory that had allowed him to load Benny’s gun with Johnny trying to break down the door, or grab the lamp to smash in the alpha’s skull while his teeth were still sunk deep in Dean’s shoulder. He remembered everything from the conversation in the kitchen to throwing the drawer to how close the knife was to Lizzie’s hands. He could scent Sam’s anger building as he recounted what had happened and leaned into him, trying to calm the alpha with the reassurance that Dean was alive and Johnny was not.

The recollection only got blurry for the omega after he hit Johnny with the lamp and the searing heat in his shoulder had begun to override his memory banks’ ability to store away information. He’d awakened clear headed that morning for the first time in days, and all of it had been there the second he opened his eyes. He’d begun to panic again, but Sam was still pressed up against him in slumber and almost the moment Sam came to he ordered Dean to calm down. Dean thought of how he’d spent the last decade hating when alphas tried to command him to do things, had trained himself to fight his instinct to submit, but Sam’s alpha voice right now was as soothing as his scent, preventing his brain from short circuiting so he wouldn’t lose his ability to function. His fingers closed around Sam’s shirt and he let the alpha’s sheer bulk ground him, nodding and leaning into his chest while the memory of what happened at Benny and Lisa’s played back like a film. To say Lily had been pleased at the level of detail Dean provided was a gross understatement. He just might be the most convincing client she’d ever interviewed, and she couldn’t suppress a satisfied smile as she shook both his and Sam’s hands and said she’d schedule an interview with the detective for Monday. That would give them the weekend for phone conversations and for Dean to recuperate, since at the moment he looked gaunt and pale and like a stiff wind would blow him over. If everything went well he might even be out of the hospital by then. God, Dean hoped she was right in her estimation.

Agent Sheridan returned around noon to try to remove Sam from the hospital again but Dr. Trenton had added explicit notes to Dean’s file that he had suffered a severe panic attack overnight and under no circumstances was to be separated from his alpha while he remained a patient. Sam considered rethinking his opinion of them man from the day before. He might be an egotist, but he was a helpful one and with what they were up against that was good enough for Sam. Adam came back to check on his brother’s progress and to let them know their dad moved on when he heard Dean made it through the claim breaking ( _because of course he had_ ) and was there in time to see the jackass Agent get booted from the premises by the nursing staff, who assured him they had security on speed dial. He brought them food - actual food from an actual restaurant outside the hospital - complete with a slice of cherry pie for his big brother, who unapologetically broke down crying the minute Adam walked into the room. Neither Sam nor Adam could blame him for cracking at the sight of a cheeseburger. The amount of time he’d spent eating hospital food in roughly the last two months was enough to make anyone weep.

With Adam on hug duty Sam stepped out to stretch his legs and call Pamela about Lizzie. Though he knew he shouldn’t leave Dean out of the conversation he didn’t want to take the chance that she was going to tell him earth shattering news, like the Jorgesons were filing an appeal for custody or something equally horrendous, and thought it better to talk to her alone first. He knew the only reason Dean was holding it together at the moment was because Sam had basically commanded that he do so, but the anxiety level in his scent was still sky high, coupled with frequent bursts of fear. Annie Hawkins was scheduled to come by at two o’clock, which was a whole other mess that Sam hadn’t really had a chance to talk to the omega about yet, and he didn’t want to risk overwhelming Dean after everything he’d been through this morning and what happened in the overnight. If there was going to be a problem getting Lizzie back he wanted to be prepared for it and have Pamela lined up to fight it. He felt like crying himself out of sheer relief when she assured him there weren’t any challenges to Dean’s custody of Lizzie, and there wouldn’t be unless charges were filed against him; something she doubted would happen because Lily Sunder was a fucking pitbull. No one could make a claim that Dean was unfit simply because he’d been attacked in broad daylight in his home. She also said if Dean was up for it she could see if the Jorgesons would bring the baby by the hospital so he could see her later. She did, however, advise Sam to get more permanent housing set up for him and Dean than just a hotel if they wanted to stay in the good graces of Indiana Pup and Child Protective Services.

Dean had finished his burger and was delighting in the piece of pie by the time Sam was done talking with Pamela, a dopey grin on his face and cherry pie filling on the corner of his mouth. Sam was tempted to lick it off but knew that would not only be extremely inappropriate in a hospital, it would likely traumatize Adam deeply. Although the second point might not actually be a negative. He had always enjoyed watching Adam squirm when he thought something was gross. Regardless, he just enjoyed seeing Dean happy for a minute with a mouthful of pie, like the first time they’d eaten dinner together fifteen plus years ago. Between that and the conversation about Lizzie he felt like they were getting a momentary reprieve, no matter how brief it turned out to be. They certainly needed it.

When Annie showed up for their two o’clock appointment the world came crashing back in again. Sam hadn’t really given Dean enough time to absorb the shock that John’s statement to Henricksen wasn’t enough to keep South Dakota from issuing a restraining order against him before Annie was there, briefcase in hand and long strawberry blonde hair pulled back in a neat ponytail. She was a beta, but she had sharp, calculating eyes and a grin like a crocodile. Unlike the meeting with Lily, where Dean had been tense but in control of himself as he recounted everything that had happened to put him in the hospital, he was positively shaking at the idea that the authorities might actually keep him from seeing Sam. It turned out New New Dean needed the alpha in a way that Old Dean and New Old Dean didn’t. It was possible that would change in time, but at the moment, knowing a neurologist and orthopedic surgeon were going to come in later to assess the bite on his shoulder, not to mention the prescription of bed rest the Om-OB/GYN had mentioned casually in passing and said Dr. Sands would discuss with him before her shift ended, he was scared to death. New New Dean hadn’t nearly enough time to adjust to his new Lafitte-less reality, or work through being attacked in Lizzie’s nursery, or come to terms with the idea that his left arm might be somehow permanently damaged, and he _needed_ someone who could order him to be calm when he couldn’t afford to fall apart but wouldn’t abuse the ability and just run roughshod over him because Christ, he was _still_ three long months away from Elliott’s due date. It was one thing to willingly tell Sam to go off with his dad to track down Azazel. It would be something entirely different if they had no choice in whether Sam stayed with him or not.

“Good afternoon gentlemen,” Annie said as soon as she entered, assessing all three of them quickly and then flashing a smile at Dean. “Normally when I meet clients for the first time they don’t look at me like I ran over their cat. I take it you’re Dean?”

“Yeah,” the omega said, his voice cracking and causing Sam to automatically start sweeping fingers through his hair.

“And you’re obviously Sam.” She turned her smile to the alpha, who nodded, before looking at Adam. “And you are…?”

“That’s my brother Adam,” Dean told her, leaning shamelessly into Sam’s touch. “It’s okay if he’s here.”

“All right then. This meeting is mostly to get us all on the same page so we know what evidence we have versus what we think we can get to submit with the appeal. I’ve already started the paperwork for you. The sooner we can get it submitted in advance of the deadline the better.”

“What...what kind of evidence are you talking about?” Dean asked, and she ran quickly through the list she’d discussed with Sam the day before. He listened intently, and once she was done he told her, “Benny...he kept a scrapbook. All our hunts. My solo hunts, too. After what happened with him and Lisa he was real paranoid about keeping a paper trail for both of us.”

“What happened with him and Lisa?”

Sam felt like he’d actually get an answer to that question this time and he was right, though it came with an increase in the full body tremor running through the omega.

“Right after they were mated, they rented this apartment - tiny little thing,” Dean told him, smiling painfully at the memory. “Couldn’t have been more than six hundred square feet. It had been listed as a one bedroom but was more like a studio. Turned out it was haunted. Someone had walled off the bedroom with a previous tenant inside it. Benny figured it out, and they’d started to knock down the wall just on a hunch. He didn’t think they were gonna find anything so he didn’t see a reason to have Lisa stay with a friend or something. But they got separated and the spirit trapped him in the bathroom. Tried to drown him. Lisa kept at the wall until she could get in and salt and burn the remains. Almost burned down the whole building, but she saved Benny. Omega Protective Services tried to claim he’d endangered her and split them up for about a month until the official FDH report came out. He didn’t want somethin’ like that to happen to them again, or to me. Figured eventually I’d settle down. He always was a romantic. The book’s down in his mancave at the house. I was gonna grab it when I was there on Monday.”

Dean’s breath hitched, which was unsurprising since he’d been crying for a few minutes while he related the story, and the lawyer watched as the alpha instinctively pulled him closer, moving his fingers from Dean’s hair down to his cheek and neck. Annie nodded to Dean in encouragement, thinking smugly to herself that these were the perfect clients to fight this kind of charge. Sam was clearly an attentive alpha, and Dean with his big doe eyes, protruding baby bump, and pretty face was in obvious need of Sam’s presence. If they could get in front of a judge for the appeal and had at the very least the list of hunts they’d be in good shape.

“We’ve got someone looking into the FDH’s system as well,” Adam added, since Sam was concentrated on calming Dean down before he got any more upset. “There’s a guy in IT who might be able to retrieve Dean’s records. It’s kind of a long shot, but we figured it was worth a try.”

“It is,” Annie insisted. “Have you made any arrangements for housing yet?”

“No, I haven’t really had a chance to look into it,” Sam told her. “Been kinda busy here. We still have rooms at the Hyatt.”

“ _A_ room,” Adam said. “Dad checked out when he left, so my stuff is back in your room.”

“Well, if you don’t mind me suggesting it, you should move all your things into Benny and Lisa’s house.” Dean stiffened at the idea, earning him an immediate backrub from Sam. Yeah, she definitely needed to get this couple in front of a judge. “Having a large house to yourself and limited ability to take care of it because you’re carrying will help sway a court to keeping the two of you together. Besides that - and I’m sorry, this will sound insensitive - you were recently attacked there while your alpha was at his job, so clearly you shouldn’t be separated from him when there are alphas willing to break into your home to come after you.”

“I’m not...I’m not helpless,” Dean told her, though the tremble in his voice certainly betrayed that pronouncement.

“The law says you are, Dean,” Annie stated, her gaze intense. “And my job as your lawyer is to help you find ways to use their own prejudices against them. If they want to insist they have to separate Sam from you because you’re not capable of making sound decisions about your life and need a protective alpha, we’re going to highlight to them how incapable you are of taking care of yourself without your _already_ protective alpha and that removing him is the worst thing they could do in your current mental and physical state. That way if they deny your appeal you’ll have solid legal footing to sue the state of South Dakota for endangering you and your pup far beyond any situation Sam could put you in. Especially when all the evidence they have to point to him as an unsuitable alpha is completely coincidental, with the exception of the poltergeist incident. If that’s the road they want to go down they’re going to have to start separating alphas who are police officers from mates who get mugged, or dentists from mates who get cavities.”

“They have a baby, too,” Adam said firmly, getting a shocked glare from his brother, who didn’t like the idea of playing some kind of princess trapped in a tower in need of a knight. The beta simply glared back, crossing his arms over his chest defiantly. “You do. Benny left Lizzie in your care, and you can’t take care of a three month old one handed when you’re having _another_ baby in a couple of months and the doctor is putting you on bed rest. _I’m_ not going to be enough to help you, that’s for damn sure.”

“Don’t say that, Runt…”

“It’s true, Dean! God, you can’t say it’s not! Since you were sixteen I’ve watched people use your designation against you, had to put up with so much crap that gets piled on you that I can’t stop because I’m _only_ a beta, and Dad could override anything I said or did to try to help you. I can’t even properly soothe you, or make you feel safe, no matter how hard I try. I’ll do anything for you, you _know_ I will, kick anyone’s ass that bothers you, _kill_ anyone that tries to hurt you, but I’m not Sam. I can’t calm you down like he can, and I can’t make you feel safe like he can. You were right when you showed up at my apartment. I don’t get it, the way you two relate, but I know it’s real, and if they want to act like you _need_ to have an alpha protecting you, then strap on your skirt, Cinderella, and show them how helpless you are without the one sitting next to you. Suck it up and use their own stupid, screwed up values against them because she’s right.”

Dean stared at his brother for a moment, shocked out of his tears and trembling, before turning to Sam, who could only shrug.

“Seems logical to me,” he said, getting a huff out of the omega.

“Fine,” Dean grumbled, “But clearly I’m Eilonwy from _The Black Cauldron_. Cinderella? Come on, Adam.”

“All right, you work on getting the scrapbook and the employment records,” Annie told them. “I’m going to file for an extension, given the circumstances. Claim that it’s unfair to ask Sam to file an appeal within seven days since he can’t leave you alone in the hospital without risking a charge of neglect. I’ll get a statement from the physician overseeing your care here on the importance of Sam staying with you. If there’s anyone else you can think of…”

“Dr. Milton and Jody Mills, back in Sioux Falls,” Sam said without hesitation. “We can give you their contact information.”

“Okay.” She took out a pad of paper for Sam to write their numbers down. “Dr. Milton is your primary care physician?”

“Om-OB/GYN,” Dean said.

“And Jody Mills?”

There was no way to miss how the air was suddenly sucked completely out of the room as the three men looked at her. Clearly she had stepped in something. She just hoped it was something that would help the case instead of hurting it. Sam was rubbing Dean’s good arm, eventually settling down to pass little circular swirls over the omega’s wrist with his thumb. He didn’t regret bringing up Jody when she could help them, but he was sorry he’d just thrown it out there without discussing it with Dean.

“She’s a…” Dean swallowed, gripping Sam’s hand tightly. “She’s a rape counsellor.”

“Oh.” Annie hadn’t been expecting that, and she tried to school her expression into something more neutral than stunned. She didn’t succeed. “I’m sorry. Is the pup…”

“No,” Sam said quickly. “No, it’s mine, we have the paternity test.”

“It was a while ago,” Dean stated flatly.

“It would be helpful if we could have a statement from her. If you’re okay with that, Dean.” It was a few moments before he nodded, his expression unreadable as he worked to furiously lock down anything from bleeding into his scent. “Okay. I’ll contact them both this afternoon. I don’t mean to be callous about it, but...that will really help your case. If they try to say Sam’s unfit because he hasn’t claimed you yet we can use that and this recent attack to refute it. The idea of being mated would obviously be very conflicting for an omega who has been through something like that, and most OPS employees won’t touch it with a ten foot pole. Can you get me the police report on the incident?”

“There isn’t one,” Sam said. “It was in Louisiana and...their laws wouldn’t have helped him.”

“I know all about Louisiana.” Her face darkened and she nodded in understanding. “We can leave the whole thing out if it’s going to endanger him with the rapist.”

“They’re dead.” She arched an eyebrow at Sam, noticing the storm in his eyes as Dean clenched and unclenched his jaw. “Died a couple of months ago. They were hunters. It’s a dangerous life.”

“ _They_. Wow. Are you _sure_ you’re okay with this being put into the appeal Dean?” The omega nodded again, but he had stopped looking at her. She turned to Sam and Adam, who both very clearly wanted this interview to end, having nothing more to tell her that could be helpful, and decided to wrap it up with a small smile. “Trust me, gentlemen,” she told them. “I have your back on this. Call me once you get either the scrapbook or the employment records. I’ll get in touch with the doctor and Ms. Mills.”  

“Thanks,” Sam said, reaching his hand out for her to shake.

She took it, giving him a short nod, and glanced at Dean, deciding there was no chance of getting him to open up any more. She turned to Adam instead, shaking his hand as well, before heading out of the hospital room. Annie knew she’d given them a lot to think about and a lot of information to track down in a very short amount of time, but even with the last minute revelation of Jody Mills and her relationship to Dean she couldn’t help but be thrilled. Not thrilled that he had been assaulted at some point of course; she might be a lawyer but she wasn’t completely heartless. No, she was thrilled because there was simply so much in Dean’s history to point any rational, reasonable judge to the obvious conclusion that Sam should not be separated from him because of what boiled down to a single mistake at a bar in Sioux Falls. As long as they could get either the records from Benny’s house or the case files from the FDH, this case would be a slam dunk.

“Are you okay with the idea of moving our stuff to Benny and Lisa’s house?” Sam asked softly when the door was closed, leaning back on the inclined hospital bed and pulling Dean onto his chest. “I can get an apartment if it’s too much.”

“Yean, no, it’s...it’s fine,” Dean murmured, feeling slightly numb and dreading when the dam holding his emotions back finally broke. “It’s kinda soon but...I’m not gonna let your fucking cousin ruin their house for me just cuz I’m scared of going back right now.”

“We should find out if we can even get in,” Adam said, leaning in to rub his brother’s back. “They might still have it taped off. If we can I’ll go check the basement for Benny’s scrapbook.”

“They’ll have an officer standing guard if it’s still cordoned off,” Sam told him. “Otherwise we’re good, even if the tape is still there.”

“Bring back dinner,” Dean added as his younger brother headed out. “Don’t forget the pie.”

“When have I ever forgotten the pie?” Adam demanded, looking genuinely affronted by the order.

“That one time we were in Syracuse and you came back with cake,” Dean replied without missing a beat.

“Jesus. You are never going to let me live that down are you?”

“Not as long as you keep telling people the Bed, Bath & Beyond story.”

Adam scowled as his brother arched an eyebrow at him, and petulantly left the room, muttering to himself about crappy gas station pastry selections. Sam waited until they were alone before saying quietly, “Are you really sure you’re okay?”

Dean shook his head, too overwrought by the day thus far to keep up the tough guy front. He slotted his face up against Sam’s neck, letting very unmanly tears flow out of him while Sam played with his hair and kissed his forehead and face and caressed his arms. He decided with only a little bitterness and regret that New New Dean was definitely not someone who was going to make it without his alpha. Breathing in the comfort of the books and worn leather and all the other things he was coming to associate uniquely with Sam ( _safety, home, love, desire_ ), he figured he could be okay with that; especially when they hadn’t even seen the two specialists and there was no telling what he was going to find out about his left arm. Forget being Princess Eilonwy - he’d pour his pregnant ass into a goddamn Tinkerbell mini-dress if it meant he got to stay with Sam.


	61. You Love Chick Flicks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little bit of fluff, a little bit of angst, a little bit of sorrow - so, standard Sam and Dean stuff.

For once in his life, Dean turned out to be just about the luckiest son of a bitch alive. The surgeon and neurologist had shown up to examine his shoulder shortly before dinner, and while there was significant damage to the muscle Johnny didn’t bite down anywhere near to the nerves. While Dean would need to go through light physical therapy until Elliott was born, likely significant PT afterwards, and his shoulder was never going to be what one might call attractive again, he wouldn’t have any loss of function in his arm or his hand. He wanted to be happy about that but couldn’t help waiting for the other shoe to drop, which it did when Dr. Sands came in at the end of her shift to talk about the state of Dean’s pregnancy after discussing with Dr. Hess her examination earlier in the day. He was officially being put on bed rest, something Dr. Hess brought up, but Dr. Sands’ explanation of it sounded like absolute hell.

His physical activity was to be severely restricted. He was not to lift anything heavier than ten pounds. No stairs, no driving, no lengthy walks, no traveling further than half an hour from home, no laundry, nothing that would put any strain on his system at all. Even a trip to the grocery store for more than a carton of eggs and loaf of bread ( _a gallon of milk was too close to the ten pound weight limit to carry around a store_ ) was forbidden, and if the bread and eggs were on opposite sides of the store that was out, too. Then again, he was only going to be allowed out of the house if there was no snow on the ground because the risk of falling was too great. Elizabeth was too heavy for him to lift, though obviously he could hold her, and if she was sleeping in a crib instead of a bassinet he was under no circumstances to lean over to pick her up. The same went for bath time. Someone else would have to do the bending and the stooping if they were using an actual tub for her. In fact, anything that involved bending and stooping was off limits. Babywearing was out, as was carrying the carseat or getting Lizzie in or out of it. He would need a stool to sit on in the shower in case he got lightheaded and to reduce the chance of slipping, and baths were out for him unless Sam helped him in and out of the tub. Basically, he couldn’t do anything besides put his feet up and knit like somebody’s grandmother, with the occasional walk around the house to make sure he didn’t develop blood clots.

Oh, and no knotting for the remainder of his term. Not that his libido was really working at this point, but when Dean told Sam he wasn’t getting laid for a long time after finding out about Gordon, he hadn’t actually meant that as some kind of prophecy. Now he just felt like a total failure as a human being, a man, and especially as an omega, on top of being broken in multiple ways. About the only good thing to come out of the day was that as long as he remained stable for the next thirty-six hours he’d be allowed to go home.

Well, that wasn’t the only good thing. Adam returned with dinner ( _lasagna, still warm, the kind that was clearly made by someone who knew how to make it properly_ ) and Benny’s scrapbook. The police had released the scene and he had already moved all of their stuff in and checked them out of the Hyatt. It didn’t really _feel_ like a good thing of course, but as Dean focused on eating his dinner instead of giving into the desire to crawl into a small, dark room and never come out, he could understand rationally that it was. Annie had stressed the importance of both the scrapbook and the permanent-for-now residence only a few hours ago, and to have them checked off the list already would mean they could focus on the IT kid, Kevin, at the Department and how he was coming with retrieving Dean’s records. Gwen had texted Adam to let him know Kevin called back earlier in the day and that he was pretty sure he’d figured out when the files were deleted, but trying to un-delete them was going to be much harder than just finding the electronic data trail. He needed to crack several layers of encryption on Samuel’s account first, and since an announcement that was made on Wednesday about the Assistant Director committing suicide security was keeping a close watch on anything the A.D. had touched.

Adam’s report on what Kevin had been up to reminded Sam that he hadn’t checked his voicemail in a while, and that the police in Lawrence wanted to talk to him. He hoped Dean would get released soon, because he didn’t feel comfortable leaving him alone in the hospital and he needed to get a new phone from his carrier so people could actually reach him. Although maybe he’d head out for just a little while tomorrow if the omega was doing well. He had three messages about separate hunts and five messages about his grandfather. Four were from the police department and one was from his grandfather’s attorney. Sam thought it probably wouldn’t look great for him that he hadn’t immediately called the police back, but at least he had valid reasons that would be difficult to dispute. Dean’s concern at yet another police station wanting to talk to Sam reminded him he hadn’t said anything about going to take care of his grandfather, and while he certainly wasn’t going to tell him _everything_ he did need to let the omega know they wouldn’t have to worry about him anymore. And that made Sam realize he hadn’t told Dean about Gordon either, so he hastened to fill him in on both threats being taken care of, doing an awful lot to lighten the somber mood Dean had fallen into following Dr. Sands’ visit.

Adam headed back to the house after dropping off dinner, saying simply that some things needed to be cleaned up and eliciting a flinch from his brother, but promising to find a Bed, Bath & Beyond so there’d be some throw pillows there by the time Dean got out of the hospital. Dean forbade anything red, and seemed so close to launching into a lengthy explanation of what the color symbolized that it practically had Adam running from the room. Sam accused Dean of just trying to get him alone, which didn’t land quite the way he intended and left the omega sliding into melancholy again. Unable to think of anything better to do, he grabbed the remote to click on the TV and set them up with something to watch to take their minds off the court cases, health problems, and dread of moving into Benny and Lisa’s, which even Sam felt conflicted about. They were in the middle of arguing over whether to watch _That 70s Show_ ( _a big “no” vote from Sam because the clothes were awful and it wasn’t that funny_ ), and _Smallville_ ( _a big “no” from Dean because Superman was lame_ ) when Dean’s phone blared out, “ **Stacy’s mom has got it goin’ on/she’s all I want and I’ve waited for so long** …” and the omega very nearly shrieked in surprise. Sam had forgotten he changed the ringtone the day before, and as Dean fumbled to grab it he burst out laughing, hurrying up off the bed as Dean swiped at him to stop.

“You changed my ringtone?” Dean demanded, and Sam simply nodded because he couldn’t speak through all the giggling. “You’re such a dick.” Checking the caller ID he saw that it was Bobby and decided to put it on speakerphone. “Hey Bobby, how’s it goin’?”

“ _A lot better now that I’m talkin’ to you, boy_.” The relief in the beta’s voice was palpable. “ _You’ve had me real scared the last couple of days, ya idjit_.”

“Join the club,” Sam said.

“ _Well, nice to know you remember how to use a phone, Sam_. _Here I been thinkin’ you must’ve lost your fingers or the ability to speak, but apparently you just didn’t think I was important enough to check in with_.”

“That’s my fault, Bobby,” Dean told him hastily, wondering how it was possible for the old hunter to sound so much like someone’s long-suffering mother. “I’ve been keepin’ him occupied.”

“ _I don’t need to hear about your sex life, Dean_.”

The omega flushed, sucking in a breath at the mention of something he was definitely not going to be having for at least the next three months, and Sam said, “I haven’t been able to get out of the hospital to pick up a replacement phone. I’m still using the burner and don’t have any of my contacts.”

“ _Oh_ ,” the hunter grumbled. “ _Well, I suppose I can accept that. It’d be nice if you boys called once in a while though to check in, and not just when you needed somethin’. That’s all I’m sayin’_.”

“How are Ellen and Jo?” Sam asked, and Dean raised an eyebrow at him.

“Why are you askin’ Bobby about Ellen and Jo?”

“ _Cuz they’re here. And I’m pretty sure their cycles are all synced up. I might not survive the week_.”

“Well you definitely won’t if you say the thing about their cycles,” Sam told him.

“I don’t...why are they there?” Dean said, ignoring Sam and turning his attention fully to the phone.

“ _Sam didn’t tell you_?”

“Sam has been trying not to overwhelm a pregnant omega with upsetting news,” Sam stated, running his hand through Dean’s hair and scratching his scalp as he scented the smaller man starting to grow tense. After moving to massage Dean’s neck for a few moments he said, “The Roadhouse burned down.”

“What?”

“Ash called me on the way back from my grandfather’s. He had some information for me on that hunt I’ve been on with your dad.” He gave Dean a pointed look, since they hadn’t told Bobby anything about Azazel. Dean blanched, sliding closer to him on the bed. “There was nothing left. I found Ash inside.”

“ _Ellen and Jo made their way here after_ ,” Bobby chimed in. “ _And they’ve been at each other’s throats ever since. Jo wants to go out huntin’ the damn thing that torched the place and Ellen’s about ready to lock her in my panic room_.”

“They know what did it?” Dean asked, and Sam took the phone from him to move across the room.

“Don’t answer that question, Bobby,” he ordered. “Dean’s on bed rest and he’s not supposed to be stressed.”

“ _Dean’s on_ **_what_**?”

“Bed rest.”

“ _Just how bad did that bastard hurt you, Dean_?”

Dean had rarely heard so much anger in Bobby’s voice directed at someone not named John Winchester, and he glared at Sam for having brought it up, for taking the phone away, for reminding Dean of reality, and for being sensible. He knew he was far too eager to jump down this rabbit hole to distract himself from the legal issues and medical issues and the fact that he hadn’t actually seen Lizzie since Monday and even though Sam told him Pamela could have her come to visit him once he was feeling up to it, he couldn’t bring himself to believe it. It would be so much easier to ignore everything and chase down something evil to kill.

“Badly,” Sam answered when it was clear Dean wouldn’t. “So you and I can talk shop, but you and Dean need to talk about simple things like the weather.”

“ _Then you better get yourself a phone, cuz I ain’t sure how much longer Ellen can keep that damned fool daughter of hers here, and Jo’s liable to get herself killed_.”

“She can come out here,” Dean called from across the room, determined not to just sit around useless for three months. “We’re...we’re moving into Benny and Lisa’s house on Saturday.”

There was a pause on the other end of the phone, the beta’s concern for Dean bleeding out in the silence.

“ _You sure that’s a good idea_?”

“We kind of don’t have a choice,” Sam said reluctantly.

“I’ll text you the address,” Dean told him.

“ _I’ll run it by Ellen and Jo. Might help diffuse some of the booby traps they keep layin’ for each other. They were both expectin’ you home by now, Dean_.”

“Yeah...I was too,” Dean said. “I’m gonna be stuck here a while longer so, you know, don’t keep the light on.”

“ _I’ll always keep the light on for you_.”

“Thanks Bobby.”

“We’ll talk to you soon,” Sam said, and flipped the phone closed. He didn’t need to look over at Dean to know he was upset. New New Dean didn’t put forth much effort to keeping his emotions out of his scent. Sam was surprised at what a comfort that was. It was a lot easier to know what to do if he didn’t have to guess how Dean was feeling. “Before I get accused of withholding information, this is the first day you’ve really been awake and I have been trying not to throw everything at you all at once.” Dean opened his mouth to object, but Sam didn’t let him, moving back to the bed and putting a finger on his lips. “And this is _not_ me deciding what you need to know and what you don’t for your own good, or whatever else you’re thinking right now. You needed to know about the OPS and the mess with Johnny immediately. The Roadhouse burning down and Ellen and Jo staying with Bobby was not a situation with a time limit on it.”

“Except that Jo wants to track the thing that did it down now.”

“Well, that’s new. A couple of days ago she was...how did Adam put it...pee-your-pants terrified.”

Dean snorted, ducking his head and leaning forward into Sam’s chest. The standing promise of a hug manifested and he sighed, exhausted. Sam was starting to smell of body odor in addition to his scent, and while it wasn’t unpleasant it was a stark reminder of just how long Dean had been stuck in one hospital or another recently. He had long since passed feeling grimy himself and was starting to wonder what internal organ he’d have to sell for a shower. Not that the idea of being dirty was foreign to him with the life he’d led, but the grime that built up after a couple of days sitting around in a hospital was somehow just...different than the grime from a hunt. That and he’d started to get a little spoiled by the showers in the hotel rooms Sam had been booking for them. The FDH definitely needed to start paying hunters better, or at least allowing them to expense the cost of rooms at the Quality Inn.

“They know what it was?” he asked, tipping his face up to meet the swirling colors of the alpha’s eyes.

“A demon,” Sam replied softly, pressing a kiss to Dean’s forehead. “From the description it kinda sounds like Ruby.” The omega went rigid against him, a plume of anger filling the space between them. Sam move his lips to Dean’s jaw, hoping to placate him some, and said, “If it is Ruby I’ll handle it. This is not up for debate. I was thinking you could ask Garth to look into it.”

Dean went rigid again, pulling back from Sam with uneasy eyes. Sam ( _the little shit_ ) stared back at him placidly, his expression unreadable.

“Why Garth?”

“You haven’t checked your thirty-seven text messages from him?” A brief hint of annoyance flashed across Sam’s face before he managed to get his emotions under control again, and Dean reached for his phone. “I didn’t mean to pry. A text came through while I was updating your ringtone and curiosity got the best of me when I saw how many he’d sent you. Not that I don’t trust you, but that many messages usually means someone’s working a case. But, you know, my _pregnant_ omega with only one functioning shoulder should be too smart to work a case at this point in his life. So what’s this Devil’s Gate and what does it have to do with me? I figure that’s the only reason you’d be having Garth secretly researching demons right now when you’ve got much better things to do with your time, like, I dunno, having a baby. Oh, Crowley says hello and that he’s sending onesies.”

Much as he’d tried not to become angry over the text messages and the fact that Dean was looking into Azazel and had met at least once with a demon himself, it was very difficult for Sam to keep the swell of irritation in check. He realized he was being a knothead about it, but he really didn’t care in that moment; not with the long list of restricted activities now placed on his not-yet-mate still playing through his head and the uncertainty of the next three months ahead of them. Dr. Sands had put the kibosh on a _lot_ of normal, everyday things, like grocery shopping and climbing stairs. If Dean wasn’t allowed to walk around a store or carry around a gallon of milk or pick up Lizzie, Sam was pretty damn sure he shouldn’t be clandestinely researching Azazel. Though Dean’s omega wanted him to placate the enormous alpha whose hands had stilled on his back, he was too angry himself at the thought of Sam just going through his phone without even asking to back down entirely. The most he was willing to do was drop his eyes to start reading through the texts, hoping Sam would accept the minor submissive move.

“I tried telling you about Crowley,” Dean muttered, scrolling through all the information Garth sent over. There was a lot, and none of it good. “Twice.”

“Probably should have tried a third time.”

“And say what, Sam? That I met a demon in a bathroom who says that you’re gonna become Azazel’s bitch and open up some Devil’s Gate that _I_ sure as shit never heard of so he can release Hell on the planet - without even checking it out first? Crowley could’ve been lyin’, how was I supposed to know? So yeah, I asked Garth to look into it before I said anything to you about yellow eyes’ blood not being just for dreams and mind-ganking demon skanks and him wanting you to say the password to open up the Mines of Moria.”

No matter how the ire churned in his belly, Sam found it impossible to keep a smile off his face as he watched the omega continue to absorb the text messages and stubbornly refuse to look up.

“You did not just make a _Fellowship of the Ring_ reference,” he said, watching as a half-smirk cracked Dean’s face.

“It’s the last part I remember,” Dean replied, glancing up at Sam from under his lashes. “I mean, after the hangover wore off. When I was prayin’ to the porcelain god I didn’t really remember much outside of what pizza tasted like on your tongue which - distracting, let me tell ya, but later...yeah, I asked what the tentacle thing was and you said it was the Watcher in the Water and really started geeking out about the book and it seemed like the right time to pounce. Figured I had to shut you up or you’d go on all night and we’d never get to the good stuff.”

“Yeah?” Shades of pink rose to Sam’s cheeks, and any chance for his irritation about Dean’s secrecy to take root was quickly squashed. “So it _was_ my dorkiness that hooked you?”

“Nah, your dorkiness just made me carpe diem. I didn’t want things to go the way they did after Adam’s party.” Dean turned beet red, looking back down at the phone just to have something else to look at besides Sam’s dimples. “I mean, I couldn’t believe that was really you on the steps when I got there, you were just so...alphas don’t turn my head, okay? There’s too much crap that comes with having an alpha, you have no idea, it never seemed worth it, but you were just beautiful. And you didn’t know you were and that made you _more_ beautiful. I _couldn’t believe_ you were the kid with a model Millenium Falcon and that super long _Doctor Who_ scarf and the BMX bike that you didn’t even know how to ride until I showed you. But it _was_ you, and you were so tall and tan and... _everything_...and your hair was this adorable wavy mop and your eyes kinda went straight through me, and god the way you smelled...and it seemed like you felt it too, but you were givin’ off such mixed signals. I hit on you all night and you were such a perfect goddamn gentleman it drove me _nuts_ , I thought I should’ve brought signal flags or something so I could give you the all clear cuz you just weren’t getting it or, I dunno, maybe you weren't into guys at all. Then in the morning you were right there next to me and I was wearin’ your shirt and I figured I’d take a chance but you...obviously _now_ I know...why you didn’t take me up on it...but I thought that Laramie was probably gonna be my last chance to find out if you felt anything. For me. Or if I was just bein’ an idiot.”

“I was the only idiot in Laramie. I knew you never went for alphas. I thought I was just conveniently located when you needed to blow off some steam and got _really_ lucky with how you wanted to blow it off. You could’ve wanted to go bowling to unwind instead, which I guess might have worked in my favor since you clearly admire my form.” That got a snort out of Dean, who peeked up at Sam again, the red in his cheeks lessening. “I shouldn’t have left that note.”

“Why did you?”

“Seemed like if I let you down hard you wouldn’t let me down easy.”

Dean’s hand found a fistful of Sam’s shirt and tugged as he raised his eyes up again to Sam’s face, planting a soft, open-mouthed kiss on his lips that the alpha would have liked to go on longer, but certainly wasn’t going to push after what the omega had been through in recent days.

“And that’s the kind of stupid that makes alphas not worth the trouble,” he breathed, scooching forward painfully to bury himself in Sam’s torso. He inhaled sharply at the feel of Sam’s hand rubbing over his abdomen, searching for Elliott’s little hands and feet.

“Well,” Sam said, “you’re stuck with me now.” That earned him another soft kiss, which lingered longer than the first, even as he felt Dean’s lips trembling against his. Christ, Sam was just so gone on him. He might be embarrassed if he retained the ability to think in moments like this. “I’m thinking tomorrow maybe we can get the Jorgesons to bring Lizzie to see you and I can go get an actual phone. I’ve got to call the police in Lawrence back, and my grandfather’s lawyer. Then maybe I can run to the house to turn the den into a bedroom or something so you don’t have to climb the stairs. I can ward the place too while I’m at it.”

“Benny warded it when he had it built,” Dean told him. A wave of fatigue and misery corrupted the omega’s roses and pie, causing the alpha to tighten his hold and tangle his fingers in Dean’s abnormally and wonderfully long hair. “I don’t wanna be here anymore Sammy. I don’t wanna have to do all this crap. I fuckin’ hate being stuck in Indiana. Can’t we just take Lizzie and make a run for it when I get outta here on Saturday? Go live in Henry’s bunker where no one’s gonna find us and act like none of this exists?”

“We’re not mated, Dean…” Sam said, and Dean shook him by the hand still tangled in the alpha’s shirt.

“So fuckin’ claim me already!” he exclaimed. “I’ve got another shoulder, just mark me up and we’ll be set!”

“Dean, I am not just going to sink my teeth into your shoulder when we’re not tied together. You can’t expect me to hurt you like that.” Sam could feel Dean shaking, the shoulder of his shirt growing wet with hot tears, and took the omega’s face in his hands to make him look up. The green eyes were swimming in the saline that was flowing in little streams over his cheekbones, desperate and pleading, but claiming outside of knotting was agony for an omega, and the agony didn’t stop until the they were tied to their mate. It would be months before Sam could take the pain away, and Dean would probably have lost his mind by then. Even so, it was hard to have Dean’s anguish focused on him and not be able to do anything to ease it. “It’ll all be okay. I promise.”

“I don’t want to go to Benny’s.” New New Dean didn’t have the energy for pretense when it came to these kinds of things, apparently. That was going to take the omega some time to get used to; the desire to just lay things out in the open without armoring up for battle every time his feelings came into play, at least when it came to the alpha. “I _can’t_ when they’re not there anymore. Monday was so bad, Sam. Before your cousins even showed up. I... _can’t_.”

“We aren’t going to stay,” Sam assured him, continuing to smooth the tears away with his thumbs as they trailed down the omega’s face. “Once Elliott is born we’ll be gone, and we never have to go back again, I promise. We can sell it or burn it or just let it sit there until it falls down. Whatever you want to do. We just need it right now. Okay?”

Dean nodded, though he still wept brokenly until he eventually fell asleep against Sam’s chest. The alpha tried to watch TV for a little while but quickly grew bored, wishing he had something to read. He grabbed Dean’s phone again and switched the ringtone out, _Stacy’s Mom_ having lived up to its potential, opting for _Solace_ ( _the orchestral version, of course_ ). After all, his omega was someone who like eighties soft rock played on a harp. A piano, woodwinds, and strings would likely be right up his alley, even though he’d never admit it. Plus, it was the version from _The Sting_ , and _The Sting_ was awesome. He really couldn’t see Dean arguing with it.

Done playing around with the phone he wasn’t left with a whole lot else to do, so he picked up the scrapbook and started leafing through it. The thing was massive, not a standard bound book but an expandable one with metal pins holding the spine together so that new hole-punched sheets could be added as necessary. It went all the way back to high school, with _real_ pictures that used to be taken on film and then dropped off at a drugstore to be developed. A fourteen year old Dean with a sixteen year old Benny at the top of a three-tiered podium in their hideous school uniforms, beaming as they held up the medals around their necks, two slightly-less-thrilled pairs of teens on the lower levels with less impressive medals of their own. Another picture of the two of them on the same kind of podium for a different competition, page after page filled with a record of the awards they won and the friendship they’d had. The two of them in the middle of a group of other alphas when Dean looked to be about fifteen, Dean’s arm slung around Benny’s neck and both of them pulling faces at the camera and whoever was behind it. Solo photos of Dean in the middle of a shooting competition or Benny fighting with a goddamned broadsword. Dean in the school pool in the middle of splashing water up at the camera so all that could really be seen was a freckled shoulder and spray of water. Benny in the process of dismantling a rifle with the gun master behind him holding a stopwatch to see how fast he could take it apart and put it back together. A page with details of the last competition they won, meticulously kept, since Benny wouldn’t compete again for the few remaining months he was in school.

After the competitions were print-outs of every hunt Dean went on with his father, with Benny, and solo. Far more than the number of individual hunts Benny took part in, all of them catalogued chronologically. Frankly, Sam was shocked at how often John had ditched his son somewhere, thinking the two had been hunting together non-stop until the past year or so, but the number of hunts Dean picked up with Benny or on his own told a very different story. The earliest hunts pre-dated Benny's mating with Lisa by several years, so he must have gone back after the issue with the apartment and done a specific search for the FDH records of the hunts Dean had worked. The very first hunt of Dean’s was a werewolf pack with his father, less than two weeks after John had come to pick him up at school. There were records of witches, trolls, ghouls, arachne, shapeshifters, wraiths, banshees, crocotta, sirens, an ogre that apparently broke Dean’s arm and leg because there was a picture of him and Benny in a hospital, both wearing very forced smiles with anxious eyes, poltergeists, vengeful spirits, basilisks - it was insane the number of things Dean had hunted down and killed either as a member of a two person team or simply on his own. It went all the way up through the Laramie job, and while Sam knew he hadn’t been hunting as long as Dean and shouldn’t use him as a measuring stick, he still was stunned by how many pages Dean’s FDH-registered hunts filled. With the exception of the gap when he had the broken arm and leg he went from one job to the next with almost no breather in between. No wonder he bottled everything up. There was an awful lot that could potentially come spilling out if he let it.

At the very back of the book was a section Benny had marked “Celebration Time,” and it was all photographs from after the hunts they’d done together, starting out as the standard film photos and transitioning to digital as they became more recent. Each one was labeled with the date and what they’d just vanquished. Some were hanging out in bars, both of them looking glassy-eyed with beers in their hands, one or the other of them shooting darts or playing pool, someone making a funny face at the camera half the time. Then the picture of Dean standing over the dragon Lisa had talked about, a “Holy shit can you believe this?” look written all over his face, eyes bright and smile lighting up the cavern around them. A picture of the mating party ( _Sam had always just wanted a simple registration at a courthouse, but some couples liked to go all out with a ceremony after they’d mated_ ), Dean standing next to Benny looking thrilled as Benny held Lisa in her white gown tight to his side, with a picture below it of a buzzed-looking Dean, his best-man boutonniere clutched between his teeth and no jacket, dancing with Lisa whose head was thrown back in laughter, the whole page labeled, “ _Best hunt of my life_.” After that Lisa showed up in the photos, patching one or the both of them up with an irritated look on her face, or trying to avoid Benny covered in something awful and going in for a hug. Dean leaning against her in the backyard by the barbecue, beer in hand and half of his face covered in bruises, looking just a little drunk and a lot happy. Benny handing an obviously very young Ben off to Dean, two of Dean’s fingers splinted together with athletic tape, his lower forearm bandaged. Benny and Dean hanging out in the Lafitte’s in-ground pool, both of them black-and blue from the waist up. The very last one was of Sam and Dean having breakfast at the kitchen island with Ben and Lisa from the day before they left. Benny must have snapped it on his phone or was very good at sneaky photography, and put it in the album before the family was killed. Sam was talking to Lisa, who was holding Lizzie and getting tugged on by Ben, and Dean was looking at him with such fondness while he was distracted that Sam’s heart just about stopped. It was dated “ _January 18, 2006_ ” and titled “ _Dean’s best hunt - Vamp nest, Laramie, WY_.”

Sam felt like he’d been stabbed in the chest between the sudden pain and the way his breath left him. There were half a dozen or so blank pages after the picture of him and Dean’s self-made family, into which Sam had clearly been accepted, that would never be filled. Two weeks ago they’d been on their way from Fort Wayne to Sioux Falls with plans to get back together in six months, and one week ago they’d reversed the trip to lay the Lafittes to rest. He hadn’t stopped at all to think about what going back to their house was going to be like, too focused on all the legal threats he and Dean were facing, but now he didn’t know how they could possibly be comfortable there for any length of time. He didn’t realize he was crying until he felt Dean stir against his shoulder. He set the scrapbook aside quickly, swiping a hand across his face.

“S’mmy,” the omega muttered, his voice sleep heavy. “Y’okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Sam said, trying to get his breathing under control.

The jade eyes slitted open and looked at him skeptically from under drooping eyelids.

“You’re a terrible liar.”

“It’s…” He couldn’t bring up Benny and Lisa and the scrapbook. Even if he were willing to upset Dean like that - which he absolutely wasn’t - Sam was too much of a mess to even know where to start. Instead he gestured at the television. “It’s the ending of _Titanic_. It gets me every time.”

“Aw, Sammy,” Dean said with a smirk, pressing a tired kiss to his jaw. “Such a romantic.”

“Well, come on,” Sam scoffed, relieved Dean wasn’t pressing the issue. “They both could _totally_ have fit on that door or headboard or whatever the hell it is. The stupidity just guts me.”

“You wouldn’t have given me the door?”

“Oh, no, I definitely would have because there’s no way the two of _us_ would fit on that door, but DiCaprio’s not even your height and Winslet’s almost a foot shorter than me. The two of them should have made it work. That’s what happens when your make a movie about an alpha falling for a beta.”

Dean snorted, snuggling up against Sam’s neck, saying, “Unlike _Terminator_.”

“Exactly,” Sam agreed. “I gotta wonder what happened to James Cameron between the two films to make him think that was going to work without it looking like the alpha sacrificed himself for nothing.”

Dean outright laughed, carefully snaking his left arm forward to splay his fingers on Sam’s stomach and only wincing slightly in pain.

“I love you,” he said through a giggle, nuzzling up against his ear as Sam half turned to him, shocked.

“What?” he asked quietly, but the green eyes stayed firmly closed.

“You heard me,” the omega sighed. “I’m not sayin’ it again. Least not right now. Lemme sleep.”

The last request came out almost a grumble, and Sam hastened to obey, murmuring, “Okay,” into Dean’s hair. It was almost scary how easily Dean could turn his mood around just by _being_. Sam hoped he was able to do the same for Dean. He’d give the Jorgesons a call tomorrow and then head out early for Sunset Trail, intent on making it as comfortable as he could for the omega despite the awful circumstances. He was certain that’s what Benny and Lisa would want. He didn’t know how they were going to get through the next couple of months, but he was determined to have Dean feel like he didn’t want to burn the house down when they left.


	62. Of Course You Should Be Afraid of the Dark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam spends a day at the house, Dean gets a visitor at the hospital.

Sam left the hospital early after calling Annie to let her know he needed to ready the house to bring Dean home just in case the OPS tried to get him in a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t scenario where he had to choose between a day away from Dean and a house in shambles. She appreciated his healthy paranoia, given what they were going through at the moment, and appreciated even more finding out they had Benny’s scrapbook in hand and Kevin was working on cracking Samuel’s files. He also ran down the list of physical restrictions Dean now had, including his need for a ground floor bedroom that he had to get set up, which he thought for a moment was going to have her breaking into song. She said to have Kevin keep digging and to get a copy of Dean’s medical restrictions written up for the court, but between the scrapbook and a note from Dr. Sands they should at the very least be able to get an injunction allowing them more time to recover the files, especially if Benny’s scrapbook was as detailed and lengthy as Sam claimed. The Jorgesons had a family event that they couldn’t miss so Lizzie would not be coming for a visit, but Dean insisted that was fine. Much as he was going nuts not having seen her for days the hospital was really no place for a baby. Sam gave Adam a call to get over to the hospital to spend some time with his brother, largely because the omega kept insisting he’d be fine by himself for a while even as the anxiety was rolling off of him so it was pretty clear he sure as hell wasn’t going to call Adam on his own.

Bobby called back to let Dean know Jo was going to take him up on his offer to get her out from under Ellen’s thumb for a while and had started out at the crack of dawn, so they should be watching for her a little after dinner. He’d tried to tell her Dean was still in the hospital and she should wait a day but apparently she was fit to be tied, and that whole getting locked in the panic room thing he mentioned the day before was turning into a real live possibility. As far as Jo was concerned she knew how to pick a lock, so whether anyone was at 59 Sunset Trail or not when she got there was irrelevant. The problem was the odds were good Sam would be, and they didn’t exactly have the cuddliest of relationships, and Dean dreaded the thought of getting released only to end up in a house filled with Sam’s irritated funk because it was February and there was no way to open up the windows to air it out.

Adam arrived dutifully, clearly refreshed after having spent almost a full day outside the hospital, and god did Dean want to know what that felt like. He brought back a bunch of board games from Benny and Lisa’s, watching his brother freeze momentarily as he recognized the boxes and the scents on them, but after recovering himself he opted for Parcheesi, because he knew Adam had no clue how to play it so he could probably kick his ass pretty easily. Adam objected, having had Dean as an older brother his entire life and knowing exactly what he was thinking, but Dean pulled the, “I’m the one stuck in a hospital” card and Adam caved. Dean trounced him handily, and after losing two more rounds Adam insisted they switch to Uno.

That it surprised Dean when Agent Sheridan showed up to talk to him about the restraining order against Sam when Adam ran down to grab some food from the cafeteria just seemed to be proof to the omega that the more time he spent in the hospital disconnected from the world the worse he was getting at remembering humanity sucked. What the guy hoped to achieve was anyone’s guess, but Dean thought it was probably something along the lines of getting him alone so Dean would feel “safe” to confess all the awful things Sam had done to him. While he knew there were an awful lot of oms out there who needed that kind of help, he wasn’t one of them, and he was damn tired of authority figures treating him like a child. At least the guy knew to back off at the words “not without my lawyer present” and he was gone by the time Adam got back upstairs. It made Dean wonder if Agent Sheridan was bribing someone at the hospital to let them know when Sam left, or at the very least had found someone sympathetic to the idea that omegas needed to be protected from the big, bad world. He was not the kind of man who believed in coincidence and it certainly wouldn’t be the first time someone was keeping tabs on him. He didn’t bother telling Adam about it though, because he was looking forward to beating his kid brother at a game of Operation and he didn’t want to think about anything that would leave his one good hand shaky.

“So, Jo’s coming out, huh?” Adam asked, going for the Bread Basket. He needed it. He was way behind after Dean had connected the ankle bone to the knee bone and snagged the Wish Bone and the Charlie Horse. He never should have agreed to play this game with his brother. He couldn’t remember the last time he beat Dean without the older Winchester being drunk.

“Yep,” Dean told him, laughing as the tweezers touched the sides and the buzzer went off, Cavity Sam’s nose lighting up. Dean leaned in to grab the Water on the Knee, lifting it cleanly out of the hole it lived in. “You’re lucky I don’t have the Specialist card for the Bread Basket or this game would be over.”

“I knew I shoulda left this one at the house,” Adam grumbled, trying a second time for the same piece.

“You’re gonna be on your best behavior with her, right?” Dean asked, raising an eyebrow at him. “Cuz her mom has a shotgun, a shovel, and access to acres and acres of Bobby’s land.”

“What?” He touched the sides of the cavity again, getting another snicker out of Dean. “Shit. You did that on purpose.”

“I did not!”

“Yes, you did, you are purposely trying to distract me.”

“You’re the one who brought Jo up in the middle of a game of skill against the master.” Dean snagged the Wrenched Ankle with ease. “And she did stay behind after I came out to visit you.”

“Well, yeah, but nothing happened,” Adam insisted, trying hard to stop the blush that was creeping up his neckline.

“You stick to that story, cuz her mom has a shotgun,” Dean repeated.

“Just because I’m looking forward to having someone my own age around who isn’t gonna have her tongue down my best friend’s throat every time I turn around doesn’t mean I’m looking forward to anything else,” Adam snapped, failing at getting the Bread Basket out for the third time in a row. “Dammit!”

“Jo’s a pretty girl, Adam. And you’re...well, you’re not _me_ but there are worse lookin’ guys out there. It would be practically un-American of you not to have noticed her. That’s all I’m saying.” Dean reached forward with the tweezers and deftly plucked the Bread Basket from its recesses in the depths of Cavity Sam’s stomach. “Also, you really suck at this game.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

Whether he was talking about the game or Jo he did not specify, but he packed up Operation and broke out The Game of Life, which made Dean snort. The idea that either of them were going to win at life outside of the Milton Bradley version seemed particularly ludicrous at the moment, though Adam definitely had better odds if he didn’t lose focus and actually went back to Duke to get his nursing degree. Dean knew how easy it was to get sucked back into their world and hoped the vampire hunt had been a one-off for his kid brother. Even though Sam promised they weren’t raising Elliott - and now Lizzie - in the life, Dean still felt like he was drowning in quicksand thirty feet from the nearest branch to pull himself out. Azazel was still lurking out there somewhere, Ruby appeared to have clawed her way out of Hell, the Devil’s Gate was real, and he and Sam were going to be stuck like sitting ducks in a house for the next three months. As far as Dean was concerned, the game of life sucked.

“You’re probably going to have to fight her for who gets the guest room,” he said, trying not to think too hard about sleeping arrangements in Benny’s house as he agreed to take the green car instead of the blue one. Adam tried to foist the pink car on him and got a light slap upside the head. “And she has a mean right hook.”

“I’m already set up in the guest room so she’d better get used to stepping over toy dinosaurs,” Adam told him, running a hand along Dean’s arm when he saw the way his brother’s jaw clenched but otherwise letting the swell of emotion in the omega’s body language pass by without comment.

They were in the middle of choosing their career cards when a soft knock on the door had them both lifting their eyes to where Gwen was being wheeled in by a nurse, dressed in street clothes with her parents standing behind her. Adam could sense Dean going rigid and immediately stood between his brother and the door, reaching a hand back for the omega to grasp and managing not to grunt as his fingers almost broke in Dean’s grip. Gwen shot Adam an apologetic smile as she scented the mixture of anger and fear rolling off of the older Winchester, and William seemed to soften a bit, though his beta mate remained stoic and unmoved.

“Hey, Adam, Dean,” she said softly, sending soothing pheromones out to try to lessen Dean’s anxiety. She doubted it would work but she had to try at least. “Sam’s not here?”

“No,” Adam said, running his thumb over Dean’s wrist the way he’d seen Sam do it on multiple occasions but not taking his eyes off the Campbells in the doorway. He heard Dean scoot in closer to him, the bedsprings creaking as he used the leverage of Adam’s hold to pull himself forward. “He had to go get the house ready for when Dean gets out of here.”

“The...the one at Sunset Trail?”

“It _is_ my house.”

The voice that came from behind Adam was terse and deep, betraying none of the emotion Dean was feeling. Adam was more than a little shocked that he’d decided to say anything; he certainly owed these people nothing, even as helpful as Gwen was being to them. She nodded stiffly.

“You should get a large dog,” William said from behind his daughter, and Adam doubled his thumb circles as he heard his brother growling low in his chest.

“Is that a threat?” Dean snarled in warning, but when it looked like Gwen’s mother was going to join the conversation William held up his hand to keep her quiet.

“Not from Colleen and me,” he told the omega. “But I can’t speak for my brothers. They’ve grown closer to Uncle Samuel’s line of thinking in recent years, and they’ve really got nothing left to lose now that their sons are gone.” As Dean’s growling grew louder, the alpha hastened to add, “I understand it was their own fault. Even Johnny, who I thought would have had more sense than to...I never realized how unacceptable their way of thinking had become. I would suggest a German Shepherd or a Rottweiler.”

“It’s going to be hard for him to take care of a dog when he’s on bed rest and pretty much can’t leave the house,” Adam said, earning a shocked expression from Gwen’s mom and a horrified look from both Gwen and her father, as well as a sharp tug from his brother.

“God…” Gwen had gone pale at the thought of just how much damage Johnny’s attempt to claim Dean had done. “I am so sorry.”

“Whatever,” Dean snapped. “Anything else you want to say before you _leave_?”

“We’re heading down to Lawrence to deal with Uncle Samuel’s affairs,” she said, locking eyes with Adam. “I still haven’t heard back from my friend, but as soon as I do I’ll let you know.”

Adam nodded as Colleen cleared her throat, saying, “Please tell Sam we had no idea...we never would have wanted this to happen to someone he cares for.”

“I’ll get right on that,” Dean assured her, his words thick with sarcasm, and Gwen was wheeled away.

“You okay?” Adam asked when Dean’s hold on his hand finally relaxed some, though his brother didn’t move any farther away from his back and Adam could hear how shallow and rapid his breathing was. “Not gonna pass out on me, are you?”

“No,” his brother said, though his tone was decidedly less certain than he would have liked. “Sam likes dogs, right? I think we need to get a dog. Can you hand me my phone so I can call him?”

“Yeah.” Adam retrieved it from the nightstand on the far side of the bed, watching Dean carefully as he tried to slow his breathing down and clutched at his chest with his hand and began to go very pale. The younger Winchester perched on the edge of the bed, gripping his brother’s shoulder as the omega visibly struggled to stop the panic attack from becoming full blown, shaking him slightly. “Hey, I’m here Dean. I’ve got you, okay?”

Dean nodded fiercely, trying to will himself to calm down and finding he was on the end of a losing battle. He had no idea how he’d managed to hold it together with Gwen in the room, or why his resolve was failing him now that she was gone, but inside his head he was stuck running through the dining room and flinging the chairs to the ground behind him while Johnny’s growls echoed from the kitchen. He could feel his brother’s hands, one still on his shoulder, squeezing gently, the other threaded up into his hair, and could hear him saying, “You’re with me, you’re okay,” over and over again, his voice slightly muffled like he was on the other side of a thick wall. Dean felt himself being tipped forward until his forehead was resting against Adam’s shoulder, the hand from his shoulder moving to sweep up and down over Dean’s spine, as the beta instructed him to relax and breathe, Adam wasn’t going anywhere and they could call Sam after he’d calmed down. Dean grabbed at his younger brother’s shirt, wishing he could smell anything beyond Adam’s deodorant, body wash, and the undercurrent of dish soap. He nodded his head and allowed his brother to soothe him as best he could, hoping Sam would be done with the house soon so he had a solid wall of chest muscle to curl up into until he was able to get the shaking to stop.

Sam would have happily come rushing back to the hospital long before Gwen, William, and Colleen showed up to send the omega spiraling. He was glad that he went to get a new cell phone and to try to make Benny and Lisa’s house into something more like a home for Dean, at least temporarily, but god he didn’t know where to start as he stood in the foyer and stared at the stairs. Adam had clearly tried to clean Gwen and Dean’s blood out of the carpet on the steps, but it had been sitting there, soaked in and dried for days, and it was impossible to miss it as soon as the front door was opened; like a flashing light proclaiming “Dean was assaulted here.” He wished he had more than a day to address this, maybe he could get the guys from Benny’s company to come in and do some work on the place if there was anything else that needed to be cleaned or, failing that, simply ripped up. There was no sign anywhere else that a struggle had taken place downstairs, so whatever had happened Adam had gotten it picked up, but still - if it was jarring to Sam it would be so much worse for Dean.

He couldn’t get bogged down with the stairs, though, which he very nearly did as his alpha refused to accept that Johnny was dead and screamed out to find someone to kill. He’d stopped after getting his new phone and picked up some plastic storage containers so he could start packing away anything downstairs that he guessed might upset Dean. Photos on the walls came down. Ben’s box of toys in the family room disappeared, as did all of their DVDs, though Lizzie’s toys stayed. The fine china in the hutch in the dining room, likely a mating present, was carefully stowed away, along with all the linens and candlesticks in the drawers. Even fridge magnets, appointment reminders, and first grade drawings disappeared from the kitchen, as well as anything in the cupboards. Sam would run out and grab some stuff after he was done getting the den set up to be their bedroom so they at least had plates to eat off of and silverware with which to eat. He had masking tape to label everything to give Dean a chance to go through it all properly later ( _he was going to need something to do while stuck on his ass for three months, and Sam was eventually going to have to tackle the upstairs_ ), but right now he just wanted to make the place look as much like a model home as he could, so Dean could tell him what besides every throw pillow known to man would make him not want to go running from the house in tears.

It was strange, as Sam emptied out the Lafittes’ belongings, all the “stuff” that made a house a home that had never even occurred to him. Cups, dishes, plates, blankets, towels, knick knacks, pictures, books, pillows, notebooks, papers, toys, not chosen haphazardly but with care and forethought. There were so many little things at 59 Sunset Trail that made it clear a family lived there once. The most Sam ever had in his apartment in St. Louis was dishes, clothing, some towels, and a television. There wasn’t space for anything in his life that wasn’t functional. He didn’t even have a plant. Now he was trying to hastily box up the lives of Dean’s closest friends and kicking himself for not ordering Dean to wait for him on Monday. He felt like an ass for even considering forcing Dean to bend to his will, but packing all reminders of Benny, Lisa, and Ben away was even difficult for Sam. Dean never should have tried to do this by himself, and Sam’s alpha recognized it was his job to save the omega from his pigheaded desire to handle things alone, so maybe he should start doing it more.

He transferred the boxes he already had filled down to the basement, pausing to pass his hand over the medals and trophies lining one of the walls in Benny’s mancave. Dean had mentioned Bobby had his set packed away somewhere, and even though Sam had gone through the scrapbook the night before it was still stunning to see just how good of a team the two had been, how good Dean was at what he did despite not being built for this kind of life. Though if Sam were honest with himself, no one was built for this kind of life, and how it became something taught through expensive boarding schools he’d never understood. Back before the FDH people got into this business because they were driven to it, because they’d lost someone. The schools had been there for generations, functioning like military academies, but it wasn’t a line of work anyone _wanted_ to see their child in. The kids who were enrolled in those schools all came from families who had never known anything but hunting, had never realized there were other things you could do with your life besides track down monsters and kill them, and the thought made Sam sick. Dean might be exceptionally good at what they did, but Sam sure as hell wasn’t letting him do it anymore; not when they were moving into a house that proved you could leave the life behind, at least until stupid, blind, bad luck snuck up on you while you were changing a tire. If that made him an overbearing knothead he’d learn to live with it.

It wasn’t until he went back up to the den to try to clear it out and turn it into a downstairs bedroom that he realized how truly impossible it was going to be to try to do this in a single day. The walls were lined with built-in shelves and Benny had a huge L-shaped desk, plus a pair of large file cabinets that were going to take at least two people to move, and probably couldn’t be budged without being emptied first. Sam realized emptying them would probably be a dumb idea since they likely contained a lot of things related to Benny’s construction company and if the foreman still wanted to take over they’d probably need every paper Benny kept on file. Sam stared at the task before him and sagged against the doorframe. There was no way he could turn the den into a bedroom, and there wasn’t really another suitable room with the mostly open floor plan of the first floor. He was either going to have to get them _another_ goddamned hotel room or ask Dr. Sands how ironclad that “no stairs” restriction was. There was plenty of space in the family room to get Lizzie set up with everything she’d need throughout the day so Dean would really only need to climb the stairs twice; once in the morning and once at night. Deciding this was the much better plan he headed upstairs to get the bedrooms in order.

The first thing he noticed was the trail of blood that led down the hall from Dean’s escape. Adam had managed to get most of it out of the carpeted stairs, but there was still a faint blood trail that was more pronounced in the upstairs hallway. The second thing he noticed was how the scent of omega panic - _his_ omega’s panic - still lingered in the air. It was faint, but it was there, growing stronger as he came to Benny and Lisa’s bedroom door. It was closed, the cracked door jamb and the large dent in the door itself standing out like a neon sign that something bad had happened in this house. Dean told Lily he’d gotten Benny’s gun from their room while Johnny had been trying to break down the door, and the alpha’s temper flared dangerously. He turned the handle to check the state of the room and found Adam apparently hadn’t bothered with the upstairs at all. Dean’s scent was more potent in here, the comforter slightly askew, and in moving to straighten it he spotted the gun safe on the floor, open and empty except for the box of 40 cals. He flipped it closed and stowed it back under the bed, an angry, black cloud swirling in his belly and beginning to pulse waves of fury out from his core towards his extremities. He strode from the room and down the hall, following the scent trail past the green room with “Benjamin” in large stickers on the open door to the closed door slightly opposite and down the hall with purple stickers spelling “Elizabeth.”

The scent got stronger, almost choking him and certainly doing nothing to suppress his anger as he opened the door to Lizzie’s nursery. The intensity of Dean’s fear, even days later, made it difficult for him to breathe as he took in the room, the furniture still covered in the dust for fingerprints, the tape outlining the spot where Johnny’s body ended up, blood on the carpet, castoff on the walls from where Dean had struck him, blood on the front of the dresser and leading out from the room, undoubtedly from Dean literally tearing himself free from Johnny’s teeth, several items scattered at the floor of the dresser, knocked there when Dean grabbed the lamp. It only took a few moments frozen in the doorway for Sam to know he couldn’t stay in this room without tearing something to shreds, grabbing the box of clothes and stuffed animals Dean had packed up and a couple of the empty boxes he’d put together and closing the door firmly behind him. He’d find a cleaning agency to come in and take care of the room, maybe the whole fucking house, just as soon as he got Dean out of the hospital.

Shit, he was _furious_ and needed to find something to stab to death.

Instead of finding something to stab to death he went back to Benny and Lisa’s room and started stripping everything from it. The bed linens went into a pile on the floor to take down to the laundry room, clothes from the closet and dressers into boxes to go down into the basement. The fabric still held Lisa and Benny’s scents and he wasn’t about to get rid of them, but it could be sorted later with everything else. The room’s decorations - all the pictures, the books, the mating album stashed on the shelf in the closet, anything personal - went into a separate box until he was finally staring at a room that was essentially empty but for furniture. They could get all new bedding tomorrow when Dean got out of the hospital. Maybe he’d ask Dr. Sands about getting a wheelchair so the omega wouldn’t be deprived of a trip to Bed, Bath & Beyond because it was too big to walk around. He thought it likely Dean’s love of everything plush and soft would override his humiliation at needing to be wheeled around the store, and Sam certainly didn’t dare try to pick out their bedding on his own lest he bring home a comforter in a color that symbolized death and destruction. Once he had the room stripped of its personality he took everything down to the basement except for Lizzie’s things, then deposited the bedding in the laundry room. He’d just found the Lafitte’s carpet cleaner to go after the blood stains in the upstairs hallway when his phone rang and he saw Dean was calling.

“Tired of board games already?” he asked after accepting the call, forcing a levity into his voice that he certainly did not feel.

Except it wasn’t Dean who answered his question.

“ _You need to tell Dean to calm down_ ,” Adam said without preamble.

“Why?” Sam’s grip tightened on both the phone and handle of the carpet cleaner until he heard the thick plastic crack under his hold. “What happened?"

“ _Just...here_.”

The phone was handed off and he listened in alarm to Dean’s halting gasps for air.

“ _Sam...my…_ ”

“Dean... _breathe_!” The alpha was already moving for the door and grabbing for his coat with the hand not crushing the phone against his ear. " _Breathe_. I’m on my way.”

He was rewarded with the sound of the omega’s breaths evening out slightly, though he still sounded like he was struggling and he was emitting pained little whines.

“ _I want...a dog…_ ”

“What?”

“ _A big...dog…_ ”

“A dog? Dean, we’ve got an infant and are having a baby in three months…”

“ ** _I want a dog_**!”

Dean managed to get the sentence out in one breath, but the way Sam heard him suck in air afterwards had him peeling out of the driveway trying not to knock over the neighbor’s garbage cans. What the hell had been going on back at the hospital?

“Okay, baby, we’ll get a dog, it’s fine, we’ll get a big dog, just _breathe_ and put Adam back on the phone.”

“ _O...kay_.”

There was fumbling on the other end of the phone, Adam talking quietly to Dean in the background, murmuring reassurances of “I’m here” until at last the younger Winchester was back on the line, saying, “You’re on your way?”

“Yes, I’m on my way,” Sam snapped. “What the fuck is going on?”

“ _Gwen stopped by with her parents. They spooked him pretty good_.” Sam was sure the passing motorists could hear how viciously he was growling as he cut through traffic at undoubtedly too high a rate of speed. Adam certainly could, given how quickly he added, “ _Not about them, they just wanted to warn him that Gwen’s uncles may not let things go._ ”

“I’ll fucking kill them if they set foot in Fort Wayne.”

“ _And you’ll end up in jail, so maybe try the dog first. Get here fast and in one piece_.”

The call clicked off as Sam merged onto Route 27, his skin humming as he thought distantly that he was in danger of bending the steering wheel from how tightly he was clenching it and that certainly wouldn’t be good because he might crash the car when his omega clearly needed him. It was infuriating that he couldn’t even leave Dean alone for half a day without someone from his family coming along to terrorize him and the awareness stirred the dark, bottomless fury that seemed to be living deep in his belly, just waiting to unfurl and consume him at every possible opportunity. Even seeing the intense red of his own irises as he checked the rearview mirror did nothing to calm his alpha’s growing rage, and he didn’t even notice when they slid from red to black. His mother’s cousins had no idea how lucky they were that he couldn’t leave Dean behind in Fort Wayne, otherwise he’d burn Lawrence to the ground hunting them down.


	63. You Better Put Me on Speed Dial, Kid

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finally, we are done with the hospital and get a little reprieve!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updates are probably going to slow down. My sister has been diagnosed with breast cancer and will be staying with us intermittently once her treatment starts cuz we live near a top cancer center and the hospital where she lives barely sends people home with all their limbs intact.

Adam had never been so relieved to be sent off to play errand boy as he was when Sam got to the hospital and curtly told him to get out of the way so he could press Dean to his chest, smothering his older brother in soft kisses as the omega’s eyes fluttered shut and he released a deeply contented sigh. It was utterly ridiculous for Adam to feel jealous of how Sam’s mere presence immediately comforted his brother, but no matter how sincere Sam was when he told Adam he did a really good job or Dean breathing out “Thanks Runt,” and obviously meaning it, it made the beta feel wholly inadequate. And yeah, that was fucked up, but his whole life it had been Dean protecting him, and then him ready to protect Dean, and he just...he sucked at it. He absolutely sucked at it. He’d never felt like he was a lesser person than all those knotheads walking around growling at each other and getting into stupid dominance battles just because he was a beta, but not being able to get Dean to even breathe normally without needing to call Sam was honestly humiliating. Sure, he knew his brother was under an abnormal amount of stress right now, that he had horror upon horror heaped on him in the last week and a half and that was certainly going to make it hard for him to get out of his own head when anxiety started to take root. Yet it still made Adam happy to basically run from the room as soon as Sam told him to head back to the house so he could work on shampooing the carpets and cleaning Lizzie’s room then gave him the list of household items he needed to go pick up; dinnerware, towels, bedding. Dean managed to croak out, “Blue” when Adam asked about a preferred color for the bedding, and he was out the door with a nod. At least if he couldn’t actually do anything to make Dean feel better he could do other tasks so Sam could stay with him.

The blood in the upstairs carpet hall proved to be a bitch to get out, and Adam thought he probably should have maybe pre-treated it the night before when he got settled down in the guest bedroom after checking out of the hotel, but he was twenty and in college and what the hell did he know about pre-treating carpet stains? Seeing so many things cleared out of the downstairs from Sam’s trip to the house definitely made him feel like he was slacking though, even if he hadn’t meant to and just figured Dean wouldn’t be going upstairs at all so there would be time to clean the carpet after they got him out of the hospital. However, by the state of the master bedroom Sam was obviously planning for him and Dean to take it over, and Adam knew exactly why Sam had given him orders to clean. He just hoped the rust red stains would come out of the cream colored carpeting after they’d sat there for a couple of days and quickly had to accept that he was going to have to shampoo a couple of times if he hoped to get the blotches out. He decided pretty quickly while pushing the shampooer back and forth that he was _never_ having anything but hardwoods wherever he lived, because this was a huge pain in the ass and one he didn’t need when Sam had given him a relatively extensive list of things to get. On top of the “house stuff” he should probably go shopping to get some fresh food for his brother, since almost everything in the fridge had expired and he’d thrown it out yesterday. While canned soup and dried pasta certainly wasn’t going to kill Dean, he absolutely did not want his pregnant brother surviving on processed foods.

He hadn’t really looked into Lizzie’s room and was horrified upon opening the door at all the blood and fingerprint dust, and decided that was _definitely_ waiting for the next day, opting instead to wipe down Lizzie’s crib and drag it into the master bedroom so Sam could get to her easily. Adam thought it likely Dean would not want her separated from him anyway after this week, and there was plenty of room for the crib. He was in the middle of pushing it to the side of the bed opposite the walk-in closet when the doorbell rang and he reached instinctively for the back of his waistband, despite not having his gun on him. It was amazing how quickly he’d fallen into the habit of expecting a weapon to be somewhere on his person after only one hunt, but then again after what Gwen’s father had told them a few hours ago he didn’t think it was irrational to be a little paranoid at this point. Adam headed down the back stairwell to cut through the kitchen and grab himself a butcher knife from the knife block, spotting the fender of a car behind Dean’s truck in the driveway through the family room windows. The sun had set and it was snowing ( _time really flew when you were trying to get blood out of a carpet, apparently_ ) so he couldn’t determine the make or model, and moved cautiously to the front door as the bell sounded again, longer and more impatiently this time. When he flipped on the outside light and saw Jo standing there with a duffel bag, looking frozen and pissed, he felt like a total moron.

“Hey, sorry,” he said, opening the door so she could scamper in past him, her teeth chattering as he set the knife on the bench in the foyer. “Forgot you were coming in tonight.”

“Thanks. A girl always likes to hear she was forgotten,” she snarked, punching him in the shoulder.

“No, I mean...there’s just a lot going on,”

“What’s with the radio silence since the Minnesota thing? I gotta hear from Bobby that a ghoul tried to eat your liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti?” Her smile didn’t quite reach her eyes, and Adam felt the color draining from his face as he struggled to respond. She didn’t give him the chance, punching him in the shoulder again, this time much harder. “I’m just kidding. God, you’re so _serious_. Where’s my room?”

She was already striding up the stairs, and he hurried up after her, trying to stay out of the range of her duffel while she looked around the house as she went. She was clearly irritated, though whether it was because she’d had to stand in the snow or she’d carried the irritation with her all the way from Sioux Falls he didn’t know, and sure hoped he was going to be able to figure it out. She had already gotten to Ben’s room and stopped, looking in soberly, before he was able to get his mouth to work.

“Uh, this one actually,” he managed, losing his voice again when she turned to him and arched an eyebrow.

“Dean’s sticking me in a dead little boy’s room?” she asked, her tone betraying just how not okay she was with the thought. She’d only met Benny once or twice when she was in her teens, but he had been well liked in the community and there were a lot of hunters lifting a toast to him at the Roadhouse when news of his death hit.

“Unless you want to stay in the one with Lizzie on the door, but there’s a bunch of blood in there that I haven’t cleaned up yet,” he said, unsure of what he should be doing with his hands and shoving them into his pockets.

“There isn’t a guest room or something?” she demanded, dropping her duffel to the floor with a loud clunk that betrayed the gun and knives she had packed in with her clothes.

“There is…”

“Great, I’ll take that.”

She grabbed the duffel from the floor and headed off down the hall again, passing the bathroom and figuring out where she needed to go by process of elimination. Adam hastened after her, saying feebly, “I’m already in there, though.”

“So we’ll share,” she told him flatly, pushing the door open and and setting her stuff down on top of the dresser, shoving his duffel aside to make room. She checked the drawers to see which ones were free and methodically began to unpack. “We’re both adults. It’s not a big deal.”

“Jo…” She snapped her head around to look at him, her expression placid but her brown eyes cold. Man, he just sucked at _everything_ today. He had clearly done something to piss her off and he had no clue what it was. “Ben’s got a bunk bed. We could switch it for the one in here and then neither of us have to sleep in a dead kid’s room and we don’t have to share either.”

“Bunk beds? Are you serious?” she demanded, wide-eyed. “What exactly do you think is going to _happen_ if we’re in the same room, Adam? And I’d suggest you really think carefully before answering.”

He recognized that tone and look from when he was dating Claire, though it was really confusing to encounter them with Jo. Granted, it wasn’t like they knew each other overly well, but she’d made the weekend at Durham after Dean basically disowned him a lot more bearable, and they’d talked and texted enough afterwards for him to know she was kind of the antithesis of Claire, whose default setting in retrospect had been petulant bitchiness for no apparent reason other than she was a petulant bitch. Jo was tough, but that didn’t mean she was hard. He wasn’t entirely sure what he was supposed to do or say in the face of her open anger.

“Did I do something wrong?” he asked, opting for the direct approach. This was usually where Claire would glare at him and storm off, making him feel like an idiot, and he simultaneously hoped Jo wasn’t going to do that and wished he had more experience with women than just Claire to use as a benchmark.

Jo punched him in the shoulder a for a third time, with some real force behind it, enough to make him mutter “Ow” and rub it afterwards.

“You don’t just drop off the face of the Earth, Adam,” she snapped finally. “The world we live in? God, even your _brother_ shoots us text messages letting us know he’s still alive, or calls to say, ‘Hey, I’m in Topeka and still alive.’ The last time we heard from you it was December and you were on your way to Minnesota to meet up with Dean and then _nothing_. You’re lucky my mom’s not here, she’d kick your ass for worrying us like that.” The way Adam blushed must have left her feeling he had been thoroughly chastised, because her features visibly softened as she went back to unpacking her bag. “How is he, by the way? There are some pretty crazy rumors flying around about him. Mom kicked so many people out of the bar for the things they were sayin’ - thought we were gonna go bankrupt and have to shut down for a while there.” Her hands stilled over the items in her duffel, and she finished quietly, “Not that we’ve gotta worry about that anymore.”

For several horrifying seconds Adam thought that tough, capable Jo Harvelle was going to break out crying, which he certainly wouldn’t have blamed her for but he also was certainly not equipped to deal with. He was on edge enough himself with what had happened to Dean and being in Benny’s house trying to figure out how to make it as comfortable for his brother as possible and knowing there wasn’t a way to do so; he simply didn’t have anything left over to make Jo feel better if he really needed to. He almost groaned in relief when she seemed to shake herself out of the sadness trying to overtake her and went back to emptying her bag.

“Hey…” he started as it occurred to him that it might be good for both of them to have something active to do and realizing there was a lot on Sam’s list that she could really help him with. “You were staying in Dean’s room at Bobby’s, right?”

“Yeah, he set us up there so we could have the adjoining bathroom,” she replied, and seemed to really strain herself attempting not to roll her eyes. “I know he meant well, probably thought we’d want to stick together after…” A small shudder ran through her before she dropped her bag to the floor and turned to look at him, crossing her arms to hug herself as if against a sudden chill. “I don’t think he really thought it through, though.”

“So you know what Dean’s room looks like.”

“Yeah…?”

“I need to make a run to Bed, Bath & Beyond to get some linens and stuff. I think it would really help Dean feel better about staying here if we got the same set he has in his room, maybe some of his pillows if we can find them.”

The mention of the all-things-bedding chain elicited a snort from Jo, and she hurried to hide the smile on her face behind her hand, not wanting to make fun of the omega even in his absence. Still, she couldn’t help but say, “He really has a ridiculous amount of throw pillows. My view of him has been fundamentally changed.”

“Wait until you see him walking around with a baby wrap on,” he told her. “With a baby in it. It’s gonna feel like a whole new world.”

“Dean Winchester with a kid.” She smiled fondly and shook her head. “Jesus. It never even crossed my mind when we were driving out to see you, even when he was all puffy and pukey. No wonder my mom doesn’t want me hunting when I don’t notice obvious stuff like that. And if you ever tell her I said that I’ll break your fingers.”

“Your secret’s safe with me,” he assured her with a grin. “So, Bed, Bath & Beyond?”

“On two conditions. You drive, cuz I’m fucking tired, and you buy me dinner, cuz I’m fucking starving.”

“Deal.”

While Jo was moving the loaner car from Bobby out of the way of Dean’s truck so they could get out of the driveway, Adam shot off text messages to both the old hunter and his brother, letting them know she had arrived safely. They grabbed a quick bite from TGI Fridays despite Jo sneering at the idea of stopping somewhere they could eat in just about any large city in the nation, but Adam pointed out that he hadn’t exactly had time to soak up much of the local color yet, plus their mission wasn’t to find the best dive bar in the area but to get bedding for his pregnant brother, and oh yeah, they were underage anyway. After splitting the spinach dip and inhaling their burgers they ended up with a little under an hour to find the exact bedding set Dean had back at Bobby’s, and it wasn’t until they found it that Adam realized he probably should have paid attention to what size bed they actually needed it for, which sent Jo into a fit of laughter that simply would not stop. He shot her a glare and stuck out his tongue, but she just snagged a queen sized set and a king sized set, pointing out the ability to return whichever one didn’t fit, and then sent him off for towels while she looked for throw pillows. They met up by the dishes in the “Beyond” section of the store, grabbing two complete dinnerware sets, two complete silverware sets, and a bunch of random coffee mugs Adam thought would make Dean smile. He figured that would hold them for a couple of days, not wanting to rob Dean of the chance to come here himself and run up a huge tab to put on Sam’s AmEx, even if he wasn’t entirely sure it would fall within the restrictions of his bed rest. By the time they were done getting the basics on Sam’s list it was too late to go grocery shopping and Jo was falling asleep on her feet, so an early morning run to the store was the plan.

After a quick breakfast of Eggos and Brown N Serve sausage straight from the freezer ( _Jo snarked that Adam sure knew how to treat a girl the morning after and he choked on his coffee_ ), they headed off to restock the fridge, wanting to be back long enough before they heard from Sam that they were on their way to do some additional work on the house. Adam had given Jo a rundown of what had happened to Dean the week before and warned her that he was probably going to be in rough shape, and while she mentioned her hourly rates for maid service she didn’t really mean it after they’d flipped a coin to see who would set up Dean and Sam's room versus cleaning the blood and fingerprint dust out of Lizzie’s. Adam shampooed the upstairs carpet again, managing to get out pretty much all of the blood while Jo washed the new bedding and made up the master bedroom so it at least wouldn’t look like Benny and Lisa’s anymore. Around noon Sam called to say they were sending up Dean’s release forms to be filled out and the Jorgesons had already brought Lizzie to the hospital, and somehow they’d both completely forgotten that Dean was going to need a clean change of clothes to leave the hospital so could Adam get into his things and bring him something to wear home, because he was starting to freak out about having to leave the hospital in bloody pants and Sam’s tee shirt.

Jo would have been ashamed to admit later, had anyone asked, that she thought Sam was being an overbearing, overprotective knothead about Dean Winchester of all people having a meltdown about wearing dirty clothes out of the hospital until she and Adam showed up and she realized that whoever the omega was at St. Mary’s, he was very far removed from the Dean she knew. It was true she really only kind of got the highlight reel of all the things he’d gone through since the last time she saw him, but that didn’t make it any less shocking to walk into room fifty twenty-one, which was finally no longer guarded by two stupid police officers in the ever rotating line of stupid police officers, and saw Dean looked wan and tired as he argued with Sam about whether or not he should fucking calm down when it was easy for Sam to say because Sam had fucking clean clothes to wear. More than that, whoever this Sam Campbell was it was definitely not the asshole she knew from the Roadhouse ( _though admittedly she’d never_ **_really_ ** _given him much of a chance_ ), because this Sam had a very, _very_ small baby in the crook of his arm that he was feeding a bottle while he refused to rise to Dean’s bait and instead talked to him as gently as possible to keep him from flying into outright hysterics. She also wasn’t sure she knew who Adam Winchester was either, not that she’d known him long, since the minute they walked through the hospital room door the twenty year-old kid she’d been teasing about TGI Fridays and Bed, Bath  & Beyond to the point where he was totally flustered and beet red the night before vanished completely in favor of some full grown man who moved forward without even being asked to take the baby from Sam after setting Dean’s clothes on the bed so the alpha could properly soothe and kiss and comfort him, while Dean turned into a puddle almost the minute Sam touched him. The whole affair was like something out of an episode of _Sliders_.

“Hey there, Sunshine, long time no see,” Adam cooed - actually cooed - at the little girl he was now deftly feeding. Jo thought she should probably get her jaw up off the floor sometime soon.

“You’re giving her a nickname now?” Sam asked, his eyes never straying from Dean, who was starting to calm down.

“I got stuck with Runt my whole life,” Adam replied. “Can’t leave it up to Dean or she’ll end up being called something like Stinkbutt.”

“After the two diaper explosions I personally have had to deal with from her it wouldn’t be an inaccurate title,” Sam said, getting a snicker out of Dean as the omega scrubbed at his face with his good hand. “Hey Jo. Do you...uh...do you think you two could just watch for the paperwork from the nurses so I can get Dean into the shower real quick before I get him dressed? Moist towelettes only do so much and they’re finally okay with him being out of bed.”

“Uh…” Truth be told it caught Jo off guard to be so immediately called upon to help, and though she was happy to do so it was a bit jarring, especially when there was nothing alpha about the way Sam was asking for her help. “Yeah, absolutely. Whatever you guys need.”

“Thanks,” Dean rasped, his voice sounding raw and overworked.

Jo watched as Sam helped him carefully out of bed, struggling to control her dismay at the realization of just how frail he was. She’d seen a lot of hunters come through the Roadhouse beaten all to hell from hunts, and the way Dean currently looked gave the worst cases she’d seen a run for their money. His cheeks were hollow, he had large, dark circles under his eyes, and the way he kept his left arm held tightly to his chest indicated the bandage she saw along his neckline was the result of some major damage. On top of that he was very obviously pregnant, which she knew by now of course, but the amount of weight he’d lost made his belly far more pronounced than it probably would have been otherwise. He swayed on his feet when he stood, and for a minute she honestly thought Sam was just going to scoop him up and carry him into the bathroom. The alpha very well might have done so if the omega hadn’t actually growled at the suggestion he couldn’t even carry his own clothes in with them, and it was just enough of a warning that Dean needed to preserve _some_ dignity to get Sam to back off a little instead of doing every single thing for him. Still, Sam kept Dean slotted tightly up against his side the whole twenty feet it took to get them to the bathroom, quietly closing the door behind them as Lizzie finished off the bottle and Adam sat down in one of the arm chairs by the bed to burp her.

Dean was so close to losing it by the time Sam got them both stripped down and under the steamy water that Sam couldn’t begin to clean him the way he really needed to be cleaned and had to settle for basically rinsing him down and keeping his bandaged shoulder out from under the spray. A nurse had come in earlier that morning to remove his I.V. after Dr. Sands came in to confirm they were releasing Dean so at least there was that, but between the poor sleep they got the night before with Dean obsessing over finding a big dog they could adopt as soon as possible and how nervous the omega was at the Jorgesons seeing him in his current state, not to mention the solid half hour of crying from the pure relief of Lizzie being returned to them at last, the little girl burbling away unawares as Dean kissed her and smelled her and held her tightly to him, it was a miracle either of them could even stand up. Sam wanted nothing more right now than to get Dean back to Benny and Lisa’s, crawl into the new bedding Adam was going to get for them, and not come out until they had to meet with Detective Hudak on Monday. Which reminded him that he _still_ needed to call the Lawrence P.D. back, as well as his grandfather’s lawyer, and shit, that just made him want to lock himself in a room with Dean even more and ignore everything they had on their plate.

“You okay?” he murmured as Dean sagged against him slightly while they both tried to keep his shoulder dry and outside the shower without flooding the bathroom floor.

“If I have to eat one more meal in this place I’m gonna punch someone,” Dean murmured back, earning a chuckle from Sam as the taller man washed his hair for him. “Quiet, they’re gonna think we’re up to somethin’ in here.”

“Let ‘em,” Sam said, running his fingers through Dean’s locks to help the warm spray rinse away the suds. “We can at least keep up appearances of a couple in the middle of a babymoon.”

The way Dean’s jaw flexed and he muttered, “Yeah,” had the alpha kicking himself.

“I didn’t mean it like that.” He drew the omega into his chest, nudging against Dean’s temple with his lips until the smaller man relaxed a bit. “I just miss touching you.”

“You’ve been touching me for days while I panic over everything,” Dean grumbled, though he soon found himself purring against the alpha’s throat as Sam massaged the base of his spine.

“Fine. I miss touching you naked,” he corrected, getting an even more contented purr out of the omega.

Adam knocking on the door made them both flinch, and Sam turned off the water as the beta called, “Paperwork is here. Put some clothes on.”

“If you don’t stop with the jump scares, Runt, I’m going to pass a rule at Benny’s house,” Dean threatened. “All naked, all the time. Except for Jo, cuz I don’t want Ellen to kill me.”

“Bring it, Winchester,” Jo shouted from the interior of the hospital room, and Sam snorted so loudly he nearly choked.

“You ready to get out?” Sam asked as he snagged a towel from the back of the toilet to wrap around his waist.

“Hell yes,” Dean replied. “Of this hospital, city, and state, but I’ll settle for one of the three at this point.”

“That’s good, because I can only promise you’re going to get one at this point,” Sam said, grabbing another towel to run over Dean’s hair until it stuck out at all angles on his head, and then delicately drying his arms and torso.

“And you call yourself an alpha,” Dean grumbled, earning himself a chaste kiss that quickly turned heated until there was pounding on the door again. “All naked, all the time Runt!”

“Promises, promises,” Jo said from the other side, and Sam threw his head back laughing as Dean flushed pink.

“ _Please_ don’t encourage them,” they heard Adam say, which just made Sam laugh louder and even drew a snicker out of Dean.

“I really hope he doesn’t go back to Bobby’s too soon, this is too much fun,” the omega chuckled, getting another kiss from the alpha who said, “I do. I don’t need him interrupting our showers or yelling at us to put clothes on.”

“Guys, seriously, I think Lizzie needs her diaper changed, and I’m not touching something that smells this bad,” Adam called.

“I will if someone pays me,” Jo told them.

Both men in the shower gave a unified, frustrated grunt, climbing out as Dean assured them they’d be right there, letting Sam help steady, dry, and dress him, and then sitting down to admire the planes of Sam’s back and chest as the alpha got himself ready to go as well. The paperwork took about twenty minutes to fill out, and then it was another forty-five before the nurse came back to collect it and wheel the omega down to the lobby, but by one thirty they were finally free. Dean wanted to stop at a diner for lunch but at Adam and Jo’s insistence that they better not have gone grocery shopping at eight in the morning for nothing he caved and they headed out for Sunset Trail. If the thought of heading there immediately made him lose his appetite, well, he’d just have to get over it. The omega had decided in the last couple of days that New New Dean was entirely too much of a wimp and needed to toughen up some, and he might as well start off with lunch in his own damn house. Besides, New New Dean was getting a big ass dog, even though Old Dean and New Old Dean had both been more like cat people, and that would just have to be good enough for him to feel at ease for the time being. He was hungry, tired, and really liked the idea of scandalizing the betas enjoying his hospitality by, at the very least, taking a much longer shower with Sam as soon as they got done getting the big ass dog. Of course it was probable that as soon as he stepped foot in the house he would end up in another panic attack and freeze, but he sure hoped not. If they were going to be stuck in that house for three months he wanted to be able to make some memories there that didn’t involve crying and hysterics and grief, and after being in danger of dying for at least the hundredth time he really wanted to start living again.


	64. You Don't Take a Joint from a Guy Named Don, and There's No Dogs in the Car

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Big ass dog time.

The dog was named Hannah and she was a Great Pyrenees, which surprised Sam because his sire had two of them and they were solid white, while this one had a black and grey mask on her face and ears and a spray of black-ish spots across her muzzle. Apollo and Orion had also both been much larger than the brown-eyed girl staring at them from the Fort Wayne Humane Society kennel, but he did recognize the way the tail - covered in extra long and fluffy fur - curved up like a question mark, and how bushy the fur on her hind quarters was ( _he would later learn these were called pantaloons_ ), and besides the black-grey mask the rest of her was the same kind of pure, almost luminous white those two mammoth boys had been. The kennel attendant, a helpful kid named Jack who spent the whole time they were there eating a candy bar and explaining to them all things dog, said that they could tell she was probably a pure blooded Pyr by the double dew claws on her back paws and by the fact that she was double coated. Also apparently black or tawny masks weren’t that uncommon for the breed, and she had definitely exhibited the trademark independent streak they were known for while she’d been with them. He tried to talk them out of getting her, even though she was only estimated to be about three and a half and should live to be ten or twelve, because Pyrs tended to stand on their hind quarters and demand hugs and obviously the omega with the very, very tall alpha was carrying and shouldn’t be jumped on; not to mention they already had the baby in the car seat they’d brought inside the shelter with them since Dean wasn’t anywhere near being okay with going somewhere without Lizzie yet after just getting her back. Pyrs _were_ good guard dogs and great with children of course, but they weren’t very trainable and tended to do whatever they thought was best no matter what their owner wanted.

“Think of them like huge, dog-shaped cats,” Jack had said around a mouthful of nougat. “Who bark every time the wind even thinks of blowing. The only command she seems to know is ‘sit,’ she’s certainly not going to play fetch with your kids, and you’d have to get used to the Pyr paw, where she’ll just bat at you until you pay attention to her. Plus they’re just not that active so if you’re looking for a playmate she’s not it.”

Obviously he thought he could deter the fragile looking omega with these warnings because he didn’t know the man who picked the dog was also prone to doing whatever the hell he wanted, or that he preferred cats, or that he didn’t give a damn about playing fetch, or that he thought the sounds Hannah was making were just about the funniest thing he’d ever heard come out of a dog. She wasn’t barking, and she wasn’t howling, she just kind of went, “wuf,” from where she sat at the back of the cage when Dean spotted her, and once the other dogs had started yipping up a storm trying to get his attention she threw her head back and uttered a deep, yet raspy, “wooWOOwooWOOwooWOO.” Over and over, “wooWOOwooWOOwooWOO,” approaching him daintily for such a huge dog, her hind quarters swaying back and forth like a runway model, tail wagging in time with her steps, like she thought she was a Pomeranian or something. When he stopped to take a look at her she stared back with those big, soulful brown eyes, and continued “wooWOO”ing him, rubbing her sides against the chain link like she was trying to mark it with her scent. Sam was asking what her background was, and apparently she’d been picked up the Sunday before just over the border from Noble County, and by the time they got someone to pick up the phone on her tags on Tuesday they learned that the owners - some poor family over in Avilla - had been killed by those vampires than the whole county was on the alert for. Pyrs were known to roam for miles, but she’d still gone quite a ways before being picked up, and the whole thing was just tragic. Even if Dean hadn’t already been smitten with her, Sam would have pushed for her to be the one they rescued. If he couldn’t have saved the Collins family from Gordon, the least he could do was save their dog from the pound.

They’d agreed in the truck on the way to the house that they’d wait until after Dean’s interview with the Fort Wayne police about the attack and Johnny’s death before looking for a dog, but that had gone out the window as soon as they pulled into the driveway of Benny’s house and Sam saw the omega start to tremble. It was like the first episode Sam was there for in the basement with the ghouls, when the adrenaline had worn off and Dean had clung to him, shaking, until his knees gave out. Now Dean seemed to be completely disconnected from reality and locked away somewhere in his own head, unaware of Sam’s repeated attempts to shake him back into himself, which didn’t happen until after Adam and Jo had come up along the side of the vehicle to see what was going on and then gotten Lizzie out to take inside as the truck’s interior grew colder. Several minutes passed before Dean finally blinked several times and registered Sam’s presence, shrugging it off as nothing when Sam asked, “Where’d you go?” and then having a slight panic attack when he reached for Lizzie and saw she wasn’t in the car. Sam needed to practically pull the smaller man into his lap before Dean would accept that Jo and his brother had simply taken her inside, and for a few long, tense moments it looked very much like Sam was going to have to order him to calm down. In the end Dean had been able to reel in the flood of fear that was crashing over him, but only with a tremendous amount of effort that left him feeling like he wanted to sleep the rest of the day away despite being so hungry his stomach physically hurt, and he’d allowed Sam to get him out of the truck.

They had a brief respite on the very slow walk from the driveway to the house, Dean clasping Sam to him in terror at the thought of slipping on the sidewalk and falling, though he tried to play it off as just wanting to cuddle. Sam let him, being gripped in the same terror at the moment as Dean was, and they made it in one very large, clingy tangle of limbs. It all went straight to shit once they got into the house and Dean froze, his eyes locked on the stairs. A full ten minutes passed before Sam could get him into the living room to sit down and eat something, and even then he was close to just picking Dean up and carrying him to the couch. The only thing that stopped him was the knowledge that might not go well, and the last thing they needed was for Dean to end up in the hospital again right after he got out from trying to fight Sam off of him.

So, after forty-five minutes of Dean struggling to eat a sandwich and constantly having to stop as the events of Monday afternoon rose up to swallow him, they were off to the Humane Society, and it was a darned good thing they sold collars and leashes there, because neither man actually thought far enough beyond getting Dean a big ass dog to consider things like collars and leashes. A very, very large part of Sam worried that bringing Hannah home was going to be like trying to put a bandaid on a severed limb to stem the bleeding, and they shouldn’t really just be bringing home a living creature that needed to be cared for on a whim, but he honestly did feel like they were supposed to find Hannah after Sam had been the one to gank the monster that killed her previous family. Besides, Dean really had fallen instantly in love with the eighty-five pound furball ( _a solid twenty-five pounds lighter than the average male, and wow were they lucky they’d found a female to take home_ ), and the eighty-five pound furball seemed to key in immediately on Sam’s behavior as “alpha” and instinctively understood that Dean needed to be guarded. Sam held her on the leash after they’d filled out the paperwork to take her with them, since she pulled slightly and would have easily taken Dean down with her, and that was definitely interesting with Lizzie’s car seat still crooked over the alpha’s arm, but as they stopped at Petco to pick her up some very limited supplies ( _a bed, bowl, and food were all Sam would allow since Dean was pushing it with how long he’d been on his feet already_ ) she stayed plastered to Dean’s side, pressing up against him every time he stopped, tail wagging lazily as she loped along at the pace the omega set, hind quarters still swaying like she knew she was the prettiest dog in the store.

Adam was upstairs shampooing the hall carpet yet again while Jo was downstairs going through the Saturday paper looking for a bartending gig when the front door opened and Hannah preceded Sam, Dean, and Lizzie into the house, and quite honestly in all the years Dean had known Jo he never imagined she would sound like a five year old when she squealed in delight at something. Come to think of it, Dean never imagined Jo would ever squeal in delight. Hannah started in immediately with the “wooWOO”ing, her tail sweeping back and forth at Jo’s approach, though she didn’t move far from where Dean had plopped down on the bench by the door while Sam headed into the living room with Lizzie’s car seat, the baby in need of a change and a bottle and starting to seriously fuss. As Jo got her hands on either sides of Hannah’s head to scratch behind her black-grey ears the dog went up on her hind legs, paws on Jo’s chest, and almost knocked her over. Jo just laughed, readjusting to accommodate the weight of a dog that was easily over three quarters of her own body weight and came up to her shoulders when standing. The carpet shampooer shut off and Adam appeared at the top of the stairs, watching as Jo got her face loudly sniffed and Dean’s knees came under the assault of an increasingly waggy tail.

“Wow,” the younger Winchester said as he came down the stairs. “You really did get a big dog. Does she have a name yet?”

“Hannah,” Dean told him, smiling weakly and looking slightly green. “Sam says she belonged to that family over in Avilla.”

“No shit?” Adam asked, moving to stand beside Jo and give Hannah some pats on her head. The dog immediately shifted her attention to the newest person willing to laud her with affection, dropping down off of Jo and then immediately jumping up against Adam.

“Language,” Sam warned from where he was changing Lizzie in the living room on the coffee table. “Or I’m breaking out the swear jar. She got picked up by someone and brought into the County. The Collinses were dead before they could track them down.” He caught a glimpse of Dean’s less-than-healthy color as he got Lizzie back into her onesie and leggings, scooping her up against his shoulder while he rooted through the diaper bag for a bottle and the formula. “Baby, you should come sit down on the couch.”

“‘M’okay Sammy,” Dean said, though he sounded tired and winded.

“I’m making Lizzie a bottle and you’d better be on that couch when I’m done,” Sam said, heading towards the kitchen. “Adam, pick your brother up if he won’t move on his own.”

“Gees…” Jo muttered as she watched the alpha disappear. “Impending dadhood sure makes _someone_ a bossy-pants.”

“Yeah, well impending momhood hasn’t stopped _someone_ from acting like he’s Superman,” Adam told her, helping Dean up off the bench and over to the couch slowly, his arm slung around Dean’s waist to hold his brother tight to his side.

“Please.” Dean gave a little tug on the leash where it was wrapped around the wrist of his good hand, and after a few more seconds of enjoying Jo’s ear scratches Hannah followed easily after him. “Everyone knows I’m Batman.”

“Yeah,” Adam said with a deep eye roll. “You’re Batman.”

“How old is the new puppy?” Jo asked, mostly to distract herself from how delicately Dean moved and how uneasy it made her to see him looking so vulnerable.

“Three and a half,” Dean told her, working his way between the coffee table and the couch carefully with Hannah still in tow. “Never knew you were a dog person, Jo.”

“Oh yeah, I had this yellow lab mix growing up named Lady. She was the best. Dogs just make a house feel different. Better.”

“Is there anything we need to get for her?” Adam asked of the dog that had immediately plopped herself down on her butt beside Dean’s feet and fixed her eyes on him, lifting a paw to his knee repeatedly until the omega reached forward to run his hand along the side of her neck.

“We got her some stuff,” Dean replied, his eyes closed and head leaned against the back of the couch. Hannah pawed at him again as his hand stilled, and he chuckled to himself as he started petting her again, playing with the fringe on the back of her front feet. “I know sweetheart. The ladies can’t get enough of me.”

“Sam’s truck is unlocked?” Dean nodded and Adam went to grab his coat from the hall closet. “We’ll go grab it.”

“Why are you volunteering me?” Jo demanded, moving closer to the living room and crossing her arms over her chest. “It’s freezing out there and you’re the one with the boy gene.”

“The boy gene?” Adam asked as Sam came back into the room with Lizzie happily sucking away on her bottle in the crook of his arm. His eyes immediately went to Dean, who was trying to breathe around the huge emptiness that had risen from his chest and into his throat and staring intently at the dog like she was the only thing holding him together at the moment.

“The one that makes us impervious to freezing temperatures,” Sam explained quietly, moving across the room to sit between Dean and the two betas not quite quickly enough for them to miss the tear that slid down the omega’s face. “Can you guys make a run to the store for some formula and diapers? The Jorgesons said the prescription is on file with the brand she’s on at the pharmacy at the Walmart on Coldwater Crossing. I’m guessing it’s some kind of shopping plaza. Maybe pick up dinner on the way back?”

“Why does she have a prescription for formula?” Jo asked, but before anyone really knew what was happening Hannah was all the way up on the couch between Sam and Dean, nearly knocking the omega over, her paws on the back, eyes trained outside, tail not wagging, barking like she was possessed.

This was no easy, flirty “wooWOO”ing or gentle, come hither “wuf”ing. This was a deep throated announcement to whatever set her off that she was not only in the house, she was big enough to take on all comers. Lizzie started crying from the abrupt scare, and Sam just had time to put the bottle on the coffee table and grab a handful of Hannah’s leash before she pulled Dean to the floor when she jumped down and headed towards the front door at the sound of the bell. Sam couldn’t suppress the growl that rose up from his toes at their large, brand new guard dog acting like a large, brand new guard dog, and for a second he was of the firm opinion that she was going straight back to the Humane Society. Hannah clearly didn’t care what her new owner thought or how growly he got and kept right on barking the entire time Adam was checking through the window in the front door and then pulling it open to address the blonde woman and little girl on the front stoop.

“Hannah, _stop_ ,” Sam ordered, which finally got the Pyr to settle down to whining, no longer trying to pull towards the door but still pacing between the foyer and the couch, making sure she was seen and it was clear how big she was to whoever the interlopers outside were.

“Hi,” the woman said once the dog had settled a bit, peeking into the house and over towards Sam and Dean. “I’m sorry to bother you, we just live across the street so I wanted to stop by and say hello. Your omega ran over earlier this week and he was really hurt. I thought I saw him come back a little while ago.”

“Oh!” Adam smiled, relaxing, and held out his hand for her to shake. “Oh, yeah, he’s out of the hospital. Thank you so much for helping him. He’s my brother, Dean. I’m Adam.”

“Renee Van Allen,” the woman said, smiling back at him as she ran a hand down the little girl’s back. “This is my daughter, Zoey.”

“Hello,” the little girl greeted with a huge grin. She looked to be about nine or ten, and for some reason gave Adam the creeps. Maybe it was the way she was dressed; her winter clothes and hair just a little too perfect for a ten year old, or at any rate all the ten year olds he’d ever known. Then again all the ten year olds he knew went to a school for hunters so getting dirty and torn up was part of the life. It was undoubtedly different for civilians. “I told mommy I wanted to come over and meet the new doggie. I love dogs.”

Hannah went absolutely berserk again, though this time she didn’t attempt to pull on the leash at all but simply stayed where she was and reasserted her presence in the house. Jo headed over from the foyer to calm her down as Sam got up to walk around the living room and try to soothe Lizzie. Renee shot Adam an apologetic look, saying, “Sorry, we didn’t mean to disturb you, I just wanted to see if he was okay.”

“Yeah, he’s fine,” Adam assured her amid Hannah’s incessant barking.

“Okay, well, welcome to the neighborhood Adam and Dean, and if you need anything you know where to find us,” Renee said, Zoey adding, “Bye Adam!” with a wave before they headed back off across the street.

Hannah made for the sofa again to make sure they were leaving, a low growl rumbling in her chest, until Dean finally gave her a tug and said, “C’mere.” She settled at his feet before both paws made their way to his knees so she could stand up and look over his shoulder at the retreating neighbors. Sam had gotten Lizzie settled and back to eating, but was still shooting angry glances in the dog’s direction, feeling like he was going to bite through his tongue when Dean actually told her what a good girl she was. He was aware that they just brought the dog home and he had been fully on board because of his connection to her former owners and he probably should wait until she had a chance to settle in before deciding dog ownership was for the birds, but his alpha instincts insisted that he protect his omega from _all_ threats and the Pyr had almost yanked Dean straight off the couch.

“You’re gonna fill the room with all that steam comin’ outta your ears if you don’t stop fumin’, Sammy,” the omega stated as he tugged on the leash again and got the dog’s paws off his knees. She took all of two seconds being down before she jumped up on the couch next to him, leaning in against his shoulder as she watched out the window for threats both real and perceived. “Can you bring home a cheese pizza, Runt? Nothin’ fancy, I get heartburn really easy these days. It’s awesome. Or do cheese on one half and whatever you guys want on the other.”

“Sure thing,” Adam said, looking from Sam, who was clearly still irate at Hannah coming close to injuring Dean and upsetting Lizzie, and his brother who had wrapped his good arm around the dog’s chest and was returning the lean against her. He gave Jo a look and jerked his head towards the door. “Come on, let’s get out of here before the ka-boom.”

He didn’t actually say “ka-boom,” not wanting to set it off before they could get out of the house, and instead mouthed the word and indicated a big explosion with his hands. Jo gave him a quick nod in agreement, hurrying over to grab her far-too-thin coat and gloves so they could get out of the house as quickly as possible. Six months ago she wouldn’t have hesitated to tell Sam exactly what she thought about the temper tantrum he seemed likely to throw right now, but it was very clear from the limited time she’d spent with Sam and Dean since they got to the hospital this morning that her input would not be welcome anymore. Sam may be on the verge of going all knotheaded, but he was very much Dean’s knothead now and she wasn’t stupid enough to get in the middle of that. For his part, Sam recognized that it would be impolite on his part as sort of their host in Benny and Lisa’s house to get _really_ upset about the dog’s behavior while they had a guest right in front of them, and managed to hold back until after Adam and Jo pulled out of the driveway in Dean’s Ford and were off down the road.

“I’m not giving up this dog, Sammy,” Dean said calmly, not allowing Sam a chance to open his mouth. He leaned further into Hannah’s silky, iridescent coat as she finally decided there was nothing out the window worth intimidating and flopped onto her stomach, taking up most of the couch and plunking her face down on Dean’s chest. “Don’t even suggest it.”

“I know I agreed to get a big-ass dog, but I think one that doesn’t try to knock you off the couch just because the neighbor and her kid stopped by might be more in line with what we’re looking for,” Sam replied as reasonably as he could.

“I don’t know that woman,” Dean said, his green eyes shifting from the dog to fix a hard stare on Sam as the alpha burped a very full little girl. “I’m damn grateful she gave the dispatcher her address when I needed help, but by now she could be a ghoul or a shapeshifter or possessed or your family could be payin’ her to spy on us. And I get it, you’re in ‘protect omega’ mode and yeah, Hannah almost took me down for a second there, but I sure as shit didn’t see those two coming up the walk, and I didn’t hear them either, and I just spent almost a week in the fucking hospital again because someone came into this house while I was upstairs, and he was wearing scent blockers so I didn’t even know he was fuckin’ _here_ until he was standing in the dining room like Freddy fucking Krueger. I’m really good with risking gettin’ pushed eighteen whole inches to the floor by a dog that sounds like it has the ability to put its bite where its bark is if it means no one gets in this fuckin’ house again without me knowin’ it, okay? She can spend the whole day barkin’ because she hears ants crawling by on the sidewalk or she thinks a leaf is gonna fall off one of the trees and land on the lawn or because she doesn’t like the look of the Girl Scout comin’ up the driveway to sell us cookies. I don’t give a shit as long as I know there’s somethin’ comin’.”

Sam was quite certain that if he didn’t have a large dog’s head laying on him ( _a large dog who punctuated the end of the omega’s tirade with a “wuf” followed immediately by a sigh_ ) Dean would have been on his feet pacing the living room, and he’d been walking around enough today that he definitely shouldn’t be doing that. His scent also reeked of stress, which dropped with each subsequent sigh from the Pyr currently batting at him with one of her paws until he gave in and started to stroke from her nose down to the length of her back, so that was definitely something working in the dog’s favor. Still, Dean might not think eighteen inches to the floor was a big deal, but what if he hit the coffee table, or what if Hannah knocked him over, or really jumped up on Lizzie or Dean’s abdomen? Sure, he was probably being ridiculous and paranoid, but after everything Dean had been through Sam felt like he might be entitled to just a little bit of overreaction at this point.

“I hear you, Dean,” he said at last, trying to choose his words very carefully so as not to end up in a real fight over their brand new dog that he wasn’t convinced should stay yet. “But there are lots of dogs that bark all the time who don’t weigh close to a hundred pounds. We could get a beagle, or a terrier…”

“Small animals are easier to kill, Sam.”

Dean’s matter-of-fact tone left Sam hoping that someday, perhaps even soon, he would recover from the terrible foot-in-mouth disease he’d struggled with ever since the Laramie job, and that if he didn’t he could at least get his stupid alpha hindbrain to remember Dean’s life had been a horror movie since long before Sam could even walk. Then he might stop doing things like suggesting tiny dogs to someone who didn’t think he would ever want another cat because of what happened to his kitten the night his mother was murdered. Because of course Dean had provided the logical retort, and something that would have been logical even if Mr. Bootsy hadn’t been killed all those years ago, but the weight of experience behind the omega’s reply left Sam flushed with shame. Dean had been very clear about what he wanted: a big dog. He had been very clear about which dog he wanted at the shelter: Hannah. And he had been very clear about how Hannah’s behavior made him feel: safe. Sam figured the best thing he could do to try to get Dean’s sudden sadness to dissipate was to immediately shut up about the Pyr.

Unfortunately Sam was a stubborn son of a bitch, and his alpha was even worse. Still, he at least managed not to be a complete jackass and instead of continuing to argue about how legitimately unsafe a large, jumpy dog might be when Dean was on serious medical restrictions and they had an infant in the house he said, “Then maybe we should look into some obedience training. Just to get her to stop jumping. And we should research the breed a little more.”

“Okay,” Dean agreed with a shrug of his one good shoulder.

“Okay?”

Sam was expecting a lot more resistance than that, some kind of argument that she was perfect exactly as she was and obedience training was just a way to part fools from their money, but the anxiety was rapidly evaporating from the air, leaving only the sadness behind and he wasn’t going to question it. Dean was gently pushing Hannah off him and getting slowly to his feet as she adjusted on the couch and stretched out, taking up two and a half of the three cushions. She huffed out a sigh of protest at being left behind before closing her eyes and settling in for a nap. Dean headed off at a slow pace for the foyer, moving to the front door to make sure it was locked.

“Yeah, that’s reasonable,” he said, giving Sam a small smile and walking down the hall towards the downstairs bathroom. “I’m gonna take a shower while Adam and Jo are gone. I still feel gross. It’s past Lizzie’s nap time, you should put her down for a while.”

“O...kay,” Sam agreed, despite being suddenly very confused how they had gone from discussing dogs to Dean needing a shower - not that he planned to pass up what he guessed was an offer. Dean gave him a thin but genuine grin and a minor eyebrow waggle from where he stood near the stairwell, walking slowly with one hand against the wall and the other under his belly, and after recovering from his shock and confusion Sam managed to suppress the urge to run upstairs with Lizzie, rip off his clothes, and run back downstairs to jump into a shower with Dean. The whiplash-inducing mood swings were probably hormones, and Sam didn’t want to question it too much lest he send Dean swinging back into sorrow again, though he did decide he should probably make time to call Jody very soon.

Sam had already made a run upstairs while Dean was struggling to eat his lunch and knew Adam and Jo moved Lizzie’s crib into the master bedroom, which he hoped would be different enough to give Dean some peace tonight. He was impressed with Adam or maybe Jo managing to get the exact same bedding set that was at Bobby’s house in Sioux Falls, though there weren’t nearly enough throw pillows to make it really feel like Dean and his space instead of Benny and Lisa’s. Tomorrow maybe he’d move some of the furniture around if Dean liked the idea, but right now his focus was on getting Lizzie into her crib and heading back downstairs to make sure the omega wasn’t trying to prove he could get into and out of the shower by himself. The baby was already sleeping against his shoulder and didn’t stir as he laid her down on her back in the crib, pausing to just look at her for a moment and take stock of how happy he was to have her back; not just for Dean’s sake but for his own. His alpha had really latched onto the idea that she was his responsibility to protect, and not being legally able to get her back from the Jorgesons had been deeply distressing. He smoothed a dark curl of hair away from her forehead and she made a little cooing sound before snuffling and settling into a deep slumber.

By the time he made it to the downstairs bathroom Hannah had moved to sleep right up against the front door, even out cold unwilling to let anyone get the jump on them, and Dean had started the shower and had it going full force. The thought of having a proper shower after so much time in the hospital had the alpha yanking his boots from his feet and stripping off his shirt in the hallway, feeling practically giddy until he heard the quiet sobbing coming from the bathroom. A wave of nausea washed over him that had him sprinting down the hallway until he slid to a stop on his socked feet in the bathroom doorway, expecting...well, he didn’t really know. It certainly wasn’t Dean, standing in his boxers with his shirt half off, face red with frustration and streaked with tears and the bathroom flooded with omega distress.

“I can’t even get my fuckin’ shirt off, Sam!” he choked before the alpha could even ask. He struggled with his tee shirt, looking like he might just rip the damn thing in half, but he could lift his left arm neither high enough to get his right sleeve off with his left hand nor high enough to get his left sleeve off with his right hand. Every time he tried he ended up whining in horrible pain and had to stop. It reduced him to a blubbering mess within seconds, and he sank down onto the toilet seat. “How am I gonna take care of two kids and a dog and a house when I can’t even get my fuckin’ shirt off? I’m fuckin’ useless.”

“You’re not.” Sam got his hands under the omega’s arms and gently pulled him to his feet so he could wrap Dean in a hug, feeling Dean grip his waist with his good hand and hold on for dear life. “You’re not useless. You’re hurt and you’re stressed and you’re scared and Jesus, why shouldn’t you be? _I’m_ scared, Dean. I’m scared shitless about you, about Elliott, about Lizzie, about the OPS separating us, about the stupid Fort Wayne P.D. acting like you did something wrong - you’re not useless, Dean. You’re human. So stop, all right? Or I’m gonna have to use my big boy voice and order you to.”

That earned him a nod, though the salty droplets didn’t stop, and Dean relaxed enough that Sam could help him get out of his shirt. The shower ended up not being the the kind of soap filled fun fest Sam was expecting from the eyebrow waggling, but there were a lot of lingering kisses and caresses and Dean allowed Sam to really care for him and that sent his inner alpha over the moon with joy. It wasn’t that he didn’t love having an omega who was so strong and capable, he was simply hardwired to provide for his mate’s comfort and that was easier to do when Dean didn’t fight him every step of the way to prove he could do things himself. Especially when proving he could do things himself these days typically left the very badly beaten up and - oh yes - pregnant omega in a completely understandable puddle of tears. Clearly he needed to get Jody and possibly even Donna on the phone, or they were never going to last three months in this house, even with a really big dog.


	65. You Can't Run From Yourself

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trying to settle into domestic life ain't all it's cracked up to be.

Dean couldn’t remember the last time he needed a drink this badly. When he found out about Lisa, Ben, and Benny he had gone numb enough that he could slide through the hours in a haze until it was time to crawl into bed and try to sleep while waiting for the gaping hole in his chest to begin closing a little bit, and after he started to remember what happened to him in Shreveport he sure as hell had no interest in drinking himself into oblivion and making himself even more vulnerable, even if it might have taken the edge off. But now, having insisted he would spend the day packing up Ben’s room so Jo and Adam didn’t have to share the guest bedroom a third night in a row he was really white knuckling it, and couldn’t stop thinking that this would be so much easier if he were hammered.

Sam tried to force his way into helping, tried to keep Dean from doing this to himself only his second day out of the hospital, tried to say they should spend the day relaxing, particularly when Dean hadn’t really slept the night before and Sam could count his ribs and vertebrae with how much weight he’d lost since Benny’s death. Dean wasn’t having any of it. He’d been in bed almost a week, and yes, for half of it he had been unconscious, which wasn’t the point, because no matter how much he wanted to hold onto every single reminder of his friends this house had to offer him, he couldn’t walk past Ben’s room if it still looked like Ben’s room. Adam and Sam had done a good job of getting household things boxed up and into the basement, Sam saying it would give Dean something to do for the next three months; sorting through everything to decide what he wanted to do with it, when he was ready, but Dean couldn’t envision ever being ready and just wanted it all gone. Not permanently, Lizzie may someday want to go through the things that had belonged to her family and keep some mementos, or all of it, it would be up to her and he’d let her make those decisions, whatever made her comfortable - he simply wasn’t sure how he could be expected to function in a house filled with happy-turned-sad memories until Elliott was born, at which point he could run away and never come back.

The only thing he could think of that might be worse would be if he ended up in his childhood home in Lebanon, which made him think about the offer of the bunker and wish he hadn’t been so stupid about the whole mating thing, or that Sam hadn’t been so resistant after Dean was on board with it. He should probably finally sit down and read chapter four of that stupid baby book, considering Bobby had sent it along with Jo and she’d tossed it at him last night before heading off to bed, letting him know Bobby still expected one of them to read the thing all the way through. He couldn’t think about that now though, kneeling next to Ben’s toy box to transfer his belongings into a plastic storage container for Sam or his brother to remove from the room, Hannah hanging out in the hallway behind him just outside the door and Lizzie kicking away in her bouncer within arm’s reach. Right now he was simply trying not to break down with every toy dinosaur he transferred from one box to the other and get through this as quickly as possible.

It crossed his mind that he should take a breather from this soon, maybe take a nap or go downstairs for a bit, but he wasn’t actually supposed to be going up and down stairs and they were only sleeping in the master bedroom because it had been too difficult logistically to get the den converted to a downstairs bedroom in a single day ( _particularly when Dean was so weak and needy that Sam had to come running back to the hospital to soothe him after Gwen’s visit like the helpless omega he was - god he hated himself_ ), and Sam had actually ordered him to only make one upstairs to downstairs and downstairs to upstairs trip each day. If he left Ben’s room now to go downstairs his stupid omega would only allow him back upstairs again once, so he was going to be either stuck downstairs not able to work on the room most of the day or, if he came back up, stuck upstairs alone well before bedtime. Better to just power through it in one go than to split it with a break and end up hanging out in Benny and Lisa’s bedroom because he couldn’t go back downstairs.

Hannah lifted up behind him suddenly, head snapping up to look down the hallway towards the stairs as she declared, “Wuf” with only mild interest, and Dean half turned to look over his shoulder as Sam appeared in the doorway, hands in his pockets like it would keep the worry from seeping out of his pores. Hannah stood up and “wuf”fed again, Lizzie really going to town in her bouncer as if she were trying to launch herself off of it and at the little stuffed monkeys dangling from the curved overhead bar while Sam stepped into the room and pretzeled himself down into a cross-legged sit beside Dean on the floor in a movement that shouldn’t have been so easy for someone so large. The dog wandered in behind him, sitting against his back and leaning in until she eventually slid down onto her stomach behind him, and okay, maybe he was all right with keeping such a huge animal in the house as long as she kept being adorable like this and did well with obedience training whenever they got around to it. Dean tilted to inhale a soothing breath of Sam’s scent, and the alpha reached around to wrap his hand against the omega’s hip and scoot him closer.

“Sitting on the floor,” Sam said with a nod. “Maybe not your most well-thought-out plan.” He moved his hand to run it through the thick dark blond locks that were starting to make their way down the nape of Dean’s neck, his heart rate stuttering when the omega sighed at his touch. “Looks like you’re making good progress.”

“Mmhmm.” He would have liked to keep going but having Sam’s fingers scraping across his scalp and his scent filling the room with _safe_ and _home_ was making it even more difficult for him to just push through all his messy, unwelcome feelings and get this done. “Got...most of his clothes boxed up already. Just working on the toys right now.”

“You’ve been up here all morning. Might be time for a break.”

The lips Sam brushed across Dean’s cheek pulled a whine out of him, but the older man shook his head in response anyway.

“No, I gotta finish up so Jo will stop flirting with Adam about his snoring before he figures out that’s what she’s doin’ and starts flirting back,” Dean said.

“That could take a while,” Sam countered. “He’s pretty dense when it comes to girls.”

“You know Jo. She’ll make sure he figures it out and then we’ll have Ellen’s angry face on our doorstep.”

“I keep reminding him that condoms are a thing and he should use them just to watch him turn red.” Dean snorted, dropping his head onto Sam’s shoulder and picking a Tonka truck out of the box. He pushed it back and forth across the floor in front of him, making tired engine vibrations with his lips and the occasional horn honk until Sam covered his hand and began to press little swirls across the back of it with his thumb. “Please come downstairs. Adam said he’d finish up, just...please. It’s enough for today.”

“My house, my responsibility.”

“That’s bullshit and you know it.” There wasn’t any heat behind his words, but he did pull the truck out of Dean’s hand to put back in the box of toys to be packed away indefinitely. “If you really want to do this yourself I won’t tell you not to, but you’ve been at this for hours, and the room isn’t going anywhere. You don’t have to get it done all at once. And if you want to sulk and overthink and not talk I won’t make you, but _please_ come downstairs to sit around brooding. It’s making me nuts not being on the same floor with you. I’m gonna start breaking things soon. The betas are freaking out a little.”

“They are not,” Dean said, his indignant tone accompanied by a watery smile.

“Dude, I get growly when you’re not within scenting distance,” Sam told him, unbending his legs and standing in a reversal of the easy motion that had carried him to the ground. “Besides, we can’t neck on the couch and make Adam and Jo uncomfortable if you stay up here.”

Dean chuckled, reaching up to take the outstretched hand Sam had extended to help haul him up off the floor. At close to twenty-eight weeks it was a bigger feat than Dean was expecting. He hadn’t realized how much his center of gravity had shifted recently. So Sam was right about planting his pregnant ass on the floor not being the best course of action for working up here. Elliott gave him a good roundhouse kick at the movement from sitting to standing, and he winced as he put his hand to his side.

“Your kid’s gonna be a soccer star, I think, as long as the goal looks like my pancreas,” the omega grunted as Sam reached out to rub against the protrusion in Dean’s belly.

“Nah, we got a boxer,” he said after a moment. “That’s definitely a fist.”

“I know you can sense my joy.” Dean’s deadpan drew a huge laugh out of Sam, which he couldn’t even suppress to properly kiss the smaller man, though he sure did try. He was still laughing when he pulled away, leaving Dean mesmerized by his dimpled smile. He raised up a little on his toes, shaky from his newly awful balance, and captured the alpha’s bottom lip between his, nibbling a little before pulling back. “Thanks for making all this crap not suck as much as it could.”

“I’m an alpha,” Sam said with a shrug. “It’s what I’m here for. That and to make sure you stay nice and warm on a floating door while I freeze to death in the Atlantic.”

“I’d make you take turns with me so we both made it,” Dean replied.

“Then we’d probably both die.”

“So we’d both die. Life wouldn’t be worth much without you, anyway, so…”

Dean got another dimpled grin for his admission even as he felt his face grow hot, and Sam’s arms snaked around his waist to pull him in close, nudging the omega’s ear with his nose.

“Careful. You’re gonna ruin your reputation as a tough guy.”

“Pretty sure all the panic attacks and crying did that a while ago.”

“Jody said that’s to be expected. She’s surprised you haven’t had an honest-to-god nervous breakdown yet.”

“Of course you’ve already talked to Jody.”

“One of us has to.”

“Sam…”

“One of us _has_ to, Dean.”

The promise of necking on the couch was rapidly going the way of the dodo when Lizzie let out an excited burble and Hannah barked in response, then went over to sniff her face and make sure the stuffed monkeys weren’t up to anything funny. Lizzie took the opportunity to grab a handful of upper dog lip and let out something that sounded close to a little cheer, leaving Hannah looking perplexed as to whether she was supposed to guard the baby or guard _against_ the baby and turning her sad brown eyes up to Sam and Dean for some direction. Sam accepted the chance to end the disagreement before it turned into an actual fight, particularly when Jody had also told him that Dean might actively try to pick fights with him as a way to release some of the anger he was undoubtedly going to feel at having been attacked somewhere he should have been safe. Sam gave Hannah a scratch behind the ears, watching her face relax with something that could easily have been called a smile, and unstrapped Lizzie from the bouncer. The baby “Ooo”ed ecstatically at being released and lifted into Sam’s arms, squealing with delight at how high up she was, and the dog huffed out her usual “wuf” before planting her butt on the carpet and panting up at him, looking for approval of her guarding abilities. Dean was watching Sam carefully, his face turning red again and expression closing off until the alpha leaned in to press their mouths together gently but persistently so the omega’s lips parted, granting permission to deepen the kiss. Sam hadn’t thought it possible to hate his family more, yet here he was, wanting desperately to take Dean down the hall, put Lizzie in her crib, and make the omega feel like the bedroom was theirs, to fill it with their combined scents, but unable to do so because of the physical and emotional damage Johnny had caused. Lizzie’s continued cooing combined with the very unmanly whimper that came from Dean ( _not that he would ever admit it_ ) had Sam pulling away, and he murmured, “Please, come downstairs,” before heading out of the room with the baby. The Pyr waited to see what Dean wanted to do, then they both slowly and carefully followed.

Jo was elated that Hannah was finally downstairs, offering immediately to take her out for a walk after spending a good portion of the morning going through the newspaper looking for a job ( _a real one_ ), checking the FDH database for cases that might be demon related ( _Sam made a mental note to keep better tabs on his credentials so she couldn’t get into the secure site_ ), and arguing on the phone with her mother ( _who did not want to hear all the reasons she hadn’t called at all the day before and only sent a text when she got in Friday night_ ). Dean ordered Adam to go with her and insisted they not leave the house if at least one of them wasn’t carrying a gun and the other one was armed with the demon killing knife Sam got from Ruby, which led to a heated discussion about sexism and Jo’s ability to handle herself. All that resulted in was Dean lecturing her on how it wasn’t about her being a woman, it was about her being a kid that didn’t know what she was doing, being too cocky to think anything bad could happen to her, and how any guests under his roof would be employing the buddy system any time they stepped outside the warded walls or they could run back to their momma until they grew up. Jo stormed off upstairs to get her handgun while Dean stormed off - or at least made a concerted effort to storm off - to the living room to sit down and watch the run up to the Super Bowl, snapping that they’d better make it a good long walk because he and Sam were going to spend some time making out on the couch and the two of them were just going to have to deal with it.

Sam watched the explosion and thought of how right Jody had been, feeling torn between being sorry Dean’s need to argue had been deflected to Jo and grateful he had managed to avoid falling into the fight upstairs. He muttered something to Adam about how they couldn’t take what Dean was saying personally, instructed him and Jo to go out to get some game food, since apparently it hadn’t escaped Dean’s notice that it was Super Bowl Sunday and they should at least have nachos or something, and told him not to come back from wherever they went after walking the dog until Jo had a proper winter coat. The beta wondered who this grown up guy was and what he’d done with the geek that had been his best friend since he was four, but didn’t object to Sam giving him his Visa again and making sure he had Dean’s keys. When Jo came back downstairs Dean barked at her to put his coat on because she hadn’t even brought proper winter gear, and how the hell had she survived her whole life in Nebraska without a decent coat and gloves, and she barked at him to go fuck himself, but none-the-less grabbed his much too large maternity swing coat from the closet and threw it on over her thin leather jacket and two layers of sweaters. Adam had already put on Hannah’s leash, taking advantage of Dean’s focus on the television not to bother with the demon knife, and when Jo snatched the leash out of his hand and stormed out of the house he quickly followed her, throwing a “help me” look in Sam’s direction that got a one shouldered shrug in return.

Dean continued fuming over the argument with Jo long after she and his brother had disappeared, astounded that anyone would just want to walk around this cul de sac solo, with or without a big dog, as Sam put Lizzie down to play and went off to the kitchen to make them lunch. It wasn’t like he thought Jo was a pushover, but she was still a _kid_ for Christ’s sake, and yeah, she was a woman, and a very small one at that, and she was just being stupid if she thought she didn’t need to be on her guard in the middle of the day when she knew what kind of monsters were out there - of both the human and non-human variety. Because really, why the hell was she thinking she didn’t need to leave the house armed to protect herself when there was nothing safe about where she was staying? If someone could just walk into Benny’s house in broad daylight and try to overpower Dean then _clearly_ Jo was a sitting duck, and Adam should be keeping himself glued to her side unless she needed to take a piss. Why couldn’t they see how dangerous it was to be alone on Sunset Trail?

Immediately he was trapped in the unbidden memory of Johnny slamming against the locked bedroom door before Lizzie cried and Johnny stopped trying to get in while the omega struggled to load Benny’s gun with fingers that wouldn’t stop shaking. Dean didn’t even realize his breath was coming up short or his chest felt like a blue whale had beached itself there or that his vision was blurring and growing dark around the edges until Sam was on the floor in front of him shaking him, hard, and ordering him to slow down his breathing. Lizzie was getting some tummy time on her floor mat over by the television, and his eyes slid from Sam to her and then back again as time slowed to a crawl and he tried to make sense of the words coming out of the alpha’s mouth. It was like trying to figure out language from underwater as he closed his eyes against the unwelcome playback and slumped forward, thinking he was probably only two or three seconds from passing out and not caring because New New Dean didn’t have the energy to expend on being embarrassed every time his body betrayed him. Large, strong hands came up to hold either side of his face, lifting his head back up as Sam shouted, “Dean!” He was semi-aware when he tipped all the way off the couch and into the crouching alpha’s arms, catching him by surprise and knocking him into the coffee table, dimly registering one of Elliott’s kicks before he slipped into nothingness.

That was how Adam and Jo found them when they got back from walking the dog five minutes later, Jo’s teeth chattering as she huddled up against Adam’s side for warmth, Hannah bursting through the door first to shake the snow off her coat but looking absolutely thrilled at having been outside. Sam had been trying to get Dean to wake back up without spinning into his own anxiety attack, because the way the omega had fallen against him had all but pinned him to the floor under Dean’s dead weight. Sam wasn’t weak by any stretch of the imagination, but Dean, though thinner, was still close to two hundred pounds when factoring in the baby, and he was completely limp on the floor. Hoisting him up if they’d been standing wouldn’t have been an issue, but to heft all that weight from the ground without hurting Dean’s bad shoulder, even just to get him on the couch, was a different story altogether. Adam whipped off his gloves and coat, dropping them to the floor as he charged across the room.

“What happened?” he demanded, dropping down to the floor in front of his brother and turning Dean’s face so he could look him over.

At the feel of Adam’s cold hand on his cheek, Dean’s eyes snapped open and he sucked in a deep breath. Before the beta could react he caught a right hook from the omega straight to the jaw, sending him sprawling backwards. Sam hastened to pin Dean’s arm to his side as Dean tried to buck against him, an absolutely terrified whine rising from his chest while his eyes remained wild and unfocused. Jo stood frozen in the foyer, horrified as she watched Adam crawl back up to try to calm his brother, one of Sam’s arms wrapped all the way around Dean’s chest to pin him to the alpha, back to front, while his free hand came up to stroke the omega’s face as Sam whispered, “Shh, baby, I’ve got you, you’re safe.”

Dean seemed to slowly be calming down, but it wasn’t until Hannah’s half bark-half howl got his attention that he truly returned to himself, his face wet with tears and his breath coming in huge gulps. Lizzie let out a shriek of joy behind him, which further helped to ground him, and after a few moments of letting the fog clear from his head and waiting for the vertigo to stop he let Sam and Adam help him stand, still not accustomed to his new center of gravity. He caught a glimpse of Jo and the shocked look on her face, felt his cheeks heating up, and headed off as quickly as he could for the kitchen with his eyes on the floor. Hannah and Sam were off after him immediately, the alpha scooping Lizzie up from her play mat as he went and the dog’s nails clicking across the hardwoods in the dining room.

Adam swiped the back of his hand across his lip to judge how much blood he was going to have to clean up, cursed slightly at the bright red streak he came away with, and leaned to the side table to grab a tissue. That was when he saw Jo, complete with the shocked expression that had driven his brother from the room, eyes wide and jaw dropped, uncertain of what to say or do. Right, Jo hadn’t seen Dean in months, was new to the whole “baby” thing, didn’t have any idea what the trip to Durham had really been about. Adam sighed and swept his coat up from the floor, calling towards the kitchen, “We’re gonna go get stuff to watch the game. Store’s probably gonna suck.”

“‘Kay.” It was Sam that responded, sounding strained. “Remember to get Jo a coat.”

The young woman scoffed, snarking quietly, “What am I, five?” though she was still too shaken by what had just happened with Dean to really mean it. She’d thought he looked bad in the hospital, and then yesterday he’d kind of spaced out or something a couple of times, but this - coming back to find him unconscious only to wake up and try to physically fight off Sam and his brother - was a whole different ball of wax. This couldn’t possibly be just about Sam’s douche of a cousin trying to claim him last week. Dean had been through a lot of shit, had showed up at the Roadhouse a couple of times after some really not great hunts, yet she never would have thought she’d see him like _that_.  _That_ made her profoundly uncomfortable, because she had no idea what caused it and therefore had no idea how to help.

Adam was heading past her towards the door, swinging back into his coat.

“Come on,” he said, giving her shoulder a nudge and digging the keys to Dean’s truck out of his pocket. “Not sure where there is around here to get you something better for winter but there’s gotta be someplace. Maybe a Burlington Coat Factory.”

“An AmVets will be fine,” she objected as Adam grabbed her arm to swing her around to the door.

“You don’t know Sam very well, do you?” he chuckled. “He will _kill_ me after sending me off with his card if you come back with something second hand from an AmVets.”

“Yeah, figures he’s too good to buy second hand clothes,” she groused, causing him to stop with his hand on the door handle and narrow his eyes at her.

“You _definitely_ don’t know Sam. He’s got nothing against second hand clothes, he just prefers to leave them for people who can’t afford more.” She raised both eyebrows at him, very clearly unconvinced, and he added, “I’m serious. He’s been that way since we were kids and he used to con his grandfather into sending clothes for me by giving him the wrong sizes at Christmas. I guarantee you somewhere there’s some six and a half foot freak who will be grateful Sam didn’t buy out all the six and a half foot freak-sized seven dollar flannels cuz that other guy doesn’t have thirty-five bucks to spend on one shirt and Sam does.”

“Who in their right mind spends thirty-five dollars on a single shirt?” she snorted, deciding Sam must like getting ripped off by clothing stores.

Adam ran his fingers up the collar of Dean’s coat, which she hadn’t bothered to get out of, and replied, “You don’t want to know how much this thing cost. Dean told me the number on the pricetag and I almost died. We’ll ask at the Kroger’s if there’s a clothing store nearby. I haven’t been able to explore the area much.”

“Is Dean gonna be okay?”

It was the first time she asked a question about, had even broached the topic of Dean’s condition - mental or physical - with anyone, even after Bobby warned her vaguely before she left that the omega would probably be in rougher shape than the last time she saw him. She’d hoped to dance around it a little longer, not being the touchy-feely type, but Dean really was a friend, and a good one, and she was more worried about him than she was ever going to admit. Her worry didn’t decrease when Adam paused, obviously unsure of how to answer the question.

“I really can't say,” he finally told her, opting for honesty before ushering her out into the cold. “Come on.”

Kroger’s was a nightmare, as bad as they’d expected in terms of shoppers running out to grab those last few items they’d forgotten, though certainly not as bad as it could have been if the Colts had made it to the Super Bowl that year. Jo felt especially crowded, and even thought she caught some people leaning in her direction as she and Adam made their way through the aisles grabbing traditional game snacks and pre-packaged burgers to make for dinner. Adam didn’t seem to notice, completely focused on getting in and out as quickly as possible, so she figured she was just being paranoid after Dean’s tantrum about the two of them leaving the house unarmed just to walk a dog. Still, she was pretty positive the guy in line behind them shuffled in a little closer than he needed to be, even with how mobbed the store was, and she took a step in closer to Adam’s side, slinging her arm through his nonchalantly. He threw her a confused glance but didn’t press the issue, sliding Sam’s card through the reader to pay for the groceries.

By the time they were at the Burlington Coat Factory ( _turns out Fort Wayne did have one - who knew?_ ) Jo was positive she wasn’t imagining things. People _were_ leaning towards her, leering after her, turning around to see where she went, nearly all of them men. When she split off from Adam, who wanted to check to see if they might have a maternity section for male omegas since some of Dean’s shirts were getting a little tight, it became painfully obvious that she was attracting all kinds of unwanted attention. She tried very hard to ignore the increasingly obvious stares, humming along to _You’re So Vain_ playing through the sound system as she browsed through the racks of winter coats, which inexplicably were in the end-of-season sale area already even though it was only the first week of February. She was doing her best to keep track of all the other people in the store but realized quickly that if she were going to be successful at doing so her head needed to be on a swivel, and while she didn’t want to admit it, it was clear she should have stayed with Adam. It became even clearer when a hand slid down her back at the same moment a red haired female alpha sidled up next to her and shot her an impish grin.

“Hey,” the alpha said, her eyes flashing crimson.

“Hey…?” Jo returned, glancing down at the arm around her waist. “Do I know you?”

“No, but we can change that.”

“Yeah, I don’t think so.” She turned back to her browsing but the alpha did not remove her arm. Instead, she turned Jo towards her, crowding her back up against the rack, and took a sniff of her from shoulder to behind her ear. “Okay, I’m going to need you to get off me.”

“You smell so good though,” the woman purred, nipping at her jaw. “What are you doing out without your alpha?”

“Seriously, get off me,” Jo insisted, shoving against her and finding she was very tightly held. The alpha was a few inches taller than her, and shockingly strong. Jo tried to readjust to get a better angle to push the woman away and quickly found both arms pinned to her sides. “I don’t have an alpha and I don’t need one, get _off_ me.”

“Every bitch needs an alpha.” Jo tried to yell for help, but the muscular arms encircling her ribs were making it hard for her to breathe and she could barely get enough air in to talk let alone shout. “How about we take this to the dressing room?”

“No!”

“But it’ll be so much fun.”

“She said no.”

Jo had no idea when Adam had showed up but she honestly could have kissed him as he grabbed the alpha by the arm and yanked her away. Jo grabbed onto the nearest clothing rack as her breath came back to her, wondering where the fuck the store employees were. Didn’t they have security who were supposed to stop this sort of thing? The alpha sized Adam up and just laughed.

“Move along beta,” she snarled after a moment. “You don’t have what she needs.”

“Neither do you,” Adam replied, stepping back and easily avoiding the sloppy uppercut she threw. He countered with a jab straight to her nose, breaking it and sending blood spraying everywhere as she stumbled backwards and landed on her ass on the floor. “You shouldn’t telegraph your punches.”

“You’re gonna regret that,” she growled, in the middle of trying to clear the starbursts from behind her eyes.

Adam stepped between her and Jo and snapped, “My brother is the omega and she’s wearing his coat. Unless you want to go to jail for attempted assault on a beta you’ll walk away now.”

“She’s a fucking beta?” the alpha demanded, sniffing back the blood as it kept flowing. Adam wasn’t going to tell her not to do that unless she wanted to make herself sick.

“Does the coat look like it fits her?”

The alpha shifted her gaze from Adam’s cold glare to around behind him, where Jo was still half hidden in the middle of a clothing rack and noticed the way the sleeves on the coat were rolled up, how wide the shoulders were, and that it nearly dragged on the ground behind her. Her eyes shifted from red back to brown and she held a hand to her nose, looking flushed and sheepish.

“Oh, man,” she said at last. “Sorry lady, you just smelled so good…” She looked back up at Adam. “Is your brother single? His scent doesn’t smell mated…”

“Jesus, fuck off,” Adam snapped, and she scampered away as he turned to Jo and quickly got Dean’s coat off her. “I don’t think you should wear this anymore. You okay?” Jo didn’t respond immediately, staring after the retreating alpha and then checking around to see if anyone had even stopped to see what was happening. One or two people veiled their eyes from her like they noticed exactly what had gone on but hadn’t been planning to intervene at all, and she felt slightly nauseated. Adam’s hand on her arm jolted her out of it. “Jo, are you okay?”

If suddenly feeling the desire to burst into tears and having to fight her body not to begin shaking counted as “okay,” then Jo figured she was okay, so she nodded up at him before asking, “How did you know?”

“How did I know what?”

“That she thought I was an omega.”

“I’ve seen that happen to Dean about a million times.” He threw the coat over his arm and took a long inhale of her from shoulder to ear, causing her to flinch back into the clothing behind her. He shot her an apologetic smile. “Sorry. You smell all minty fresh so you’re probably covered in his scent. I didn’t find any maternity stuff for Dean. You want me to hang out while you’re shopping?”

“Please.” That came out a lot quicker than she intended, so she cleared her throat and shrugged casually. “I mean, sure, yeah. If you want. Now that I know why everyone keeps looking like they want to use me to brush their teeth it probably couldn’t hurt to have some backup.” Adam snorted, taking a step back to give her some space, which didn’t actually make her feel better. “You know, the last time Dean came into the Roadhouse there were these alphas that were really crowding him by the door and I figured he was just havin’ a bad night but uh, that happens to him a lot?”

“Pretty much everywhere he goes if he doesn’t wear blockers.”

“How does he deal with it?”

“He drinks. And stays away from alphas when he can.”

“Then how’d he end up with Sam?”

“Because he’s a Disney princess and finding a prince is a requirement for the happily ever after.” The finally got Jo to relax a bit and she laughed, moving out of the clothing rack. “Feel free to use that, by the way. He hates it.”

“Oh trust me, I will,” she assured him, leading him back over to the coats so they could finally get out of the store. It did not escape her attention that they continued to get leered at by half of the people walking past them, almost certainly because they both smelled like Dean now between Jo having worn his coat and Adam carrying it. Suddenly she understood why Dean hadn’t wanted them going outside without weapons on them and figured she needed to cut him some slack. If this was what Dean’s life was like he had the right to be a little paranoid, and definitely deserved a fucking prince.


	66. Do You Feel Like Watching the Game?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's Superbowl Sunday!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: There may be some triggery stuff in here.

Watching the Super Bowl at Benny/Lisa/Dean’s house was actually pretty awesome despite no one really caring about either team, though it was weird for everyone but college boy Adam to just sit around on the couch like normal people with a house and a dog and a kid and eat a bunch of food while taking in a game. Sam and Dean were already sprawled out on the couch - _not_ making out but babbling ridiculously at Lizzie - when Adam and Jo got back from shopping, and much to the omega’s surprise the expected hissy fit from the two betas about not having anywhere to sit didn’t come. Instead Jo thanked Sam for letting her get a coat with his card ( _it was calf-length brown wool and made her look like a gunslinger - she fucking loved it_ ), Sam almost fell off the couch at the unexpected expression of gratitude, and she and Adam headed into the kitchen with the food.

There was some teasing, of course, since Dean’s only good arm was completely occupied with holding a spit-bubble-blowing baby and that meant Sam had to feed him from their shared plate of food on the coffee table, snaking his long arms out past Adam and occasionally moving the plate a little farther from the edge as Hannah sat a few feet away, drooling and patiently waiting for someone to either take their eye off their food or drop something on the carpet. Jo snarked something about Dean being such a pretty princess so Dean demonstrated that his left middle finger still worked, earning a huge laugh out of both betas, who high fived like it was some kind of inside joke, and dammit he never should have introduced the two of them, because they really did get along very well and he was probably going to get tag-teamed as long as Jo was visiting. He clearly hadn’t thought through what might happen if his quasi-little sister spent time hanging around his actual little brother, because this was setting up to be pure hell. Hannah erupted into barking every time anyone reacted to a play or a hard tackle for the first half of the game, running around looking for the threat, but by the second half she seemed to have figured out that the humans were just being stupid and loud and settled down on her stomach to mournfully watch the food again.

By the time the game ended Dean and Lizzie had both fallen asleep on Sam, who had not failed to notice the way Jo sat slotted up against Adam for most of the night, his arm casually slung over her shoulder while they discussed the game and how The Rolling Stones was a weird choice for the halftime show, considering the band members looked like a public service announcement for all the reasons to avoid taking hard core drugs. When she got up to go to the bathroom somewhere towards the end of the third quarter Sam mentioned that they looked kind of cozy together, shifting Dean a little so he was more on the alpha’s shoulder instead of putting his arm to sleep as he very softly snored, not expecting at all to hear that Adam was just trying to make sure she was okay because an alpha had gotten handsy after smelling Dean’s scent on her while they were coat shopping, and that Adam had never dreamed he’d be the kind of guy to hit a girl but that knothead fucking deserved the broken nose. Sam reminded him that condoms were a thing and got a pillow to the face, which woke up his brother who was not pleased at the two younger men acting like pre-teen girls at a sleepover. He was grumbling about letting the pregnant guy fucking sleep when Jo came back and wanted to know what was going on, Dean’s gruff reply about a pillow fight making no sense whatsoever so she let it go.

The Steelers were in the middle of getting the Vince Lombardi Trophy when Lizzie started to fuss, still nestled carefully and comfortably between the two large men on the couch, her diaper full and her stomach empty. Dean flinched awake, looking on the verge of flailing at not immediately knowing where he was, but he calmed quickly at the feel of Sam’s hand running through his hair, finger combing out the slight tangles from moving around in his sleep. Sam took a second to marvel at the idea that Dean’s hair had gotten long enough to tangle until Lizzie’s increased fussiness and Adam clearing his throat brought him back to reality. Getting a half-asleep, pregnant, off-balanced, broad-shouldered omega with a baby up off the couch turned out to be better than watching Jerry Lewis stack chairs, and Hannah took advantage of the fact that _finally_ no one was keeping track of their food to snag the remainder of Jo’s nachos.

Dean regretted every time he’d ever teased Lisa even slightly for falling asleep before eleven o’clock when she was carrying Ben and Lizzie when he seemed to have turned a corner into his third trimester and fallen face first into exhaustion. Granted, what his body had gone through the week before probably didn’t help with how he was feeling as he made his way slowly up the stairs, having passed Lizzie off to Sam to feed before he started towards the bedroom, but he’d just slept through almost half the game and didn’t think he should be this ready to crawl into bed. He’d barely done anything after the episode on the couch besides struggling down to the floor at one point to play with the baby and pet the dog. Sam hadn’t let him leave the living room outside of peeing, not even to get a glass of water once he got him settled back down. It was probably because of the stress - Dr. Sands had said something about cortisol spikes and that if he felt like he needed to sleep he should, but that didn’t make him feel less like a weak little omega as he slowly lowered himself down to the edge of the bed to take off his socks and wait for Sam.

“Someone had a really big poop and needs a bath before bed,” the alpha said as he came into the room and headed for the en suite bathroom. “You up for helping me out?”

“Sammy, I told you not to have that third plate of chicken wings,” Dean admonished, getting back to his feet and following into the bathroom, stretching out his back a little as Sam laughed. “I knew something like this would happen.”

“My god, you’re such a dork,” Sam told him as he got the little blue bathtub out and planting a kiss at the corner of Dean’s mouth when he passed.

“Give me the baby and take care of the water.” He held an arm out and Sam shifted Lizzie over to him before getting everything set up in the tub with the baby shampoo, rubber duck temperature taker, and hooded towel to wrap her in afterwards as Dean walked back and forth with her. “Went a little nuts with the formula today, huh kiddo? Trying to make sure Sam’s over his poop trauma before Elliott gets here and it’s all dirty diapers all the time?”

“I do not have poop trauma.”

“You didn’t see your face the third day we were here and Lisa brought you back down from changing her.” He smiled broadly at the image of Lisa in the kitchen, dwarfed behind a shellshocked Sam, hand covering her mouth as she stifled laughter at his expense. It was a great memory, one he wanted to think back on happily, but it brought such a terrible tightness to his chest that the smile quickly became strained as he turned from Sam to Lizzie. “Your mom,” he choked, trying to hold onto the fondness of those few days here with the six of them together. “She always knew when to just...throw someone in the deep end and see if they were gonna sink or swim. Sam kinda doggie paddled.”

Lizzie was fascinated by the words coming out of Dean’s mouth despite not understanding any of them, and responded with some cooing and shrieking before running her lips like a little motorboat and getting spit everywhere. Dean laughed at how silly she looked with drool going everywhere, eyes bright and arms and legs wiggling, but looking at her hurt more than he dared admit out loud, and god help him he was grateful when Sam said, “On second thought, go lay down. I’ve got this.”

“I can handle washing a baby,” Dean objected, though he didn’t fight when Sam took the little girl back and gently pushed him out into the bedroom, clicking the door shut behind him as Adam appeared in the doorway.

“We’re taking Hannah for a quick walk,” he said. “Jo says she’s doing the potty dance. Don’t worry, we’re both armed.”

“Okay,” Dean said with a nod, then added as his brother turned away, “Remember, Trojans are your friend and come with lots of options.”

“I fucking hate you both,” the beta snarled, and stomped off down the hall after slamming the door behind him.

Left to his own devices as he listened to Sam talking to the baby about which little piggy went to market, Dean shucked off his pants and overshirt, not even bothering with his under tunic after learning the hard way there was no point trying to get it off without help. Needing to forget that he was in Benny and Lisa’s bedroom - which, granted, was easier to do when Adam and Jo got him a bedding set to match his room back at Bobby’s - he got himself situated under the covers and grabbed _What to Expect When You’re Expecting: Omega Edition_ from where he’d set it down on the nightstand the previous evening when Jo threw it at him. He knew Sam had been trying to read the whole book, but Dean didn’t see the point of that. The first three chapters dealt with the first three months of pregnancy and he’d already lived those so he felt little need to replay his greatest hits from that trimester, particularly when they mostly involved him hanging out over a toilet puking his guts out. As for the chapters on the second trimester - well, he’d lived through those too now, mostly, and was pretty sure his experience wasn’t going to fit into the typical things to “ _Expect_.” Instead he started right in with chapter four, the one both Bobby and Sam had made such a stink about, noticing that someone had turned down the corner of one of the pages about halfway through. He guessed that was probably Sam, since Bobby had circled the chapter title and made the note, “ _Have Dean read_ ” in the margin. It didn’t make sense that Bobby would want him to read the entire chapter and then dog-ear a page in the middle with no notation.

The babymooning chapter was very short, only about ten pages long, and Christ was it annoying to try to get through. The way the beta who wrote this book put together sentences made him wonder if she thought all omegas popped out their first baby directly after presenting. It couldn’t have been written at much higher than an eighth grade reading level, and he was surprised not to find the phrase, “like, ohmygod!” somewhere in there. At least it explained why he’d almost immediately wanted to jump Sam’s bones when they came back together in Windom despite the many issues he was dealing with, and why even now while he was healing from what Johnny had done to him the urge to pin Sam down to the bed and do all sorts of fun, filthy things to him was so very strong. He knew he shouldn’t be reacting this way, that it wasn’t healthy ( _not that he’d ever dealt with anything in a healthy way_ ), but the extent to which his hormones were driving him to want to be intimate with Sam anytime they were even remotely alone or at least had a closet nearby to close themselves in was a bit of a surprise when mentally and emotionally he was so close to losing it most of the time.

He realized he probably should have taken his mother’s lessons in alphas and omegas a bit more to heart, rather than shuffling them away as little more than fairy tales after he presented and discovered just how awful most alphas were. Millie had told him about how quickly alphas and omegas bonded when they’d found their mate, that he would know when it happened to him, and of course he had, even if he did spend a couple of years denying that’s what he felt when he arrived at Adam’s graduation and scented Sam. Obviously Bobby would want him to read this chapter, knowing how ornery he was in addition to being adamantly opposed to the idea of accepting a mate. Bobby might only be a beta, but he understood Dean and he understood what was going on between him and Sam even when they’d both been too blind or scared or whatever to pick up on it. Biology was trying to soften up the higher functioning levels of his brain to the idea of mating the alpha that his omega had already chosen, which was actually pretty smart from an evolutionary perspective and probably would have really pissed him off if Sam weren’t just so... _Sam_.

What he didn’t understand was why this chapter had caused the alpha to freak out and to insist that they not mate until after Elliott was born. Unless Sam hadn’t yet figured out they were bonded - though that didn’t seem even remotely possible. Sam had been the one to lay his feelings out there first, and Dean had reciprocated all of them, even if he hadn’t _said_ how he felt out loud until a few days ago. There was no way Sam could have thought this whole time that it was just hormones when hormones alone weren’t enough for the kind of babymooning they’d been engaging in. Dean flipped back to the beginning of the chapter and started leafing through the pages, trying to see if maybe he’d missed something that had been circled or maybe some of Sam’s handwritten notes in the margins to go with Bobby’s that would clue him into what had scared the alpha but there was nothing. Finally he took a look at the page that had been turned down and realized the big moron in the bathroom must have turned it down as a placeholder, and that meant he only read half the chapter. Sam got through everything about the hormones and nothing about how they only held any sway when a pair was already bonded.

The dumbass. They could already be mated by now, safe in the Men of Letters bunker, and have avoided a ton of this shit if Sam had just finished the fucking chapter. Or didn’t start reading it to begin with. How could someone who prided himself so much on being booksmart be so goddamn stupid as to not finish reading something before making a judgement about it? Sam would never only do half the research on a creature before going on a hunt; it was infuriating that the one time he’d think he knew everything with only partial knowledge of a subject it would have the potential to screw them six ways to Sunday between the OPS separating them and the danger of Dean getting charged with manslaughter for defending himself. Not to mention they couldn’t even enjoy the babymoon now, something that frankly sounded awesome, especially when Dean had already read all the literature Dr. Milton gave him on surgical delivery and they were looking at two months minimum after Elliott was born before they’d be able to resume knotting ( _and Christ, he missed knotting now that he knew what it felt like to be filled, every beta he’d ever been with paled in comparison, and his relentless omega kept hammering home the_ **_need_ ** _to be tied to Sam as frequently as possible_ ). That meant they were staring at nearly six months of hand jobs and blow jobs and fingering and just thinking about how inadequate that would be was enough to make him want to break everything in the room. It was a stupid thing to be pissed about. Lots of people went six months without sex, but knowing they could have avoided this if Sam had just finished reading was sour icing on a bitter cake. Dean tried to suppress the growl rising in the back of his throat and decided it was a good thing Lizzie was in the bathroom with the alpha or Sam would be getting a boot upside the head as soon as he came out.

“I’m starting to think someone fills up her diaper just to get us to give her a bath,” Sam said with a smirk as he emerged, slightly damp, depositing Lizzie in the arm Dean automatically held out for her before going to grab her a diaper from the bag beside her crib and then pajamas from her box of clothes. “I figured you’d be asleep by now.”

“I was reading,” Dean snapped, snatching the diaper and pajamas from Sam and starting to get Lizzie ready for bed, his left shoulder having just enough range of motion for him to do so without pain.

The flare of anger in the omega’s scent left Sam very confused, and almost against his will he felt his alpha bristle. He thought a second time of Jody’s warning about Dean wanting to pick fights with him in an effort to regain some sense of power in his own life, but something about this felt different than the mood swings Dean had been having since yesterday.

“What were you reading?” he asked, immediately getting _What to Expect_ … slammed against his chest as Dean paused momentarily in getting Lizzie’s leg into one side of her footie pajamas to grab the book from the nightstand. It wasn’t the same as hitting him with a shoe, but it would have to do. “I don’t…”

“Chapter four, Sam. The one you were so upset about? The one you said I _had_ to read before you’d claim me? Yeah, I read it.”

Sam’s heart sank and his stomach clenched as he moved over towards the crib, staring at the book in his hands. He hadn’t thought about the babymooning chapter since Dean’s birthday, was certain it had been wrong about what was going on between the two of them. Now however, with the angry scowl turning down the corners of Dean’s pretty mouth and the way he was pushing past his obvious irritation to put on a happy face for Lizzie, it felt like the world was crashing down around his ears. Clearly Dean realized now that what was happening between them wasn’t real; was probably pissed off that Sam had been taking advantage of him when he knew the omega’s feelings were hyperinflated by hormones.

However, unlike when he’d originally read the chapter and it seemed like his life was ending, strangely this time he only felt the briefest flash of heartbreak before his alpha began to rise up, furious that the omega would spurn him this way. He had done everything possible to show what a good provider and protector he would be, including covering all of Dean’s hospital bills, his housing, his clothes, two separate lawyers, even buying him a truck so the omega would have a safe vehicle to drive _their_ baby around in. He’d adopted a goddamned _dog_ for Dean, was taking care of some other alpha’s child as if she were his own, was being endlessly patient with Dean’s mood swings and panic attacks, had acquiesced to letting him come to this house alone, which is why they now weren’t allowed to fuck each other for _months_. Didn’t he realize any other alpha would be out the door by now, would be claiming his rights to their child and walking away, would have just taken what he wanted and mated Dean with or without his consent? What more could the man _possibly_ want from him?

Something seemed to be snapping inside Sam, something that made his center of higher reasoning try to pull back helplessly at the rage building inside of him. His rational brain was screaming that this response was inappropriate, that he didn’t even really know what Dean was upset about, that this was the man he wanted to mate, build a house for, have a dozen babies with, protect with his very life if he had to, but the anger refused to dissipate. It was blacking everything out - how much he loved Dean, how scared he was of this kind of fury, how insanely he was overreacting - until all that was left was the wrath, focused like a laser on the omega on the bed, who had noticed the way the temperature almost dropped in the room as Sam’s anger rose. Very slowly he picked Lizzie up from the mattress even though he wasn’t supposed to lift her, worried that any sudden movement was going to set Sam off, and began to slide towards the edge of the bed.

“Sam?” he said calmly, his heart pounding in his chest so fast he was afraid it might make him pass out before he could figure out what was going on and why Sam’s irises were suddenly the glowing red of an enraged alpha.

“ _Come here, Dean_ ,” Sam ordered, but there was something wrong with his voice; something _not Sam_ about it, and despite the command coming from his alpha Dean found it simple not to comply.

“I don’t think so, Sammy,” he replied, bolting for the bathroom as Sam sprung at him from over by the crib.

Sam reached the door just as Dean slammed it shut and locked the knob, Lizzie waking up and starting to cry as the alpha leaned against the door, a growl starting low in his gut and rising like a thunderstorm. He could smell the omega’s fear from the inside of the bathroom and the part of him that was in control found it deeply satisfying, while the rest of him shrieked for him to stop and pounded against the soundproof box into which his logical self had been locked.

“Open the door, Dean,” he snarled from outside as Dean lined the baby bathtub with a couple of towels in case it was still wet and laid a wailing Elizabeth down in it so his one good arm would be free to fight Sam off if necessary. With what he wasn’t sure, but he hurried to the linen closet on the other side of the room past the vanity in the hope that Benny kept a weapon stashed there for emergency purposes. “ _Open the door_.”

“Not until you calm down Sam,” Dean said, struggling to keep a tremor out of his voice when his search turned up nothing but linens. He headed back to the vanity, risking turning his back on the door to check underneath the sink for something to defend himself with, even if it was just a pair of hair cutting scissors and he was absolutely not supposed to be bending over. The sound of the doorjamb splitting behind him had Dean abandoning his search to scramble over to the tub to get between the alpha and Lizzie, as he shouted, “Adam!”

Hannah went off like a burglar alarm downstairs, her frantic barking drawing closer by the second as Sam dragged Dean from where he was on the floor over to in front of the vanity, his grip so tight on the smaller man’s bicep he was going to leave bruises. Dean tried feebly to swing a left hook at the alpha but his shoulder exploded in agony and he had no strength to put behind it. Sam stopped the hit like Dean was a three year old and twisted his fist, a scream of pain echoing through the bathroom and mixing with Lizzie’s shrieking.

“Trying to hit me, bitch?” Sam hissed as his irises flicked over from red to black. “Bad idea.”

The bullet that splintered the vanity mirror just to the left of Sam’s ear finally got him to stop, the bathroom going dead silent except for Lizzie continuing to wail and Hannah’s sharp, threatening barks promising Sam a calf full of canine teeth, but it was the hammer cock that really made him still, glaring down at Dean as the omega tried to swallow the whimpers clogging his throat.

“Get away from him Sam, or I swear to god I will kill you,” Adam demanded coldly, Jo behind him restraining Hannah by the collar for no other reason than to give Adam a clear shot if necessary.

The alpha laughed, looking up from Dean to glare at Adam in the mirror, Jo half hidden behind the beta with the gun, a mixture of terror and disgust on her face. Adam’s expression held only the promise of Sam’s imminent death if he refused to release Dean. The snarky reply Sam intended to shoot back at the two pajama-clad twenty year olds died on his lips when he caught a glimpse of his own reflection, twelve sets of black irises glaring back at him from the fractured glass. The anger that had been driving him vanished as if someone had reached into his chest and plucked it out, and the corners of his brain that had been trying to restrain him rushed forward to take back control as he blinked away the blackness and his hazel eyes returned. He sucked in a breath like a man who had been underwater for too long, taking in a huge gulp of air and relaxing his hold on Dean. The room came into focus in sections; first the bathtub where Lizzie was continuing to screech, then the mirror where he saw Adam and Jo still poised to kill him if they needed to, then the absolutely destroyed linen closet and the towels and washcloths everywhere, then Dean. Dean, who was trembling so badly it seemed a real possibility that he was going to shake himself to pieces. Dean, whose eyes were squeezed so tightly shut his entire face scrunched up in a combination of horror and physical pain. Dean, who was struggling to suppress the sobs that wanted to rip their way out of him and trying to make himself small enough to hide between the vanity and commode.

“Dean…” Sam choked, releasing his hold and stepping away until his back was against the wall, hands in the air. Dean’s knees gave out and it was good the toilet was right there or he would have ended up on the floor. “Something’s...something’s wrong with me…”

“I’ll fucking say,” Jo snapped as Adam moved into the bathroom, sliding over in front of the linen closet with the gun still trained on Sam.

“Dean, get Lizzie out of the tub and come over to me,” Adam said firmly, his eyes never leaving Sam as his older brother struggled to get the baby out of her tub one handed, his left wrist at the very least badly sprained.

“Adam…” Sam attempted, looking at him with eyes that were normal and now brimming with tears.

“Shut up,” Adam hissed as he got Dean and Lizzie pressed up against him, his left arm snaking around his brother’s waist as the older Winchester and the little girl both bawled.

“There’s something...wrong with me,” Sam insisted, his breath hitching while his eyes overflowed. “Something’s really...wrong with me…I can’t…”

“Not tonight, Sam,” Adam cut in, moving with Dean out of the bathroom. “We’ll figure it out in the morning, but not tonight.”

“I can’t...control it…” Sam said anyway, crying now almost as hard as Dean. “I’m scared of what I...m-might do…”

“In the morning, Sam,” Adam repeated. “Dean’s got the interview with the detectives tomorrow so we all need to go to bed. He’s gonna come sleep with me. We’ll figure this out in the morning.”

“N-no.” Sam moved so quickly towards them that Adam shot just past his head again, destroying what was left of the mirror. Jesus, they were going to have the cops on them if Adam couldn’t get Sam to back off. The alpha held his hands up again as Hannah lunged at him, nearly taking Jo to the floor, and he backed towards the bedroom door. “N-no, I’ll go sleep in B-Ben’s room. You stay here.”

“You all right staying in here, Dean?” Adam asked, and his brother nodded vigorously against his shoulder while Adam tracked Sam’s movements all the way to the hall. “Okay then. Goodnight Sam.”

“I’m sorry…”

“Goodnight. Sam.”

The alpha shoved his hands into the front pockets of his jeans, half collapsing in on himself the way Dean had in the bathroom, and with a nod and a sob headed off down the hall. Adam let go of his brother, who practically fell down to the edge of the bed with Lizzie clutched to his chest, and rushed to close and lock the bedroom door. Jo finally let go of Hannah, who immediately went to stand by the door and repeatedly snort after Sam, the young woman giving a start as Adam moved back past her and shoved the gun into her hands.

“Point that at the door and shoot him if he comes back through it,” he told her before trying to get Dean to release his death grip on Lizzie. “Dean, give her to me and lay down.” The omega blubbered something neither beta could understand, and it doubled Adam’s determination to get the baby away from him. “Give her to me.”

Finally Dean relented, letting Adam pull her out of his arms and start walking her around the room to try to stop her screaming. Jo moved to the edge of the bed to rub Dean’s back while she kept the gun trained on the door as Adam cycled through every song his brain would allow him to recall that had even the slightest soothing melody. The best he managed was _One_ , then _Fake Plastic Trees_ , _Sober_ , though obviously he didn’t drop the f-bomb in the Tool song because he was singing it to a baby and Sam’s “swear jar” played prominently at the front of his brain, and finally _She Talks to Angels_. Lizzie began to calm down and start to doze with the last song, which was good because Dean was still a mess and Adam needed to take care of him. He had no idea what had happened beyond Sam looking possessed, and he didn’t doubt his friend was scared of whatever had been driving him to manhandle Dean, because Adam was fucking terrified.


	67. You Knew There Was Something Wrong with You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The morning after the night before.

Adam decided the thing he liked best about Jo so far was the fact that she could actually cook. He understood that was reductionist and old fashioned, but after laying awake half the night trying to soothe Dean enough that he could sleep the last thing he wanted was for his brother to have nothing to eat for breakfast but a bowl of Cap’n Crunch. Jo made scrambled eggs, pancakes, _and_ bacon in the amount of time it took Adam to burn half a loaf of bread and give up entirely on making toast. For the first time possibly ever he thought he’d gotten incredibly lucky having Becky for a roommate, because she liked to do the cooking and it was obviously a skillset way outside Adam’s comfort zone. They’d taken shifts guarding the door overnight, both running on only a couple of hours of sleep, and when Jo piled up Dean’s plate of pancakes and eggs ( _Adam warned her off the bacon_ ) he told her to just lock the door and go back to bed. Sam hadn’t ventured out of Ben’s room all night, Dean was still barricaded in the master bedroom, Adam had already taken a bottle up for Lizzie, and there was no reason they both needed to hang out downstairs waiting to see who came out first, not when he had Hannah to keep him company on the off chance Sam was still rabid ( _or whatever the hell had been wrong with him the night before_ ).

It was mid-morning by the time Sam appeared, hair looking particularly mussed and dark circles standing out on his face under his red rimmed, puffy eyes. He was still in his clothes from the night before minus his socks and shoes, and his hands were already stuffed back into his pockets as he shuffled his way into the kitchen looking deeply ashamed of himself. He fumbled getting one of the new mugs out of the cupboard and staggered over to the pot of coffee to pour himself a cup, avoiding Adam’s eyes the entire time. His cheeks looked pink and raw, like he’d been scrubbing at them with the sleeve of his shirt, and though Adam slid him a plate of pancakes and bacon the alpha didn’t make a move to touch it, instead just staring at the bottle of syrup on the kitchen island in front of him.

“You don’t look like you slept at all,” the beta finally said, leaning against the counter with his arms crossed.

“That’s because I didn’t,” Sam replied thickly as he picked up his fork with the intention of eating but having no appetite to do so. “Is he okay?”

“I’m going to need you to define ‘okay’ before I answer that.”

“Did I break his wrist?”

“No. It’s just a bad sprain. I wrapped it once I got him calmed down. Well, kind of calmed down.”

“Shit.”

Sam threw down the fork and pushed the plate away, resting his elbows on the island, his hands fisted in his hair. Well, at least Adam knew why his hair looked worse than just his normal bed head. The alpha looked like he might break down crying again and Adam didn’t think he could take that. The Winchesters weren’t criers by nature, having shed more tears in the last three months than they had in their entire lives, and Sam had never been either, so the fact that Sam was sitting here now on the verge of blubbering into his pancakes was unsettling to say the least.

“So what happened last night?” Adam asked after giving his friend a couple of minutes to try to compose himself.

“I don’t know,” Sam said miserably.

“Okay. What do you _think_ happened?”

“I don’t know!” The stool kicked out behind him with how quickly he stood, startling the Pyr who headed for the living room in a flurry of confused “wuf”s. The clatter of the legs against the floor gave Sam enough of a jolt that he quickly composed himself, pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes and exhaling a shaky breath. “I have no idea. One minute we were talking about that dumb baby book and the next I was just... _furious_. Over _nothing_. Over the fact that Dean was angry, but I didn’t even know what he was angry about and I just...I just wanted to tear his throat out. Literally.” He dropped his hands to his sides and stared at the far wall of the kitchen, carefully avoiding Adam’s gaze. “I’m scared shitless, man. I don’t know why I reacted that way and I couldn’t stop it. I just wanted to _kill_ him and I knew it was wrong and I couldn’t...”

“Maybe it’s pheromones?” Adam suggested. “Like what happened back in Windom?”

“No, it wasn’t like that. I couldn’t stop that either but that...I knew what was driving it. I just needed to scent the baby but I didn’t want to hurt him. Last night I did.”

“What about your psychic thing? Your eyes looked weird.”

“Sam?”

They both turned to where Dean was standing in the doorway between the dining room and the family room in his tunic and boxers from the night before. Hannah was standing in front of his legs, pressing up against his thighs and watching Adam and Sam in the kitchen. He looked ill and delicate, no color at all in his pale skin with the exception of the purple-brown bags under his eyes, his left wrist wrapped in an Ace bandage. Sam slowly slid his hands to the island countertop and clung to it to suppress the instinctive need to hold and protect an omega in such terrible physical shape, his arms trembling with the effort it took to restrain himself.

“Hey,” Sam said softly, Adam heading around him to stand at the threshold of the kitchen and the dining room, partly to assess his brother’s condition and partly to provide a barrier between the two if one was needed.

“I thought I told you to sleep in,” the younger Winchester said with a slight scowl, his arms folded across his chest again in frustration.

“Tried. Couldn’t. Lizzie needs a diaper change and I’m not supposed to lift her out of the crib. Jo’s sleepin’ and I didn’t want to bug her and get a lecture about women’s lib or somethin’ when she already made breakfast.” Dean drew in a determined breath, clenching his jaw and squaring his shoulders in an attempt to look like Dean Motherfucking Winchester instead of some breakable little omega who couldn’t get his shit together after something that wasn’t half as bad as the bar fights he routinely found himself in when he went just a little too easy on the scent blockers. “And I need a shower. Didn’t get one in yesterday and I can’t go to the police station with greasy hair.”

“Okay,” Adam said, heading towards him. “I’ll go change Lizzie and then I can help you…”

“Sam can help me,” Dean cut in firmly, turning to head for the downstairs bathroom before either of them could question his declaration, Hannah following dutifully after him.

Adam looked back at Sam, whose expression betrayed the slightly nauseated feeling he was experiencing at Dean wanting to shower with him. It wasn’t exactly the sort of reaction Sam ever thought he would have at that kind of invitation, but he didn’t know what he was supposed to do after what had happened the night before. Well, obviously he was supposed to help Dean shower; he just didn’t know _how_ he was going to do that when he didn’t feel he had any right to even touch the omega, let alone be so intimate with him.

“I just want to remind you that I have a gun,” Adam told him after a moment, no trace of humor in his tone or stare. Sam gave a curt nod and the beta headed away upstairs.

Hannah was laying outside the open bathroom door, panting as the steam from the shower made the air billowing out of the room uncomfortably warm for a double coated dog. She growled lowly as she watched Sam approach, though it wasn’t a threat as much as it was an attempt to decide whether she wanted to raise to a “wuf” or “wooWOOwooWOO.” In the end she did neither and merely groaned as Sam stepped over her and clicked the door shut behind him. Dean was sitting on the toilet seat lid, in the process of unwrapping the bandage from his left hand after having already taken off his slippers. He looked even worse in the bathroom light, which gave a kind of yellow sheen to his skin. Sam didn’t move from where he’d stopped against the closed door, and after the Ace bandage was off Dean stood up to face him, though he didn’t raise his eyes any higher than Sam’s chin. He stood there for a while, the mirror fogging up in the increasingly moist warm air, and waited for Sam to move. Finally he let out a frustrated sigh and said, “I can’t get my shirt off myself, Sam.”

His eyes flicked up quickly to Sam’s and then away again, giving the alpha no more than a second to try to assess the omega’s mood. Dean had thoroughly clamped down any emotion that might leak out into his scent, and though Sam was certain he was afraid because of the way his right hand had trembled slightly while he unwrapped his left ( _and clearly he was going to be afraid after the previous night’s events_ ), anything else Dean might be feeling was a complete mystery. But Dean needed help getting out of his shirt, and he wanted Sam to be the one helping him, so the younger man moved in and carefully lifted the tunic off over Dean’s right arm, over his head, and slid it down his left side. The bandage on his shoulder looked like it needed to be changed, but before Sam could get a really good look at it Dean was turning away and yanking off his boxers so he could climb into the shower enclosure.

“Wait,” Sam said, causing Dean to stop, his entire body going rigid while Sam quickly stripped out of his clothes and moved to his right side to take hold of his arm and help steady him.

Dean barely managed not to flinch at the touch but allowed Sam to aid him getting into the stall, reaching out as best he could to grab Sam’s forearm for support when his foot slipped. Sam got his free arm around Dean’s back and definitely felt him tremble then, still having no clue what the boundaries were or how he was supposed to help Dean beyond simply making sure he didn’t fall and hurt himself. The omega paused, taking some time to get his shaking back under control as he leaned heavily against Sam’s side, glancing up again at Sam’s face for only another second or two before stepping carefully under the hot spray of water. Gently Dean wrestled his good arm free to reach for the loofa to transfer to his left hand, judging the weight of it to be something he could handle with his sprained wrist, then reached back for the body wash as Sam’s hands settled on his waist to keep him steady even as the alpha maintained a respectable distance between them. As he took the soapy loofa back in his right hand and started to wash down his chest, Sam risked trailing his fingers a few inches up Dean’s side to hold his ribs, regretting it immediately when the smaller man froze in front of him, his breath catching in his throat. Sam stopped instantly, waiting for Dean to take the lead.

“So, it’s pretty clear that demon blood of yours is a problem,” Dean stated when his voice finally returned to him, extending the loofa over his shoulder. “Can you get my back?”

“Yeah,” Sam murmured, washing over Dean’s freckled skin in slow, sweeping arcs of suds. “And yeah. I don’t know why all of a sudden, but yeah, it is.”

“Crowley told me...when I didn’t know if I could trust him...that back at Marge’s Ruby kind of opened you up to it. That Azazel was gonna have a lot more pull with you now. And with the couple of dreams you had, and the way you blew that door out with the poltergeist, and then last night...”

“I know. I’m angry, Dean. I’m angry all the time. At everything and nothing - for no reason. It’s always there, just beneath the surface, even when I’m...when I’m happy. And it’s...for a while now you’ve been enough. Having you there was enough to pull me back but now...I don’t know what’s happening.” He swallowed thickly, sliding slowly in closer until he could rest his forehead against Dean’s scalp, snaking an arm around the omega’s abdomen to pull him into a loose embrace. Dean shook slightly but didn’t fight him. “I made my grandfather kill himself.” Dean stiffened, and Sam tightened his hold, the fear and confusion he was feeling battling the Old Spice body wash to become the dominant smell in the shower. At the scent of Sam’s rising distress, Dean softened automatically, too tired to fight his omega’s demands that he comfort the alpha, that somehow he could make it better if he gave in to his instincts. It seemed the correct choice as Sam all but dissolved against him, trembling slightly. “I knew I could _make_ him do it. I don’t know how I knew, but I did. That if I just thought about it hard enough he wouldn’t be able to resist the order. And I don’t regret it, because he was never going to leave us alone - he was never going to leave _you_ alone, and Jesus after what he had Johnny do he deserved to die just like any other monster, but it feels like I let something out that I can’t put back where it came from. When I saw Crowley he said I needed to stop, and I want to. I want to stop, I just don’t know how, and that terrifies me.”

“The only way it’s ever gonna stop is when Azazel’s dead.” Dean pulled out of Sam’s hold to stand under the water and rinse off for a minute before grabbing the shampoo and handing it back, turning to look at Sam over his shoulder, his features carefully schooled into a mask of perfect, rational calm. “Wash my hair, would you?”

Sam took the bottle from him with a soft, “Mmhmm,” squeezing a dollop into his palm and massaging it through Dean’s tresses, enjoying how the older man melted against him as Sam worked his fingers into Dean’s scalp. He was fairly certain he knew where Dean was going with this, and even though he could feel deep in his bones that he was only going to get worse the longer Azazel was able to roam the earth he wasn’t willing to accept that he needed to actively hunt the demon down; that he couldn’t leave it to John to handle. It seemed ludicrous to fight the OPS to stay together just to turn around and leave, even if it’s what he already knew Dean planned to suggest. Hell, they were meeting with the detectives to clear up the mess with Johnny in a couple of hours and Dean was going to need to be supported through that, not to mention they needed to arrange to sell Benny’s business, and he couldn’t just expect Adam to stick around for months to help out, even if he was Dean’s brother and had insisted for years that he wanted to take care of Dean. That was supposed to be Sam’s job, and even if it hadn’t been the alpha was not yet ready to admit what was happening to him wasn’t going to stop unless _he_ stopped it. Denial wasn’t just a river in Egypt after all.

“I’m sorry about last night,” Sam said quietly, running his fingertips up the back of Dean’s neck to the top of his head and back down around the sides to scratch across his temples. He pulled a contented sigh out of the omega that made is heart do a little flip and let him pretend for a few minutes that things were going to be okay between them - that nothing had changed.

“I know.” Dean moved away again to rinse his hair, extending his arm back for Sam to hold and help keep him steady in the shower. After a few moments he turned to face the alpha, his eyes still closed against the soap running down his face, and he tugged gently for Sam to come closer. “Doesn’t make it okay.”

“I know,” Sam echoed, moving to duck under the showerhead and slotting himself up against Dean. “You had every right to be upset about the babymooning. I’ve been taking advantage…”

“That’s not why I’m upset about the babymooning.”

“What?”

“You haven’t been takin’ advantage.” He tipped his head up against Sam’s neck, trying to force the fear that threw his heart into a wild, pounding rhythm to go away. “I was mad cuz you’re an idiot. You only read the part about hormones and not the part about bonding.”

“What?”

“The hormones only affect bonded pairs. We’ve been bonded since Shreveport.”

“What?”

Sam’s inability to process what he was being told and say anything other than “What” actually drew a snort out of Dean, who finally looked at him; really looked at him with his huge juniper eyes, water droplets fringing his lashes. He threw the younger man a tentative smile, skimming his fingers up Sam’s spine.

“I tell you I practically had a love-at-first-sight experience at Adam’s party and you’re surprised that we bonded?” he asked. “I know things got all fucked up but...I spent a week drinkin’ at Bobby’s and crying like someone outta _Pride and Prejudice_ after your reaction to my big move was ‘I’m gonna go make breakfast,’ so yeah. Pretty sure we bonded then. In spite of everything. You woulda known only bonded pairs babymoon if you’d finished the chapter before freakin’ out.”

“Dean…”

“I can’t be around you if I’m not safe, Sam. If Elliott and Lizzie aren’t gonna be safe.”

The alpha couldn’t stop his hands from shooting down to grab the omega’s hips, just the thought of losing him enough to make Sam need to physically latch onto Dean. He managed to contain the urge to clutch Dean to his chest and never let go, but just barely. His fingers dug in slightly before he got the surge of terror under control and relaxed to rubbing circles into Dean’s hip bones with his thumbs.

“I’ll get a handle on it, Dean.”

“Will you?” Sam’s hands traveled up his torso and shoulders, avoiding the bite mark to caress Dean’s neck before settling on either side of his face, thumbs tracing the lines of his cheekbones and making the omega purr in spite of himself. “Can you, Sammy?”

“If I can’t I’ll go,” Sam told him, holding the skeptical green gaze as he ran his hands through Dean’s hair, his hazel eyes searching the omega’s expression like he needed to memorize what he looked like in case the smaller man vanished. “I promise. If I can’t get it under control I’ll go back out on the road with your dad and I won’t come back until Azazel’s dead. Okay?” Dean had moved up tight against him, his face pressed into Sam’s neck, and he nodded. “But I can’t just walk away from you without trying.”

He could feel something in the Dean give way - not exactly his fear, Sam couldn’t possibly expect him to stop being afraid anytime soon with two bullet holes in the bathroom wall upstairs, more like his hesitancy to believe that Sam could fight whatever darkness was trying to take him over. Dean was clearly making a conscious decision to trust Sam, to face the dragon instead of running from it to hide in a tower. His arms were around Sam’s back, barely any pressure from his left but his right arm clasping Sam desperately to him, like if they clung together tightly enough he could drive the demon blood out of the alpha through sheer force of will. Sam wrapped himself around the omega, wanting to hide them both away from the world and anything that might try to pull them apart, especially the evil thing that lived inside him and was working to poison everything Sam did, twist every feeling he had into something grotesque. He didn't deserve to feel Dean’s lips against his, not ever again, not after being so completely out of control the night before, so he certainly wasn’t going to try to suppress the whimper that rose in his throat as the omega pushed him to the back of the enclosure away from the spray, his mouth slanting over Sam’s, tasting of pancakes and syrup. The omega’s instincts were insisting he could keep the alpha from boiling over if he was too busy being wrapped around Dean’s little finger to be angry about anything, and that seemed to be a good plan to go with as his full pink lips slid away to suck a dark bruise onto Sam’s skin where his jaw met his neck. The only scent coming off the alpha now was joy as he focused on breathing, feeling lightheaded, his eyes fluttering closed and toes curling. That Dean was able to send his heart racing like a thoroughbred at the Belmont Stakes with just a few kisses would never cease to amaze Sam, and his hands wove into Dean’s hair to tip his face up so he could return the favor. They were back under the shower, the hot water starting to run more lukewarm, Sam’s hands everywhere and Dean clinging to his neck with his good arm when there was a knock at the bathroom door and Adam called, “Everything okay in there?”

“Don’t say anything,” Sam breathed against Dean’s lips. “Maybe he’ll go away.”

“You’re such a dreamer,” Dean said. “Babymooning in here Runt. Stop bein’ a cockblocker.”

“Christ, I need my own place,” they heard the beta grumble, and burst out laughing, teeth knocking together as they kissed through their smiles, Adam’s feet retreating with the sound of Hannah’s nails clacking after him.

They stayed in the shower another twenty minutes until the water had really gotten uncomfortably cold, partly to scandalize Dean’s younger brother and partly because they both needed a cold shower before either tried to leave the bathroom in nothing but a towel. Adam was set up in the living room with Lizzie on her play mat and Jo had reappeared, looking particularly rumpled and desperately in need of a hair brush as she clutched a cup of coffee and scrolled through help wanted ads on Sam’s laptop, sitting cross legged on the couch. They both pointedly ignored the squawk Dean gave when Sam scooped him up to carry upstairs, figuring it was the only way around the order for the omega to only go up and down the stairs twice a day and not wanting to renege on that for fear the semi-retired hunter would be taking the stairs as often as he liked rather than relying on the others in the house to get him something if he needed it. Adam half expected they would be staying upstairs until right before they needed to go to the police station, having built-in babysitters downstairs to watch the infant and the dog, but not even fifteen minutes later they were back at the top of the stairs, Dean grumbling about how stupid it was that Sam was carrying him up and down even as his cheeks betrayed his delight with a slight pink blush at being carted around like a delicate flower. Dean headed off to the kitchen to load the dishwasher while Sam scooped Lizzie up off the floor to get her out of her pajamas and into actual clothes, since Dean wasn’t comfortable being separated from her for however long the interview took. Even if she had to stay outside in the waiting area with Sam he wanted her with him, an impulse the alpha definitely understood. It was one thing to have Adam and Jo watching her in the house while they were showering or dressing. It was another entirely to not have her in the same building, or even on the same street.

Adam followed his brother, discussing in hushed tones where things stood between him and Sam, whispering fiercely about Dean being too forgiving, that he couldn’t just act like the previous night didn’t happen, and Dean insisting that wasn’t what was going on. Jo tried not to eavesdrop, but they weren’t as quiet as they intended to be, and she doubled down on her efforts to locate a bartending gig in the area so she could at least rent a room somewhere until she found some signs of the demon that torched the Roadhouse and killed Ash. It was nice hanging around with Adam and being there to support Dean if he needed it, but this level of drama made her skin itch and was far too telenovela for her comfort level. Dean said something about it being “too exhausting to fight,” which wasn’t the kind of thing any hunter liked to hear, though before she could spend too much time worrying about it Sam was coming back down the stairs with Lizzie properly dressed, and Hannah was up off the floor, launching herself across the coffee table and onto the couch to bark out the front window at the neighbor from across the street coming up the driveway. She knocked Jo sideways and stepped square on the laptop keyboard, but the young beta managed to get an arm around her neck to hold her in place as the doorbell rang.

“Dean, your early warning system is going off,” Jo called as Sam diverted to see who was at the door, and the omega was immediately coming into the living room to get Hannah’s leash on her to keep her from making a break for freedom.

“Hey...Rachel?” Sam said upon opening the door to the pretty blonde standing on the other side with a Saran wrapped bundt pan in her hands.  

“Renee,” she corrected with a smile as Lizzie cooed at her. “I don’t think I got your name when we were over a couple of days ago.”

“I’m Sam.”

“Sam.” She purred out the name, letting the “m” hum on her lips, and took him in from his toes to head, her eyes lingering slightly at his groin. “Just wanted to stop by and drop off a little housewarming coffee cake.”

“Oh! Thanks, but you didn’t need to go to the trouble.”

“It was no trouble. To tell you the truth, some of the girls on the next street over and I have started up this book club and no one wanted coffee cake at our meeting last night. I figured there was no reason to let it go to waste, and if I keep it at our house it’ll just go right to my hips.”

She wiggled her eyebrows at Sam as she giggled, blue eyes twinkling, and he returned the laugh uncomfortably as he took the coffee cake from her. They stood in awkward silence for a moment, Renee rocking back and forth on her heels with her back arched, her breasts thrusting towards him every time she rocked forward, and it all seemed very strange to the alpha. Not that he supposed mothers were supposed to act one particular way, but she certainly wasn’t acting like someone’s mom; more like a horny teenager trying to make sure he noticed her. When she ran her tongue across her teeth he had to suppress the urge to slam the door in her face.

“Well, thanks again,” he said finally. “We’ll be sure to return your pan once we’re done.”

“My pleasure Sam,” she told him, turning with one last eyebrow wiggle. “Stop by any time.”

The encounter was bizarre and unnerving, and the Pyr went off again, yanking Dean towards the couch as Renee headed back down the driveway. The omega would have tried to convince her to stop if their neighbor across the street didn’t give him the creeps, and if Sam weren’t holding the coffee cake like he thought it might spring to life and attempt to beat him to death. Dean hadn’t really registered anything about the woman when he pounded on her door for help a week ago, but now he figured he was lucky she hadn’t started cutting him into pieces to keep in mason jars in her basement.

“Looks like you’ve got a fan,” he said as Sam walked over with the baby and the cake.

“The suburbs are weird,” was all Sam said in response before heading into the kitchen to plop the cake down on the island. “Come on, let’s get going.”

“You guys are leaving now?” Adam asked as the alpha and omega traded off the baby so they could get into their coats, Sam helping Dean slide his left arm in before grabbing Lizzie’s car seat from where it lived inside the front door to buckle her in. “Don’t you have a couple of hours before you have to talk to Detective What’s-her-name?”

“I need a haircut,” Dean replied. “It’s too easy to pull when it’s this long.”

“I still like it,” Sam said, carding the hand not holding the baby carrier through the omega’s hair so he could cup his hand against the back of Dean’s head and pull him slowly into his chest.

“That’s because you’re so tall only a freakin’ giant could get their hands up there,” Dean told him, tipping his head back for a kiss. “I’m tellin’ you, you give me five minutes and a pair of clippers…”

“I’m sorry, are we all just supposed to act like Adam didn’t have to shoot at Sam _twice_ last night to get him to let you out of the bathroom?” Jo demanded, getting up off the couch and striding over to the foyer to shove the alpha with both hands. After the way she’d gotten manhandled the day before she had a whole new appreciation for the kind of crap Dean put up with and wasn’t about to let this slide. “I always thought you were a jerk but the fact that you’re still here when any decent person would have packed up and moved out is disgusting. You’re no better than a guy who hits his mate and brings her flowers the next day to apologize for it, and the _worst_ part is Dean’s so messed up cuz of his dad he doesn’t think he deserves better.”

Dean sighed tiredly, leaning his forehead against Sam’s shoulder. He figured this was coming, he just hoped they’d get out of the house before it did.

“Jo…” he began, but Sam cut him off, saying, “You’re right Jo. I don’t have any excuse for my behavior last night, and I sure as hell don’t deserve Dean’s forgiveness for it, but that’s between the two of us and he’s an adult who can make his own decisions. If he wants me to leave I will - the minute he tells me to go. Right now he doesn’t, and I don’t plan on giving him a reason to want me to. You can be okay with that or not, I really don’t care. I appreciate you looking out for Dean but his opinion is the only one that matters so...yeah. Good luck job hunting.”

He pulled the door open, shoving down with everything he had at the churning darkness that swirled up from the pit of his stomach, trying to once again drive him over the edge into a murderous rage so far outside the realm of an appropriate reaction to Jo’s understandable concern it was obscene. Nothing she said was out of line or a misread of the situation; Sam himself felt like the worst kind of alpha there was. He didn’t know why Dean was even willing to move past this, and he was fully prepared to walk out if anything like the bathroom incident happened again. Dean scented the brief burst of rage that pulsed off of Sam before he tamped that down, too, and ran a hand along Sam’s stomach, pulling the alpha’s attention over to the open concern in his eyes. The touch was tentative, half-afraid, and just the knowledge that he was starting to scare Dean washed away the growing anger so he could kiss his temple and nuzzle his ear before helping him down the sidewalk towards the truck. It flitted across his mind that sending Adam with Dean to the police station instead might be a good idea, given the low opinion he already held of the particular investigation they were going to try to lay to rest, but at this point it was pretty clear the only thing keeping him in check was Dean’s presence. Until he could find something else to lock the homicidal genie inside him back into its bottle, being separated from the omega seemed like a spectacularly terrible idea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I plan on catching up on the last two episodes of the current season and hopefully that won't send me spiraling into a terrible depression about the direction SPN is taking and just kill my will to write. Cross your fingers. I do have several chapters stacked up in case the wind gets knocked out of my sails and it takes a bit to get my Muse back to the table, but I'm very torn between desperately missing the boys and just HATING Andrew Dabb. (I want to know who he has a picture of with a goat and a sombrero in a compromising position that he is blackmailing into keeping him employed...)


	68. We Just Need You to Fill in Some Missing Pieces

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Procedural cop show time (also Lily Sunder rocks).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Does anyone have Davy Perez's address so I can send him a giant bouquet of thank you flowers?

It was entirely possible that Dean hated police stations even more than he hated hospitals, though he’d certainly been in hospitals more recently as of late. When he was younger, however, he’d landed in police stations his fair share of times, largely because local P.D. tended not to believe an omega under the age of eighteen would already be a registered hunter with the FDH. It usually didn’t take long to sort things out, and only once had he ended up someplace that didn’t stick him in a solitary holding cell ( _though thankfully there had only been two other guys in there and they’d both been betas_ ), but it wasn’t the sort of experience one forgot, no matter how many years had passed. It definitely hadn’t gotten better just because he was an adult who hadn’t done anything wrong and who had a very powerful attorney sitting beside him while he waited for the detectives to come interview him about beating Johnny Campbell to death with a unicorn head lamp.

It helped that Sam and Lizzie were there with him, had been there sitting with him in the waiting area before Lily arrived to review Dean’s memories of the previous Monday and remind him to listen to her if she told him not to answer something. Sam had Lizzie out of her car seat so they could hold her and entertain her and encourage her to work on her barely budding hand-eye coordination, and it was...nice, but strange. The omega in him felt vulnerable about too many things to function, so even though he still harbored the hum of fear at Sam’s volatile state deep in his gut, he was also afraid of what was going to happen in the interview with the detectives and that they might still try to drum up charges against him and throw his pregnant ass right in jail. He needed to pick one thing to be scared of and let the other go - at least for now - if he was going to make it through this interview without posturing his way into prison in overcompensation for the way he was feeling. So he let Sam play with his freshly cut hair and trail fingertips down his face and nudge his nose into Dean’s scent gland to enjoy the vanilla-caramel-coffee that reminded him of his favorite morning beverage - which was funny and went a long way to explaining why he just wanted to eat Dean up most of the time. Dean would deal with his very conflicting emotions later. Right now he was determined to let Sam soothe him into a state where he could make it through the interview without sticking his foot in his mouth, not heeding the lawyer, or needing to prove he was a big tough guy who didn’t have to sit there and listen to the cockamamie theories pushed out by a barely competent police force in a backwater state that questioned whether omegas had the right to defend themselves against a forced claim using any means necessary.

He was lucky he’d found an omega for a lawyer, since they were getting pointed stares from the other people waiting at the station; some betas who considered the behavior of the pair grossly inappropriate, mostly alphas who teemed with jealousy at the sight of the barely-grown-up alpha and the stunning omega purring next to him, one pup already in tow and another on the way. Lily, however, knew what they were in for and that Dean would need to be calm if he was going to make it through the interview, so she smiled, got Dean’s attention, played with Lizzie a bit, and never once suggested they separate despite Dean practically being in Sam’s lap on the bench they were sharing. She simply took up the seat on the bench on Dean’s other side, pushing a strand of hair back from her forehead, and calmly discussed the case with him while Sam ran a hand lazily up and down his spine, wanting her client to be as relaxed as possible before he had to go in and give a statement about what no one could deny was a horrific attack. She didn’t miss the way he flinched slightly when they came to take him back to be interviewed, or the way the soft kiss Sam pressed to his lips settled him some. If only all omegas could find alphas who understood their purpose was to make life easier for their mate she thought, somewhat ruefully, as she followed Dean down the hall.

There were two detectives waiting to interview Dean in the unnecessarily small, windowless room. He noticed it didn’t have one of those two-way mirrored walls like all the police procedurals on television made out interrogation rooms to have but there were surveillance cameras set up in the two far corners from the door, trained on where he and Lily Sunder would be sitting. Detective Hudak introduced herself again, the other detective - the lead, apparently - telling him her name was Ballard. She was older, with highlighted chestnut hair and dark eyes, and while Hudak gave off the stereotypical calm of a beta Ballard’s alpha flowed off her in waves. Dean immediately noticed the way Lily bristled at Ballard’s assessing glare, and wondered if his lawyer would even let him speak or just handle the whole encounter herself. She clearly did not like the lead detective on this case.

“Thanks for coming in to see us, Dean,” Hudak began after clicking on a tape recorder. “Glad you’re out of the hospital and looking better.”

So, clearly she was playing good cop. Dean gave her one of his winning smiles, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes.

“Glad to be out of the hospital,” he told her. “Hospitals suck.”

“Yes, we got your case from South Dakota OPS,” Ballard said coolly. “You’ve been in hospitals a lot lately.”

“My client’s case with Omega Protective Services has nothing to do with why we’re here,” Lily cut in immediately. “If you plan to discuss anything other than Johnny Campbell’s vicious attack on Mr. Winchester this interview is over.”

“This interview is over when I say it is, Ms. Sunder,” Ballard sniped, which had Lily rising from her chair.

“That isn’t the way this works, Detective Ballard,” Lily shot back. “My client may be an omega but he still has Constitutionally protected rights, specifically due process guaranteed under the Fifth Amendment. If you think you’re going to call my six months pregnant client - who incidentally has been placed on bed rest as a direct result of the deceased’s attack on him - down to this station to harass him into a false confession with issues unrelated to this case under the pretense of just wanting to take his statement, when he is still physically and emotionally vulnerable, and I’m going to allow it you have another think coming.”

“It’s in your client’s best interest to give us his statement on what happened to him so we can close this case and move on, Ms. Sunder,” Hudak said reasonably as Ballard stood to glare across the table at the obstinate omega who didn’t know her place. Dean was having a really hard time suppressing a grin.

“And he’ll be happy to do so,” Lily replied. “But we will _only_ discuss this case. Any other outside, pending, potentially prejudicial legal difficulties my client may or may not be dealing with are off the table, and if they’re brought up again we’re walking out of this room.”

Hudak gave a quick nod, putting a hand on Ballard’s arm as she said, “Fine.”

Lily waited until Ballard was seated before taking up her chair next to Dean, who was wondering how big of a fruit basket they should send Pamela Barnes for putting them in touch with her. A very large part of him wanted to pull out his phone just to text Sam how awesome she was. He’d never been a fan of lawyers, but he definitely had no regrets about hiring Lily Sunder.

“So, Dean.” Hudak was looking at him and giving him a small smile while Ballard openly fumed. “Why don’t you tell us what happened last week?”

“What part do you want to know about?” Dean asked, clenching his jaw as he stared across the table at the two cops who were trying to make it seem like they just wanted the truth as if he was too stupid to figure out they'd be happy to railroad him. “When he came at me in the kitchen or chased me up the stairs or when he was holding a switchblade over my kid?”

“All of it,” Ballard replied flatly.

“The gory details or just the highlights? Cuz the details are pretty gory and I wouldn’t want to offend your delicate alpha sensibilities.”

“Dean.” Lily’s hand on his arm immediately pushed down the growing irritation he had with the way Detective Ballard was looking at him. Fuck, they should have forced the police to come to the house instead of Dean dragging himself down here to sit in these uncomfortable chairs with two cameras trained on him and a tape recording running. Not that he would have been that much more comfortable at Benny’s. This whole thing sucked. Lily looked pointedly at Ballard and Hudak and said, “I’m sure you can appreciate how traumatic this is for my client.”

“Uh huh,” Ballard said, leaning back in her chair and folding her arms across her chest. Dean decided he should just try to ignore her and focus on talking to Hudak.

“Why don’t you walk us through that day as best as you can,” Hudak instructed calmly, shooting Ballard a look to caution her further. She hated being paired up with knotheads on cases like this. Even when the evidence was flimsy for pursuing a manslaughter charge alphas always got their panties in a twist when an omega had killed one of them. “From when you got to the house through the attack.”

“And beating Mr. Campbell to death,” Ballard growled.

Dean rolled his eyes as Lily warned, “Careful, detective.”

Ballard held her hands up in the most submissive manner she could muster - which wasn’t very - and crossed her arms over her chest again. Dean waited to get a nod from Lily before saying, “I got there a little after lunch. Maybe one o’clock or a little later, I wasn’t really watching the time. Got Lizzie inside and up to her room so I could unload the boxes from the truck to pack up some stuff…”

“Why were you packing?” Ballard asked.

“Don’t answer that, Dean,” Lily instructed. “Why or what you were packing is in no way relevant to this case.”

“No, it’s fine,” Dean said as he held out a hand to indicate Lily should stand down for a minute. He fixed a glare on Ballard, one corner of his mouth quirking up in a sardonic smile. “Until Johnny ripped a chunk out of my shoulder and got me stuck here for the next three months I was planning to go back home to Sioux Falls to my own room at my Uncle Bobby’s house, maybe get an apartment with Sam. I wanted Elizabeth to have some of her own things, and there was some other stuff of Benny and Lisa’s that I wanted to take back with us. Mating albums and shit.”

“You don’t strike me as the sentimental type, Dean.”

“They were my family.” The look on the omega’s face dared Ballard to challenge him, and for a moment she looked completely ready to until Hudak shot her a glare. Christ he hated alphas. “Anyway, I was upstairs packing up some of Lizzie’s toys and clothes and stuff and I needed a break so I went down to the kitchen to see if there was anything to drink in the fridge. I got out a mug and the milk and then Johnny showed up.”

“So you let him in?”

“No, he was just there in my fucking dining room wearing scent blockers so I wouldn’t notice him.”

“So you didn’t let him in?”

“My client already said no, Detective Ballard.”

“Fine. What happened after he was ‘just there in your dining room?’”

“He started monologuing about how Sam’s grandfather had him following me around for a while and he’d been waiting to get me alone. We’ve had some problems with Sam’s family because he hasn’t claimed me yet and they want him to take our baby. His grandfather figured if Johnny claimed me my kid would stay in the family.”

“You expect us to believe that?”

“I really don’t care what you believe. It’s the truth.”

“Samuel Campbell had a history of intimidating my client,” Lily said, pulling a thin stack of stapled papers out of her briefcase. “There was an incident in Chicago about a month ago. Mr. Campbell attempted to strangle my client in a restaurant and Dean had to fight him off with a pair of chopsticks. These are sworn affidavits from the bartender, front of house manager, and two servers who were on duty at the time. My client chose not to pursue charges due to fears of retaliation because of Mr. Campbell’s position with the Federal Department of Hunters, and his belief that Mr. Campbell had finally backed down.”

Dean couldn’t suppress his shock at the affidavits, having no idea when he mentioned the attack in Chicago at their first meeting that Lily would track down the staff who were working at the restaurant to get their statements. Damn, she was good. She slid the stapled packs across the table at the two detectives, who took a moment to look them over, Hudak’s brow furrowing and Ballard looking positively pissed. Ballard continued to read through the papers while Hudak took over the questioning.

“What happened next?”

“I threw my mug at him and one of the drawers from the island and tried to get to the den.”

“Why the den?”

“That’s where Benny keeps his gun safe.”

Ballard tossed the papers down and forced her way back into the conversation.

“So you immediately assaulted the deceased and then sought out a lethal weapon without any further discussion?”

“Don’t answer that, Dean,” Lily ordered again, her hand on his arm once more as she fixed a steely gaze on the alpha across from her. “The deceased had threatened my client with grievous bodily injury and a forced claim. Chastity’s Law protects his ability to defend himself from a forced claim in the manner he deems appropriate as the omega under direct threat.”

“I’m well aware of Chastity’s Law,” Ballard snapped, her snide tone indicating exactly how she felt about it. “There’s still a difference between what the omega deems appropriate and what the State of Indiana deems appropriate.”

“Are you arguing that a carrying omega with a dislocated shoulder and several cracked ribs has a legal right to only _some_ methods of self defense? If so, I’d love to see your pre-approved list of those methods.”

“You tried to get to Benny’s gun safe,” Hudak interjected, hoping to keep the conversation somewhat on track. “What happened then?”

Dean was actively trying to suppress a growl, wanting to just get through this as quickly as possible and go home. He was tired, his back hurt, Elliott was kicking him, and he needed lunch. He’d take monster hunting over this crap any day of the week.

“Gwen came in,” he said. “So I went upstairs instead cuz Benny’s got a smaller gun safe under his bed. Gwen said something to Johnny about how they were just supposed to talk to me and I don’t know what happened since I was trying not to piss my pants, but I heard her falling down the stairs and then I locked myself in Benny’s room.”

“You didn’t go down to the nursery?”

“There wasn’t a gun in the nursery.”

“No, but there was a baby in the nursery.”

“ _He_ didn’t know that and I was pretty sure I couldn’t fight him off with a baby.”

“So you got the gun out?”

“Yeah, I got the gun out, and he was trying to break the door down but he couldn’t, and then Lizzie started cryin’ and he stopped trying to break the door down.”

It surprised him when his breath suddenly came up short at the memory of Lizzie’s wails from down the hall and Johnny moving away from the bedroom. He spread his hands on the table so he would have something to hold onto that could help stop the world from tipping as he tried to focus on breathing normally. He wanted to just get through this and be done with it, not stop and start and have to come back here because he went into a goddamned panic attack. Lily hadn’t removed her hand from his arm after settling him and began to gently and unobtrusively soothe him, asking with her eyes if he needed a break. He gave her a quick shake of his head before looking back at the detectives.

“He stopped trying to break down the door…” Hudak prompted, and Dean said, “He stopped trying to break down the door and I got out the gun and I heard Lizzie stop cryin’. I...uh...I got out into the hall and down to the nursery and he was...in the rocking chair, h-holding her. He had a knife out, was trying to get her to...play with it. Told me to come in and put the g-gun down on the changing table. Started using his alpha voice.” He stopped again, pressing his hands down onto the table until his knuckles turned white, using the pain in his injured left wrist to help force down the swell of fear constricting his chest. “He put Lizzie down and told me to go over to the dresser, came up behind me, c-cut my...shirt open and...uh...bit me.” He swiped furiously at the tears on his face, focusing on controlling his breathing so it didn’t become any more erratic and cursing at what a ridiculous cry baby he was. “After that it’s kind of blurry. I was in a lot of pain. There was a lamp on the dresser so I grabbed it and I hit him and got Lizzie out of the crib and I think I got my phone and ran across the street. I mean obviously I ran across the street cuz that’s where the paramedics came to get me but I don’t know how I got there.”

“How many times did you hit him?” Ballard asked, her face a stony mask of disapproval as she looked for holes in his story.

“I have no idea,” Dean replied gruffly, his watery eyes hard as he continued trying to rein himself in. “Enough.”

“Enough for what?”

“Enough that I could get my kid out of her crib and find someone to help me not bleed to death.”

Ballard outright scoffed and demanded, “Bleed to death? Don’t you think that’s a bit dramatic?”

“When’s the last time someone attempted to claim you and you had to tear your shoulder out of their teeth to escape, Detective?” Lily snapped, and Ballard actually looked cowed. “Considering this is only my client’s second full day out of the hospital it seems pretty clear to me that his fear of bleeding to death was well founded. If you have any other questions directly related to the incident and not meant to impugn my client’s character or imply he had no reason to fear for his life, the life of his unborn pup, and the life of the infant in his care he’ll be happy to answer them. Otherwise we’re done.”

“Just one more question,” Ballard said, leaning forward to lock eyes with Dean, apparently of the opinion that she could somehow intimidate him after all the shit he’d been through in his twenty-seven years on the planet. He wanted to laugh at her self-inflated ego, but the desire to just get out of the fucking room outweighed that urge. “How good did it feel to beat him to death with that lamp?”

“And we’re done,” Lily stated, collecting her briefcase and coat while Dean sat and stared calmly back at the alpha. “Dean?”

“It must have felt really good, right?” Ballard pressed as Lily grabbed his arm to try to pull him up out of the chair. “You’re a hunter, you’re surrounded by those knotheads all the time. Hell, you haven’t even let your pup’s sire claim you; you must _hate_ us, don’t you?”

“Don’t answer that, Dean.”

“To be able to take all that rage out on someone, and just bash his skull in, to just keep _hitting_ him even after he was down.”

“Do not answer that, Dean.”

“You were gonna show him, weren’t you? You were gonna show him that omegas don’t have to beg and submit and present. You were gonna shut him up good so he never used his alpha voice on anyone ever again, weren’t you?”

“Dean!”

“The way we’re always strutting around just _taking_ whatever we want, regardless of what you omega’s think about it. Well, you _really_ made sure he knew what you thought, didn’t you?”

“This interview is over,” Lily snapped, hauling Dean up out of the chair at last, his eyes still locked on Detective Ballard, who Hudak wasn’t even trying to restrain at this point. “If you want to talk to my client you can do it through me.”

“I bet it was the best feeling of your life, turning the tables on him and being the one in charge, wasn’t it?” Ballad demanded as Lily pulled Dean towards the door.

“I don’t know how it felt,” he said flatly as Lily opened the door to usher him out. “I was too distracted by the entire left side of my body melting off once I got his teeth out of me. Like my lawyer already said, you have anything else to say to me after this you talk to her, because we’re done.”

The conversation definitively ended, Dean stalked off down the hall well ahead of Lily, who remained behind to hand her card to Detective Hudak. Jesus was that satisfying, shutting down that stupid alpha detective with her stupid “I bet it felt great”s. Yeah, it probably had felt fucking great to beat in Johnny’s skull; he’d even go so far as to suppose it was liberating, but he hadn’t been lying back there. He didn’t remember how satisfying it had been to unleash on Johnny all the rage he felt at everything the Campbell cousins had done to him because he’d been consumed by the agony exploding down his left side from the bite. He tried not to think about it, to just move his thoughts forward since as far as he was concerned it was a thing of the past, something Lily could field for him now that he’d gotten the interview out of the way and he knew they’d have a hard time building a case against him, but now that Ballard had brought it up his mind refused to let it go. It kept trying to drift back to the moment, to push him into the terror and the pain and the realization that this might be how he died, bleeding out in Lizzie’s nursery at Benny’s house, getting him stuck in a loop that stopped his breath and tipped the floor dangerously to the right so that he lost his footing and found himself thudding against the wall. He caught sight of Sam on the bench at the far end of the waiting area where he was talking with someone on the phone while Lizzie napped in her car seat, his vision greying out as he turned to the wall and raised his hands to the plaster like there were handholds built in that could keep him upright if he could just find them. He could hear someone calling his name - several someones actually, one of them most definitely Sam - as he stopped trying to fight gravity and sank to the floor, the beads of sweat from his forehead leaving a trail down the wall as he went. His vision wasn’t blacking out yet, which he was willing to take as a triumph, a halting chuckle breaking out of him as he tried again to find those handholds in the wall that he just couldn’t locate. Time was slowing, pouring over him like molasses as he let go of the attempt to break out of the memory and focused everything he had on simply not passing out. The effort to stay upright became too much at the exact moment he felt huge arms envelop him and press him to a warm, muscled chest that rippled as the arms flexed around him and hands ran up into his hair. He turned his face, letting Sam’s scent bring him back to reality, to the present and the police station, where Lily was now crouched down behind him rubbing his back.

The sharp, unpleasant smell of fear coursing off of Sam would have had Dean recoiling had the alpha not been the only thing keeping him from falling all the way to the floor when he gave up maintaining control over his limbs in exchange for maintaining control over his breathing and to some extent his sanity. Dean tangling his hands into Sam’s shirt seemed to calm the younger man down, as did Dean’s eyes fluttering up to focus on Sam’s face. He still couldn’t really understand what Sam was saying to him ( _undoubtedly it was something soothing given how Sam’s hands never stopped moving over his face and neck and through his hair_ ), nor could he form words in response ( _which was fine since he didn’t know to what he would be responding_ ), but he was able to pull himself up a little more onto his knees to lean flush against Sam’s chest, taking in huge gulps of air against his neck. Someone asked about calling an ambulance, which Sam flatly refused, unwilling to subject Dean to the hospital again when he just needed to get him out of this goddamned police station, and after getting a nod to his murmured, “Can you stand?” he hauled the omega to his feet. Lily was already grabbing the car seat and heading back to the bench for the diaper bag ( _they were going to have to send her a big ass fruit basket as well_ ) while Dean got his bearings against Sam, the memories of Johnny sinking his teeth in finally falling away so that he could really breathe again.

“You okay to get to the car?” the lips pressed to Dean’s temple asked, and the omega swallowed thickly.

“Just gimme a minute,” he replied softly. “Gotta get my sea legs.”

Lily had returned and was patiently waiting for Dean to regain control of his limbs so they could head out to the parking lot, her hand gently brushing against his arm as Sam smiled his thanks at her. Everyone in the police station practically was looking at them as Sam got an arm tightly around Dean’s waist to help keep him steady and they headed at an awkward, halting pace out of the building. The thing of it was, New New Dean couldn’t be bothered to care. So what if he’d just collapsed in front of a bunch of strangers? He hadn’t passed out. That was a win in his book. So what if his skin was slowly turning the shade of his eyes? He was still on his feet. That was another win in his book. So what if he’d just had to fight off a panic attack after dealing with an asshat detective who he knew would love to be able to nail him for anything and everything, up to and including jaywalking? He wasn’t on his way to a holding cell, and he wasn’t going to have to come back here again; his kickass lawyer was going to take care of that. Dean was winning all over the place today, and if he was unable to care what anyone thought about him nearly falling apart in public - well, he wasn’t exactly going to call that a loss.


	69. Be My Valentine?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pretty much exactly what the title says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will not apologize for the ridiculous fluff of this chapter and you can't make me.

“I’m telling you Sam, that lady across the street is _weird_.”

“She’s not weird, Adam. She’s just a little overly friendly and you have cabin fever.”

“Dean thinks she’s weird.”

“Dean has cabin fever, too.”

“Dean wants you both to shut your collective cakehole so the pregnant guy can actually take this stupid nap you both said I needed.”

Sam looked over from where he sat at the dining room table researching the Devil’s Gate information Garth had texted Dean while they were in the hospital almost two weeks ago to the omega curled up on the new sectional, a pillow shoved grumpily under his head, and snickered. Lizzie had kicked herself to sleep in her bouncer and Hannah was on the floor between the sectional and the coffee table, snoring quite loudly. Adam, in contrast, was staring through the sheer drapes in the living room window at Renee's house across the street, watching as the fourth woman in the last five minutes parked and hurried inside with some sort of baked good clutched to her chest.

“You do need a nap if we’re going out to dinner tonight,” Sam said before attempting to go back to his research.

“It’s Quaker Steak and Lube, Sam.” Dean threw him a somewhat petulant glare. “We’re going to Quaker Steak and Lube. I think they’ll be okay if a fat omega with an infant falls asleep in his porterhouse. It’s why we picked the place - the whole family-friendly thing.”

“You’re not fat, Dean. You just aren’t used to being...not thin.”

“Are you kidding? Have you _looked_ at me lately? I’m surprised I haven’t drawn at least one moon into orbit. The fewer people who see me like this the better.”

For a brief moment Sam considered going full on sappy with the omega, deciding against it only because that would undoubtedly lead to other activities ( _Dean, despite all his protestations, was a surprising sucker for sap_ ) and Dean really did need a nap and not to be mauled ( _at_ _least as much as the alpha was allowed to maul him these days, which was some but not a whole lot, though the new Om-OB/GYN had encouraged continued babymooning to help Dean’s mood_ ). He understood that it was hard for Dean to watch his flat stomach vanish and his hips get fuller; hell, Sam was the one who wrapped the Ace bandages around the omega’s still-blooming chest every morning since he could finally lift his left arm enough to start compressing his moobs again without it being more trouble than it was worth. He was rapidly expanding everywhere now that they were getting into the home stretch, like a ripcord had been pulled, and they were going to have to figure out how to get him some more maternity clothes soon because his shirts were starting to get too tight through the shoulders and it was really pissing him off. And speaking of pissing, the omega complained every single one of the many times he had to go to the bathroom about having to sit down to pee because he couldn’t see “little Dean” anymore to aim unless he leaned out over his stomach, which just threw him off balance, and he did not appreciate at all his continually widening feet since they did nothing to rectify said balance problem. Still, Sam loved the extra softness, especially when he’d been able to feel Dean’s spine and ribs when he got out of the hospital. Well toned and muscled Dean was gorgeous for sure, with his shoulders and biceps and pecs and legs and just slightly soft stomach, but this was what Dean was _supposed_ to look like carrying and it was nothing to be embarrassed about. Sam knew he’d probably feel the exact same level of discomfort with how his body was changing if he were the one going through it, yet after spending a week doing very little beyond sitting around and eating Dean was finally starting to look somewhat healthy again. The frightening fragility he’d worn out of the hospital like some kind of sick Halloween costume was vanishing, the color ( _what there was of it anyway_ ) returning to Dean’s skin, and Sam could almost see what people meant when they said pregnant omegas glowed. Despite having just gone through the stress of the claim break, Dean looked beautiful - the best he had since they met up again in Minnesota.

Sam didn’t say any of that, though. That could wait until after dinner when they were alone upstairs. Instead he said, “Even though it’s _just_ Quaker Steak and Lube I would like to have a nice evening out with you that doesn’t end in you drooling all over my shoulder and me dragging you out of the restaurant while everyone looks at me like I drugged you.”

“We could just stay home.”

“It’s _Valentine’s Day_ , Dean. Our first one. It should include a night out, even if it’s just a short one with a baby in a car seat at a chain restaurant.”

“You’re such a Taurus.”

“You fucking love me for it.”

“Swear jar, Sammy.”

“Lizzie’s asleep, it doesn’t count.”

“Valentine’s Day is just an excuse for Hallmark to sell cards and jewelers to guilt alphas into buying their mates expensive shit they don’t really need.”

“Look, you barely slept last night…”

“Because the stupid relaxin is killin’ my hips…”

“...And between your prenatal appointment this morning and the physical therapy you’re practically dead on your feet.”

“Well if _someone_ would drive me to Bed, Bath  & Beyond I’d be able to get myself a proper body pillow and then I could actually _sleep_ with my all my joints tryin’ to slide out of place.”

“Bed, Bath & Beyond is too large of a store when you refuse to be pushed around in a wheelchair and you know it.”

“Maybe, but if you _really_ loved me that’s where we’d be going for Valentine’s Day.”

“Hey, Quaker Steak and Lube is car themed. That’s gotta earn me points for something.”

“I mean, why is her kid home _all the time_?” Adam looked between his brother and Sam, having mastered in the last full week and a half that Dean had been out of the hospital the ability to almost completely block out their silly babymooning quarrels that were always destined to lead to mashing their faces together and vanishing into the den for half an hour or so. For most of the previous week he’d been on edge, waiting for one of these fights to lead to an explosion but it never happened. Nothing even remotely close to the bathroom incident had occurred, not even when they were in a real argument like the fight over Dean not being allowed in Bed, Bath  & Beyond without a wheelchair, the end result of which was Dean storming off to the laundry room just so he’d have a door to slam. Adam had gotten particularly good at ignoring anything and everything about what they were going to do for Valentine’s Day or that included the word “lube” ( _though he did find it hilarious where they’d agreed to go to dinner so they could take Lizzie with them - it was so classically his brother_ ) and started tuning out the minute “pillows” were mentioned, like some sort of Pavlovian response. “It’s the middle of the school year so why does the bus drive past their house every day without stopping?”

“It might be winter break,” Sam said sensibly, turning back to the laptop.

“No, the bus is still coming around the cul de sac in the mornings and afternoons.”

“Maybe she’s homeschooled,” Dean suggested, trying to find a comfortable position despite the awkwardness of his ever expanding midsection. Jesus he was glad he only had about ten and a half weeks left, the surgical delivery planned for May second ( _so he would always have an out if he forgot Sam’s birthday_ ) in between his thirty-eighth and thirty-ninth weeks. His clothes were starting to not fit and he figured very soon that his feet would disappear beneath his girth. “Lots of kids are homeschooled. Dad tried homeschooling me for a couple of years before you came along and started stinkin’ up the place.”

“Not enrolling you in school because he’s dragging you all over the country isn’t the same as homeschooling, Dean,” Adam informed him before returning to peek out the window.

“Will you stop spying on the neighbors?” Dean demanded, whacking him with a throw pillow. “You’re like Jimmy Stewart in _Rear Window_.”

“You _do_ realize his character was right about the neighbor having cut up his mate?”

“Shut up and let me sleep.”

“Maybe you should get a job?” Sam suggested, giving a shrug of his shoulders. “You’ve been going kinda stir-crazy since Jo started working at that dive bar.”

“And moved out of the guest bedroom,” Dean added, earning an affronted huff from his brother that was just a bit too huffy.

It was true, though. In the last week the dynamic of the house had shifted significantly, ever since the bathroom incident and Dean getting the police off his back about Johnny ( _they were still pressing Lily for access to Dean, but she was magnificent at stonewalling_ ). Lily had instructed Dean to research Chastity’s Law, which had been on the books since 1994 when the governor’s twenty year old daughter had been killed jumping out a hotel window to escape a forcible claim. Forced claiming had not been illegal in Indiana prior to that and omegas had no right to fight back against an alpha, leaving flight as their only option. Lily wanted to make sure Dean knew the law backwards and forwards in case they had to return to the police station for anything else, but other than that she had everything well in hand and it was off their plate for the foreseeable future.

The injunction against South Dakota Omega Protective Services had gone through and they had been given a temporary reprieve, allowing Sam to stay with Dean. There was still an impending court date with the OPS but it wasn’t until March first, so that was off in the distance and not looming over them either. In the meantime Sam had gotten the utilities changed over to his name ( _omegas weren’t allowed to have utilities in their name except on rentals_ ) and had been replacing the furniture throughout the house to help make it feel like theirs, which made it easier for Dean to ignore the memories haunting the place and helped him avoid breakdowns and panic attacks. The Lafittes' things went into storage for Lizzie to have when she was older if she wanted, or maybe Dean could take them out at a future date when being reminded of the missing members of his pack wasn’t so painful. They even hired a painter to redo Ben’s room and a professional cleaning service to take care of the mess in Lizzie’s. Jo had moved into the room formerly belonging to the little boy and gotten the bartending gig, deciding to stay only until she’d saved up some money that she could use to go out hunting the demon that torched the Roadhouse; Pamela Barnes had arranged for Dean to sell Benny’s company to the foreman who had been interested in taking it over ( _though it would be a while before that was finalized_ ); and Sam was now in far too frequent contact with lawyers down in Lawrence about his grandfather’s will, which had left everything to Sam and which, of course, Jeremiah’s sons ( _except for William_ ) were contesting.

The Lawrence P.D. had come up to interview him about the day his grandfather killed himself, though luckily for the young alpha Samuel had not wanted to press charges and the surveillance cameras throughout the house made it clear everything Sam had done was in self defense. David had taken a swing at him before Sam pushed him through the library doors, Andrew and Philip had both rushed him, and Samuel had been stupid enough to pull a gun. The same security footage also clearly showed Sam leaving the property well before the lawyer arrived to update the will and of course Samuel’s suicide. There was no angle showing a clear shot of Sam’s face when he had the elderly alpha pinned to the wall so there was no way for them to figure out what he’d said to his grandfather, and it was simple enough to convince the authorities that Sam told the old man he was dead to him, and would never seen his grandchild or great grandchild again, and the guilt of what Samuel had done must have driven him to end it all. Sam considered calling Lily to sit with him through the interview but in the end decided not to bother adding something so trivial to her stack of case files. There were definite advantages to being an alpha and getting the benefit of the doubt, something that hadn’t been lost on Dean even as he felt relief washing over him when the police pulled out of their driveway.

When it came right down to it, the only person in the whole house whose situation hadn’t changed at all in the last seven or so days was Adam. Well, except for Jo moving into Ben’s room, and no matter how his brother and friend wanted to view it, his edginess was more about not having someone with him at night than anything else. Sure, he liked Jo ( _maybe a little more than he was ever going to admit_ ) but it wasn’t about having a girl that - fine, he was attracted to - sleeping under the sheet while he slept on top of it every night. At twenty years old Adam had rarely had to sleep alone; really almost never. When he was little he always slept with Dean, usually in the same bed. When he went to Actaeon he had roommates. When he got out of Actaeon and went to Duke he had roommates. Even when he was in the hospital he’d had roommates, or at least someone to keep him company, and he was drugged half out of his mind most of the time so when he was alone it didn’t really matter. His apartment with Becky was the first time he had a room to himself, and she had been so... _Becky_ that being able to escape to his room had been a genuine relief. It didn’t feel like sleeping alone so much as fleeing some kind of crazed Sam Campbell fangirl. At Bobby’s house he spent most of his time downstairs with the retired hunter, and when he’d climbed the stairs to go to bed he’d never slept well. Having another body weighing the bed down, even one that was light and barely moved the mattress, was comforting, in spite of the fact that Adam needed to make sure he either got up before Jo every day or got up after Jo every day, because he was only twenty and waking up with morning wood was beyond his control. It should have been a relief when she wasn’t there anymore, but he just didn’t like not having someone else breathing in the room.

Besides that, between Sam dealing with lawyers and Dean having to do PT and pick out furniture in magazines for Sam to order for the house and Jo going off to work, Adam kind of tumbled ass backwards into part time nanny and dog walking duties but didn’t have much else to do beyond reviewing textbooks he was starting to know backwards and forwards. This had lead to his somewhat obsessive interest in the neighbor across the street, who was a bit off-putting in her zealous attempts to get to know the new kids on the block. She’d even offered three times to babysit Lizzie tonight so Sam and Dean could have a nice night to themselves and Adam could head out for an evening of fun ( _Jo was scheduled to work, of course, which she didn’t mind at all - she’d been getting out of the house as much as possible after Sam’s freak-out_ ), and that definitely was strange; except she probably knew Benny and Lisa and was only interested in Lizzie because she missed her neighbors. That was what Sam and Dean thought anyway, but Adam’s opinion was that they were too busy making goo-goo eyes at each other to notice much of anything else at the moment. There was something weird about Renee, her kid, and her baked-goods-toting guests, and Adam wasn’t imagining it just because he missed sleeping - platonically - with Jo.  

“I am not…” Adam had turned a deep crimson from his chest all the way around his back and up to the tips of his ears. “I am not going stir crazy because Jo moved out of the guest bedroom.”

“Really?” Sam’s eyebrows shot up to his forehead and the smile on his face was just a little too broad for Adam’s taste. “No mention of the job, just straight to her moving out of the guest bedroom?”

“The beta doth protest too much, methinks,” Dean said, his face half buried in a pillow.

“ _What_?” Adam demanded, positively scandalized.

“Why is everyone always so surprised that I read?”

“Because you have such a pretty face, baby.”

“I’m the total package, Sammy, you know that.”

“You guys are gonna make me puke,” Adam snapped, getting up off the couch and heading for the stairs. He pointed back out the front window before he vanished completely. “And there’s something wrong with that lady across the street.”

“Condoms are your friend Adam,” Sam called after him, getting flipped off for his effort before Adam nearly bumped into Jo at the top of the stairs as she was on her way out to go to work.

“Why are we discussing prophylactics? You got a hot date tonight that I don’t know about?” she asked, shooting Adam a smirk and wiggling her eyebrows. “Or just hoping to get lucky?”

Dean burst out in high pitched gales of laughter and the dog jerked awake, thinking she had missed something and erupting into wild barking. Neither could see the young beta trying to will himself to dissolve into the floor from where they were downstairs, but they both knew Adam’s mortified look well and were quite certain it was plastered to his face at the moment. The omega nearly fell off the couch while Sam literally buried his face in his arms on the dining room table in an attempt to contain himself, his whole body shaking.

“I hate you both!” the younger Winchester shouted downstairs, saying politely to Jo, “Have a good day at work,” before stalking off to the guest room and slamming the door.

“I have no idea what that was about,” Jo declared as she came down the stairs to grab her coat, “but you guys are dicks. You should leave the poor kid alone.”

Dean actually sat up at that with a snort.

“Says _the kid_ ,” he snarked. “What, those whole six months you have on him have suddenly made you all worldly?”

“Girls mature faster than boys,” she said, tying her scarf and plunking a knit hat down on her head. “Especially when the boy is a Winchester.”

“She’s not wrong,” Sam agreed from the table, but Dean was watching Jo peer out through the front door and turn her keys over in her hand.

“What are you looking at?” the omega asked as Hannah pawed at him for attention.

“Just making sure the weirdos across the street aren’t looking this way,” she told him. “They’ve asked if I want to join their book club three times since I got here. They’re just creepy. Haven’t you noticed?”

“Did you and Adam rehearse that?” Dean said, raising an eyebrow at her. “He was just down here talking about how their kid never goes to school.”

“Yeah, I noticed _that_ , too,” Jo muttered. “Weird. I’m telling you, they’re like something out of _The ‘Burbs_. You guys probably would’ve already picked up on it if you weren’t attached at the lips half the time.” She perked up slightly, her hand on the doorknob as she prepared to make a run for it. “Okay, they closed the curtains. Later guys.”

She darted out into the cold to the borrowed car, pulling the collar of her coat up around her ears and not letting the car warm up nearly long enough before backing out of the driveway. Dean watched her go from the couch, his eyes flitting across the street to Renee's house, where the curtains were still drawn. He truly hadn’t thought anything about Adam’s ramblings beyond his brother really needing to get out of the house ( _which - let’s be honest, the kid had been cooped up there too long and should pick up a hobby, or maybe a girl_ ) but now that Jo was saying the same thing he couldn’t help wondering if there was something he was missing about the neighborhood. After all, he’d found Renee offputting when she gave them that coffee cake last week, and he’d still found her off putting when she came over to retrieve the bundt pan after they’d scraped the thing into the trash just in case they had reason to be suspicious of her. But after that he hadn’t spared her a second thought, not with everything they’d been working through the past seven days or so. _Was_ it weird that the little girl never went to school? That a group of thirty-something women met multiple times during the week for a book club? That they would offer total strangers to babysit their infant or ask them to join their group when they didn’t even know if said stranger _liked_ books? He had no clue, quite honestly, what would be considered normal and what wouldn’t, having never lived in the suburbs. Adam, for all his protestations, had been raised as a hunter, and Jo had grown up around hunters; hell, her father was a hunter, that’s how he died. It was possible they’d caught onto something right under their noses that Sam and Dean had missed with all the distractions.

“Hey, Sammy…” he started from his perch on the couch, where Hannah had joined him to press her nose against the window, floppy ears perked where they joined her skull.

“No,” Sam said without hesitation.

“You don’t even know what I was gonna say.”

“Yes, I do. You think maybe there _is_ something weird about the people across the street.”

“Did you just use your psychic crap on me?”

“No, I’m thinking the same thing.” He stood up as he closed the laptop and moved to the couch. “And the answer is still no.”

“Sam…”

“No.”

Dean scowled, staring out the window at the neighbors as Sam shoved Hannah off the couch with his whole body after his attempted gentle nudges didn’t even budge her, then pulled the smaller man over onto his lap. The dog snorted and settled on her stomach on the floor, looking up at him with “What did I do?” eyes that left Sam completely unmoved, his back to the window and attention focused entirely on Dean. It took all of the omega’s willpower ( _or perhaps it was stubbornness_ ) not to melt at the feel of the giant hands winding their way slowly under his shirt and up the skin on his back, gooseflesh rising wherever the fingers grazed past. It did turn the scowl into more of a pout, but the pout stayed firmly affixed to his face even as Sam’s lips nipped at his jawline, pressing a delicate string of kisses from his ear down his jugular until he found a collarbone to nuzzle against, his hands continuing to trail over Dean’s back and sides and skimming just under the waistline at the back of his pants. That was when Dean’s breath caught, his eyes sliding closed and hands moving to Sam’s shoulders to dig in and hold on.

“Sam…” he started, breaking off with a whimper at how warm Sam’s mouth was against his Adam’s apple.

“No,” Sam repeated, kissing all the way up to nibble on Dean’s lower lip, rocking the omega’s hips against him with a tight enough grip to leave bruises. At least Dean hoped it would leave bruises. He needed some other alpha’s mark on him besides the ugly scar Johnny left.

“But…” It really was difficult to think of anything besides how soft Sam’s hair was and how he could feel the alpha’s heart pounding against his rib cage as he held Sam against the pulse point on his neck that was going to have a dark purple hickey in just a couple of minutes if Dean had anything to say about it. What was he talking about again? Oh yes, the neighbors. “There could...weird...inourfrontyard…”

“No.”

Dean was already a rag doll on Sam’s lap when the alpha finally stopped teasing with those soft lips and sealed them over his, hands sliding back up to cage the omega against him with an arm along his spine and another in his spiky hair, and the smaller man lost the ability to do anything outside of holding on for whatever ride Sam had in mind. While they’d spent a fair amount of time kissing over the past week they’d really only been dancing around each other, getting reacquainted and rebuilding trust after Adam had to shoot out the mirror in the upstairs bathroom to snap Sam back to sanity. Mostly it had been Dean testing to see if pheromones were an effective method of calming Sam down when he was starting to get angry, and they certainly had been, which was fine with him. Now Dean’s new Om-OB/GYN had just given them the green light for a little more than kissing, something Sam clearly took seriously as he continued to rock them together. Dean wondered if there were such a thing as getting butterflies in your chest or if his heart was just trying to take off and fly away with the lightness lifting up against his breastbone where a terrible weight typically dwelt these days, mewling into the mouth slanted against his, warm and wet and needy. The mewl turned to a full out whine when the alpha’s response was a growl and a trail of bites down to Dean’s shoulder, not breaking the skin but with enough pressure to promise a claim mark and the omega bucked his hips and found an earlobe to suck between his teeth, tilting his head to allow greater access to his neck. As the overpowering sweetness of slick filled the room Sam pulled away just long enough to tug his shirt over his head and let it drop to the floor, wishing Dean wasn’t so self conscious about his body so he could feel the omega’s bare skin pressed up against him but settling for the Ace bandages as he stripped Dean’s shirt from him as well.

Dean thought distantly that if the neighbors across the street were voyeurs on top of being overly friendly they sure were getting a show, though he couldn’t really care as he curled his fingers into Sam’s chest, wondering if the alpha was maybe some kind of pagan god with the unearthly way he was built and deciding, if he was, he could understand why people used to worship them. Heat radiated off of Sam’s skin, still tanned even in the dead of winter, and the omega wished there wasn’t a beach ball between them because he sure would like to use his mouth on those dusky nipples instead of his fingers, though he’d take what he could get at this point if Sam kept shivering and moaning the way he was under Dean’s touch. The sounds Sam was making as Dean gasped into his hair were obscene, the alpha holding his hips down to grind against each other with increasing desperation, and Dean couldn’t decide if he was really pent up or if Sam was really good at this ( _he highly suspected it was the latter_ ) but he was about three seconds from coming in his pants like a horny fifteen year old and god it was fantastic. When Sam panted, “Come on baby” into the salty, sweaty hollow of Dean’s throat it tipped him over the edge and he choked back the scream that wanted to burst from his chest so all that came out was a squeak and a gasp as a wet spot bloomed and grew at the front of his pants, Sam following a few thrusts later with a half choked sob, his whole body shuddering as his dick pulsed beneath the weight of the omega on his lap. Dean clung to the alpha’s neck as he crashed their mouths together again, Sam spent and pliable under him now as Dean pushed his head to rest against the back of the couch, hands tangled in the dark wavy hair, lips and teeth moving down Sam’s long, exposed neck to mark him up, darting his tongue out to taste his glistening skin. A particularly hard nip against the alpha’s collarbone drew a rumbling laugh out of him, a sex drunk smile on his face as he lifted his head to find Dean’s mouth for a long, lazy kiss.

“Easy tiger,” he murmured, studying the omega’s blissful expression through half closed lids. “Save some of that for later.”

“Mmm. We’re not gonna be able to wear these pants to dinner,” Dean observed, getting another, louder laugh out of Sam.

“No,” the alpha agreed, dragging Dean’s hips forward again. “No we are not.”

He pulled back to look at the omega, who waggled his eyebrows.

“Totally worth it, though,” Dean said, and Sam hummed happily in response.

“Oh yeah, totally worth it.”

“So, the weird neighbors across the street…”

Dean yelped as he was flipped onto his back on the couch, Sam hovering over him with arms bracketed on either side of him, his eyes dark and predatory despite the wicked grin bringing out his dimples.

“No.” He pressed a quick kiss to Dean’s lips before climbing off of him, grabbing a still-sleeping Lizzie complete with bouncer, and walking past a confused Hannah to head down the hall. “You’re gonna have to hurry if you want me to wash your back.”

Dean grunted, rolling himself carefully over towards the edge of the sectional at a pace that could definitely not be confused with hurried. Someday when Elliott was much older Dean intended to fully embarrass his kid by letting him or her know exactly how often she or he came close to cockblocking the alpha and the omega, but for right now he was just determined to get to the shower and let Sam unwrap him so they could empty the hot water heater. After all, it was Valentine’s Day.


	70. So Please Tell Us You Have Actual Good News

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dinner and breakfast.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have never been to a Quaker Steak and Lube and am not attempting to disparage the chain. Please no one forward my story to Quaker Steak and Lube. :)

Sam considered it entirely possible that Dean just kept bringing up the neighbors across the street throughout the afternoon so Sam would shut him up with a “No,” and some necking, but he couldn’t really say that he minded if that were the case. Between the shower and getting to the restaurant they’d made out against the refrigerator, the dishwasher, the entertainment center, the stairs, the door to the den before managing to fumble it open and stagger inside to get Dean up on the desk, and the washing machine while it was on the spin cycle cleaning their clothes after the episode on the couch. They might be pushing the limits of the bed rest since Dean wasn’t sitting down much, but Sam did have him hoisted in the air half the time so they figured it was probably okay. They only bothered to put on boxers and pants after the shower instead of waiting until they were ready to go because Adam was there and they couldn’t really set an “all naked all the time” rule, though after Lizzie had gone down for an extra nap so she wouldn’t be cranky at the restaurant the beta caught them half inside the broom closet and decided he’d had enough, taking Dean’s keys and telling them he was heading out to Jo’s bar to see if he could convince her to help him bleach his eyes. By the time they were getting Lizzie into the truck Dean had only to cast a glance at the house across the street for Sam to have him trapped against the passenger side, mouth working up his throat then across his jaw until finally sealing over his lips and catching the omega’s moan. Sam enveloped Dean as the smaller man’s knees buckled, their frozen noses bumping against each other when Dean grabbed the alpha’s coat partly to hold himself up and partly to haul Sam in closer. The creepy neighbor across the street was probably watching, but really, who the hell cared at that point? Being the size of a small planet might not be so bad if it got him this kind of attention.

The Quaker Steak and Lube was ridiculous, but in a silly, fun kind of way. Sure they got some stares from the diners at the surrounding tables between a carrying male omega being something most people thought the stuff of legend, the baby in the car seat that didn’t look like either man, and the constant, excessive touching while they studied the menu, but there was racing memorabilia and engine parts decorating the place, plus actual race cars suspended from the ceiling; gutted, of course, but still, race cars. Even though Dean hadn’t come anywhere close to taking the nap he needed and was very clearly putting forth a lot of effort towards maintaining conversation, he was enjoying the stupid themed restaurant, pointing out the various parts to Lizzie and explaining what they were and how they helped make the engine go, how the cars were painted that way because they were retired from NASCAR, which was a sport some people liked watching but he didn’t really get because as far as he was concerned there weren’t a whole lot of things stupider than driving hundreds of miles really fast without actually getting anywhere. Their waitress was a super peppy beta right around their age who pointed to the tag on her suspenders when she said her name was July ( _like the month_ ) and she spent quite a bit of time gushing over Lizzie and what a _cute_ family they were, to the point that Dean almost told her she could tone it down because Sam was a generous tipper and she didn’t need to work _quite_ so hard. He kept his mouth shut despite the urge, thinking it was entirely possible she was just naturally that peppy or he was just so tired she seemed extra peppy, and he wasn’t in the mood for any special ingredients getting added to his food for being a smartass to the waitress.

The food was okay - not great, but it was a chain restaurant based around a motor oil brand so that was to be expected - and they had pie, and no one accosted Dean when he went to the bathroom by himself, which was something of a minor miracle given the looks he was getting. He even got left alone when Sam took Lizzie to the restroom to change her diaper, making him wonder if he just smelled that much like sex with Sam or if the Quaker Steak and Lube actually attracted decent human beings for clientele. He felt positively domesticated, in a nice way, by the time they finally wound their way home, and it didn’t actually bother him that much when they had the dog walked, the baby down, and were in bed before nine thirty. Adam was still out, Jo wasn’t home from work yet, and Lizzie had been moved back into her nursery down the hall so they didn’t even have to worry about being quiet as they stumbled into bed, mouths hungry for more than the restaurant was able to serve them and hands digging frantically at clothing and skin, fingers sliding in and curling around, names shouted and gasped, ending up spent, sticky, and panting for breath, naked limbs tangled together. Sam was starting to wonder if maybe they’d been hit with a fuck or die curse, since the blush coloring Dean’s skin from his cheeks down to his neck had the alpha wanting to devour him as if they hadn’t spent the entire day all over each other, and Dean seemed more than willing to be devoured. Lizzie crying on the baby monitor was what finally convinced Sam he had to remove his lips from the scent gland behind Dean’s ear, which the omega was grateful for as he was on the verge of passing out between the breathlessness and his rabbiting heartbeat, though he certainly didn’t plan to tell Sam to stop anytime soon when the bed and room _finally_ smelled like it belonged to them.

“Get some sleep,” Sam murmured, pressing a series of kisses to Dean’s mouth before tearing himself away to grab his boxers, wipe their stomachs and chests with his tee shirt, and head down the hall to see what Lizzie needed.

Dean fully intended to stay awake until Sam made it back, but it had been a long day and he was pretty dehydrated from all the bodily fluids he’d spilled throughout it, not to mention exhausted from all the calories burned. If this is what babymooning was like they were definitely going to have to have another baby at some point in the not too distant future. Where that thought came from he had no idea, but he didn’t have enough energy to really explore the sudden urge to put himself through this kind of physical strain again soon - or ever - so he got one of the larger throw pillows between his knees despite the copious amounts of slick still coating his thighs in an effort to relieve the ache in his stretching hip joints. It was the first time in weeks he felt like he could truthfully say he was happy as he listened to Sam singing _And So It Goes_ through the baby monitor, thinking with a smile that of course Sam would like Billy Joel as he fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

He woke with a start to the sound of Hannah barking downstairs, Sam’s breath hot on the back of his neck and the alpha’s body wrapped protectively around him. The first rays of sunlight were streaming through the bedroom window as the two of them jolted awake in sync, drawing their handguns from underneath their pillows on instinct. Sam carefully pushed Dean’s arm down from where he had the gun trained on the door, his lips brushing the omega’s temple as he whispered, “Stay here, do not follow me downstairs.”

“Sam…” he objected, but the hand on his chest forcing him firmly down to the mattress conveyed how serious Sam was.

“Don’t make me order you,” the alpha said flatly before rolling out of bed and slipping into a bathrobe, tying it around his waist on his way to the door.

The first thing Sam noticed when he got out into the hallway was the murmur of a man talking to Hannah, who sounded like she was no longer in the family room where he’d left her sleeping the night before but instead somewhere towards the back of the house. He’d have a clearer view of anyone in the dining room or kitchen if he went down the back stairs, so that’s exactly what he did, heading silently down the hall ( _avoiding that squeaky board in the floor outside Ben’s-now-Jo’s room_ ) and noticing that neither Jo nor Adam were in their beds. He thought for only a moment that maybe it was just Adam downstairs, but that didn’t make any sense, since Hannah was still doing her “I will tear your leg off” bark and she wouldn’t sound like that over Adam and Jo. It occurred to him that he should be worried about where the two of them were at this early hour of the morning and he was pretty sure he would be later. Right now he needed to figure out who the hell was in their heavily warded house.

The sound and smell of cooking bacon and eggs reached him halfway down the stairs before anything else like a scent or lack thereof that might give him a clue to the intruder’s identity. Whoever it was had managed to calm Hannah down, either through convincing her they were not a threat or that there was a slice or two of the heavenly pork product in it for her if she settled down, as the fiercely protective barks had de-escalated to hopeful whining. It seemed even less likely Adam and Jo were there since there was only one voice and he was clearly talking to the dog, which was reassuring given that Sam knew he could handle one of just about anything. As he closed in on the foot of the back stairwell and saw the dark haired man in the suit standing at the stove making breakfast - the familiar alpha scent reaching his nostrils at last - he felt his temper flaring and slid the safety back on his Taurus.

“Haven’t you heard of doorbells, Henry?” he demanded, glaring as Dean’s grandfather turned to him with a smile. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m making breakfast,” Henry replied logically as he turned the bacon in the pan. “I didn’t attempt the coffee. That machine has too many buttons.”

“I can see you’re making breakfast and you know that isn’t what I meant.” The young alpha moved the last two steps into the kitchen and dropped his handgun into the pocket of his robe. “What did you do, pick the lock?”

“Heavens no. You have this house very nicely protected against the supernatural but there are some definite weaknesses to spell work.”

He began plating the food on the dishes he’d set out on the island, Hannah watching him pass forlornly and hoping against hope he dropped something, but before he could load up all three plates Sam said, “Bacon makes Dean sick to his stomach.”

“Does it?” Henry raised an eyebrow at him, then with a shrug handed the strips meant for Dean’s plate to the dog, who looked like she would thereafter follow him to the ends of the earth. “Thank you for warning me. I certainly wouldn’t want him to be ill first thing in the morning.”

“If you didn’t want him to feel ill first thing in the morning you probably should have knocked instead of breaking into our kitchen to make breakfast.”

“Sammy?”

Dean had managed to pull his best badass hunter voice from somewhere within the deep recesses of him that remembered how to be a badass hunter but he didn’t come down the stairs, just stood at the top with his Colt in a pair of sleep pants and one of Sam’s shirts, which barely fit over his belly anymore. Sam was probably going to be irritated that he didn’t stay in the bedroom like he was told, but fuck that - he had a gun and he wasn’t letting Sam go downstairs to confront who knows what without backup. It was taking a lot of effort to keep the panic out of his scent so whoever was in the kitchen didn’t immediately know there was a carrying, injured, frightened omega upstairs who was having a hard time not falling into a flashback to two weeks ago, but New New Dean needed to learn how to keep it together under stress. More than just the concern of who Sam was talking to was the fact that Dean had just passed Adam’s room and it was empty, the bed still made from the day before. When he passed Jo’s vacant room he half expected to find her down the hall in Adam’s and wasn’t concerned ( _the day before_ **_was_ ** _Valentine’s Day after all_ ), but to not see either of them home at roughly seven in the morning ( _he’d checked his phone for the time, which had also shown no missed calls or new text messages_ ) was deeply troubling.

“It’s okay Dean,” came the reply. “It’s just Henry. He made breakfast, but there’s bacon. You might want to stay upstairs.”

“Is Adam down there with you?”

“No.” The long pause floating down from upstairs gave the distinct aroma of omega stress time to bleed down the stairwell, and Sam started back up with the instinctive need to soothe. “Baby?”

“I’m gonna call him.”

“Okay, I’ll bring you your eggs. Yell down to me if Lizzie wakes up.”

“Okay.”

Sam listened for a moment as Dean padded off down the hall, stepping deliberately on the squeaky board so the alpha would know he wasn’t hovering, then turned back to the elder Winchester, who had already popped Dean’s plate into the oven to keep warm. He flashed Sam another smile before sitting down at the island and gesturing towards the stool nearest the stairs.

“Please, eat while it’s hot,” he instructed before tucking into his own eggs. “It’s been so long since I cooked someone breakfast besides myself. I’m quite enjoying it.”

“You used to cook breakfast?” Sam asked with a disbelieving snort. “I thought back in your day that was the little omega’s job.”

“It was,” Henry conceded, taking a bite of perfectly cooked bacon. “But every Sunday I made breakfast. I enjoyed it. I was good at it. It gave my mate one day a week to relax and sleep in.” Sam looked at him like he’d grown tentacles, and Henry shook his head, smiling ruefully at the way he was perceived by these young men. It wasn’t as if he didn’t deserve it, but it still stung. “I understand what you probably think of me. What Dean undoubtedly thinks of me, what John...but I loved my family. I left to do important things - or at least I thought they were important. By the time I realized nothing was more important than my mate and my son it was too late.”

“Touching,” Sam said around a mouthful of bacon and eggs. Damn. Henry really did know how to cook breakfast.

“Who’s Lizzie?”

“Our little girl.”

Henry choked on his eggs, his eyes wide as he looked at the young alpha.

“Already?” he asked, coughing. Time moved differently when he was with Sinclair, what with all the enchantments surrounding their stronghold, but he had learned how to gauge it against the natural world and surely he hadn’t been gone more than a few weeks.

“She’s not... _ours_ ,” Sam explained, though it felt very wrong to say, especially sitting in Benny and Lisa’s kitchen. Of course she wasn’t theirs, but also obviously she was. She was a gift, something the Lafittes had been able to leave behind to ease Dean’s suffering. At least he thought - hoped - that she did, as Benny must have hoped should anything happen to him and Lisa; that his children would help Dean and Dean would help his children. He didn’t want to go down this road with Henry, not this early in the morning, not without coffee or vodka, so he said, “You’re here about the bunker, obviously. Since you’re never here to ask about your grandson.”

“Is there a reason I should be asking about my grandson?”

“Christ.” Sam had to laugh or he would have punched the guy. “At least I know where John gets it from.” He stabbed at his eggs and shoved a forkful into his mouth. “Dean isn’t well. He was injured, his closest friends were killed - this is their house, Lizzie’s their baby - and then he got hurt again. I’m sure you want to know why I haven’t contacted you. There you go.”

“Oh.” For the first time since he’d met the man, Sam actually believed Henry might genuinely care about his omega grandson’s wellbeing nearly as much as he did about getting Sam to join the Men of Letters. It was a realization that came to him with a good deal of bitterness on Dean’s behalf. “Is the pup all right?”

“Barely,” Sam bit out, his anger at Johnny rising up again with murderous intent. “We got very lucky and he’s still in danger of early labor. He’s not allowed more than half an hour from the house so a trip to a hidden bunker in Kansas is a little out of the question right now.”

“We have spells for transport,” Henry told him, though Sam could have sworn he was hesitant to do so, as if he anticipated some kind of negative reaction to what he was saying. When Sam didn’t say anything he continued. “It’s how I’m able to travel without a vehicle. How I was able to get into your house without using a door. It’s very powerful magic that shouldn’t be used often but it could get you both to Lebanon within a few seconds.”

“That’s all well and good Henry, but it still doesn’t solve the problem of us not being mated.”

“I thought that had been decided already.” Henry was genuinely perplexed by Sam saying it was a problem. Dean had been quite enthusiastic about mating and in his own personal experience most alphas readily gave in to an omega when it came to claiming them. “At Bobby Singer’s house…”

“Dean has some complications.” He gripped the fork so tightly his knuckles turned white. “I can’t knot him until after the baby is born so I can’t claim him.”

Henry’s expression was openly shocked and perhaps a little guilty, which made Sam happy if he were reading the older man correctly. He should feel guilty. He’d refused to help them back in Windom, wasn’t even interested in Dean in Chicago, hadn’t done anything more at Bobby’s than offer up the bunker to Dean and whip him into a frenzy, and now had made the kitchen stink of bacon so that the omega was probably going to have to spend the whole morning upstairs until the place aired out. Maybe if Henry had offered up the bunker immediately, had mentioned this transportation spell all the way back in Minnesota things would be different now, but woulda, coulda, shouldas had never done much for Sam so he finished his eggs and bacon and went to make coffee.

“There’s a spell for that as well,” Henry said finally, flinching and grabbing his side. It was clear by the sidelong glance Sam cast him that he no longer believed whatever problem Henry was having was diverticulitis, but at the same time didn’t seem to think it was a good idea to press him on what was really going on, perhaps intuiting it wouldn’t be safe for Dean. Henry brushed at the beads of sweat that sprang to his forehead, breathing slowly through the pain, and walked haltingly with his plate to the sink. “Well, more of an elixir, really. To suppress what he would feel at being claimed without...well, not in the normal way.”

Hilarious as it was that Dean’s grandfather was getting all squicky about knotting, if the two of them actually _could_ effectively run away from all their problems to the bunker it was worth hearing more. Though just the idea of running left his alpha bristling and itching for a fight. Alphas didn’t run from anything, not even police departments hell-bent on finding _something_ to charge their omega with or government agencies determined to separate them or houses that still smelled faintly of dead pack-mates even after everything had been boxed up and all the furniture had been replaced. But his omega had already mentioned running, didn’t have the emotional reserves to deal with the truckloads of shit that had been heaped on him in the last two weeks, and if it’s what Dean still wanted Sam was willing to entertain the idea.

“This elixir - would it do anything to Elliott?”

“Elliott?”

“That’s what we’ve been calling the baby.”

“Oh, well...I’m afraid I don’t know.” Sam raised an eyebrow at that, watching as Henry moved gingerly back to sit at the island. At the irritated look on the young man’s face Henry hastened to explain, “Most of our spell books are quite old, the newest having been published in the 1950s. You’ll forgive me for sounding prudish or old fashioned, but the idea that an omega would be carrying and unclaimed this far into their term would have been just about unheard of back when these books were written. There’s nothing about side effects on a carrying omega or if it could injure the pup because there wouldn’t have been a need to worry about that sort of thing. Typically omegas would need the relief if their alpha was leaving for an extended time - going to war for example - and couldn’t properly claim them before leaving. I can do some research into it, see what I can dig up.”

Obviously Sam wouldn’t even consider whatever this thing was Henry was offering him if he weren’t certain it wasn’t going to hurt Elliott, but the eagerness with which Henry offered to research the spell for him was disconcerting and almost made him not want to consider the offer regardless of whether or not it was safe. This was the fourth time he’d seen the man in under three months, and he was pushing awfully hard to have Sam move into the bunker as soon as possible. At first it had been somewhat flattering, but now it felt like he was on a date with a guy who was trying too hard to get him back to his apartment before Sam figured out he kept fingers in formaldehyde in his fridge. Henry seemed to guess he had overshot his goal, pushing himself from the island and reaching for where he’d laid his coat across the stool at the far end.

“Think about it, Sam,” he said as he bundled himself up and took his briefcase up from where it sat on the floor. “Something very dark is coming. It would be a great benefit to the organization to have you as a member.”

“Something dark?”

“Demonic. The signs are everywhere if you know how to read them. That would be one of the first things we taught you, should you choose to join us.” Noticing how Sam seemed to relax a bit at this explanation, Henry decided to take things a step further whether Sinclair liked it or not, saying, “Would you like to see how the travel spell works?”

“Uh...sure…”

Henry threw him a smile, seeming to Sam to be genuinely excited at the prospect of having someone appreciate his work. He opened his briefcase and drew out the copper bowl, necessary ingredients, and matches. Sam knew a bit about magical herbs and general botany, but not enough to guess at more than one or two of the items Henry was using. It definitely had the effect of making the alpha want to risk the danger of fingers in refrigerators, and that feeling only increased when he asked Henry what he was doing and Henry replied simply, winking, “Magic.” He struck a match, muttering an incantation in what sounded like Celtic, before dropping the flame into the bowl, at which point the air between Sam and Henry rippled; actually rippled, like a lake into which a stone had been tossed. Hannah went crazy, backing away from whatever it looked like to her before running around the island to stand with Sam as Lizzie’s cries echoed down from the upstairs.

“I’ll take that as my cue to leave,” Henry said, packing the ingredients back into his briefcase, putting his hat on his head and lifting the bowl from the island.

The air rippled with the bowl’s movement, drawing a delighted chuckle out of Sam despite himself. He was too much of a nerd not to find the whole thing incredibly cool and to rattle through any number of reasons why he shouldn’t let the possibility of Henry being a serial killer deter him from learning that spell. After all, he was a hunter and knew how to take out all kinds of things. A human who knew some magic wouldn’t _really_ be a match for him when it came right down to it.

“Let me know if that elixir is safe for the baby,” Sam instructed, earning a pleased look from Dean’s grandfather.

“I will,” Henry replied with a smile. “Take care of Dean.”

He stepped through the ripple, which vanished with him and the bowl, causing the Pyr to rush forward and pace the location of the spellwork, barking and growling. Sam got a hand on her collar to pull her back and pat her flank, letting her know she’d done a good job before going to retrieve Dean’s eggs from the oven and a fork. When Sam got to the top of the stairs the omega was just coming out of Lizzie’s room, cell phone in hand, looking red faced and flustered.

“She’s hungry and wet, but I can’t get her up,” he said helplessly, dragging a hand through his hair.

“You better not have _tried_ to get her up,” Sam warned, shoving the plate at him. “You’re not supposed to be bending over.”

“I didn’t,” Dean shot back defensively, ignoring the eggs. “I was just tryin’ to keep her calm. Is Henry gone?”

“Yeah. He wanted to know about us taking the bunker. He thinks he might have work-arounds for some of the things keeping us from moving in.”

“Great.”

Dean tossed the word out as if he hadn’t heard a thing Sam said, heading back down to the bedroom with the plate of food and flipping open his phone to press the “call” button as he went. He knew he needed breakfast, had no hope of ignoring it the way Elliott was pummeling him this morning after the adult activities he and Sam had gotten up to all day and night before, yet he had absolutely no appetite because Adam wasn’t answering his phone. That in and of itself wasn’t that big of a deal - the kid was an adult and didn’t always answer his phone - but the phone had either died or been shut off in the middle of Dean’s twelfth phone call, and the following twenty-five calls he’d placed had gone straight to voicemail. Jo’s phone had done the exact same thing. There was probably a case to be made for the two of them hooking up the night before and finding somewhere else to be, but one; that was more of a Dean move, Adam was a gentleman, all “let me get the door for you” and laying his jacket down over puddles, and two; it was fucking February. Where exactly were they going to spend the night together without freezing their asses off besides a hotel, in which case see point one?

He had laid out clothes to wear for the day and was in the process of getting the Ace bandages unwrapped, the shower filling the en suite bathroom with steam by the time Sam was done changing and feeding Lizzie. Somewhere back in the corner of his mind was a small voice telling him not to panic, that he was just overreacting, the two young betas had really been hitting it off and the day before was Valentine’s Day and there was _nothing_ to worry about. The larger part of his brain was screaming at that very small voice to shut the hell up because it sure as fuck didn’t know what it was talking about and clearly hadn’t been paying attention to anything that had happened in the last few months. The idea that Adam had gone to hang out at Jo’s bar last night and neither of them had returned home _not_ being a reason to panic was laughable with everything the omega had been through. Obviously he should be panicking, there were the weird neighbors across the street and the Campbells still pissed off about Samuel leaving everything to Sam ( _who had already said he was auctioning off everything and having the family compound razed to the ground as soon as the mess with the will was cleaned up_ ), and that didn’t even take into account the multitude of non-human things that could have gotten them. And Adam would have texted if he and Jo were somewhere; nothing obnoxious like Dean might have sent him back in his days of kissing and telling, but he would have sent him _something_. “Hey, Jo and I are staying in the city,” or “Hey, the two of us got invited to a party - don’t wait up,” or “Hey, neither of us can stand seeing the two of you play tonsil hockey so we’re getting a room.” _Something_. That he hadn’t felt incredibly wrong to Dean, all the way down to his bones.

Sam appeared in the bathroom doorway, a baby in his arm and dog at his heels, and asked, “What are you doing?”

“What does it look like I’m doing?” He stepped carefully into the shower and lowered himself down onto the plastic stool they picked up the week before so Dean wouldn’t be entirely dependent on Sam for his hygiene. “I gotta get the day started so I can figure out where Adam is.”

“But...I need to walk the dog…” Sam objected, and Dean full on rolled his eyes.

“I’ll be fine by myself in the shower, Sam. Got my gimp chair and everything.”

Dean reached down to pat the stool leg and threw Sam a half smile, the alpha reaching for him when his balance failed slightly as he straightened. The flash of completely irrational fear that washed over Sam at the thought of taking the dog out onto the front lawn to do a number one and a number two while Dean was alone in the shower had him again rethinking his hesitation with Henry earlier. Sam hated the feeling of Dean being vulnerable in this house, which he’d been working hard the last week to suppress, but even with the new furniture and the professional cleaning and the repainting of rooms Sam still remembered that initial scent of fear that hit him at the top of the stairs. He knew Dean must be suppressing even more, as good as he was at it. Sure, the omega had been very fragile when he got out of the hospital, but as he healed physically he was managing to rebuild some of his protective walls to keep out the feelings this house stirred in him. Sam didn’t want this life for them. He didn’t want to constantly be frantic if they weren’t in the same room or for Dean to need to live behind mental walls just to make it through the day.

“Just...don’t try to get out if I’m not back yet,” he finally said, handing Dean the loofa and body wash. “I’ll get Lizzie back down for now but promise you’re going to wait for me.”

“If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life,” Dean replied, enjoying the shocked look on Sam’s face. “Yes, I did just quote Gwendolen Fairfax. Why does everyone think I only read skin mags?”

“First Air Supply and now Oscar Wilde. I feel like I don’t even know you.”

“I hunted Calliope at a community college. They were doing _The Importance of Being Earnest_. Hilarious show.”

Sam recalled the printout of the hunt in Benny’s journal, and how shocked he had been that Dean took out a Greek muse. Even more impressive was that he’d done it alone. Hannah was really starting to dance behind him though, so rather than get into a discussion of Dean’s lengthy history of killing things or his surprising knowledge of classical theatre he simply said, “You’re awesome.”

“I know,” Dean replied and pulled the curtain surrounding the tub closed so Sam would go lay Lizzie down in her crib and take the dog out before she left a sizeable puddle on the floor. He needed to get himself cleaned up from the night before and would prefer not to spend too long in the shower waiting for Sam to come back. The sooner he could figure out where Adam went the sooner he could convince the hippopotamus squatting on his lungs to move. It shouldn’t take them too long. After all, how far could they have gone?


	71. There's Always Gonna be Something to Hunt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Valentine's Day actually kind of sucks.

When Jo told the boys she’d found a dive bar nearby to work at she really wasn’t kidding. Not that Adam was big into the bar scene what with not drinking and all ( _even though he’d had a fake ID since he was seventeen, being a Winchester_ ), but he’d been out to his fair share of college dives just to be social, and Bob & Barb’s definitely had them all beat. Bob & Barb’s was the kind of place that reveled in its sleaziness, from its poor lighting to its uneven floors to its questionable clientele. Bob & Barb’s had a long bar, a smattering of booths, a pool table that had seen better days, a stage that was never used, and a very pretty new beta bartender who wasn’t even old enough to drink and still managed to fend off all the alpha knotheads with a smile. It certainly was not the place Adam wanted to spend Valentine’s Day, but his brother and his best friend just _wouldn’t stop kissing_ ( _among other things he didn’t want to admit he’d overheard_ ) and Jo was the only other person he knew in the whole city. Sure, she’d be working, but she’d mentioned a couple of times now that she wished she could keep a shotgun under the bar just in case she needed to discourage a patron who wasn’t taking the hint and she’d only been working there about a week. It seemed like she might not mind having someone watching her back on a night when there were bound to be lots of lonely alphas and betas out there looking to drown their sorrows in too much booze and the long blonde locks of a pretty girl.

Jo had been happy to see him, too. Genuinely happy, not the happy she was plastering on to make sure the regulars didn’t get pissy about the new girl being a bitch, but a happy that told Adam his instincts had been correct; she was relieved not to be navigating shark infested waters alone. He found a seat near the end of the bar and ordered a Pepsi, getting a lecture about how he was a lightweight and she was glad he wasn’t stupid enough to try to pass off that fake ID or expect her to let him get drunk, and oh yeah, they carried Coke products. He appreciated the easy teasing, told her he didn’t drink anyway, and grabbed a menu so he could peruse the terrible options the kitchen had to offer, which were, truly, terrible. Every ten minutes or so she’d come over to check on him, see if he needed another Coke, flash him one of her pearly white smiles, and head back down to deal with the knotheads jockeying for her attention.

Eventually he got tired of just hanging out at the bar and managed to hustle a couple of guys at pool the way Dean had taught him, being careful to keep it friendly and not fleece them for so much it pissed them off and made them retaliatory. It was a fine line to walk but he did it well and kept the alphas laughing even as he took their money, noticing not entirely with disinterest the way Jo kept glancing at him while he played, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. By the time his playing partners called it a night and stumbled out into the cold winter air he had a thick stack of bills in his pocket, returning to his stool for another soft drink while _Surrender_ played overhead. The bar had thinned out considerably, only a handful of patrons left after those who had managed to find someone to hook up with and take away the loneliness managed to do so, while most of the others decided it was best to pack it in early with the way the wind was whipping the snow around outside. Only the die-hard drinkers remained with a skeleton crew of staff: the cook still in the kitchen, a single server on the floor, and the second bartender with Jo, who had been downgraded from taking orders to drying glasses.  

“I hope you’re not going to make that a habit,” she snarked as he folded the bills to shove into the back pocket of his jeans. “I’ll never get any tips if you keep taking everyone’s money.”

“I promise to share the wealth if I do,” he replied, snagging a fry from the basket she’d plunked down in front of him “on the house” and from which she was lazily eating. “How much longer until they cut you loose?”

“You have some hot plans for the two of us?” He blushed all the way up to his hairline and she positively crowed with laughter. “God you’re easy to wind up. Yeah, they’re probably gonna let me out of here in a half hour or so. Why?”

“Just trying to make sure you get home okay,” he said. “The weather’s getting crappy and I’d hate for the book club across the street to waylay you if you end up in a snowbank.”

“Are you suggesting I don’t know how to drive in the snow?”

“I’m merely pointing out that you have an old Cadillac sedan with practically bald tires and I have Dean’s four wheel drive truck.”

“I see why you got a full ride at Duke.” She flashed a grin at him, grabbing his empty glass. “Let me see if I can get an ETA on when we can get out of here.”

Fifteen minutes later Jo was clocking out while Adam went out to warm up the truck, garnering a declaration of how she never knew he was such a gentleman. The other bartender ( _coincidentally, Joe_ ) told her she should have said something sooner about her boyfriend waiting on her, and she didn’t bother to correct him, thinking it would provide her an easy out of uncomfortable situations since she wasn’t in the safety of the Roadhouse where everyone knew not to press their luck. A couple of the alphas still hanging around tried to convince her to stay, but she told them to come back for her next shift on Thursday and try again before buttoning her coat around her and flipping her collar up past her ears.

The February evening air was a definite jolt to her system. Not that she was unaccustomed to the winter, having grown up in Nebraska, it was more that Bob & Barb’s kept the heat up to make sure the patrons were thirsty so they would buy more two dollar drafts throughout the evening and hopefully get drunk enough not to care that the beer sucked. She spotted the truck at the far end of the mostly empty parking lot, though she noticed almost immediately that it wasn’t running. A gust of wind blew the falling snow around her in a little tornado of white flakes, and she called out, “Adam?”

When there wasn’t a response she headed back inside, asking Joe to check the bathroom to see if he was in there just in case she’d missed him on the way out, but the only person in the bathroom was a drunk off his ass, half asleep regular named Bill who was in the process of peeing on his shoes. She pulled out her phone to give him a quick call and see where he went as she headed back out into the parking lot but it just rang until finally going to voicemail. Cautiously she moved across the parking lot towards the truck, calling, “Adam?” again and fishing her keys out of her pocket to hold one of the keys between her middle and ring fingers as an improvised weapon she could use to gouge an attacker’s eyes. Glancing down at the asphalt she could see Adam’s footprints in the snow and how they stopped at the driver’s side door, then went around to the front of the truck out of the glow of the parking lot light. She scanned the area beyond the lot where a hill rolled up and away to a shopping plaza in the distance and pulled out her cell phone to try calling him again. The call was on the third ring when she felt a hand on her ankle and was slammed into darkness.

Adam awoke cold and confused to the early morning sunlight streaming in on him, the lines of the rays broken up by something that cast shadows across his face and body in a repeated pattern. His head hurt and his shoulder was sore from laying on something hard all night and he had no idea what was going on. Checking himself for injuries he determined relatively quickly that there wasn’t anything really wrong with him except for the large bump on his head and the utter lack of awareness of where he was or what had happened. He still had his coat and gloves, which was at least something since wherever he was was cold, but his phone and keys were gone. His vision was a little blurred from the headache, and he shook his head to try to clear it, eventually being able to see that he was in some kind of metal cage in a barn. One end of the cage was solid metal, the other was a door with a sliding lock attached to some kind of heavy duty electrical cable that ran up and across the ceiling over to a control box of some sort, the two other sides crisscrossed bars. It was like something they might have in a zoo, only more secure. The other two cages were exactly the same. He could see that one of them held a dark haired man, while the other had a spray of long blonde hair poking out of a brown coat.

“Jo!” he yelled before he could think better of it. She stirred as he cast his eyes furtively around the space they were in, realizing it was some kind of barn, much like the one the vampires had been using as a nest, with hay bales, large wooden support beams, and a thick door at the far end. It didn’t look or feel like the door led to the outside - though cold it was far too warm where they were to be completely exposed to the elements - so wherever it was, it was a substantial building. Jo stirred slightly, groaning a little, and he repeated as loudly as he dared, “Jo!”

“If you know what’s good for you, you’ll shut up,” growled the man in the other cell, who had an old wound on his head that hadn’t been treated and left him with a swath of dried blood down the side of his face. “Better they don’t think you’re awake yet.”

“What are they?” Adam demanded, and the man looked at him like he’d started spontaneously speaking a foreign language.

“What _are_ they?” he echoed, not seeming to understand the question.

Before Adam could ask again Jo was sitting up, holding her head and trying to take in her surroundings. He watched her pat down her coat like he’d done and pull her pockets out, coming up empty. He called out to her again quietly, waiting until she turned around and spotted him across the barn.

“Adam!” She gripped the bars, eyes glued to him as she openly struggled to control her rising fear. “Holy fuck where are we? What is this?”

“Shh!” the man insisted. “Christ, keep it down! Do you want to get us all killed?”

“Who the fuck are you?”

“Alvin Jenkins,” he said, turning to look at her. “Hey, aren’t you that new bartender at Bob & Barb’s?”

“Yeah,” she told him, glancing over at Adam in the hope he knew something about this guy.

“Crap.” Jenkins ran a hand through his hair, wincing as he touched the wound on his forehead. “Well, maybe someone will come looking now. Though how the hell they’re going to find us I haven’t got a fucking clue.”

“What are you talking about?” Jo demanded, and Jenkins snapped, “I was leaving Bob & Barb’s on Friday and they grabbed me in the parking lot. Wait, what day is it?”

“Tuesday,” Adam said. “No, wait, Wednesday.”

“Fuck.” Jenkins ran the same hand through his hair again - clearly some kind of nervous tic he had. “I’ve lost a day.”

Suddenly the door to the room swung open and a tall man in a ragged flannel, overalls, and half worn out Carhartt walked in carrying three metal tins with something that looked like a cross between oatmeal and grits. His boots thudded heavy on the floor as he set down a tin in front of each cage, grinning at the three prisoners with brown teeth and breathing out putrid air from his lungs at each of them before going to the control panel and pulling a key out of his shirt pocket. He slotted it into the panel and drew a pistol out of his coat, turning back to give Jenkins and the two betas another smile.

“You all don’t try anything now,” he growled. “You’ll spoil all the fun.”

He gave the key a clockwise twist and pushed a button, releasing the lock on Jenkins’ cage, then went and kicked the tin of the mush mixture in before closing the door again. He moved back to the panel and pushed another button, slamming the lock back into place. Adam cast a glance over to Jo, who was openly shaking, and gave a little jerk of his head to warn her off from an escape attempt. She nodded in understanding, scooting back from the cage door when the lock slid open and the tin was kicked inside for her. Adam was the last one to get his food, and he stayed stock still as well, gauging the man’s height and weight and how difficult he would be to overpower once he got out of here. After he’d locked the door to Adam’s cage again he looked back at all three of them and chuckled, then went out through the barn door and closed it with a thud.

“What are we gonna do Adam?” Jo choked out as Jenkins inhaled the food he’d been given, scraping it into his mouth with his fingers.

“We’re gonna get out of here Jo,” Adam replied calmly, getting his hands between the bars of the top of the cage to grab hold of the cable running above them and see if he could pull it out and free the lock.

“That’s not going to work,” Jenkins warned him. “I already tried.”

“Well, I haven’t,” Adam told him, using his entire body weight to yank against it. After a couple of tugs it fell free from the ceiling, a bracket hitting the cage and bouncing off as Adam dropped back and landed in his tin of sludge. “Fuck.”

“Did that make you feel better?” Jenkins groused, and Adam considered flipping him the bird.

“Adam?” Jo’s voice was very small, and he turned from trying to clean off his coat to look at her. Any pretense she had of being a big, tough, wannabe hunter had been abandoned in favor of getting some kind of reassurance from the younger Winchester that they weren’t about to become part of a suit made from human skin. “ _How_ are we gonna get out of here?”

“I don’t know yet,” he said, moving to the side of the cage closest to her to try to soothe her with his presence. She may just be a beta, but he’d learned a hell of a lot about soothing in the last couple of weeks. “But we’ll come up with something. And my brother’s going to freak when we don’t come home. We just have to stay alive until whoever the guy with the gross food is slips up or until someone finds us. Okay?”

She nodded, struggling to take deep breaths and get her shaking under control, and she replied, “Okay.”

“Eat your breakfast. We’ll figure this out.”

But there was nothing to figure out. Whoever had them knew what they were doing. The cages were well built, welded together at the joints so there was no way to break them without breaking through the soldering itself, and the soldering was done by someone who knew their way around a tig welder. The metal had clearly held up for a long time despite some light rusting, and it made Adam wonder just how long this freak had been taking people. He hoped it was a very long time and that there was some kind of pattern for his brother and Sam to pick up on once they started looking for him, and he knew they’d be looking for him soon. Dean was a worrywart under the best of circumstances. After what he’d been through recently he’d probably be forcing Sam to track them down already, and that definitely worked in their favor. The biggest problem he saw was all the missing persons cases they’d connected to the vampires and whether there would be anything to stand out and make the disappearances around Bob & Barb’s ( _or at least in the vicinity of Bob & Barb’s_) stand out as separate. A different man came in to feed them lunch in the exact same manner in the exact same tins, though this time whatever the gruel was tasted like maybe it had a little bit of honey in it. By dinner a third man came to feed them, older than the first two - old enough to be their father. He wore the same clothes as the younger men and a filthy trucker’s cap, his teeth half rotted out and one eyelid drooping. All three were clearly cut from the same brand of crazy, and he didn’t like at all the way they leered in turn at Jo, sizing her up like a prized calf. There was no lighting in the barn so once the sun had set there was no real way to tell time, and despite the adrenaline flooding through his system the youngest Winchester could only stay awake so long listening to Jo and Jenkins sleep before he fell into an uneasy slumber himself.  

He woke with a jolt a short time later to near pitch blackness at the sound of one of the locks popping open. Whether it was still Wednesday or early Thursday morning he didn’t know, but he could tell it was nowhere near daybreak. He checked the door of his crate and glanced over to where Jo was also looking blearily around before realizing it was Jenkins’ cell that had been unlocked. Jenkins was already up, swinging the door open with suspicion and then growing delight as he took a few tentative steps out into the barn.

“Don’t,” Adam warned as the man looked around the room to see if there was anything stopping him from leaving. “Jenkins, don’t!”

“I’ll get help,” Jenkins told him. “I’ll come back for you both.”

“You shouldn’t leave,” Jo said, her eyes flicking from Jenkins to Adam and then back again when she saw worry and fear reflected in her friend’s face. “It might be a trap.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll come back,” Jenkins assured her, and was gone.

Jenkins didn’t come back. By the time morning rolled around and the first of their captors returned with the same tin of disgusting food his cell remained empty, the lock unlatched like they’d be bringing him back any minute now. Adam spent the day watching Jo shaking in the other cell, partly from the cold and partly from fear, and tried to engage her in small talk just to pass the time and keep her mind off their predicament. She needed it, too, with the way the men feeding them eyed her every time they came in, their gazes growing more and more lecherous. Jo wasn’t some kind of shrinking violet, but these men were big and it would be stupid to pretend that she could handle herself unarmed if they decided to drag her out of her cage or to climb in with her and take care of the bulges in their pants that they frequently squeezed while looking her over.

For almost two days after Jenkins vanished it went like this; the three men ( _who it was now apparent were just_ **_people_ ** _\- crazy as fuck people, but people nonetheless_ ) feeding them, mentioning something about getting their strength up, saying they’d never “done” a couple before and they rarely took bitches because it wasn’t “sporting,” but mostly leaving them to their own devices to try to figure out a way out of the cages that they hadn’t thought of yet. The only thing either had managed so far was remove their belts and sharpen the prongs to use as gouges, the way Jo had been holding her keys the night before. Even that was difficult, particularly for the young woman, whose fingers and toes had been so cold since the first night she could barely feel them anymore. Adam was starting to fear she’d end up with hypothermia if they didn’t get out soon, knowing how cold he was and able to tell by the color of her skin and lips that she was much worse off. They knew practically everything there was to know about each other by the fourth night, from favorite colors to favorite foods to favorite movie growing up, to what they wanted to be when they grew up and whether they still harbored those childhood dreams. Jo had wanted to front a rock band called _Drunk Boy_ , because who would expect a chick to front a band called _Drunk Boy_ , and Adam wanted to grow up to be a professional wrestler - not the Olympic athlete kind, the Rowdy Roddy Piper kind. The two were actually laughing in the dark about the prospect of Adam in a kilt when their third night there - at least they were both pretty sure it was only Friday - the bolts to their cages opened in sync and the doors popped open slightly.

Both betas froze, Jo eventually moving to the back of her cage as Adam inched forward. He knew it was a trap, that they weren’t meant to make it back from wherever they were ( _perhaps they weren’t even supposed to make it out of the barn_ ) but staying in the cage left them sitting ducks and that just wasn’t an option. It was smart to let them out at night when it would be harder for the pair to spot any potential traps or anyone following them, especially when they did not have the home field advantage. It took him several minutes to convince Jo to come out of the cage and considerably less persuasive power to get her to not let go of the back of his jacket as they moved through the barn.

It turned out the portion of the barn they were being kept in had two doors. There was the one in front of them that obviously led to the outside eventually, since it’s how the men came in every day and that was the way Jenkins had exited never to return. The other was behind the cages and couldn’t be seen when they were in them but didn’t seem to lead out, as there was no cold air coming in under the door. Adam got Jo turned so they were back to back and wrapped his left arm around her waist so she could keep an eye on their six without losing him or stumbling as he moved them to the previously unknown door. Walking backwards wasn’t the easiest thing for her to do when she officially couldn’t feel her toes, but she had his arm to hold onto every time she lost her footing and he kept her upright until they got into the room, which had a loft, a bunch of hay, and a tool cabinet at the far side.

“Wait here,” he told her as he got her set in the center of the room watching the door so he could check the place for weapons. He tried the cabinet first, coming across a bow with a slightly frayed string and a bunch of arrows that had definitely seen better days, their tips dulled and fletching mostly gone, but nothing else that could be of any use. When he turned back to Jo he spotted a dull, rusty double bit axe on the wall over a table covered in hay bales, and asked, “Think you can swing that thing?”

When she glanced over her shoulder at him, her eyes wide and glassy, he gave a jerk of his head to the weapon, and after assessing it she breathed, “Yeah, yeah I think I can.”

He slung the string of the bow across his body and set the arrows down before pulling himself up onto the table to get the axe down. He considered their odds if they just stayed and hid in the barn - there was a loft, after all - but doubted that was what the crazed hillbillies wanted and they might find themselves on the wrong end of a gun, which he had no doubt they possessed. Either that or they’d just get waited out. There wasn’t exactly anything to eat or drink in the barn, and they were only going to last a couple of days without water.

“What’s the hold up?” Jo demanded, taking a step backwards toward the table.

“Weighing our options,” he replied as he climbed down and handed her the axe. It was heavier than she expected and she almost dropped it, her semi-frozen fingers unhappy to obey her. “Stay and hide or run and hide.”

“I don’t want to stay in this barn,” she said finally, her knuckles white with how tightly she was gripping the axe.

“It’s warm in here, relatively speaking,” he objected, not sure whether he was trying to convince her or himself what the best course of action was. “We go out there we’re we have to deal with the elements.”

“We stay in here we’ve literally boxed ourselves in.”

“Fair enough.” He grabbed the arrows from the table and searched the cabinet again until he found a rag to tear into strips, which he used to tie the bundle of arrows together and affix them to a belt loop. He was glad the arrows had target heads, as they’d be easy to pull out of his makeshift quiver. If they'd been broadheads he’d be screwed. “You wanna carry the axe or do you want me to?”

"Oh, I’m good holding onto the axe, thanks,” she told him with a nod of her head, and he grabbed her hand as he passed her.

“Don’t let go of me.”

Why he felt he needed to tell her that Jo wasn’t entirely sure, since there wasn’t anything she could envision happening to them that would get her to stop acting as a second skin. They made their way out into the night and assess their surroundings as best they could with nothing but the moonlight overhead. There were fields in all four directions surrounded by forests, with a long driveway leading off through the trees from an old, large farmhouse with a two level porch. There were a couple of half dismantled vintage trucks littering the landscape, an old enclosure that looked like it might have been for pigs at one time but had fallen into disrepair, and a large tractor that had seen better days. It didn’t look like any of the vehicles on the property were in running condition, at least not ones they could see from the barn. There were a handful of lights on in the house, all of them upstairs, making it seem worth the risk to check around back for something that could get them out of there. Adam moved Jo around behind him again so she’d be mostly hidden if anyone was looking out from the house and darted across the drive to move up along the side of the porch, coming around to the back and seeing a beat-up station wagon with two flat tires. There was a detached garage about fifty yards off, but even from where they were they could see the heavy padlock on it. Undoubtedly that’s where they kept whatever they used to get on and off the property and pick up people like them and Jenkins. Adam was fairly certain Jo’s axe would work on the padlock, but he’d barely started over there with her before the screen door at the front of the house swung open and they heard a two note whistle that was answered by someone around the far side of the porch. Adam grabbed Jo’s hand to pull her up next to him and whispered, “Head for the trees” before pushing her off across the back field. It was the smallest space to cross before meeting the treeline and she took off like a gazelle while he made his way to the other side of the car and ducked down.

The two younger men ambled out from either side of the house, one having already come down off the porch and the other still up on it. Both of them carried long spears and wore night vision goggles, the most modern thing on them since all the clothing they’d worn had been patched many times. Their eyes fell on where Jo was sprinting away and they gave whoops of delight, heading after her at an easy pace with sickly matching smiles on their faces. Before they could get much farther from the house Adam popped up over the roof of the car with one arrow notched and shot the first man in the shoulder, knocking him backwards. The arrows really were in terrible shape, the beta had been aiming for his center mass, but as the man yelped and took the attention of the second hunter off the car Adam notched another arrow and let it fly. It too went wide, clipping the side of his neck and drawing blood but lodging relatively harmlessly in the house. It startled the second man more than hurt him, but it gave Adam a chance to take off after Jo.

“We’re gonna gut you, bitch!” the second man shouted as the first man ripped the arrow out of his shoulder with a whine.

As his words echoed across the field Jo risked a glance back to see where Adam was, her foot catching on a root as she broke the line of the trees and sending her face first into the snow. It was such a stupid horror movie mistake she could have kicked herself, but then Adam was there hauling her up and grabbing the axe from where it had fallen while the two men bore down on them. He thrust the axe at her, snapping, “Move!” as he turned with the bow to loose another arrow at their pursuers, this time getting the closest one in the leg. The man fell at once, dropping his spear as he shrieked, and the other man paused to assess the wound, giving Adam a clear shot at his head. He over-corrected for the fletching, the shot going wide the other way, and with only three arrows left he decided that was his cue to make like a tree and get the fuck out of there. He could see flashes of Jo’s hair moving through the branches ahead of him and followed after her the best he could, though her brown coat camouflaged her well.

“Adam!” she yelled, glancing back and almost faceplanting a second time.

“I’m here!” he called back, gaining on her fast. “Be quiet and keep going! Just keep going!”

She nodded to herself as she scrambled up and forward, her eyes finally starting to adjust to the light streaming down through the trees. Her feet were still freezing and her fingers were rebelling against continuing to carry the axe, but she could feel the sweat running down her back and pooling in the hollow of her neck. She shrieked at the hand on her arm until Adam covered her mouth to stop her, dragging her with him deeper into the woods.

“Do not let go of me,” he whispered again, and she promised, “I won’t.”


	72. What the Hell Happened to You Guys?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A look at what Sam and Dean have been up to.

The Fort Wayne Police Department was useless. Useless and bigoted and and a goddamned waste of public resources. When Dean got off the phone with Bob of Bob & Barb’s, armed with the knowledge that the Cadillac was there but his truck wasn’t he’d immediately called the police, who all but yawned on the phone. They didn’t care that Dean was a hunter and there was the real possibility the two civilians who were missing had been snatched in retaliation for something Dean had done. They didn’t care that Dean hadn’t heard from his brother since he left the house on Tuesday, or that both of the betas' cell phones were dead. They didn’t even care that Jo left Bobby’s car behind ( _it wasn’t registered to her anyway so there was no way to prove she’d been driving it_ ) or that Dean’s truck was gone ( _Adam needed to be a registered driver with the South Dakota DMV since Dean was an omega, so as far as the police were concerned he had every right to take it_ ). A young couple running off together on Valentine’s Day wasn’t exactly cause for alarm, and they explained tiredly that they’d be happy to have him fill out a missing person’s report after forty-eight hours even though they fully expected them both to pop up somewhere in a couple of days when the hormones wore off or the alcohol ran out. No one had to tell Dean they didn’t care because his name was attached to the death of an alpha a few weeks ago - it was plain as the nose on his face.

Bobby and Ellen were there by the time Dean would be able to fill out the stupid report that he knew was going to get filed away in a dusty old cabinet until it turned into a cold case, having started the drive out from Sioux Falls as soon as Sam called Wednesday afternoon to say that Adam and Jo hadn’t come home from the bar where she worked and he needed help to go out and find them. The only reason Sam and Dean hadn’t investigated themselves was that the alpha was practically sitting on the omega to keep him from snatching the keys to the Escalade and driving off to the bar on his own. Though that wasn’t exactly right. Sam had actually done more laying on him and against him and pressing him flush to the walls in a replay of Valentine’s Day except with a lot less clothing, as a day of almost-all-naked-all-the-time runs of the bases ( _except home plate, of course_ ) seemed to be the only way to actually take Dean’s mind off his brother’s disappearance.

The alpha had tried a variety of things throughout the day, but nothing had done anything to make the cloud of panic surrounding Dean disperse outside of overpowering his forebrain by drawing out his omega, and the only thing that had worked to draw out his omega was sex; or at least as close to sex as they were allowed to get. It wasn’t the route he’d wanted to go since it seemed terribly inappropriate given the circumstances, but once Dean started smashing all their plates in a blind rage after getting off the phone with the police and worked himself straight into hyperventilating Sam figured it was worth a shot. He thought maybe if he could get Dean’s omega reacting like something close to being in heat he wouldn’t have the ability to think of anything else, and that had worked, even if it did make the alpha feel like a pervert and was resulting in some really painful chafing. Sam was definitely of the mindset that something bad had happened to Adam and Jo, but there was no way he could go out looking for them and leave Dean alone, and there was no way he could take Dean with him to look for them, and he absolutely could not let Dean spend the day stressing himself right into labor, which was a very real and frightening possibility at the moment. If the omega had his way he’d be camped out at the police station in a tent, waiting for the magic forty-eight hour timeframe to pass, instead of upstairs napping while Sam answered the doorbell at eleven in the morning on Thursday, hastily tying his bathrobe and trying to shut Hannah up before she woke Dean.

“Did we interrupt your beauty rest, Aurora?” Bobby asked after taking in Sam’s robe, tangled hair, and five o’clock shadow for a few seconds while Ellen moved straight into the house to set down her bag at the foot of the stairs and shrug out of her coat.

“No,” the alpha replied, trying to do something with the mess on top of his head. “No, I’ve uh...I’ve been taking care of Dean.”

Ellen eyed the deep red hickey by his jaw that was very clearly brand new and with a raised eyebrow and open scowl said, “Uh huh. Glad to see you’re so concerned about my daughter goin’ missin’.”

“It’s not…” Sam flushed, running his hands through his hair again. “Overwhelming him with pheromones is the one thing that’s kept him distracted since yesterday and has actually gotten him to relax and sleep. He’s sleeping now, as a matter of fact. We’re both really worried Ellen, he feels like this whole thing is his fault somehow, and he _can’t_ be stressed like this with the baby, so let’s just forget this conversation happened and I’ll get you up to your rooms, okay?”

“You don’t have to ask me twice,” Bobby grumbled, following as Sam hurried back up the stairs and doing his best not to notice that the alpha was walking funny. They’d already agreed Bobby would stay behind with Dean while Sam and Ellen went looking for clues about Adam and Jo and the old hunter certainly hoped he could figure out another way to keep Dean calm because he was definitely not doing any of the things Sam probably had been since the day before.

Sam got Ellen set up in Jo’s room and Bobby set up in the guest room before heading into the nursery to check on Lizzie, who was scheduled for a mid-morning feeding shortly, the dog plopping herself down smack dab in the middle of the hallway to try to keep track of where everyone went. The alpha was halfway to the back stairwell with the baby when the doorbell rang and he heard Dean calling to him from the bedroom, sounding only half awake and scared. Sam was muttering, “Fuck my life” and trying not to get tripped by Hannah, who decided to stand up and bark right as he was stepping over her, the doorbell ringing a second time as Ellen and Bobby both reappeared in unison like they’d timed it. Dean called for him again, this time sounding much more anxious, and Ellen met Sam in the hallway, taking the baby from him.

“I’ll get the baby, Bobby will get the door, you get Dean,” she told him as she jostled an increasingly cranky Lizzie. “Is she wet or hungry?”

“Hungry,” Sam told her as Bobby moved past both of them to get to the door. “Formula is in the...uh...the standalone cupboard past the island, bottles are on the glass shelf over the sink.”

Bobby was off down the front stairs, Ellen down the back, when Dean stumbled his way to the bedroom door, bathrobe tied loosely across his hips.

“Sam?” he said, his hair disheveled and eyes half lidded. The stress pouring off him filled the hallway, thickening the air and driving Sam into an instinctive protection mode, his hands flying to Dean's face and back to stroke and soothe him. “Did you move my phone? I wanted to check if Adam called…”

“Yeah, the battery was almost dead so I took it downstairs to charge it,” the alpha told him; the wrong thing to say obviously since a spike of anger and panic overtook the smell of stress and the omega’s green eyes were furious.

“What the fuck, Sam?” Dean demanded, giving him a feeble shove. “What if he calls and I miss it?”

“I was downstairs making a sandwich, I just came back up. The phone didn’t ring, and both Bobby and Ellen are downstairs right now. They’ll hear it if he calls.”

“They’re here?”

“They just got here.”

“‘Kay.” He headed back into the bedroom, digging through the drawers for clothes to wear with trembling hands. “We should probably take a shower so you guys can get on the road. What time is it? I don’t want to get to the station before noon. They’ll just tell me it hasn’t been long enough.”

“It’s a little after eleven.”

Dean thought it should be some sort of comfort that he hadn’t slept the day away or left Ellen and Bobby sitting around for hours waiting for him to wake up before they put together a plan to find Adam and Jo but he was too busy feeling hopeless at having wasted a day and a half that he could have been out finding his brother if he weren’t pregnant and on goddamned bed rest. His whole adult life he’d never let his biology hold him back, had always been able to prove he was just as capable at what he did as any alpha or beta, had hunted circles around most of the alphas on the FDH payroll, and now his designation had finally gotten the last laugh. Adam could be somewhere dying, and he was sleeping in until almost noon unable to find a pair of clean socks because he was too stressed to function.

“Dean?” Sam said softly, the omega’s open anxiety making his own distress rise. This was not a workable situation for the alpha. If Dean wouldn’t calm down, Sam didn’t know how he could possibly leave to look for the missing betas. “Let’s get in the shower, okay? The quicker we get out of here the quicker Ellen and I will find them.”

“I don’t have any clean socks!” Dean snapped, slamming the drawer closed. “How fucking hard is it for people to remember to do laundry in this house? I can’t fucking do it, I’m not allowed to fucking bend over! How can I go to the police station if I don’t have any fucking socks, Sam?”

“You can wear a pair of my socks, Dean.”

“That’s not the point!”

“You boys all right up here?” Hannah punctuated Bobby’s question from the doorway with a little “wuf” and Sam turned to him as Dean stalked off to the en suite bathroom. The beta looked like he couldn’t be more uncomfortable unless he walked in on them having sex, extending the brownie pan in his hand towards Sam. “Your neighbor Renee dropped this off. Was askin’ after Jo and if she’d thought about joinin’ book club. Kinda made my skin crawl.”

Sam snorted as he heard the water start in the shower, shaking his head. Jesus he was a mess and needed to work on pulling himself together quickly. He remembered something in the baby book in one of the little “Did You Know…?” bubbles that were supposed to seem cute, woven into the second or third chapter, about a carrying om’s moods having an affect on their alpha’s emotions, but this was ridiculous.

“Welcome to the ‘burbs,” he grumbled, adding of the brownies, “Don’t eat those, we don’t really trust those people,” before going to join Dean in the shower.

They had to wait until the bar opened at two o’clock to go in to talk to anyone that might have seen something on Valentine’s Day, and in the meantime Sam looked into missing persons records anywhere near Bob & Barb’s while Ellen and Bobby drove Dean to the police station to fill out the missing person’s report even though it was a few hours shy of the required forty-eight before Jo and Adam could be officially declared missing. At least they’d driven out to Indiana in the Impala, which did a bit to lift Dean’s spirits, despite there being no way in hell anyone was letting him drive. Having Ellen with him got the police to take the case a little more seriously - because of course it did - though they still had to wait what seemed to be an unreasonable amount of time before they actually got to see someone about filling out the necessary forms to file a report. It gave Sam the peace and quiet he needed to make some real headway on the case without Dean’s stress driving him into a frenzy, his alpha insisting that he fix the situation and growing increasingly frustrated when he couldn’t. By the time he heard Baby rumbling back into the driveway he’d managed to pick out missing persons cases dating back to the 1950s that were all within a ten mile radius of Bob & Barb’s, long before it was Bob & Barb’s. There were only a couple of people a year who vanished overnight between December and March, always within a few days of each other and never more than three. They predated the disappearances due to Luther’s nest by enough years that the pattern was easy to see once he knew what he was looking for. It never raised alarms because the missing person’s car was never left behind and never found, making it seem plausible that they were just cases of people who decided to take off for parts unknown. Since the disappearances were within a seasonal range and not tied to a narrower timeframe the local P.D. never picked up on it as anything unusual.

Armed with the knowledge of the disappearances but little else, Sam and Ellen prepared to set out while Bobby was tasked with looking for anything that took two to three victims during winter and then hibernated in the summer. Bobby’s initial gut instinct had been that it was a Yeti, but they were rarely seen in this hemisphere outside of Canada and as far as he was aware didn’t know how to drive. It was possible someone was making sacrifices to a deity as well, though he’d have to do some digging and without a lot more information it was probably going to take all night, especially when all he had was Sam’s “damned laptop” and no access to his library back home. Ellen was busy packing up all manner of weapons so they’d be prepared for anything they came across, though the plan for the day was just to collect as much intel as possible. Of course any hunter worth their salt knew how easily gathering intel could turn into fighting for your life so Sam certainly wasn’t about to stop her. He was too preoccupied with Dean in the den trying to put the omega in a good enough mood that he wouldn’t immediately revert to stress levels so high he would probably have a stroke the minute Sam left the house without him.

Sam knew this was hard not only because it was Adam who was missing but because Dean didn’t know how to _not_ save people and hunt things. They’d been playing house for a while now, all the way back to Chicago when they didn’t even have an actual house, and it had been fine. It really had, like a glimpse into what their lives would be like once Elliott was born and they really were retired and Sam was a lawyer and Dean was whatever the hell he wanted to be, since Sam certainly wasn’t going to demand he sit around all day keeping house and raising kids, yet it seemed now like they had been deluding themselves. How were they going to get out of the life when someone was always going to need to be saved and something was always going to need to be hunted? Dean had been conditioned throughout his entire life to be the one hunting and saving, and rewiring his brain to think otherwise seemed an impossible task.

At least that was how Sam felt with Dean’s tension and guilt filling the house, so thick and cloying he could barely breathe around the offensive smell, and it made his alpha insist he remind the omega that _he_ was the one to be protected and kept safe, not the other way around. Sam knew it was chauvinist as hell, but he needed on a primal level for Dean to be safe; for _him_ to be the one keeping Dean safe. He needed it like food or shelter or oxygen, all the way down to the marrow in his bones. It was necessary for his very survival, because Dean was the stone he planned to build his entire life around, and that stone couldn’t wobble under feelings of inadequacy for not being able to do something he should never have had to in the first place. How he was going to get Dean to understand it wasn’t his responsibility to save _everyone_ by himself - not even his little brother - was something Sam hadn’t yet figured out, so if he had to subdue him through biology just to get past this he would, even if it left Sam feeling like he wasn’t exactly playing fair when dealing with his desired mate and how he was suppressing the man’s natural inclination to believe everything that went wrong with the world could have been prevented if only Dean had been paying attention.

Bobby and Ellen had to admit that Dean’s mood was astoundingly better coming out of the den than it had been going in, and though they were both still somewhat red faced at having overheard some of the things the two young men were clearly trying to keep them from overhearing it was obvious Sam actually had struck upon something that worked to keep Dean from having an aneurysm. Both betas politely averted their eyes during the perhaps too passionate goodbye kiss Dean planted on Sam in the doorway, murmuring, “If you die getting my brother back I’ll kill you.” It got a dimpled grin out of the alpha, who smoothed his hair and gave the omega a peck on the corner of his jaw before heading out to warm up the truck while Ellen loaded their duffel full of weapons into the back seat.  

It was around three by the time they made it to Bob & Barb’s, finding the parking lot sparsely populated, which wasn’t a big surprise given that it was the middle of the day. The Cadillac Bobby had loaned Jo was still sitting there untouched, a thin layer of snow coating the windows from not having been brushed off in a couple of days. Bobby had made sure to grab his spare keys before they left Sioux Falls so they checked the interior first to see if there was any sign of where Ellen’s daughter had gone, but the only thing they found was an empty coffee cup from Dunkin Donuts with lipstick on the lid. They locked the car back up and turned to head into the bar when something caught Ellen’s eye in the small, dingy apartment building that butted up against the bar’s parking lot. Someone was watching them out the window - it looked like a middle-aged man - and when he spotted Ellen he dropped the curtain he’d been peeking out from behind.

“Hey Sam,” she said, giving a nod towards the window, “that guy who went missing a couple of days before Adam and Jo, what was it, Jenkins?”

“Yeah,” Sam told her. “Alvin Jenkins.”

“The police interview any witnesses on that case? Like maybe in one of those apartments?”

Sam swung around to where she was looking, watching the curtain move again to flash half of the man’s face and then drop back.

“No,” he said. “They only talked to the people in the bar.”

“Figures,” Ellen sneered. “Most cops are so dumb they could throw themselves on the ground and miss.” Despite the severity of the situation Sam had to stifle a full belly laugh, Ellen giving him a swat on the arm as he snorted into his hand. “Come on, let’s find out what the bartender knows and then we’ll ask what Polonius up there might’ve seen.”

The bartender - Alex - didn’t know a whole lot, since she wasn’t working on Valentine’s Day ( _her mate had something special planned she explained with a completely unnecessary wink and nudge_ ), but she did know who was, and he - Joe with an “e” - was scheduled to be there at four. She was only there because someone called the day before and said the other Jo was missing, so the owner called her in to take the shift just in case the new girl had really bailed on them. Sam thought for a moment that Alex was about to get her lights punched out at the suggestion that Jo was some kind of unreliable flake but Ellen managed to control herself and they ordered some terrible food and a couple of beers while they waited for Joe with an “e” to show up.

Joe with an “e” didn’t have a whole lot to offer them besides the time Jo clocked out and the fact that she’d gone off with her “boyfriend” who had been there most of the night playing pool and drinking Coke. By the description of the boyfriend it was obvious he was talking about Adam. He did tell them she’d come back in looking for the guy after they left and even had Joe check the bathroom for him, which at least told them that whatever took the pair had gotten Adam first. That made sense since Dean’s truck had been taken and Bobby’s car hadn’t been. Whatever grabbed them didn’t know they came in separate cars, so it must not have gotten there before Adam did, and Adam left the house around six o’clock, giving them roughly a four hour window to ask Mrs. Kravitz across the parking lot about.

After punching half the buzzers on the intercom the guy who had been peeking out the window let them up and met them at the door of his studio apartment, which was covered in monster movie posters and desperately needed to be cleaned. He introduced himself as Ed and had at least thrown on a pair of pants under the bathrobe he was wearing, his stained wife beater having seen better days. He was thrilled someone had finally come to talk to him about the disappearances, since he’d reached out several times to the police and been dismissed as a wacko every single time. It turned out that no one was willing to take him seriously because he was insistent that some kind of monster had been kidnapping people from Bob & Barb’s parking lot for at least the last ten years that he’d lived in the apartment. He was some kind of computer nerd who worked out of his little studio and knew he wasn’t the most sociable guy on the planet, but that didn’t mean he was crazy. One of the people who had gone missing was a Sheriff’s brother from over in Hibbing, Minnesota, and she was the only one who believed him but even she couldn’t get any traction with the local P.D. He was only in town visiting friends on a cross country road trip and since his car was gone they’d chalked it up to him just driving off like all the other missing persons cases. After that Ed hacked into the Department’s records system to research the problem on his own, since his job was literally to attempt to hack computer systems for companies and figure out where their security loopholes were and in his mind it was the obvious thing to do. He even set up an alert on anyone who was reported missing after visiting Bob & Barb’s and started paying more attention to the parking lot, which was pretty easy with him working from home. It didn’t take him long to see a pattern that anyone with two brain cells to rub together should have picked up on and he made sure thereafter to never leave his apartment after nine o’clock once December 1st rolled around; at least not until after two or three people had gone missing. He was a beta, after all, and that seemed to be what the “thing” was taking, but it always stopped at three. And oh yeah, it made a sound: kind of a whining, screeching growl. He distinctly remembered having heard it whenever a new missing persons case popped up on his alert. Ed couldn’t really describe it other than to say it sort of sounded like Godzilla in the old movies, not that awful remake with Matthew Broderick. That was usually where he could tell he lost the handful of detectives who had come to talk to him over the years.

Ellen was in the process of exchanging contact information with Ed while Sam surveyed the parking lot from the man’s window and noticed the stoplight just past Bob & Barb’s looked like it had traffic cameras set up on the pole, pointed in all four directions. His stomach did a little excited flip as he asked, “Ed, do you think you could hack into the city’s traffic cameras and get us a look at the footage from the night Jenkins went missing and Valentine’s Day?”

“Probably.” The man seemed excited just at the prospect of being asked to do something, at knowing that he was being taken completely seriously. “It might take me a day or so. I want to make sure they don’t know I’m in the system.”

“Of course,” Sam said. “We don’t want them knowing either. But we could really use any information you can find out for us.”

“Consider it done,” Ed told him with a grin, and got Sam’s email before walking them out.

“You really think we ought to be involving a civilian in this?” Ellen asked after the man had shut the door behind them and they were on their way out of the building. “Can’t the FDH look into this for us and do it quicker so we don’t have to sit on our hands?”

“This isn’t a case the Department’s looking into,” Sam replied, pulling his coat higher around his neck as a gust of wind hit them upon exiting into the parking lot. “Maybe a year ago I could have gotten someone in IT to pull up the traffic cams in this area, back when it still mattered that I was the Assistant Director’s grandson. But now? There’d be a ton of paperwork and we’d need some kind of proof it was a legitimate hunt to begin with. The best we’ve got at the moment is something that hunts at night in a four month window, never takes more than three victims, and sounds like classic Godzilla.”

“And can drive a car,” she added.

“And can drive a car,” he echoed.

Ellen got behind the wheel of Bobby’s Cadillac so they could caravan back to the house, but the engine wouldn’t turn over and she quickly gave up as Sam slid into his truck to warm it up. She locked the car and climbed into the passenger seat of the Escalade, pulling her seatbelt on, her expression steely as she stared out the window at the bar. She knew she never should have let Jo leave Bobby’s to come here. Jo had been bucking against Ellen’s restraints since she was thirteen, and while yes, Ellen knew she kept her daughter on a leash shorter than any grown woman should have, it was because she didn’t want to end up here: wondering what the hell had snatched her only child out of a parking lot while no one was looking.

“Are we gonna find them, Sam?” she asked as he turned the heater on, not risking a glance at him for fear her resolve would crumble and she’d let out all those panicked tears she was keeping well bottled up at the moment. She hoped he knew enough to lie to her and tell her they would, regardless of what he actually believed. “It’s already been two days.”

“Lots of things keep their victims for a while,” Sam replied. “You know that.”

“My daughter’s never been one of the victims.”

Sam cast a sidelong glance at her, noticing how quickly she wiped her fingers across her cheek, and focused his eyes back out the windshield. Ellen was just proud enough that he doubted she’d want him to see her crying, even if there was no way they could really avoid it in such close quarters.

“We’ll find them, Ellen,” he said, since it was the only thing he really could say, and she believed him, because it was the only thing she really could do. “We’ll find them.”

Maybe it was because he was distracted by the case they were working or by seeing Ellen Harvelle of all people in tears, but Sam almost got them sideswiped by an old black van pulling into the parking lot as he was backing out. The other driver leaned out the window to flip him off, the vehicle making a screeching, squealing sound as the driver turned the wheel to park on the opposite side of the lot. He could sense Ellen was looking at the van as well, and she said, “That sound kinda like a whining, screeching growl to you, Sam?”

“Yes. Yes it does.”

Dean of course would know exactly what it was on the van making that noise, but the source of the noise wasn’t what mattered the most. What mattered the most was knowing that the monster didn’t sound like Godzilla, and whatever they were chasing either had the ability to drive two vehicles at once or they must be hunting at least a pair of somethings. A pair of somethings was never good.  


	73. Why Not Let Someone Else Do It?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean does a stupid thing.

Dean had gotten pretty good over the course of the twenty-three-ish years since his mother died at accepting that he wasn’t worth much as a person and burying how much he hated himself beneath a thick layer of bravado and deflection. The bitch of it was that bravado and deflection only worked when other people were around. When he was alone with no one to convince he was the toughest, most capable and charismatic guy in the room it was hard to ignore the fact that there just wasn’t much of a point to him as a person. This was especially true when he was stuck on his ass watching a baby that he wasn’t even allowed to pick up out of a crib and a dog that he wasn’t even allowed to walk while his kid brother was missing and possibly dead and he - the best damn hunter in the country - was forbidden from even researching what might have taken him because he needed to keep his blood pressure down.

So Dean was doing what any hunter worth his salt that had been benched would do: he surveilled the strange neighbors across the street who kept having book club meetings and sending over baked goods. It didn’t appear to be a book club day, since the house was busy with people coming and going all afternoon at roughly fifteen to thirty minute intervals. It was a wide range of folks as well, everyone from early twenties with nose rings pulling up to people with white hair who sputtered down the street at a snail’s pace. The most recent arrival wore particularly thick glasses and almost took out the Van Allen’s mailbox pulling into the drive, unabashedly wrapped in a fur coat with her best pearls on for an afternoon drive. Renee had left her living room curtains open and he could see Zoey there for almost the whole time the visitors were doing whatever it was they were doing. Zoey seemed to be completing school work at a card table set up in front of a fireplace, so it was possible he was right and she was just homeschooled, which wasn’t too common but certainly didn’t fall into the category of monstrous. As to where Renee was taking all these people he didn’t know, but it was the first time he’d noticed the string of traffic into and out of her house. He wondered if maybe she had just started running some kind of dominatrix thing out of her basement, though quickly dismissed it as something that only happened in porn. And _that_ made him think maybe she was running an amateur porn studio out of her basement, but he didn’t think the market for girl-on-girl ( _since it was mostly women going in_ ) with one of the participants in their golden years would be large enough to bother with all the equipment and lighting, and it definitely seemed like a bad idea to homeschool your daughter if that’s what you were up to. Eventually it became obvious that the only way he was going to figure out if something really insidious was going on was to go over there and see what he could from the doorway that might give a clue as to Mrs. Renee Van Allen’s daytime activities, and that was certainly going to be a lot harder than it sounded since Sam had actually taken the time to type up and print off Dean’s restrictions for Bobby to keep by the laptop in the dining room in case Dean got bored and tried to do the laundry.

Working in Dean’s favor were all the years he’d spent with John where he needed to sneak out to pick up a quick job when he got dumped somewhere and then make it back to whatever crummy hotel or abandoned house they were staying in at the time before John did, so he’d gotten very good at figuring out how to escape what was practically a house arrest. Working against Dean’s favor was the fact that he was being babysat by Bobby, not John, and Bobby was no slouch. He was also a pretty hard taskmaster who was taking Sam’s list seriously, and thus far the only thing Dean had been allowed to do was feed and change Lizzie and wash the dishes from lunch, as well as scrub out Renee's brownie pan after Bobby scraped the brownies into the trash at Sam’s insistence. He was still trying to figure out some way to get out from under Bobby’s thumb when he got an unexpected assist from Lizzie, who blew out her diaper like she’d been saving up for a week. As luck would have it, there were no more clean diapers downstairs ( _at least not after Dean stashed them under the couch_ ), so Bobby was going to have to carry her upstairs to the nursery to change her, and who knows - he might even have to give her a bath.

“You just earned yourself a car for your sixteenth birthday,” he whispered as Bobby came shuffling out of the dining room to take her from him, shooting the beta an apologetic grin as he passed her over, trying to make sure Bobby could get her without having to touch where the poop was seeping out her onesie and through her leggings. “Sorry. If I could go up and down the stairs more…”

“Nah, it’s okay,” Bobby assured him, and Dean certainly wasn’t going to mention how sappy the grin on his face was when he took the little girl from the omega. “She needs to get to know her Uncle Bobby anyway and I’ve cleaned up a helluva lot worse things than baby poop.” He fixed a serious glare on Dean and said, “If I come down here to find you’ve been tryin’ to rearrange the furniture or move the TV or some other idjit thing…”

“I will not try to rearrange the furniture or move the TV,” Dean promised, and Bobby headed off upstairs with a nod, Hannah raising her head to wuf at him from where she was sleeping up against the front door.

Dean was up off the couch as soon as the beta hit the top of the stairs, getting the brownie pan out of the drying rack and grabbing the Halti harness and leash from the hook that had been added for them near the fridge. He set the brownie pan on the bench by the door as he sat to shove his feet into the one pair of boots that weren’t too tight for him now and snagged his coat from the closet as the dog looked up at him with a new interest. He thought he heard Bobby coming back down the hall, but a quick glance upstairs confirmed he was still in the nursery, his conversation with the squealing little girl floating down to him in bits and pieces and including not a small degree of astonishment at how thoroughly she ruined her clothes. He did indeed hear the word “bath” mentioned, which curled the corners of his mouth. He knew how baths with Lizzie went, and he was almost assured to get across the street and back before Bobby even knew he’d been outside.

“Come on Hannah banana,” he said as he slipped the harness over her muzzle and hooked the leash in the way he’d watched Adam do it since they bought the thing to help control how she pulled on walks. “You’re my backup.”

In the back of his mind Dean knew he was being astonishingly stupid, and he shouldn’t be going across the street to the neighbor’s house, even though it was _only_ across the street to the neighbor’s house, he just couldn’t stop himself. He’d figured out pretty quickly that since yesterday Sam was using sex to keep him from being overwhelmed by panic and feelings of powerlessness at not being able to do anything to find Adam, as opposed to Dean being able to get himself under control on his own, and though he appreciated the effort it honestly just made him feel more powerless. Hell, Dean had been using kissing and cuddling to keep Sam from going all Harvey Dent since the week before, so obviously Dean was going to let Sam distract him. Sam had magic hands after all ( _though Dean was starting to worry one of them was going to develop an allergy to their lube with how much they’d been using_ ), but now it was after five o’clock, it was rapidly getting dark, and Sam and Ellen weren’t back yet with news of anything, nor had they called with an update even though they’d been gone a couple of hours. Dean was going crazy stuck inside this house and his head with nothing to do outside of watching an endless string of hapless betas on “You Are Not the Father” episodes of Maury Povich ( _although to be honest, those never got old_ ). He needed to feel _useful_ , and checking out Adam’s theory that there was something wrong with the neighbors seemed harmless enough. He had no plans whatsoever to do anything outside of returning the pan and hopefully getting a peek inside Renee's house, and then he was coming straight back across the street, so what kind of trouble could he really get into? Plus, he was going to have Hannah with him, as well as the gun from Benny’s downstairs safe that he’d strapped to his hip the last time Bobby went to the bathroom, and if it turned out there was anything sinister going on he figured he’d be okay between the dog and the Glock. Hannah almost gave him away in her excitement to go out for a walk ( _she knew the word well and cocked her head, ears perked, then danced whenever she heard “walk” or spotted her harness_ ) and he was lucky she never broke into outright wooWOOing but settled with low growls and wufs while he was pulling his coat on, checking to make sure he left the door unlocked before heading out into the fading light.

The Halti harness had been a great investment, even if Dean insisted initially that it looked cruel to do to “his girl,” earning a deep eye roll from Sam, who had thoroughly researched it ( _because obviously he would have_ ). Despite his earlier protestations he was definitely glad they had it and had been using it with her or she probably would have yanked him right down the minute they got outside. It had snowed for a bit since they got back from the police department and the sidewalk was just a little slick. With Dean’s shifted center of balance he never could have stayed upright had Hannah decided to _really_ pull on him, which she undoubtedly would have done had she not been wearing that harness to discourage her from just taking off. She was a mountain dog after all and had an unnatural love of the snow, so any opportunity she got to run around in it she took. His inner omega was insistent that he abandon this foolishness and go back inside to sit down and wait for Sam to get home and pamper him some more, that he was pregnant and delicate and this wasn’t his responsibility at this point in his life, but truthfully his hindbrain never stood a chance, no matter how right it may have been. The adrenaline coursing through his veins at having something _active_ to do was completely overriding his instincts as his forebrain kept reiterating, “ _You’re just walking across the street. You’re not doing anything dangerous_. _You’re only returning a baking pan._ ” He had the dog and the gun and was wearing sensible shoes, not to mention it was still daylight outside and he was in full view of at least three other houses on the cul de sac whose owners had already returned home from work. This was just a tiny bit of recon, the sort of thing he could do in his sleep, and if someone thought they heard him singing _Eye of the Tiger_ under his breath on the way across the street just to calm his nerves then he’d recommend they get their ears checked, because he _totally_ wasn’t doing that.

The lady with the fur and the pearls and the Coke bottle glasses was on the way out just as he and Hannah were coming up the walk, and he overheard Renee saying something about nothing being set in stone. The old lady gushed with thanks, turning and screeching when Hannah barked sharply at her from the end of the driveway. Renee grabbed her to keep her from falling on the front stoop, and Zoey appeared behind her mother in the doorway, crying, “You brought the puppy!”

“Dean!” Renee said with a smile as he stopped where he was, giving Hannah a shove on her hind quarters so she’d sit. The kid at the shelter had been right; it was the only thing she knew how to do, and she did it much better when she was given a nudge. “How nice to see you out of the house! Zoey, go wait in the living room please.”

“Yes mommy,” Zoey said, waving as she went. “Bye Dean. See you later!”

Hannah growled low and barked after the child, stopping only when Dean laid a hand on her neck and said, “Shh.”

“Good heavens!” exclaimed the woman, clutching at her heart. “That _thing_ can’t be legal to have in a residential neighborhood!”

“Gladys, why don’t you come back in and sit down to catch your breath,” Renee suggested, steering her back through the door. “Dean lives right across the street and we’ll just be a moment.”

“I hope so,” Gladys snapped. “I have a dinner party this evening and I’d _hate_ to be trapped here by a hairy _beast_!”

“You’re a hairy beast,” Dean muttered under his breath as Gladys disappeared back inside, moving up to the front stoop once she was gone. “I just wanted to return your brownie pan.”

“Oh, aren’t you sweet!” Renee flashed him a bright grin, Hannah erupting into a flurry of threatening howl-barks when she reached forward to take the pan from Dean. “You’ve got quite the guard dog there.”

“She’s on a bit of a hair trigger.”

“Did you enjoy the brownies?”

“Uh…” He threw her one of his thousand watt smiles, shoving aside how rotund he felt to turn on the charm for a minute as Hannah stood between the two of them, pressing herself into Dean’s legs. “‘Fraid I couldn’t indulge. Doc’s worried about my sugar intake. Gestational diabetes and all.” He rubbed his belly to try to sell the lie. “We appreciate the thought, though.”

“Oh that’s too bad. Amanda bakes the best desserts! We never touch them because we don’t want it all to find a home on our thighs. But she just keeps baking them anyway! I thought we might as well share the wealth with the pretty carrying omega across the street.” She grinned again. “I hope your company enjoyed them at least. Your uncle and aunt, right?”

“Yeah.” He should have asked Bobby what he talked to her about - _if_ he talked to her about anything. Sure, _that_ wouldn’t have seemed suspicious at all. “They’re Jo’s parents, actually, just coming to help out a little before the baby gets here.”

“Well that’s nice of them! I’m sure it’s hard carrying and having a four month old to take care of.”

“Yeah, yeah it is.”

“How did you know Benny and Lisa? You must have been quite close for them to leave you Lizzie.”

The attempt to pry into Dean’s background was blatantly obvious, despite the innocent expression Renee attempted to plaster onto her face. Whether it was because she was just a busybody or because she knew what Benny used to do and wanted to figure out if Dean was in the same line of work he had no idea, but erring on the side of caution seemed wise.

“I used to work with Lisa. At her uh...yoga studio.”

“Really?”

“Yep!” He flashed the smile at her again and threw in an eyebrow waggle for good measure. “You’d never know it by looking at me now, but back in the day I was pretty flexible. That’s how I landed Sam.” She giggled a little at that and swatted his arm, which set Hannah off to barking again and it seemed to be his cue to wrap this up. Glancing blatantly into the house to feign concern for her guest, he asked, “The...um...your...I’m sorry Hannah upset your...mother-in-law?”

Renee really laughed; a high-pitched, tinkling sound like wind chimes as Dean spotted a table with a dark cloth laid out on it over her shoulder in the room at the end of the hall, a purple candle lit and several decks of cards standing next to each other. Gladys was sitting there, clearly waiting for him to be gone judging by the scowl she cast back in his direction. Huh. He wouldn’t have pegged Renee for a Tarot reader. She didn’t seem nearly crunchy enough, and he didn’t think he’d ever seen her in any type of New Age stuff like hippy clothes or crystal pendants, or even a weird, flowy scarf. There were stereotypes about Tarot readers being well on their way to having the reputation as the crazy cat lady in their retirement for a reason, and Mrs. Renee Van Allen certainly didn’t hit any of them. It made him wonder if she was just into the harmless stuff or was dabbling in something that ran deeper and would require her to stay a little more under the radar, though he definitely wasn’t pushing any farther than this today.

“No, that’s Gladys Ganem. She’s not my mother-in-law, she’s just a client,” Renee told him. “She lives a few streets over. I’m sure you’ll see her out and about this summer. And speaking of Mrs. Ganem, I should be getting her home. Book club is tonight and I need to get Zoey fed and the house cleaned up.”

“You guys sure do read a lot of books!” Dean exclaimed, hoping it came out sounding more like a desperately bored housemate looking for something interesting to do and less like a crazy stalker. “I gotta tell you, I’ve never really been into clubs myself but you do seem to have a lot of fun. What are you reading right now?”

Judging by the way she blinked the question clearly caught her off guard. It was nice to know his instincts weren’t too badly dulled by being pregnant, and now he _really_ wanted to know what it was those women got up to three to four times a week.

“We’re...uh...we’re reading... _The...House of the Seven Gables_.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, we’re doing a whole...classics...thing. It’s silly, we’ve each picked a book we were supposed to read in high school and didn’t.”

“Heh, I could keep you in book suggestions for months.” He leaned in with a little self deprecating shrug. “Typical omega, never finished high school. Not a whole lot going on with me in the brains department. Guess I’m lucky I’ve got such a pretty face!” She giggled along with him and he hoped he’d sold her the backstory of the young man across the street being nothing more than a dumb blond ex-yoga instructor in case the Tarot cards were the tip of a very dark iceberg. “Anyway, thanks for the brownies and enjoy your evening.”

“You too, Dean.”

He turned and headed carefully back down the walk as she closed the door, Hannah hanging out on the stoop for a moment to make sure Renee wasn’t going to come back out and stab them with a carving knife. Even after she had decided the neighbor probably wasn’t going to reenact the shower scene from _Psycho_ on her front lawn Hannah trailed behind Dean, keeping between him and the house just in case. Dean had almost reached the road when the front door to his house was thrown open and Bobby stood there glaring at him, fit to be tied.

“Just what the _hell_ do you think you’re doin’?” he yelled, his fury pushing Dean to hurry back across the street at a quicker pace than he otherwise would have gone. Shit, he was going to have to figure out how to bribe the beta into keeping his mouth shut about this or he’d be facing a lot worse anger from Sam. “I come downstairs after puttin’ Lizzie down for a power nap and you’re nowhere to be found! I look out the living room window and there you are across the damn street, shootin’ the shit with the neighbors like you ain’t on bed rest!”

“I was only bringing back the brownie pan,” Dean explained as he started up the driveway towards the Impala, Hannah trotting just slightly ahead. “I’m supposed to be movin’ around anyway and I figured…”

Everything slowed to a crawl as he hit a small patch of ice and his right foot went out from under him. He reached for Baby with his left hand, trying to grab at the passenger side mirror but missing it by a couple of inches, yanking on Hannah’s leash with his right hand to try to get her back to him before he hit the asphalt. Bobby was already in motion, his expression frantic, as Dean held his breath, straining towards the dog to break his fall, and landed on the ground square on his right hip. It knocked the wind right out of him, pain shooting up and wrapping around his lower back as he struggled to draw in a gasp of air. Hannah made it just in time for him to sling an arm around her and keep from going all the way down on his side or stomach, and she moved almost immediately to stand right over his legs and guard against anything that might come at him while he was vulnerable, her body positioned so he could use her bulk to hold himself up.

“Jesus Christ boy,” Bobby panted, managing to get on the ground next to Dean despite his two bad knees. All discomfort at having to be touchy feely went straight out the window at the sight of the young man’s pallor and the sweat beading along his forehead, and he ran a hand down Dean’s face. “Where does it hurt?”

“My hip…” He winced as another jolt of pain shot up his side when he shifted from the hip he’d landed on to sit properly and try to get his extremities to stop shaking. “I can probably stand but it’s gonna be tough…”

“Everything all right over there?”

Bobby glanced across the street where the neighbor and her kid and a white haired lady, who said something nasty about the dog probably being at fault, were staring at them from the front stoop. He didn’t know why, but the sight of the expressions on their faces made his blood run cold. It was something about their eyes; they were lacking a certain warmth, and it was obvious even from a distance. It was like being watched by a pair of snakes.

“Fine,” he said, forcing a smile onto his face and giving a wave. “Just took a little tumble. Nothin’ to worry about.”

She nodded at him and turned back to Mrs. Ganem, who was walking towards her car as Bobby got an arm around Dean’s back.

“You’d better get me up quick,” Dean told him quietly. “Our odds aren’t great that old blue hair over there is gonna make it out of the driveway without backing straight across the street and into us.”

“And here I was hopin’ to just stay out here until Sam gets home,” Bobby shot back sarcastically. “Cuz hypothermia’s just what you need after taking a fall outdoors where you weren’t supposed to be in the first place."

With a couple of shoves they were able to get Hannah to stop actively guarding Dean and step far enough back that the omega could get to his knees, then use both Bobby and the dog to stand on wobbling legs. The pain shot in a new direction now, straight from his hip to his ankle, and his right leg almost buckled under him. Bobby had himself planted by that point and was able to take a good amount of Dean’s weight when he stumbled into him, slinging the taller man’s arm around his shoulders to drag him towards the front door, Hannah leading the way but thankfully not pulling at all. Just before they made it inside she needed to stop to pee, which gave Dean a real chance to catch his breath as he leaned against the door and tried to get the trembling under control.

“Don’t tell Sam I went across the street,” he said as the dog finished watering the lawn and they were able to make their way in.

“Dean, you gotta tell him you took a spill. If the baby…”

“That’s fine, I don’t...we can just say Hannah needed to go out and you were upstairs giving Lizzie a bath.”

“So you want him pissed off at you, me, the dog, _and_ an infant instead of just you, is that what I’m hearin’?”

“It was my dumbass idea, I’ll make sure I’m the only one he’s mad at.”

Bobby had finally managed to get him into the house and out of his coat with the door closed behind them, helping him limp towards the family room to stretch out on the couch and pulling off his shoes. He knew it would probably be better to get Dean upstairs into a bath before his hip seized up, but didn’t think that was a realistic goal, at least not until Sam got back. He got the Glock off of Dean’s waistband with a scowl, thanking whoever was up there for well maintained firearms with safeties that worked. Dean, in all his pigheadedness, seemed to be trying to act like he wasn’t really hurt that badly, even as Bobby could practically feel the waves of pain pouring off of him. He certainly didn’t need a heightened alpha sniffer to know when his boy was putting on a stupid brave face.

“Why’d you go over there anyway?” he asked as he headed for the kitchen to see if there was an ice pack in the freezer, or even a bag of frozen peas that Dean could press to his hip. He should call Dean’s doctor as well if he could find where Sam put the number. Hell, maybe Dr. Milton would be willing to give him some advice even though Dean wasn’t her patient anymore. “I know you don’t think I’m dumb enough to believe it was just to return a brownie pan.”

“I just wanted to see if there was anything I could find out about our neighbor and her book club,” Dean said, hissing as he shifted to try to get the pain in his back to subside a bit. Hannah jumped up on the couch to lay right down on his legs, drawing a grunt out of Dean as she looked at him like she was daring him to try doing something that stupid again. “There have been people comin’ and goin’ from her house all afternoon, and her kid never goes to school.”

“You ever hear of homeschooling?” Bobby groused, returning with a couple of family sized bags of corn to have Dean use on whatever hurt. “Or mindin’ your own damn business?”

“Yeah, well, I figured out she’s a Tarot reader for rich old ladies and desperate twenty somethings, but I don’t know if that’s all she is.”

“A _Tarot_ reader? She sure as hell don’t look the type.”

“That’s what I thought, too. But without going into her house there’s not a whole lot I could scope out.”

“Well, at least you had enough sense not to try to talk your way inside.”

“Give me a _little_ credit. I’ve seen _The People Under the Stairs._ ”

Dean had gotten one bag of corn shoved under his back and was holding the other against his hip when his cell phone began to vibrate on the coffee table, the screen lighting up with **Sam** on the caller ID. He wouldn’t even try to suppress a groan, and when he couldn’t easily reach it he had the sense not to scowl as Bobby grabbed it for him and hit the button to answer and then put it on speaker phone.

“Hey Sam,” the older hunter said.

“ _Hey Bobby._ ” It was Ellen on the other end of the line and she sounded tense. “ _Sam’s drivin’. We’re almost back, stuck a couple of streets over. There are a bunch of police here and an ambulance, got the main road blocked. They’re redirecting everyone._ ”

“You two find anythin’?”

“ _Got some good leads and a guy who’s gonna help us look into traffic cams near the bar. Thinkin’ we might know a lot more tomorrow. How’s Dean doin’_?”

Bobby didn’t spare Dean the irritated stare as he replied, “He’s been better.”

“ _Did somethin’ happen_?”

“Oh, you know Dean. Can’t ask him to sit still for five minutes before he goes stir crazy.”

“ _Well, we’ll be there soon._ ”

“I’ll get dinner started.”

“ _See you in a bit_.”

The call ended just as a particularly sharp pain shot through Dean’s back, and he gripped Bobby’s arm with a whine, his breath catching. It was enough to make him see stars and have tears springing to his eyes, not to mention scaring the old hunter half to death as he watched what little color Dean had recovered since hitting the driveway drain from his face. After a moment the pain subsided and he could breathe again, though Bobby was still holding his breath in terror.

“I need to call my doctor,” Dean told him, taking the phone with trembling hands and cycling through the contacts until he found his new Om-OB/GYN. “I think I tweaked my back. It’s starting to spasm.”

“Either that or you’re in labor,” Bobby replied, his voice filled with dread as Dean pressed the call button for Dr. Johnson.

“What?” Dean demanded, wiping at the sweat along his hairline.

“Back labor, Dean.”

“What the hell is back labor?!”

“Exactly what it sounds like. And you’d know about it if you’d read the entire baby book by now!”

“Bobby, this is no time for your crappy jokes.”

“Who’s jokin’? You think I’d make somethin’ like that up after watchin’ you fall on your ass because you’re just too damn stubborn to listen to your doctor’s orders?”

Dean didn’t know what he thought, besides being reasonably sure that Sam was going to kill him if he’d sent himself into labor through sheer stupidity, and not in the figurative sense; not after what had happened in the bathroom the week before. Sure, Sam hadn’t had any more episodes like that, but then nothing had happened that might make it hard for him to control the anger he’d talked about the next day. This - this was going to make Sam angry, and Dean wouldn’t even be able to blame him or say he was overreacting. He had absolutely no excuse for having done something so utterly, mind-numbingly moronic beyond not knowing how to get out of his own fucking head. And that wasn’t even the truth. He hadn’t even _tried_ to think of another way to deal with the overwhelming helplessness that had driven him to “just check out the neighbors across the street.” The neighbors who they had no _real_ reason to think were anything other than regular human beings that were just a little too friendly. There were other things he could have attempted first, not the least of which was calling Jody to talk through how he was feeling. That seemed to obviously be what he should have done, now that he was quite potentially on his way to giving birth prematurely because of his stupid pride that wouldn’t let him admit to any weakness, but especially not any weakness associated with his designation; to accept that sometimes he might have to simply live with the fact that he had certain biological limitations. What he had done was idiotic and if something happened to Elliott he’d have no one to blame but himself.

The way his pupils were blown wide with with fear as he waited for either Dr. Johnson or her answering service to pick up and the shiver running through him had Bobby feeling instant regret for the way he’d just spoken to the omega, who couldn’t keep the temor out of his voice when someone from the answering service finally picked up the other end and he set about explaining who he was, what had happened, how far along he was, and what he was experiencing. They were going to page the doctor, who would tell him if she wanted him to come in, but in the meantime he should get into a warm bath if he could in case it was just muscle spasms, and to time the bouts of pain in case it wasn’t. If he was in the early stages of whelping they’d need to know how far apart the contractions were so they could determine the best course of action and hopefully stop his labor from progressing further. Neither of them actually wanted to try to get upstairs, so Dean settled for Bobby helping him to sit on the floor of the downstairs shower with his back to the spray while they waited for either the doctor to call back or Sam to get home. At the moment he wasn’t sure which of those two things scared him more.  


	74. Like a Bad Acid Trip

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam comes home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: there might be some triggery stuff in here.

Dean wasn’t in labor and Sam didn’t kill him, though that was solely because he left to find a bar and drink his emotions into submission as soon as he found out what was happening and felt that terrifying fury start to rise up again to demand the omega’s head on a platter for endangering their child. Bobby had intercepted him almost as soon as he came through the door and began to panic at the smell of Dean’s fear, regret, and pain that had filled the house by then, even though he was still in the shower. Relating that Dean had gone outside on his own and fallen in the driveway and that they were waiting for the doctor to call back because he might need to go back into the hospital did not go well. As Bobby anticipated, Sam’s initial reaction was to blame anything and everything involved, especially the dog, but Dean showed up in the bathroom doorway in a bathrobe ( _Bobby couldn’t believe he’d made it out of the shower by himself_ ), heavily favoring his right leg and looking terrible as he dripped water all over the floor, saying simply that he was the only person to blame for the whole thing. The alpha was torn immediately between wanting to protect and comfort Dean versus tearing his throat out, and the latter urge was dangerously strong. So he stormed out, telling Bobby to call his cell if Dean ended up in the hospital or if he and Ellen figured out what took Adam and Jo. Dean didn’t even object to him leaving, the rage pouring off of Sam poisoning the air in the foyer and making him want to find a room to hide in with a whole bunch of guns and knives to keep the alpha at bay.

Sam’s original idea was to just find a dive like Jo worked at, or maybe go right back to Bob & Barb’s and hang out until he got drunk enough that he could get a cab back to the house or call Bobby to come get him and sleep through the anger, but somehow he ended up at Champion’s Sports Bar attached to the Marriott, and since he was there it made sense to just book himself a room and plan to stagger up to it when he had polished off the bottle of Grey Goose he convinced the bartender to leave with him. He ordered a salad and did two shots, thinking he should probably ease into the evening just in case he had to go running to the hospital to be with Dean, whom he knew he should be with anyway, but he just couldn’t imagine being anywhere near him at the moment without things going very badly. The anger rolling off of him even after his food had arrived and he’d had a third shot was enough to keep everyone but one other man from sitting at the bar, and the bartender had repeatedly checked in with him to make sure he was okay and see if he needed anything else in a tentative way that betrayed genuine fear that the massive alpha was going to start punching people and breaking things any second. After about forty minutes Bobby called to say they’d heard from the doctor, who didn’t think there was any reason for Dean to come in. The spasms in his lower back didn’t have any regularity and weren’t increasing in intensity and he wasn’t bleeding or experiencing abdominal pain, so it was far more likely he’d simply strained something than the baby being in danger. She did want to see him tomorrow just to check on him, and if anything at all changed before then he was to go straight to the emergency room, no matter how minor it seemed. Something tugged at his chest, trying to pull him back to Sunset Trail like a magnet, but the black waters churning in his gut swelled up to drown it, and he growled out his thanks to the old hunter before ending the call.

By his ninth shot the anger was starting to subside to what seemed to be a manageable level and the bar was starting to fill up, an extremely attractive beta with pale skin and almost black hair sliding in on one side of him while a tall, dark haired man with a square jaw and heavy brow took up the stool on the other.

“Rough night?” the brunette asked as Sam poured himself another shot.

It took him a moment after downing drink number ten to realize she was talking to him, and he said, “I’m sorry?”

“I asked if it was a rough night,” she repeated with a smile, her green-gold eyes sparkling. “You look a little young to have a whole bottle of vodka to yourself.”

Sam huffed out a breath at the suggestion he couldn’t handle his liquor and informed her, “I’m twenty-two. Almost twenty-three.”

“Like I said, a little young.”

“You’re no older than I am.”

“Ah, but I’m not drinking a whole bottle of Grey Goose by myself.” She held out her hand, her teeth darting out to chew on her lower lip. “Sarah Blake.”

Sam considered for a moment, then took her hand and shook it firmly.

“Sam Campbell.”

“So, Sam Campbell,” Sarah said, keeping his hand in hers and covering the back with her other one, “rough night?”

“Rough life,” he told her as she swept her thumb back and forth across his wrist. Her hands were small and warm, her fingers smooth, pretty nails perfectly manicured as she pinned him to his stool with those eyes. That swirling darkness was turning into something more; something much less like fury and much more like lust. “But it looks like it’s getting better.”

When the bartender came back over she ordered a salad as well and Sam requested a shot glass, since she told Sam she clearly needed to start catching up to him. She was getting her Masters in Art History at Indiana University down in Bloomington but was up for a friend’s mating reception on Saturday. She’d come in a day early just to relax before everyone started arriving on Friday and things really got crazy, and had never met a hunter before but seemed to find it extremely sexy. She found it even sexier that he had been pre-law at Stanford, because it was _Stanford_ , and tragic that he’d left because his girlfriend was murdered by something supernatural. She’d never encountered anything out of the ordinary but a neighbor had gotten into trouble with some pixies when she was a kid, and she thought what he was doing was basically a public service and a whole hell of a lot more exciting than art history. Sam assured her that it wasn’t as glamorous as it sounded, that he was actually in the middle of a case and just needed a little downtime, and she said with definite intent, “I’ll bet.”

By his eleventh shot and her fourth they were laughing about how little people in government desk jobs actually cared about what they did, and how ridiculous it was that she was spending so much money on a degree in _art history_ that she was realistically never going to be able to repay, because there were only so many museum curator positions available so in the grand scheme of things she was probably going to end up teaching middle schoolers and _that_ certainly wasn’t going to pay off her debt. He mentioned he was disgustingly wealthy, which made her laugh, and that made him laugh, and by his thirteenth shot and her seventh she had her tongue down his throat and had slipped her room number into his front pants pocket, telling him she was going to be up for a while so he should feel free to stop by before sauntering out of the bar. The black lust hummed low in his belly, urging him to follow her, to chase and catch and breed, and he stared at the room number as his dick twitched in his pants, straining uncomfortably against the fabric.

“You’re not really gonna let that go, are you?” asked the man beside him, and Sam jumped, having forgotten he was there. “Piece of ass like that? I don’t know what you’re still doin’ here, man.”

“You need anything else, Tom?” the bartender asked, taking a second to clean his glasses on the hem of his shirt.

“Nah Del, I’m good,” Tom said, pulling out his wallet and dropping two twenties onto the bar. He turned to Sam and threw him a smile. “I’d hurry up there if I were you. Somethin’ that pretty’s not gonna wait forever.”

His stomach churned, sending heat and need down into his groin, his synapses so soaked in alcohol his forebrain couldn’t begin to protest against the carnal demands of his alpha. The vodka had dulled the anger but released something else entirely, something he was neither prepared to fight nor wanted to, and he shot a grin back at the guy - Tom - and his little nod of encouragement. Normally Sam wasn’t the kind of alpha to just go out picking up betas for meaningless flings, but maybe that was part of his problem. Maybe he wouldn’t be so angry if he let off a little steam every now and then instead of keeping it all bottled up until he wanted to explode. Maybe the problem was denying these darker impulses. He grabbed the paper with the room number on it and his coat, flinging down a wad of bills for the bartender, and made his way into the hotel.

The elevator ride was interminable with how hard he was just thinking about sinking down into someone warm and soft and willing, someone so much smaller than he was with pale skin offset by raven hair, feeling the swell of breasts under his hands again and hearing the breathy, high-pitched keens of a beta female. He thought of how Jess used to come apart under him, her skin so soft and smooth, arms and legs slender and delicate, and had trouble suppressing a groan. Jesus, if he didn’t get it together soon this was going to be over quick, and he certainly didn’t want to leave Sarah thinking he was some kind of one pump chump.

Sarah didn’t look like she cared how long he lasted, greeting him at the door with her blouse open, skin flushed and chest heaving beneath her black lace bra.

“Hey,” she breathed, and Sam was on her, stripping the blouse down her arms as he kicked the door shut behind him.

“Hey,” he echoed as his hands went up under her skirt to pull down her panties while his mouth attacked her neck.

Neither needed to say anything more than that, it seemed. One of his hands swept across her back to unhook her bra, the other snaking between her legs to feel how wet she was while she undid his pants and pushed them down past his hips, giving up on getting his shirt off as he picked her up to back her over to the couch and sink in with a growl. She gasped, a desperate, needy sound, as he knelt down on the cushions to push her up against the mirror hanging on the wall, hands cupping her ass and pressing hard enough to leave hand prints. Her fingers threaded through his hair as she dropped her head back to give him access to her neck, and when he looked up at himself fucking her in the mirror he saw that his eyes were black.

Sam flinched violently on the stool down in the bar as he stared at the beta who had just introduced herself as Sarah Blake and had to suppress the urge to vomit up all ten shots of vodka right there. His vision swam a little with the stab of pain behind his eyes that quickly dissipated, and he hoped he wasn’t staring at her with as much horror evident on his face as he currently felt. Thank god she was a beta and couldn’t detect the guilt, disgust, and self loathing pouring out in his scent at what he’d just seen them doing.

“Is something wrong?” Sarah pulled one of her hands away from his, touching her cheek, and laughed. “Do I have something on my face?”

“N-no…” Sam stammered, drawing his hand free of her grasp and reaching for his wallet. “No, you don’t have anything on your face. Sorry, I just...I’ve had a bit too much, I really need to get home.”

“Oh, shit, you’re bleeding!” she exclaimed, grabbing a cocktail napkin and reaching out to wipe off the thin red line running down from his nose.

“Yeah, I get these sometimes,” he told her, taking a step back directly into the guy behind him, who shot him an annoyed look. “God, sorry.” He grabbed a cocktail napkin of his own, trying to put as much distance between himself and the beta as he could without being openly rude, the nausea rolling in his stomach driving the anger he had been struggling with right out of him. He asked the bartender, “Will sixty cover my tab?”

“Sure,” the bartender replied, cleaning his glasses on the hem of his shirt. “You sure I can’t get you anything else?”

“No, no, I’m good,” Sam said, dropping three twenties onto the bar. “Nice to meet you, Sarah. Have a good night.”

He could feel the beta’s eyes on him, trying to figure out why the hot guy she’d just starting flirting with was suddenly on the verge of losing his dinner all over the bar and undoubtedly wondering why she always ended up being attracted to freaks, but he didn’t give a shit. First the demon blood wanted Sam to hurt Dean, and now it wanted Sam to be unfaithful to him, and even though he hadn’t actually done anything with this girl - this Sarah - he felt filthy and just wanted to go home. This was only the second waking vision he’d had and he needed to get away from this woman and back to Dean while he had control of himself, while the evil thing inside him that was trying to override all the instincts he had when it came to the omega was locked down. He dug his phone out of his coat and pulled up Dean’s number, his hands shaking as he waited for someone to pick up.

“ _Hey Sam._ ”

God, the sound of Dean’s voice on the other end of the phone, even when that voice sounded thick and raspy with emotion because the alpha had stormed out on him when he was hurt and scared, made Sam want to cry with relief.

“Hey, baby, is Bobby still up?” His speech was a little slurred, but he was doing well at walking in a straight line as he headed out towards the restaurant doors to where they met the hotel lobby, planning to cancel the room he booked and make sure his truck wasn’t going to get towed from the parking lot. “I don’t think I should drive myself home.”

“ _I don’t…_ ” He cleared his throat as Sam heard the bed - _their_ bed - creak in the background. “ _I dunno. I think he’s still downstairs. Ellen might be up here, I can get up and look…_ ”

“No, no, that’s okay. You need to rest. I’ll get a cab home.”

“ _Where are you_?”

“Downtown. At a sports bar. I’ll be back soon.”

“ _Okay._ ”

“Fair warning for when I get there, I kinda smell like a Russian.”

“ _You been wrestling bears_?”

“Drinking vodka. Dork.”

“ _That mad at me for going outside, huh_?”

“I’mma be mad at you until Elliott is born.” He snorted at himself, the alcohol hitting him suddenly like a wall of drunkenness. “I’mma. I can’t even talk. Shit, I should’ve had a bigger dinner...”

“ _Are you sure you wanna wait for a cab_?” The bed was creaking again, and he thought he heard Dean stifle a gasp. His voice sounded strained as he continued. “ _I can get Bobby, it’s not a big deal_ …”

“No, Dean, go back to bed…”

He could already hear the omega on the other end of the phone calling to Bobby though, setting Hannah off briefly until he knew just by how loud her barks were that she’d come upstairs to check on him. Sam was suddenly ridiculously glad Dean had demanded they get a dog, even if he’d fallen outside with her earlier in the evening. If whatever was going on with him got bad enough that he had to leave, he’d feel a hell of a lot better knowing Dean had a big ass dog with him. Not that he wanted to leave, not ever - not after what just almost happened in the bar. Just the thought of it was making him break out in a cold sweat.

“ _Bobby’s comin’ to get you. Where’s the bar_? ”

“It’s...uh...whatever’s attached to the Marriott downtown.”

“ _Okay, I’ll have him look it up. Are you somewhere safe_? _Where nothin’ can get you when you’re this drunk_?”

“Pfft. Anything comes at me I’ll mind whammy it.”

“ _Sure thing, Professor X_.”

The floor tipped and Sam ended up on the bench by the empty hostess station, giggling like a maniac while he heard Dean calling down to Bobby with the hotel name. He couldn’t remember the last time liquor hit him this fast and hard, thinking the flood of happiness he’d been feeling since Dean picked up the phone and having avoided one of the biggest mistakes of his life might have something to do with it. He was still laughing when he said, “I love you.”

“ _Jesus, how much vodka did you have_?”

“Don’t need to be drunk to tell my omega I love’m. In fact, I’m gonna start sayin’ it more just to watch you turn pink.”

“ _Did somethin’ happen, Sammy_?”

“What d’ya mean?”

“ _I dunno I just...I figured I was gonna get the silent treatment for at least a week. I didn’t think you’d go all Shakespeare in Love on me._ ”

“God, that film was _awful_. Can’t I go all _Say Anything_ instead?”

“ _Sure thing, Diane_.”

“I am _much_ better looking than Ione Skye. And I have better hair. Not that it matters cuz I’m Floyd anyway. Even had the boombox.”

“ _His name was Lloyd. You don’t get to be a character when you don’t even know his name_.”

“Whatever. I’m drunk. I can still be the guy with the boombox and the...the Peter Gabriel song even if I screw up the name, jerk.”

“ _Bitch_.”

That angry thing that lived at his core tried to awaken at the gentle teasing, of an omega calling him a bitch, but he was feeling too good to let it take hold of him. While it sucked having to wait for Bobby to come get him because he’d had way too much vodka he was enjoying the pleasant warmth spreading across his chest and how light it made him feel. Part of him wanted to just curl up on the bench and go to sleep while he waited, but something in the deep recesses of his mind told him that wasn’t a good idea so he just leaned against the back and listened to Dean breathe on the other end of the phone.

“ _So what happened_?”

“I had a...uh…” He pinched the bridge of his nose, the headache returning as he squeezed his eyes shut. “I had a vision. It was pretty fucked up. I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.” His head was really starting to hurt now, making him feel woozy, and he leaned forward to try to put his head between his knees. “If Bobby’s still there tell him I’m gonna be inside the restaurant. Gonna see if they can make me some coffee.”

“ _Okay. I’ll see you when you get home_.”

“You better not. Better be asleep.”

“ _Is that so, bossy_?”

“ _You’re_ bossy. And short.”

The alpha giggled again, his laughter exploding when Dean countered with, “ _I’m not short, I’m fun-sized_.”

“Go to bed. I’ll be fine.”

“ _Promise_?”

“Promise.”

“ _‘Kay, I’m hanging up before I turn into any more of a girl_.”

“‘Kay. I love you Diane.”

“ _Love you too, Lloyd. Which I’m givin’ you_ **_only_ ** _cuz you did have a boombox_.”

Sam giggled some more as they breathed out their goodbyes, then laid his head back against the wall and closed his eyes to wait for the room to stop spinning. After a few minutes he figured out how to get back to his feet and not completely embarrass himself with the total inability to walk as he headed back inside and took up a stool next to the dark haired, square jawed man. Sarah had moved farther down the bar to talk to some other guy, not even bothering to cast a glance back at him, which Sam thought was just as well. He wasn’t there for her anyway, he was there for something that would wake him up a little and maybe chase away his growing headache.

“Well,” the bartender said as he made his way back over. “Just couldn’t stay away?”

“Waiting for a ride,” Sam replied. “Is it possible to get some coffee?”

“Sure. You want that Irish?”

“I don’t think that’s a great idea right now. Black will be fine.”

“You got it.”

As he headed off to get Sam his cup of joe, the square jawed man cast a look down towards the far end of the bar and gave him a nudge. Sam had dropped his head forwards into his hands on the bar, trying to force the pain out of his skull by pressing against his forehead, and he jolted at the touch. The man gave him a half smile and said, “Man, I can’t believe you walked away from that.”

“What?”

The man’s words were so close to something he’d said in Sam’s vision that it made him feel sick all over again. The guy had turned away to take in the curve of Sarah’s back appreciatively, nodding as he watched her flirt with the new guy she’d moved on to.

“If I were your age and had your looks, I’d definitely take any offers from a woman who looked like that,” he said as the bartender came back with Sam’s coffee. “Hey Del, can I get another beer? And another one of whatever my friend here was drinking to help take the edge off for him?”

“That’s really not necessary…” Sam objected, but Del was already saying, “Course you can, Tom,” and grabbing the beer and the Grey Goose.

“I figure a couple more shots and an old mated guy like me gets to live vicariously through the alpha stud at Champions,” Tom said with a laugh, clapping Sam on the back like they were old friends.

Sam wanted very much to bristle and posture, to get this guy to keep his hands to himself, but he was too drunk for any of that. How had he gotten so drunk? Vodka was his liquor of choice and he had a pretty high tolerance for it. Granted, he hadn’t gotten drunk since the night of the ghoul attack, but he was out drinking with Dean on his birthday just a couple of weeks ago. Had he been here a shorter amount of time than he thought and just had too many too fast? He pushed the Grey Goose away and focused on his coffee.

“Sorry to disappoint you Tom, but you’re better off living vicariously through the guy she’s interested in now,” Sam told him, hoping it would end the conversation.

“That guy?” Tom scoffed. “Nothing vicarious to be had with a couple of betas. Even if one of them is smokin’ hot.” He nudged Sam again and winked at him - actually winked. “Bet you could get her back easy if you wanted.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t want,” Sam snapped. “I happen to have someone already, not that it’s any of your business.”

“My apologies Sam. She must be very understanding to let you go out and get drunk alone.”

“It’s he, and...how did you know my name?”

“I overheard it when you were talkin’ to the beta goddess down there.” Tom’s grin turned lecherous as he looked Sam up and down. “If it’s guys you’re into, I bet you could have them both. The dude she’s with ain’t bad lookin’ either.”

“ _Excuse_ me,” Sam said flatly, picking up his coffee cup to move a few seats away towards the end of the bar.

“I’m just sayin’, you could have some fun Sammy.”

“It’s Sa…”

The word died on Sam’s lips as he turned around and saw the stool where Tom had been sitting was empty, no one between him and Sarah and New Guy down at the far and of the bar. Sam felt more drunk and more sober in equal measure. Del was polishing glasses with a cloth, and Sam moved back down to the stool he’d just vacated, sliding his coffee cup with him. Del looked up at him with a smile.

“Problem with the coffee, sir?” he asked.

“No, I was just…” Sam’s head was really starting to pound and he ran a hand through his hair. “Where’d the guy go?”

“The...guy?”

“Yeah, the guy I was just talking to. Tom.”

“Tom?”

“Yes! Dark hair, five o’clock shadow, no sense of personal boundaries apparently...He was sitting right here!”

Del cocked his head to the side, removing his glasses to wipe them on the hem of his shirt in a move that made Sam uneasy for reasons he couldn’t explain. He wanted to get up and run from the bar, just not quite as much as he wanted to figure out what the hell was going on.

“I’m sorry sir,” Del said. “You and the young lady are the only two people who have been here all night.”

“What?” Sam shook his head, trying to clear away the cobwebs that were making it hard to think. “No, I was just talking to him. His name was Tom.”

“Sir, I think I’m going to have to cut you off,” Del told him, taking away the bottle of Grey Goose as Sam followed his movements just a few ticks behind. Why were there twenty shot glasses lined up on the bar? “Is there someone I can call to come get you?”

“He’s fine.” Sarah was next to him, her blouse open and one strap of her black lace bra hanging off her shoulder as she pressed up against his side. She smelled like vodka. “He’s coming up to my room.”

“No…” Sam objected as she ran her hands up into his hair, her mouth hot on his neck. “No, I have to get home.”

“No you don’t Sam,” she insisted, fingertips moving down to unbutton his pants so she could slide a hand inside to cup his balls. “You have to come up to my room.”

They were on the couch in her room, _Sweet Troubled Soul_ playing on her iPod in the background, though he didn’t know how they got there, and his shirt was off, his pants down past his knees while she ground down onto him, head thrown back as she moaned. He could feel his knot swelling and wanted to get her off of him before he came, but when he tried to push her off his hands refused to obey him and instead pulled her insistently forward so her breasts were flush up against him. She turned his face up to look at him, her pupils blown wide with lust, and crashed her soft red mouth down onto him as he said, “Stop,” against her lips.

“Little late for that,” she gasped and cried out, clenching around him and continuing to pump her hips to push him over the edge to join her.

“Stop!” he shouted as she tipped her face down, her eyes black.

“You know you want this, Sam,” she purred, clamping down on his hands to keep them on her thighs as she rocked on his lap. “You’re so young. You could have anyone - even me. Why would you tie yourself to an om and a couple of kids when you have your whole life ahead of you?”

“I love Dean.”

“Love is a gross exaggeration between one person and everybody else.” She came a second time and he really wanted her off of him but his body wasn’t listening. “Shaw wrote that. But you know that, don’t you? You went to Stanford and everything after all. And now you’re gonna spend your life with a guy who didn’t even finish high school? You’re gonna have a kid with him? No one our age needs a kid. You should be out there having fun. Doing this.” She increased her pace, trying to chase a third orgasm as she started to press against his fully inflated knot. “You’re smarter than that, Sammy.”

“Get _off_!”

His hands finally complied and he shoved her to the floor, yanking up his jeans and zipping them over his painfully hard erection, trying to ignore the smell of vodka and sex that clung to him. She sighed in frustration as he looked around for his shirt and his jacket, finding them on the floor at the far end of the couch. She was up on her feet by the time he was pulling the shirt down with shaking hands, buttoning her blouse closed and sliding her skirt back down over her hips.

“Fuck Sam, you’re just no fun,” she said, and when he turned the dark haired man from the bar was standing there instead, scratching the day’s worth of growth on his jaw. “I mean I get it, we can’t open Hell without you, someone needs to make the first overture, blah blah blah but this little play date frankly sucks. Why couldn’t you just have gone up with the brunette in the bar when you had the chance and wandered down the path all on your own without me having to give you a shove? I have better things to do with my night, and Meg’s the one who got off on this sort of thing.”

“Meg…?”

“My little sister. You killed her, remember? Sure would like to know who gave you that knife so we can get some payback.” The man - Tom - was on him before Sam could wrap his head around everything he’d just said and the alpha was slammed up into the mirror over the couch, pinned there by his throat as Tom stared straight into his soul with those jet black eyes. “You gonna tell me who gave that to you or do I have to pry it out of you? I can, you know. It’s easy to root around up there -” he flicked Sam’s forehead with his fingers, “- when you’re dreaming. So how about it Sam?” He slammed Sam back against the mirror again so hard the alpha saw stars as the glass shattered, cutting the back of his neck. “I just need a name. Just one name, and this can be over. How about it Sam? Sam?”

“ _Sam_!”

The alpha jerked upright, almost colliding head first with Bobby’s chin as the beta leaned over where Sam had fallen asleep on the bench near the empty hostess’ station. He quickly took stock of himself at the look of concern in Bobby’s eyes, checking to make sure he was still clothed and everything that should be zipped was and he didn’t smell like someone else. He glanced back into the restaurant and saw Sarah at the far end of the bar with the guy she’d replaced him with, laughing and practically sitting in his lap. Tom was closer to the door, and after a moment of Sam’s pointed stare he turned slowly and raised his beer with a smile on his lips, then turned back to the bartender. Sam got shakily to his feet, taking a step towards the man before thinking better of it. He didn’t have any proof the guy was actually a demon, and even if he did he wasn’t wearing Ruby’s knife. He supposed he could try to exorcise him, but Bobby was standing right there, he was still feeling pretty drunk, and he was trying to use his powers _less_ , not _more_.

“Sam?” Bobby repeated, reaching out to lay a hand on his shoulder. “You all right son?”

“Yeah…” Sam wasn’t all right. Not even close. “Yeah, I was gonna get some coffee but I must’ve fallen asleep.”

“Let’s get you home.”

The Impala was just about the most beautiful car Sam had ever seen as Bobby helped him stumble out into the parking lot over to where she was parked next to his truck, advising him that if he needed to throw up he should do it now because however angry Sam was at Dean being an idiot and falling outside, multiply that by a thousand and that’s how pissed Dean would be if Sam threw up inside his Baby. The alpha snorted and assured Bobby he was not going to throw up in the car, even if his stomach was rolling like crazy as he moved. He sank down into the leather seat and let Bobby close the door behind him before leaning up against the window to appreciate the cool glass on his forehead and fell back asleep shortly after they pulled out of the parking lot. Sarah and Tom didn’t return to his dream, and no one had black eyes, but he did see Adam and Jo holed up under what looked like the hollowed out roots of a massive tree somewhere that was covered in a thick layer of snow several inches deep. Jo was huddled up close against Adam, half inside his coat, her skin ghostly white and lips blue, and her coat was spread out over them like a blanket. Adam didn’t look like he was doring much better, but his lips at least still held a little color in the pale moonlight. An axe was laid out beside Jo and there was a pathetic looking bow and three equally pathetic looking arrows next to Adam, who kept repeating, “They can’t hunt us all night,” as Jo shivered.

Sam didn’t know where they were or who he was talking about, but he hoped to god as he dreamed that Adam was right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updates this week are going to be slow (this may be the only chapter - sorry). My daughter's birthday is the 20th, which is also my sister's lumpectomy, and then of course I've got to stuff my face with turkey and the tryptophan is going to result in a lot of napping and not much writing. Gobble gobble!


	75. Like I’m a Grenade and You’re Waiting for Me to Go Off

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The morning after.

It seemed appallingly shallow, but one of the things that Sam loved most about sleeping with Dean was getting to wake up every morning smelling a caramel vanilla latte, whether there was actually a caramel vanilla latte in the room or not. How he’d lucked out not only landing an omega who smelled like coffee but having knocked him up with a baby who smelled like two of his favorite flavors he had no idea, but it was _almost_ enough to make him feel like his life wasn’t destined to be one long demon montage. _Almost_. Waking up pressed against Dean’s shoulder blades, feeling the short hairs at the back of Dean’s neck tickle his nose, and getting to nuzzle against his desired mate’s ear to scent him was never going to get old, but the smell of vodka still hung heavy in the air and dampened the morning with memories of the vision and the dream from the night before. He pulled the smaller man tight to his chest to burrow in closer to his neck and try to hide them both in the pillows and under the comforter, only blearily aware of the world until he heard Dean catch his breath and let out a small hiss. Sam opened his eyes at the sound, his head pounding out a rather violent drumroll to dissuade him from looking straight on at the morning sunlight coming through the bedroom window and making it clear that any further movement would be a very bad idea.

“You okay?” he asked, his voice rough and his tongue feeling like a shag rug that hadn’t been cleaned since the 1970s.

“My hip hurts,” Dean said quietly, tensing slightly under the alpha’s arm. Sam couldn’t tell if it was from physical or emotional discomfort, as the omega had locked down what leaked out into his scent. “Back, too. I need to get up soon to get ready for Dr. Johnson.”

Sam groaned, burying his head between Dean's shoulders and cursing softly. He supposed the awfulness of last night was worth it in the long run if it had gotten him home. He might be dreading being up so early when his body just wanted to sleep off last night's poor decisions but he'd feel like absolute shit if he'd woken up in a hotel room having missed a prenatal appointment. Dean was still keeping himself very guarded, and after a few moments Sam gave him a little squeeze and murmured, “Sorry if I scared you last night. When I stormed off. I was afraid I’d do something I didn’t mean to.”

“It’s okay.” Sam slid his hand up over Dean’s Ace bandages so he could feel the omega’s heartbeat, and after a moment Dean’s fingers began to ghost across the bones in the back of Sam’s hand. “Who’s Sarah?”

“Hmm?”

The alpha had really snuggled up tight against him, his eyes closed as he enjoyed being wrapped in Dean’s scent, letting it relax him almost all the way back to sleep, his eyes flickering open as the omega slowly and painfully turned onto his back to take Sam in.

“You talk in your sleep when you’re drunk.” Sam raised an eyebrow at the careful composure veiling Dean’s face. “Sounded like a fun dream, is all.”

He attempted an eyebrow waggle but it didn’t quite land as sincere, so Sam pressed a kiss to Dean’s neck and replied casually, “Met her at the bar. That vision I mentioned - we shook hands and I saw us doing...things. That I didn’t want to do with her. And then I saw my eyes go black. I thought I’d better call you to have Bobby come get me. So that’s what I did.”

“Oh. Okay.” Dean turned to look at the ceiling, his eyes growing moist as a twinge of pain shot through his lower back. “I wouldn’t have blamed you if somethin’ happened last night. I was so stupid. I really was, I didn’t think about falling…”

“All right, first, you _were_ stupid, and I’m still mad at you, and this is going on the official ‘remember that time when…’ list for the next time you insist on doing something stupid,” Sam cut in, wiping away the tears that leaked out of the corners of Dean’s eyes. “Second, we already have one kid and we’re having a second one soon, and I don’t plan on raising them to think it’s okay to cheat on someone just because you’re mad at them. If I _ever_ do something like that, kick my ass out and never take me back, okay?”

Dean nodded, clearing his throat and pushing against everything welling up in his chest; the relief at Sam being home and not homicidal, the fear that the doctor was going to tell him he’d really injured himself or Elliott, the continuing panic that they didn’t know where Adam was, the frustration that he’d laid himself up again and was even more useless. He wiped at his eyes with his hand, willing the tears to stop because he didn’t have time for them, and said gruffly, “Can you help me get up? I’m not movin’ too well today.”

“Yeah. Give me just a minute. I really need some water and aspirin or this hangover’s gonna kill me.”

He laid a flurry of soft kisses from Dean’s cheekbone down to the corner of his jaw before rolling off the bed and struggling to his feet. The alpha’s head and stomach both threatened to conspire against him to take him right back down to the mattress but he managed to remain vertical and after a few moments lurched to the bathroom to dig through the medicine cabinet for anything that would make him feel less like someone had gone after his head with a mallet. There was a needling at the back of his brain that he was missing something important, something he was forgetting from the night before, but he couldn’t possibly hope to figure out what it was until his head stopped trying to explode. He checked his reflection after downing four Advil and grimaced, though he supposed he should be grateful despite how green he looked that his eyes weren’t black. His stomach made its displeasure known at having only water and painkillers added to its already unhappy contents and Sam sincerely hoped either Bobby or Ellen had gotten up already and made breakfast. Not that it was their job to cook for either him or Dean, but god it would make this morning so much easier if he could just get downstairs and stuff some pancakes in his face without having to cook them.

The omega had gotten himself to the edge of the bed by the time Sam came back in, pain evident in the lines of his back and arms as he gripped the mattress and drew in a deep, shuddering breath. Dean was staring at the floor, face red and jaw tensed as the alpha moved to take the arm he held out for Sam to grab and pull him to his feet. As soon as he was up his back and hip exploded in pain again and he clawed at Sam’s shoulder, struggling not to succumb to the wave of nausea that hit him as he leaned forward into the alpha’s chest. Sam felt a flush spreading across his face and neck, kicking himself for having left Dean alone like this. Yes, it was his own damn fault he was injured, but it still made Sam feel like the shittiest alpha on the planet for having gone off to a bar when his omega was suffering this much.

“Stop thinkin’, Sam,” Dean ordered, his hold on Sam’s shoulder relaxing a little as he blinked away the moisture clinging to his lashes. “You think louder than anyone I know.”

“If you’d stop hurting yourself I wouldn’t have to think so much,” Sam countered, debating the pros and cons of just picking Dean up and carrying him into the bathroom and deciding in favor of the pros. “This isn’t going to be fun for either of us.”

That was all the warning Dean got before Sam had an arm under his knees and was swinging him against his chest. Dean tried very hard to stifle the scream that tore its way from his throat but was completely unsuccessful, Hannah erupting into furious barking somewhere downstairs. Sam almost threw himself off balance with the extra weight, his head throbbing at the base of his skull in protest, and it took a minute before he was able to move. It was just as well since Dean was shaking with the effort not to break down in tears from the fire raging in his hip and back, clinging to Sam and trying to force air into his lungs before he fainted.

A knock on the door preceded Ellen asking, “You boys all right in there?”

“Just getting Dean into the shower,” Sam told her, and Dean choked, “Bath. The doctor said to take a bath.”

“We’ve got breakfast on when you’re done,” she said. “And Bobby thinks he might have a theory. Haven’t heard from that guy Ed yet about the cameras.”

“Okay, thanks Ellen.” He adjusted his hold on Dean as gently as he could. “You all right with me moving?”

Dean nodded against his neck but couldn’t do much more than make a strangled grunt in response, digging his fingers into Sam’s shoulders again when the younger man started to move quickly towards the bathroom. It was clear to Sam that the omega wasn’t able to do much more than hold on and try to breathe, and just the movement from being carried was enough to leave him close to passing out. He got Dean over to the tub and set him on his feet, though by that point the man didn’t have the strength to stand and simply clung to Sam to keep himself upright as Sam quickly stripped Dean’s boxers off and then got him in over the edge of the tub to slowly slide down half onto his left side. The awful, huge, purple-black bruise covering Dean’s hip from his waist to partway down his thigh had Sam’s alpha bristling anew with anger at the omega’s foolishness the day before.

“Fuck, Dean,” he snapped, reaching for the plug to stop up the drain and turning on the hot and cold water as Dean worked at getting his chest unbound, wincing as he needed to shift a little farther from the side of the tub. “What the hell were you thinking?”

“That I should be able to go outside in the middle of the day without having to worry about anything,” Dean replied quietly, flinching when Sam ran his hands into his long chestnut hair and squeezed against the headache that was just starting to dissipate.

“Yeah, well, not when you’re off balance and it’s the middle of winter.” It didn’t escape his notice that Dean was looking at the floor instead of him, and he closed his eyes and counted to ten, inhaling through his nose and exhaling through his mouth, his hands sliding out of his hair and down to his sides where he balled them into fists. It took just enough of the edge off that he didn’t feel like he was going to fly into a rage, and he knelt down next to the tub. “Promise me you will not try to get out of this tub on your own or I’ll order you to stay here until I come back upstairs.”

“There’s no way I’m getting out of here by myself, Sammy,” Dean choked, closing his eyes as a wave of nausea washed over him again. He slowly turned over so his hip and lower back would start to become submerged, leaning his head against the porcelain with his eyes closed. “Couldn’t if I wanted to, which I don’t.”

“Okay.” Sam took advantage of Dean’s closed eyes to lean in and brush a chaste kiss against his lips, finger combing the dark blond hair that was slightly damp with sweat from the agony of getting carried into the bathroom. “I’m going to get something to eat and bring you up a plate. What time do we have to be there?”

“Nine thirty.”

“I’ll coordinate with Bobby so we can get my truck on the way back.”

Dean nodded, sinking down a little farther into the water and reaching out with his left foot to adjust the faucet with his toes. He knew he needed to be careful with soaking in water that was too hot, but god it made his hip and lower back feel so much better. He felt Sam’s lips on his forehead and heard him pad away, feeling his muscles relax just a little for the first time in well over twelve hours. It was glorious.

There were waffles and homefries downstairs courtesy of Bobby, who had already walked Hannah out to the front yard to do her business while Ellen had fed and changed Lizzie. They were going to have to get someone to come in and clean up all the dog poop once the snow melted, but Bobby figured that’s what having money was for so he didn’t spend too much time worrying about it. After getting a lecture from Ellen about storming off the night before ( _which was shockingly not as bad as he expected from her_ ) Sam inhaled his breakfast while Bobby talked about the two possibilities he saw for what they were trying to locate, though neither made very much sense, and he could be way off base either way. The first option was vetalas, which always hunted in pairs, but they weren’t seasonal so that didn’t seem likely. The other was a trio of Celtic deities that dealt with different fertility aspects and required human sacrifice - Teutates, Esus, and Taranus. Each required the sacrifice to be done in a different way, so it would make sense that they would take three victims. What didn’t make sense were the years they only took two victims, or where exactly they learned how to drive cars, or why they bothered to take the cars at all. Not much was known about the three gods, and specifically among what was unknown was how to kill them. Until they had some more information they wouldn’t be able to narrow down which of the two possibilities was more likely, or if he was just totally wrong and it was something else.

After downing one of Bobby’s trademark cups of coffee that was so strong it could probably dissolve shoe leather, Sam headed back up with food for Dean on a breakfast tray Sam picked up after the omega made an offhanded comment about how he expected breakfast in bed regularly once he got too big to roll downstairs in the morning. Dean was all but dozing in the tub, his back and hip feeling so much better, though the smell of breakfast definitely got his attention. He wanted to make a smartass comment but his tired brain wouldn’t comply, so instead he smiled sweetly ( _he could feel the dopey grin on his face and didn’t mean to bat his eyelashes, it just kind of happened_ ) and told Sam he was a prince, and got a nice, lingering kiss for not being a jerk. Sam went off to the guest bedroom to shower, returning just as Dean was finishing his waffles to get him up and dressed, opting to wait until after the omega was seated on the toilet lid to put his shirt on, for no other reason than to keep his clothes dry, _obviously_. It totally wasn’t that he was still spooked by what had happened the night before or wanted to be able to feel Dean’s skin against his to remind both of them that no matter what was going on with the demon blood, Sam would never want to jeopardize this.

It was a testament to just how much Dean was hurting that he didn’t even protest as Sam and Bobby got him laid out across the back seat of the Impala so he could stretch out instead of letting him sit up front. He was able to walk a little better after the bath, and his back wasn’t spasming every time he moved, but he still wasn’t going anywhere under his own power without assistance and Sam nearly dragged him into the medical complex where Dr. Johnson’s private office was. Bobby looked like he wanted to crawl out of his skin as he got left behind in the waiting area with mostly pregnant omegas and betas and very little to read that wasn’t about cycles, uterine health, and how to detect lumps in breast tissue. Apparently mates could help with that, something that should have gone without saying except someone clearly thought it needed to be said and now here he was slamming a magazine back down on a side table and trying not to draw attention to himself and how red he was turning.

Dr. Johnson was just about as furious with Dean as Sam expected doctors were allowed to be professionally without risking an angry alpha in their face defending a mate. She assessed his physical condition, checked on Elliott the best she could, had a look at the cerclage to make sure it hadn’t torn, put in a request to schedule him for an MRI the next day and an ultrasound directly after the exam, then spent fifteen minutes lecturing him on just how dangerous what he had done was, since apparently despite everything he had been through he still didn’t get that he was a high risk pregnancy, or if he did he didn’t _really_ appreciate what that meant. She suspected he had a pinched nerve in his hip from the fall, which happened to carrying oms even without them being reckless enough to walk a dog by themselves in the middle of winter when they were on bed rest, and as for the pain in his back it was likely he had ruptured a disc. If that were the case it was going to be a real problem, since recovering from a ruptured disc required him to do pretty much all the activities he was restricted from doing, specifically things like walking and biking, not a lot of laying down, and a regiment of light exercise that in his case was going to decrease his chances of carrying to term even if it helped his back. However, if he did have a ruptured disc and they didn’t do anything until after Elliott was born the odds were high that the damage could worsen and he might eventually need surgery to correct it, particularly with the life he’d led up until now and how many injuries he’d already sustained in his twenty-seven years on the planet. By the time she was discussing the likelihood that he would need to see either an Orthopedic Surgeon or an Osteopathic Doctor, Sam was having a hard time squelching his growls and had to leave the room to walk around the complex and try to calm down.

Even though Bobby wasn’t exactly having the time of his life out in the waiting room, he certainly didn’t think switching places with Sam in the doctor’s office was an upgrade, not when Sam was leaving behind an obviously upset and badly shaken Dean who certainly didn’t need his alpha storming out in the middle of an appointment about the baby. Up until now the beta always thought Sam was the only good egg to come out of the whole Campbell family and now he wasn’t so sure even that was correct. Dean may have acted like a numbskull yesterday but he didn’t deserve to be left when whatever Dr. Johnson said to him had him scared half out of his wits. Bobby didn’t like at all that Dean just seemed to be accepting of Sam’s little temper tantrum either, and resolved to make sure the young alpha knew just how far out of line he was once this was all over.

Sam didn’t come back for the ultrasound, which had the beta just about fit to be tied, and the way Dean said it was fine didn’t improve his mood one bit. Bobby didn’t know what the hell was going on between the two of them or what may have happened since they left his house a couple of weeks ago but it sure as hell was _not_ fine for Sam to be acting like a pigheaded ass _or_ for Dean to just be excusing his behavior away. He knew his boy had basically no self esteem to speak of, but he would have hoped after everything he’d been through that Dean knew he deserved better than _this_. Sam still hadn’t returned by the time they were back in the doctor’s office to review the results of the ultrasound, which confirmed that Elliott was still okay in there and Dean hadn’t suffered anything like a placental abruption, though reading between the lines Bobby understood that was a goddamned miracle, even if Dean appeared to be going a little numb and might not be processing everything he was being told. She was sending them home and they’d call about the MRI, since he needed to rest today, then dismissed Dean with instructions to stop at the receptionist on the way out to schedule a follow up appointment for the next week.

It wasn’t until they were getting off the elevator in the lobby of the complex that they spotted Sam again, pacing near the doors as a low growl rumbled out of him while he clenched and unclenched his fists. Bobby sure didn’t like the looks of him and objected when Dean told him to wait by the elevators while he limped his way across the lobby to where Sam was standing, having gone still as soon as he smelled the omega but not looking up. Bobby’s hackles only raised further watching Dean reach a hand tentatively towards Sam, Sam’s jaw working furiously like he was on the brink of exploding before he took hold just of the smaller man’s fingers, the muscles in his arm flexing all the way up to his shoulder as he restrained himself. It seemed very possible for a few seconds that Dean was in real danger of Sam turning on him until he oh so carefully moved flush up against the alpha and turned his face into Sam’s neck, nuzzling his nose behind Sam’s ear. The taller man’s breathing visibly slowed and his body gradually relaxed until he finally tipped his chin forward onto Dean’s shoulder and turned to scent him. They stayed that way for a few minutes, Sam speaking quietly as he tightened his grip on Dean’s fingers but didn’t move otherwise and Dean nodding to whatever Sam was saying, pressing in a little closer the best he could with Elliott between them. Bobby was trying to straighten his neck out from the whiplash of Sam appearing to be so close to violence to thinking he might have to break up some babymooning a minute later, but then Sam pulled away with a quick peck to Dean’s cheek and walked out into the parking lot, punching numbers into his phone and raising it to his ear. Dean limped over to a bench near the stairs that wound up to the second floor and carefully lowered himself down onto it, Bobby coming over to grab an arm to help him with his balance.

“I thought for a minute there he was gonna tear your head off,” the old hunter stated as the omega tipped his head back against the wall and focused on his breathing. “You wanna tell me what that was about?”

“He’s just upset,” Dean replied, closing his eyes at the pain in his lower back as he shifted to try to make his hip hurt a little less and failed. “He’s callin’ a cab to take him to his truck to get a little space is all.”

“Upset seems a bit of an understatement to me.” He sat down next to the young man and gave him a small shoulder check. “What’s goin’ on? Everything okay between you two?”

“It’s...complicated.”

“Uh huh.” He looked at Dean closely for several long moments, watching the omega grow increasingly uncomfortable under his gaze as he checked for bruises he might have missed when he and Ellen arrived the day before. “That’s what my mom used to say after my dad knocked her around for dinner bein’ cold.”

“What?” Dean turned wide green eyes to him, the tips of his ears turning red. “No, there’s...it’s nothing like that.”

“You sure about that?”

“No. I mean yes! I mean…” Dean sighed, running a hand over the back of his neck at the crick that was starting from the way he was leaning, despite only having sat that way for a couple of minutes. Jesus, he was falling apart and he hadn’t even hit thirty yet. He really wished Sam wasn’t outside waiting for a cab so the alpha could swoop him up and carry him out to Baby, and man did he hate how quickly he was thinking things like that were the solution to his problems. “Sam’s got this...thing.”

“Thing?” Bobby echoed.

“Yeah, this...thing…” Crap, he was going to screw this up and Bobby was going to freak out and how the hell was he supposed to make “demon blood” sound like no big deal, especially when it was a huge fucking deal? “He has a hard time with his temper lately, and there was an...incident last week that got kind of physical, and...”

“An incident that got kind of physical?” The beta was glaring at him now, nostrils flaring at the thought of Sam putting his hands on Dean to hurt him. “That’s not a hard time with his temper, Dean. That’s grounds for a restraining order.”

“It’s not that simple Bobby…”

“It really is, Dean.”

“It’s not though. He...he’s got this…it’s biological, all right? He can’t help it.”

“Is that what he’s got you believin’?”

It was clear Bobby was about three seconds from storming outside to track Sam down and beat him with whatever large, heavy object might be at hand, and Dean snapped as quietly as he could, “He has demon blood in him, Bobby. That’s how he knew about that demon that came to kill me and Adam back in Minnesota, it’s how he knew about Gordon, it’s how he got us out of the basement at that bar in Sioux Falls. It’s not just run-of-the-mill psychic stuff, okay? His mom made a deal before he was born and now he’s got this crap poisoning him, and it’s trying to make him do things, but it’s _not him_. So he left last night because he was upset and he’s gettin’ a cab because he’s upset and he doesn’t want to lose it again. He _knows_ he’s not right when he’s like this.”

Bobby was white as a sheet trying to absorb this new and distressing information. He wondered how many people knew about this. It couldn’t be many or Sam would have a lot more hunters after him like Gordon had been. Suddenly Bobby understood why the boys had been so vague about why Gordon thought Sam’s precognitive abilities were such a big problem - because they _were_. God, what did this mean for Dean? What did this mean for the baby? Was he or she going to come out some kind of half-demon hybrid? They’d be running from hunters for the rest of their lives if word of this spread. Not to mention how uneasy Bobby felt with an alpha as large as Sam being around his boy when he had something so black inside him he couldn’t be near Dean when he was angry for fear of hurting him.

“Do Adam and your dad know about this?” he asked quietly, suddenly hyper aware of how many people might be listening to their conversation.

“Dad does,” Dean mumbled. “It’s the same demon that killed Mom and Sam’s college girlfriend so they were hunting it together for a while. I haven’t told Adam cuz he’s tryin’ to get out of the life and this would pull him back in pretty quick.”

“Has it occurred to you it might be demons that grabbed him and Jo?”

“I assure you, Ponyboy is the _least_ interesting character in this particular story, at least as far as Hell’s concerned.”

Bobby just about jumped out of his skin at the short man in the dark suit with the crisp British accent who was suddenly standing in front of them, hands calmly clasped with a topcoat slung over them. Dean flinched as well, but settled quickly as Bobby shot to his feet to stand between this strange man and the omega.

“Who the hell are you?” the beta demanded, reaching for his gun that had, of course, been left home because it wasn’t appropriate to take it to a doctor’s appointment.

“And here I thought I needed no introduction,” the man said with a smile, his voice deep and gruff with just the slightest edge of amusement.

“This is Crowley,” Dean explained, nudging Bobby away.

“That’s supposed to mean somethin’?” Bobby demanded, earning a raised eyebrow from the demon.

“Bobby Singer, of course,” Crowley said. “Your reputation precedes you.”

“My reputation?”

“Mostly it boils down to ‘I’m surly and I have a beard!’”

Crowley’s imitation of Bobby was just ridiculous enough to draw a snort out of Dean, who got a glare from the beta. He shrugged, saying, “It was kinda funny.”

“Eddie Izzard’s given me some tips,” Crowley told him. “Not funny, however, is what’s been happening between you and the moose since the last time we talked. Perhaps you’re waiting for the onsies to ensure I’m a demon of my word before you take care of that growing problem.”

“Demon?” Bobby spat, practically foaming at the mouth.

“Hell’s top crossroads demon, to be exact,” Crowley replied.

“That growing problem is under control at the moment,” Dean growled.

“It isn’t, and you know it Padme.”

“What is it that you want, Crowley?”

“Your father’s pulled a David Copperfield on me. The illusionist, not the Dickens character. I haven’t been able to get his attention for weeks.”

“Yeah, well, welcome to my world.”

“This is serious, Dean. Azazel is getting bolder in asserting his dominance over other power players down in Hell. Your father is supposed to be taking care of him now that you’ve got Sam so thoroughly distracted.”

“He’s got a hellhound after him. Maybe if you call it off he’ll pick up the phone.”

“It’s not my hellhound.”

“Then I don’t know what to tell you. Try a couple of cans and some string? What’s the big deal all of a sudden?”

“Azazel is sending demons after Lilith’s nearest and dearest.”

“And you want me to care because?”

“They ate my tailor!”

“I’m thinkin’ this might not be the best place for this conversation,” Bobby interjected, finally having processed that not only did Dean know this demon, apparently John did, too.

“Believe me, I’d love to be discussing this in private, but Dean’s found himself a beautifully warded house to hole up in,” Crowley snapped. “Nothing’s getting in there to have tea with the family anytime soon.”

“That’s the first thing you’ve told me that hasn’t made me want to puke,” Dean said. “So, what - you’re asking me to play Dolly Levi? See if I can get him to take your call?”

“If you would be so kind.” He cast a glance down at Dean’s lap, causing him to blush before Crowley asked casually, “Would you like me to take care of that hip for you? On the house, in appreciation of the always witty banter and the reference to my favorite Streisand film.”

“You like Barbara Streisand?” Bobby asked with a huff, earning himself a grin from the demon.

“Who do you think made her a star?” he countered, then turned back to Dean. “How about it?”

“Tempting as it is to get even _more_ involved with your kind, I’m gonna have to pass.”

“Well, your loss. Remind Sam of our conversation in Moline, and be sure to ask him what he dreamed about last night. Not the girl in the bar, though you should know about that too. The other thing. I’m sure you’ll find it...helpful. If he remembers it, that is.”

With a snap of his fingers and a flash of red eyes he was gone, leaving Dean by himself to face Bobby’s withering glare.

“Seems we’ve got a lotta things to talk about,” he snarled, arms folded across his chest. “I think we should probably get goin’, don’t you?”

“Yeah.”

Dean glanced out the doors of the complex to check if Sam’s taxi had come yet, or if he’d seen them talking to Crowley. The alpha wasn’t anywhere to be found, something which left Dean relieved, yet ashamed to feel that way. He wasn’t sure he wanted to keep the demon’s presence from Sam, not when Crowley told Dean to ask him about something he dreamed the night before, but he’d need to wait to see if Sam’s emotions had evened out some when they got home. Much as he hated to admit it, he wasn’t sure they had the problem with the demon blood under control at all. Sam had been so upset the night before he’d ended up at a bar, and now Sam again needed to separate himself to keep from repeating the bathroom incident. Dean didn’t doubt for a second that if Sam got that out of control again someone was going to end up dead or nearly so, and the thought of that made his blood run cold. After a few minutes he struggled to his feet, letting Bobby help him up, even if he felt like a kid who was going to end up grounded as soon as they got home. He knew laying down was probably going to make his back feel worse, but Christ he needed a nap.


	76. I Just Know That This Whole Thing Couldn’t Be Messier

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ed comes through with the traffic cams.

There was a lot of yelling in the car on the way home about demons and keeping secrets and not being a damn idjit when there was a baby who needed to be taken care of and another one on the way and that meant no more stupid decisions and starting to act like grown ups. Dean thought Bobby might have gone a little easier on him considering they were on their way home from a doctor’s appointment and Dean was sprawled out in the back of the Impala again, but no. Not only was the retired hunter incensed, he took the scenic route back to the house just to give himself extra time to yell. Bobby made it clear that if Dean weren’t carrying Bobby would have tanned his hide for being kept in the dark about Sam’s issues and their meetings with Crowley, not to mention whatever else the beta was sure Dean still hadn’t come clean about.

It at least seemed clearer to the man that Dean wasn’t trying to make excuses for Sam’s anger issues when they pulled up into the driveway next to the Escalade, hearing Hannah announce their arrival to the house, and the alpha appeared in the doorway looking a little sheepish and a lot anxious. He was already halfway to them by the time Bobby threw the car into park and swung open the driver’s side door, quickening his pace when he noticed Dean shifting in the back to try to get the door by his feet opened so he could slide out himself. Bobby watched with slight trepidation as Sam got to the door first, the tension in his stomach dissolving as he saw Sam hover slightly in front of Dean, clearly waiting for permission to touch before offering the omega his aid. Dean took a moment to openly scent the air between them, then murmured something that had Sam going around to the other door while Dean stretched himself back out on the seat. The beta did his best to look like he was simply waiting for them and not assessing the way Sam was treating Dean, relaxing further as Sam carefully pulled him out and got him up on his feet in the driveway. The alpha took a moment to sweep his fingers up and down the smaller man’s back while he shamelessly breathed in all the smells that made up Dean’s scent, holding the omega to him as tightly as he dared. After a minute or so Sam sighed so loudly and contentedly that Bobby could hear him from across the driveway, burying his face deeper into Dean’s neck and tightening his grip, one of his hands snaking into Dean’s hair and holding on for dear life while Dean returned the embrace just as fiercely.

Bobby had always heard tell that omegas were more feline while alphas were more canine, but coming from a long line of betas he’d never really thought that much about it. Now he could definitely understand why people said that, as Dean was responding to Sam’s deep inhales against his neck and soft caresses by basically rubbing his face along Sam’s jaw like a cat trying to mark the alpha as his. He was embarrassed both by being so close to such an unapologetic public display of affection and by how sweet he thought they looked. Bobby wasn’t the kind of man who did “sweet,” after all; hadn’t been since his mate died.

“I’m thinkin’ you boys should either move it inside or start chargin’ the neighbors admission for the show,” he said finally when it looked like things were about to move beyond scenting and marking each other.

Sam giggled into the space behind Dean’s ear where his scent was strongest and murmured something the beta couldn’t make out, but it had Dean nodding in response, then Sam cautiously lifted him up to carry him into the house. Any remaining qualms Bobby had about Dean’s ability to judge when Sam was dangerous and when he wasn’t were quickly being eased just by watching the two of them and he hurried ahead - noticing someone had salted the sidewalk to ensure it wouldn’t be icy - to open the front door. He definitely wasn’t letting Sam off the hook yet for whatever that “physical” thing was Dean had mentioned, and it was certainly going to take a lot more than a moment in a driveway for him to be able to trust the alpha not to go off the rails, but there was a clear Jekyll and Hyde thing going on here that Bobby was willing for the time being to believe wasn’t voluntary. It still needed to be dealt with, and soon, but at least it looked like Dean was able to tell when Sam was himself and when he wasn’t. Hannah danced happily at her person returning home, trying twice to jump up on Dean as Sam carried him to the couch to get him settled, Ellen emerging from the kitchen with Lizzie sucking away at her lunchtime bottle as everyone was getting out of their coats and boots.

“Glad you finally made it back,” she said, waiting for Sam to get Dean comfortable on the sectional before passing Lizzie off to him. “Sam and I were startin’ to think you got lost on the way home from the doctor’s.”

“No, we uh...we ran into one of John’s associates,” Bobby told her, throwing a pointed look at Sam. “Fella by the name of Crowley.”

“Never heard the name,” Ellen said. “Where’s he based out of?”

“He’s not...a hunter…” Dean cleared his throat, glancing to Sam who was burping a little girl and had gone slightly pale. “He’s more of a resource. Not always reliable. Has some information for Dad but can’t get him on the phone.”

“Really?” Sam asked evenly, turning his attention to the baby as she let out a particularly impressive burp against his shoulder. “About that case?”

“Yeah,” Bobby replied, his tone bordering on waspish. “ _That_ one.”

The realization the Bobby knew at the very least about Crowley and Azazel had Sam practically breaking out in a cold sweat, casting his eyes to Dean who could only manage a weak smile in response to his unspoken query. The last thing he wanted was to get Ellen deeper involved in this mess, not when he already suspected Ruby had torched the Roadhouse to get his attention. Dean was clearly of the same mindset, because he promptly changed the subject.

“Have you heard from that Ed guy about the traffic cams?”

“Not yet,” Ellen said. “I checked in with him while you all were gone. He has the program up and running but just needs to work out a couple of bugs before he uploads it to their system. I’m havin’ him look into Jenkins’ file while he’s workin’ on it, see if we can figure out what kinda car he drives to match up with footage from the day he went missin’. Should help us pinpoint exactly what we’re lookin’ for. Someone wanna help me with lunch?”

“You don’t have to make us lunch,” Dean objected as Sam passed Lizzie off to him.

“No I don’t, but it’s at least givin’ me somethin’ to do, Dean,” she snapped, shooting him a glare. “I’ve been sittin’ on my hands all morning with nothin’ to keep me occupied besides watchin’ a baby and a dog and waitin’ for the phone to ring. That’s not to say you don’t have a sweet baby or a sweet dog, but I’m kind of losin’ my mind right now, so either get in the kitchen and help me cook or let me know what you want me to make.”

“I’ll help you,” Bobby volunteered, arching an eyebrow at Dean as he passed. “If I recall correctly, you’ve got some things to talk to Sam about.”

“What does that mean?” Sam asked, worry pouring off of him as Hannah plopped herself down on her butt beside the couch and started batting at Dean for attention. The alpha grabbed her collar and pulled her back so he could sit on the floor in her place, getting a disappointed growl out of her as she shifted closer to the end of the couch to fruitlessly paw at the omega’s feet. “Is everything okay with the baby?”

“Yeah, no, Elliott’s fine,” Dean replied quickly, jostling Lizzie in his arm and wincing at the unexpected twinge it brought out in his back. Much as he hated hospitals, he couldn’t wait to get that MRI. At least all the pain was helping keep him distracted from worrying about Adam. “Crowley wanted me to ask you about the dream you had last night. Not the one with the girl, the other one.”

“The other one? Is that all he said?”

“He said I’d find it helpful.”

Sam looked genuinely perplexed. The only dream he remembered from the night before was the one he was having when Bobby mercifully woke him, yet it seemed that there was something else at the edges of his memory. He’d felt like that since this morning, but whatever it was refused to crystallize for him, remaining fuzzy and just beyond his reach.

“I don’t know what he’s talking about,” he said at last, reaching out to pat Hannah’s neck when the Pyr gave up on getting Dean’s attention and turned her massive paw on Sam. “I remember the one with the girl.”

Dean smiled, betraying a touch of hurt, and asked, “Is that the fun one from this morning?”

“No, actually.”

“You had another dream about her?”

Dean wanted to stuff the question back into his mouth as soon as it escaped. He sounded so insecure and needy, which was _not_ who he would allow New New Dean to be, dammit. He was definitely blaming this on hormones if Sam called him out on it, and it looked like he might judging by the smirk on his stupid, handsome face.

“It was really more about this demon named Tom,” Sam said, extracting Lizzie from the omega’s arms and kissing him firmly before heading over to her play mat to set her down for a little tummy time. “And it was far less sexy than whatever you’re thinking. I’ll tell you all about it after lunch.”

“You will?” Dean asked with a raised eyebrow. “Or is that somethin’ you’re just saying cuz you hope I’ll forget all about gorgeous Sarah once I’ve eaten?”

Sam smiled, wanting to point out how cute Dean was when he was literally green eyed with jealousy, but instead demanded, “When did I say she was gorgeous?”

“You didn’t have to. All your little moans and groans while you were sleeping did.”

Because he was essentially still a ten year old, Dean immediately started in with mocking the moans and groans from earlier that morning, throwing in a couple of over-the-top lip smacks as well, until Sam grabbed a throw pillow from the far end of the couch and smacked him with it, grinning. Hannah called foul on the roughhousing with a flurry of wufs and by the time Bobby came in to see what the hell was going on in the family room, Sam was kissing Dean breathless, making it quite clear that he preferred reality to any kind of dream. His grumbling about socks and door knobs as he turned to go back in the kitchen just made Sam sink in closer, his hands framing Dean’s face and twining through his hair, reveling in their mixed scents until Lizzie gave a pointed grunt and their scents were overpowered by the smell of baby poop so pungent neither of them could contain their laughter. When they glanced over at her together her face was all scrunched up in concentration and she was obviously still going, so Sam broke away to grab her before she leaked out and ruined the play mat.

Sam meant to tell the omega about Sarah turning into Tom and Tom being Azazel’s son, but Dean fell asleep almost immediately after finishing his soup and sandwich and the alpha wasn’t about to wake him up to run through a dream that was, in fact, a bit like a Penthouse Forum letter, not when Dean obviously needed to catch up on sleep from the night before and had managed to find a position on the couch that didn’t upset his hip or back too much. Ellen sat down with Sam’s laptop to do some more research on the three gods they might be dealing with, having come up empty on something that would kill them when she’d been left to her own devices earlier in the day, and Bobby managed to corner the alpha in the den to grill him about the “demon blood thing” he’d just learned about, and whether Sam could really control himself around Dean or was just hoping for the best. If he’d asked that the morning before Sam would have insisted he could handle it, but after the events in the bar and the dream he needed to tell Dean about, the alpha didn’t even sound sincere to himself when he told Bobby there was no need for him to worry because Sam would never do anything to harm Dean or their baby.

After their little heart to heart in the den, Sam switched off on the research while Bobby and Ellen called every hunter in the area they knew who might have heard about anything weird that just never rose to the level of the FDH. Even though the FDH had been around for decades there were still a lot of hunters who preferred the old school methods and didn’t like the idea of being tied to a government agency. No one had any helpful information, though a couple did suggest they might be looking for a phantom attacker. It didn’t account for the missing vehicles, however. Dean was still fast asleep hours later when they got a call from Ed, who had worked out the bugs in his program sooner than expected and was in the process of running through the traffic cam footage to copy the files from Valentine’s Day and the previous Friday and said he’d probably have them ready to email over around dinner time.

The dog had been walked and Lizzie had been fed, changed, and played with by the time Dean finally woke up for dinner and remembered he needed to leave his dad a message and tell him about Crowley ( _since there was no way Dean expected John to pick up the phone_ ), right after he got done peeing, because his bladder was really unhappy he hadn’t awakened sooner to answer its calls. Sam tried to help him limp to the downstairs bathroom and got grumpily swatted away, though he didn’t swat quite as much on the way to the dining room to eat. The email didn’t come over until a little after eight o’clock, by which point Dean and Sam were snuggled up on one end of the couch, the omega dozing up against the alpha’s neck while Sam trailed fingertips through his hair, rubbing circles into the back of Dean’s neck, as Ellen brushed up on phantom attackers and Bobby put Lizzie to bed. Sam’s phone buzzed in his back pocket, jostling Dean against his shoulder enough when he reached to dig it out that the smaller man woke with an actual whine.

“Jus’ five more minutes, Sammy…” he groaned, scooting in closer to Sam’s side and really waking himself up with a slight twist the wrong way. He hissed, freezing as his back seized. “Shit…”

Sam pressed his knuckles into the knot at the base of Dean’s spine as he checked his phone and spotted the alert for a new email from godzillakingofmonsters@hotmail.com with the subject line “traffic cams.” He tossed the phone to Ellen to check it, getting Dean to his feet with a murmured, “Let’s get you to bed,” Hannah jerking up from flush against the front door where she was sleeping as the two young men reached the stairs. Dean grabbed the railing and sagged against Sam with a frustrated sigh.

“Well go on, Florian, and carry me upstairs,” he grumbled. “Just don’t tweak your back. We can’t both be gimps.”

“Florian?” Bobby huffed from the top of the stairs, glancing down at them. “That some kinda kinky thing you shouldn’t be mentionin’ in polite company?”

“He’s Snow White’s prince and she’s the only princess who gets picked up and carried,” Dean snapped, and at the grin that started to sprout on Sam’s face he said, “You know what, forget it. It loses the charm if you gotta explain it.”

“Dumbo’s mom kind of carries him at one point,” Sam replied, and the omega held a finger up in his face.

“First, we do _not_ discuss that movie,” he spat. “Second, Dumbo is _not_ a Disney princess, whereas the growing consensus is that I clearly am. And third, are you really comparing me at my current size to an elephant?”

Sam tried to stop laughing, he really did, but there hadn’t been a whole lot to find funny the last couple of days and realizing he had inadvertently compared the shorter man presently turning red and glaring at him while pressing his large abdomen into Sam’s side to a pachyderm had his dimples out on full display. Dean actually growled at him, which just made Sam laugh harder, and after standing there listening to the giant alpha trying to apologize through his giggle fit the omega finally turned away to start struggling up the stairs on his own. Sam got swatted quite a bit more when he just went right ahead and lifted Dean up, asking, “Is this what you were thinking, princess?” but even the swatting couldn’t stop the laughter. Bobby was starting to think he might want to suggest to Ellen that they find a hotel to leave the house to the two idjits when they finally disappeared into the master bedroom.

Half an hour later Sam was back downstairs with the baby monitor, damp hair curling around his ears and his tee shirt sticking to slightly wet skin, grabbing the laptop from Ellen, who was having a hard time getting the files Ed sent to open. The traffic cam email had turned from one into thirty-six between the initial alert on his phone and the time he got back downstairs, and both Ellen and Bobby had given up on trying to review the files while they were still coming in. It was slowing Sam’s computer to a crawl that Ellen just didn’t have the patience for. The files Ed downloaded were so large he had to split them, though he did give the dates and times as the main email message, as well as a quick explanation of what they were seeing. Apparently the cameras weren’t standard video cams and instead took static pictures every three seconds for the state’s Amber Alert system. There were cameras every twenty miles on the two main highways that went past Bob & Barb’s north to south and east to west. Ed had located the timestamp when Jenkins was taken from the parking lot, his car pulling out ahead of an old Winnebago that was likely the sound of the whining growl Ed heard that night. The first eighteen emails tracked Jenkins. Both cars showed up again twenty and then forty miles to the north, and then again and again and again on traffic cams, always heading northwest. The borderline hoarder with questionable hygiene certainly had done his due diligence, continuing to hack traffic cams even after the cars crossed the state line into Michigan and the timestamps reflected a four hour time difference between when the cars left the bar and when they finally disappeared between a final traffic cam that caught a sign reading, “Huron-Manistee National Forests - 20 mi.” and the cam right outside the park’s main entrance. The other eighteen emails followed Dean’s Ford and Jenkins’ car, only this time the car had the plates from the Winnebago. It took the same exact route and disappeared between the same two traffic cameras.

“What the hell kind of thing hunts four hours _by car_ outside its home territory?” Bobby demanded rhetorically as Sam pulled up Mapquest to see what was in the area.

“Whatever it is, I think we can add to the research that it probably lives in or around the woods,” the alpha said. “If it’s in a national forest it may not get enough food in the winter and has to go looking. Maybe that’s why it drives...”

“But to travel four hours? There have got to be people in Michigan it can take, even if it does need to cast a wider net.”

“Whatever it is, you’ve got time to figure it out while we’re on the road,” Ellen said, heading for the hall closet to grab her coat. “I sure as hell don’t plan on sitting here when we’re lookin’ at a four hour drive just to get to the last place we have a solid lead on Jo and Adam. You comin’ Sam, or do I have to hotwire your truck?”

“Yeah. Get a bag together with the basics and I’ll let Dean know we’re leaving.”

The response was automatic, even as his stomach twisted at the thought of being that far away from his omega. Sam was almost certainly going to miss the MRI appointment tomorrow, and as much as he trusted Bobby the thought of leaving Lizzie and Dean alone with just the old hunter to help and guard him made him feel sick. Yet he obviously needed to go with Ellen, given how far of a drive it was and how long Adam and Jo had been gone by now. Waiting any longer would be a literal waste of time when they could kill two birds with one stone and have Bobby start checking Michigan lore and missing persons reports while they were driving up to gank whatever it was and hopefully get the two young betas back. Ellen gave him a curt nod and headed up the stairs to collect an assortment of weapons from among the things she and Bobby brought with them from Sioux Falls, the collection Bobby insisted they bring being substantial. Sam followed, diverting into the bedroom to see if Dean was even up, as he’d been starting to doze after Sam worked out some of the knots in his back in the shower.

Hannah startled awake with a couple of loud barks as Sam pushed the door open where she was sleeping snugged up against it, Dean wincing behind the barrel of the gun he had trained at the door, having twisted around over his right hip. He grimaced as Sam stepped over the dog, slipping the gun back underneath his pillow before trying to readjust and release some of the pressure he’d just added to his hip and his back.

“Sorry,” he muttered, his face half covered. “Force of habit.”

Sam hummed in response, sitting down behind him and working his fingers into the base of Dean’s spine for a few moments before saying, “We’ve got a lead on where Adam and Jo might have been taken.”

Dean rolled carefully onto his back so he didn’t have to look over his shoulder at the openly concerned alpha who was forced to stop rubbing his back and switched to running a hand through Dean’s hair.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. A national park in Michigan.”

“Michigan? What kind of monster hunts that far across state lines?”

“Dunno, but Bobby’s going to look into it while we’re on the road.”

“You’re leaving _now_?”

“It’s a four hour drive. And it’s been almost three days since they were taken.” The way Dean chewed on his lower lip as the Pyr jumped up and deposited herself at the foot of the bed halfway up Sam’s side had the younger man leaning in for a soft kiss to try to put the omega at ease. “We’re not going to hunt tonight, we just need to get up there.”

“Promise you’re not gonna do anything stupid?”

“No way.” He shot Dean a smirk. “Doing stupid things is your move.”

“Yeah...thinkin’ I’ll try to give up that honor for a while. You’ll be careful, right? Cuz I’ve hit my traumatic event quota for the year so…”

“I’m going to be careful, and I’m going to get Adam back.”

It was such a cheesy matinee idol line that Dean felt compelled to reward him with a hero-going-off-to-war kiss, tangling his fingers into Sam’s dark waves and hauling the alpha down flush against his Ace bandages and globe shaped abdomen. He wasn’t quite as minty fresh as when he’d laid down after the shower but fuck it, there was no telling what Sam and Ellen were going to find up in Michigan and he wanted to make sure the alpha was properly motivated to come back in once piece, so he focused on putting all the feelings he wasn’t particularly comfortable saying out loud into the way he moved his mouth against Sam’s, deep and open and promising the same kind of welcome home kiss when Sam made it back. He didn’t let up until he got a whimper out of the younger man, who looked more than a little dazed as his hazel eyes fluttered open, his lower lip still held gently between Dean’s teeth. Sam was about to dive in for an encore when Ellen knocked on the door asking if he was ready to go, and he sighed deeply, resigned to having to leave Dean behind as he told Hannah to watch the house. The dog groaned in response, like she thought he was silly for presuming she needed to be told how to do her job, and flopped back down on the bed as he threw some clothes in a duffel bag and headed out of the room.

Neither Sam nor Ellen were sure exactly when Michigan joined the Union or who had been running the government when it was admitted as a state, but they both agreed that it must have happened in the summer, as no reasonable collective of people would willingly include what was obviously one of the circles of Hell if they’d been given the grand tour in February. It was possible, of course, that they were being too hard on the place and its undoubtedly fine inhabitants, however they’d just have to revisit that supposition when there hadn’t been an apparent blizzard the day before and a four hour drive in the dark wasn’t taking six and a half hours because of the road conditions. They were still about thirty miles out from the National Forest when Sam gave up an pulled into a motel to get them a room for the night, figuring they could head out again as soon as the sun was up. Bobby had called with an update on the case, having cross-referenced the dates of the missing persons reports Sam pulled against the park’s maintenance records. With the exception of three disappearances that happened in November, all of the reports had been made when the park was for all intents and purposes closed, since most of the internal roads were not maintained from November 30th to April 15th, and some sections of the park had even shorter maintenance windows. It definitely appeared that whatever was there was traveling because their natural food source dwindled when the park closed or was taking advantage of the fact that no one would be around in the winter months. Though it didn’t really help much in narrowing down what they were looking for or why it was taking people from Indiana, it suggested to Bobby that whatever it was might like the thrill of hunting their prey.

Whether it was because of the crappy drive up or the fact that they got into bed late or him being worried about leaving Dean in another state Sam couldn’t be quite sure, but for some reason the idea of going to sleep had him feeling very on edge, like one shoe had dropped when he wasn’t looking and the other one was about to, making him aware of both at once. He carefully emptied the bag of weapons Ellen had packed up to catalogue everything while she crawled into the bed farthest from the door and promptly fell into a dead sleep, grumbling about being too old for this shit, and then took a long, hot shower to warm up when the heater put out only minimal effort to stave off the cold. There was a reason he rarely stayed at stand-alone motels that were just off the side of the highway instead of hanging on to find a chain hotel: because stand-alones typically sucked. He thought of Dean and Adam’s life before they got to school, of Dean’s life on the road after he got kicked out and it made him want to punch something John-shaped. Sam had never really had a home either, but at least what he had was stable and clean, even if he was largely alone without the Winchesters. He couldn’t imagine dragging a couple of kids to these kinds of flea and roach infested places and thinking it was a good idea - not as a way of life. Sure, on a road trip somewhere that went awry, or maybe stopping on the way home from camping with no other real options this was fine, but to purposely subject two small children to that kind of lifestyle seemed the apex of poor parenting.

Eventually he couldn’t put off sleeping any longer, his eyes simply refusing to stay open for him, and climbed into the bed closest to the door to try to catch a couple of hours before he and Ellen finished their trek up to the park. For a while he seemed to have exhausted himself enough that he could slip into a wonderful darkness void of any thought and just drift deeper and deeper while his mind and his body recharged. Then eventually images began to appear like something out of a horror movie, and that was saying something given how close to a horror movie his life routinely was. There was a wall of photographs with men in camouflage beside dead people, holding their heads up by their hair like hunting trophies. A mobile made of pelvic and jaw bones hung from a ceiling, spinning lazily as some kind of old timey piano music echoed in the background from an honest to god Victrola. There was an ashtray that looked like half a human skull. A beaded curtain that turned out not to be beads but finger bones separated a filthy dining room from a filthier kitchen where a man stood with his back to Sam working in a sink, first hacking with a large cleaver and then turning to pick up a bone saw. The sink and counter were covered in blood, and without turning the man took what appeared to be part of a leg out of the sink to toss on the table behind him. It had been stripped of any fur or flesh, so what the leg came from wasn’t readily apparent, but something told Sam it was human. The kitchen gave way to a breakfast nook with an array of weapons: hunting rifles, bows, crossbows, spears with bloody tips, two large axes, the floor where they stood covered in gore and dead flies. Sam could almost smell the house in his dream, the air thick with death, and then he was standing out in the forest, bare feet stuck in the snow as he stared at the back of a tree with the ground fallen half away from its root system and heard Adam say softly, “They can’t hunt us all night.” He felt the loss of sensation in his toes and his fingers, his heart slowing and struggling to pump, seeing his breath ghost out white in front of him, and heard someone shout somewhere behind him, “ _I’m gonna bleed you out slow for shootin’ my brother_!” With a jolt he sat up, the morning light streaming through the window and blinding him as he heard Ellen brushing her teeth in the bathroom, getting ready to head out for the day.

It was _people_ who took Adam and Jo. There was no lore on the monsters up in Michigan because the monsters were people.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My apologies to the people of the great state of Michigan, but I, too, live on a Great Lake and it suuuuucks.


	77. Those Depraved Killers Got Put Down Like the Dogs That They Were

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Meanwhile, up in Michigan...

Adam was stretched out on chaise lounge by the side of the pool, sun beating down and umbrella drink next to him, wishing he’d remembered his sunblock. The Winchester boys had never been ones able to bake in the sun without turning into lobsters, their pale skin and blond hair as incompatible with summer as sardines were with red wine. Dean was supposed to be meeting him soon, though, since he was the one who insisted on taking this vacation, and Dean would absolutely have remembered to bring something with at least an SPF level of 45. Dean had freckles so he burnt even worse than Adam did, which no one who had seen Adam with a sunburn would believe was possible, but it was. When they were younger Dean didn’t care so much about making sure to protect against skin cancer, but ever since he and Sam mated and started having babies he never stepped out of the house without a hat, sunglasses, and sunblock when it wasn’t overcast. Adam often wondered if Sam had ordered Dean to protect himself against the sun, the alpha’s olive skin always sporting a healthy tan and rarely burning, and it really wouldn’t surprise him if that were the case since Sam would protect Dean from anything and everything he could, including lightning strikes and skin cancer if he had his way. Whether it was because Sam ordered him to take care of himself or just because he wanted to take care of himself for Sam, Dean had embraced baseball caps, high SPFs, and Ray-Bans, and any time they were someplace sunny he’d have his trifecta of sun repellent ready before he’d even consider going outside.

“He’s not coming,” Jo said from the chaise beside him, setting her kettle brim hat over her face as she wiggled back onto the bamboo slats, adjusting her swimsuit cover-up against her thighs. Her red two piece with the halter top and boy shorts showed through the gauzy white fabric with fringe at the hem, and she tilted the hat up just enough to look at him and smile. “Enjoying the view?”

“What?” He felt himself blush deeply, hiding behind the Burberrys Sam had shoved at him when they got to the resort, insisting that he was allowed to buy his brother-in-law nice things, especially with how often he babysat the kids for them. “No, I was just…”

“God you’re hilarious,” she cut in with a laugh, reaching for her own drink where it sat on the small table between the two of them, her fingers brushing his. “Dean texted while you were grabbing the drinks. Elliott’s getting another tooth and is pretty miserable. He’s going to try to convince Sam to come down with Lizzie, though, but you know how Sam is. Especially with baby number two on the way.” She raised the hat again and looked over at him. “Or is it number three? The Lizard counts as baby number one, right?”

“Jesus, don’t ever let Dean hear you call her ‘the Lizard,’” Adam told her with a snort. “He’ll totally latch onto that and she’ll be Lizard until she gets mated. Maybe _after_ she gets mated. Elliott’s already stuck with ‘Alien.’ That kid’s gonna need therapy.” She laughed, high and bright, and he smiled as he picked up his drink. “And yes, the Lizard counts as baby number one.”

“Christ, who would’ve thought Mr. Badass Hunter Dean Winchester was going to find a mate and start popping out kids like a Pez dispenser?” she asked, and he almost fell off his chaise, setting his drink down before he spilled it as he erupted into giggles. She giggled right along with him, taking a sip of her daiquiri. “Well he is! His first heat after Elliott and he’s already knocked up.”

“He does seem to be the poster child for omega fertility,” Adam agreed, and she gave a thoughtful nod of her head.

“I’ll tell you though,” she decided, “I’d retire from the life and start popping out kids, too, if I had a mate who brought me places like this.”

“Good luck with that,” he said as he got himself under control and picked his drink back up. “Sam is in a _very_ exclusive income bracket.” He took a sip and stopped, feeling heat in his face and chest even as his limbs went cold. “This is non-alcoholic, right?”

“Hmm?”

He took another sip but it tasted funny and made him feel even more strange, his nose and ears starting to feel chilled as well even as the sun beat down on him.

“This is supposed to be an aguas frescas, but it tastes more like sangria.”

She raised the hat to look at him and shrug, her face white with splotchy red spots and lips so blue they were almost purple.

“How should I know? You’re the one who went to get the drinks.”

Adam was very confused and took a third sip, really feeling the chill all the way into his bones. When he turned to look at the pool it was frozen over and everyone around them was wearing heavy winter clothing. He twisted in his chaise to Jo, who was suddenly sharing his space and shivering in her bikini and cover-up.

“Did you…” He was having a hard time talking, he was so cold, his blood feeling like maple syrup congealing in his veins. “Did you say D...Dean wasn’t coming?”

“Y...yes…” Her teeth were chattering so hard she couldn’t really speak either. “B...but S...Sam might c...come…”

Jo was shaking so hard he could feel it rattling his ribcage and he slung his leg over her, wrapping her up against his bare chest the best he could and rubbing his hands up and down her back to try to warm her up. He looked around for his beach towel to at least throw over them, since he was only in a pair of swim trunks, but couldn’t find it anywhere.

“W...we should g...go,” he suggested, pain shooting through his fingertips like thousands of needles trying to rip out of his skin all at once. “It’s too c...cold h...here. H...hypo...therm...mia…”

“My l...legs won’t move…” she slurred, her breath warm against his neck. “I want my m...mom…”

Adam snapped awake to the sun’s rays beating down on his face, feeling like his limbs were encased in ice, and immediately reached to shake Jo as she slept on his chest, her face halfway down to his stomach under her coat. She didn’t want to wake at first, moaning in response to his hands on her shoulders, and he clasped a hand over her mouth to stop her from making noise as he remembered the two men hunting them. Though it was likely only one man now - Adam had gotten one of them square in the leg last night. Of course it was possible there were other people in that house they saw. They should try to make their way back there, see if there was another car they didn’t spot that maybe they could hotwire. There had to be a running vehicle somewhere. These freaks didn’t walk them to the property, wherever it was.

When Jo finally stirred he thought better of that plan. She was in far worse shape than he was, and he wasn’t faring well. He couldn’t feel his toes and most of his feet, his fingertips were bright red since he’d lost his gloves somewhere while they ran, and his back was so stiff from sleeping on the cold ground that he felt like he was never going to be able to straighten up. Jo’s nose was bright red, her hands were bright red, the tips of her ears were starting to shift from red to a darker, more dangerous color, her pulse rate was slow and weak, and she couldn’t speak without slurring. It had been a mistake coming out here last night, that was literally painfully clear. It would have been better if they’d taken their chances in the barn, but they had no way of knowing there would be this much snow. They needed to find proper shelter, or at least find somewhere better hidden that they could start a fire. Perhaps there was a cave nearby that they could hide away in until they had some idea of whether or not they were still being pursued. Whatever they did, they needed to do it fast, and they needed to cover their tracks in the snow, before Jo got so bad she couldn’t move. He got her back into her coat, slinging the bow across his back, sliding the arrows back into the makeshift quiver with fingers that screamed at him to stop, gripping the axe in one hand and holding Jo against him with the other to limp out from underneath the half-uprooted tree they’d sheltered under for the night.

Jo was in considerable pain, mumbling about her feet, but she was determined to keep up with him as he assessed the area looking for the men from the night before. He could see now that they were in the middle of a forest that went on for as far as he could see, and they must have gone quite a distance from the house. Even with most of the leaves down for the season the sun didn’t have much of a chance of breaking through the pine trees any more than it already had and there was nothing in sight but more trees. Taking a few seconds to get their bearings and see what direction they’d come from then gauge that against the sun ( _they’d come from the east_ ), he decided to head to the south and see if they could find anything, having Jo drag a tree branch behind them to obscure their footsteps. He might just be making their situation worse by moving them around instead of staying put, but wherever they were was much colder and snowier than Indiana, so they really didn’t have much of a choice in staying where they were or looking for better shelter. Obviously by now Dean and Sam would know they were gone, but the terrain was so different they couldn’t possibly be near Fort Wayne anymore, and that meant they couldn’t count on anyone to come looking for them. They didn’t even have cell phones to try to call for help, though given their current location in the middle of the woods he doubted they’d get a signal anyway.

“A...are we gonna d...die out here?” Jo asked after they’d been moving for about fifteen minutes, struggling to keep her hold on the branch with hands she could barely feel, and even then all she could feel was white hot pain.

“No,” he told her firmly. “No, we’re g...going to find somewhere and get w...warmed up and f...figure it out from there once I’m sure n...neither of us are g...going to lose any toes.”

She snorted, struggling to breathe evenly so he wouldn’t think she needed him to stop.

“You s...sure know h...how to show a g...girl a g...good time.”

It took them two hours, though it felt like two weeks, until finally the trees began to clear and they found themselves through blind luck at what appeared to be some sort of campground. There was a small playground, about thirty empty sites with electric and water hookups, and a central building that housed bathrooms and showers. The betas could have wept with joy at the site of it, and Jo did weep when they discovered the padlocks on the doors and couldn’t readily find something to pick them with, though she wasn’t actually able to produce any tears. It was so hard to breathe and she was in so much pain and she didn’t want to freeze to death on a campground in the middle of god-knows-where but it would be so much easier if she just laid down and went to sleep. It was a full five minutes of Adam searching the area for anything metal they could use on the lock before Jo realized she had a bobby pin in her hair, which she couldn’t even remove because of how unusable her fingers were, and Adam really almost kissed her before going to work on the lock on the far side of the bathrooms. He got Jo in and then took the axe to get some kindling and wood, instructing her to pop open a couple of windows if she could so they wouldn’t die of carbon monoxide from having a fire inside.

By the time he got back she’d managed to get two of the small windows in the shower area open but it had exhausted her and he found her huddled on the floor trying to crawl farther into her coat. The bathroom was only slightly warmer than the outdoors, feeling like the inside of a walk-in refrigerator, and the open windows weren’t helping the temperature any. Despite being freezing himself he took his jacket off to lay it over her like a blanket before getting to work on the fire, for the first time in his life thanking anything and everything that would listen that he’d gone to Actaeon and survival skills had been a core part of his coursework since the sixth grade - like the Boy Scouts on steroids. They couldn’t have been luckier in the weapons they’d found in the barn and brought with them, even if notching the main log to start the fire using friction wasn’t the easiest task in the world without having a knife handy, and it killed him to dismantle the bow in order to make a drill, knowing he probably wouldn’t be able to restring it afterwards. Still, they had the axe and there was only one entrance to defend against crazed rednecks if it came down to it. If those lunatics tracked them down and decided to bring spears to an axe fight, Adam and Jo would be in good shape. At the moment getting the both of them warm and drying out their wet clothes was the important thing, otherwise they’d never have the strength to follow the trail leading to the campground out to a main road, and they might not literally have feet to stumble on if they lost their toes to frostbite.

It took a painfully long time for the fire to start by twisting a sharpened stick back and forth in the notch as quickly as possible, but without the bow it would have taken much longer so at least that was something. Jo was barely conscious by the time Adam really got the fire built and hauled her over against him, shucking them both out of their pants, which were practically soaked from sleeping in the snow overnight, and getting her coat off to throw over them again while they used his coat as a barrier between them and the tile floor. He babbled about anything that came to his mind just to try to keep Jo awake, promising her they were going to make it out of wherever they were, occasionally earning a quiet hum of agreement from her but nothing more. They were probably going to kill themselves through smoke inhalation, but hopefully they’d at least die warm.

Ellen didn’t understand why Sam suddenly thought Adam and Jo had been taken by regular people, or why Bobby seemed to trust his instincts, but it was Sam’s ride and Sam’s dollar so she didn’t have much choice but to go along as they drove to the nearest town to interview the locals and pick up an area map. As eager as she was to find her daughter she had to admit there was sense in getting the lay of the land and seeing if anyone had a strange tale to tell that would help them pinpoint what this thing was, since she certainly didn’t think it was human. They didn’t get a lot of help in terms of unusual stories or odd disappearances, but they did find out that a section of wood was privately owned by multiple people and butted right up against the edge of the park, with markers to indicate where any hikers were entering or exiting private property. There were a dozen or so houses scattered throughout that typically had their own access roads, which wouldn’t be on any maps as anything other than a line off of the main north-south route on the east side of the park. It was hard to argue the usefulness of that information, regardless of whether they were hunting humans or some kind of creature.

The plan was simple. Sam would approach each of the houses under the pretense of having lost his dog, Ellen posing as his mother who let her out accidentally and just felt _awful_ about it. He’d snapped a couple of pictures of Dean and Hannah after they got the new sectional, which she seemed to think they’d gotten just for her, so it would be an easy lie to sell. They started at the last traffic cam to pick up Dean’s truck and turned north on the main road edging the forest, pulling off at each of the access roads they spotted on their way. The roads were still in pretty bad condition, the state plows not having made it out that way yet since the area wasn’t heavily trafficked this time of year, and that made for slow going. Ellen was doing her best to keep track of which side road they’d turned off on the map but none of them had names so it wasn’t the easiest thing on the planet, plus it started to snow around noon and that made visibility poor, and not all of the side roads were plowed out. Determining what was and was not an access road was turning out to be a mystery in and of itself.

After a long day of bumping down driveways and knocking on doors, chatting with people about his missing Pyr and how much she meant to his mate who, yes, was very pretty and yes, was carrying and couldn’t help look for her himself, they’d come up with exactly nothing and both were beyond frustrated, when they passed what looked like it might be an access road that they hadn’t been down before. They’d missed it driving north, since it was on the other side of the road, but by the time they had turned around to head back south the wind had changed direction and suddenly there it was. It looked like it hadn’t been driven down in several days, faint tire impressions all that remained in the drifting snow to indicate it was something that could - and had - been driven down. Sam hung a right, apologizing to his suspension for what he was putting it through, and after about fifty yards Ellen told him to stop, looking off through the trees down a side road that was narrower and looked like some kind of trail meant for farm equipment instead of a proper driveway. With a nod Sam got her meaning and pulled off to head down it and see what they could see. Already this property felt different from the others they’d visited so far; wrong somehow.

It became clear just how wrong it was when they started spotting the vehicles in the clearing in the fading afternoon light. There were dozens of them, all makes and models, some barely more than rusted out husks, many of them very, very old. The ground in the clearing was filled with ruts, the snow several inches deep, the whole field far too messy to try navigating even with the Escalade’s four wheel drive. Sam parked and reached into the back to haul the duffel with the weapons into the front seat, grabbing a sawed off shotgun for himself while Ellen took two handguns, tucking one into the back of her waistband before climbing out, the alpha mirroring her on the other side of the truck.

Sam kept his eye on the treeline while Ellen was sweeping under the vehicles as best she could under the circumstances. There were no footprints into or out of the area, so no one had been here in the last day or so at least. Ellen was checking around a black Mustang that was about ten years old when Sam started for the far end of the field, quickening his pace and glancing around fervently as he went.

“What is it?” she called, catching sight of the bed of a black truck half hidden by a camper. Sam was in the process of cleaning off the windows with his coat sleeve when she caught up with him, both hands on her pistol to keep it at the ready. “Sam?”

“It’s Dean’s truck.”

He was already fishing into his pocket after peeking through the back door, spinning through his keys to find the spare.

“You’re sure?”

“That’s Lizzie’s car seat in the back.” A humorless chuckle escaped his throat as he looked at the tiny stuffed cheetah sitting there. “We’ve been looking for Spotter.” He got the car unlocked and reached into the back to grab it and stuff it inside his jacket pocket, then handed the key to her. “I’m going to keep heading up to the house. Take the truck and see if there’s anything nearby in the park. Like maybe a ranger’s station.”

“We should stick together, Sam,” she objected as he headed back towards his truck. “They could be up at the house.”

“They’re not. They were in the woods not that long ago.”

“How can you possibly know what?”

The tone of her voice stopped him, despite his sudden, pressing need to get up to the house and to get there alone. He had no idea why he felt that way, but it was almost like there was a rope tied around his waist and it was actively pulling him back to his truck and up the driveway. Whatever it was hammered in his head that Ellen must not come with him, that Jo and Adam weren’t there, that he had to send her off somewhere else. The betas were in some kind of enclosed space away from where they were right now, and whatever was waiting for him here was waiting _only_ for him. If Ellen came with him it would kill her.

“I know things sometimes,” he said at last, looking at her only briefly before continuing back to his truck. “And I know they’re not in this area anymore. I have to go see what’s there, and you need to check the park. The ranger’s station, campgrounds, anywhere that’s got a building.”

“How…”

“I just know!”

He stopped by the Escalade, turning to her imploringly. Short of tying her up or knocking her out there wasn’t any way for him to convince her to not come with him unless he got into his demon blood issues and Christ did he not want to do that when they’d just brought Bobby into the whole sordid mess that they’d been trying so hard to keep under wraps. The more people who knew about it the more they would be in danger, and if Ellen knew then Jo would undoubtedly end up knowing, and with the way Jo felt about him lately he might as well take out a billboard announcing open season on him to the FDH. She stared at him for a long time with her jaw set in a firm line, seeming to peer straight into his soul, and he sighed.

“I just know,” he repeated, climbing into the driver’s seat and backing down the track to the access road proper as she watched him pull away but didn’t try to follow.

He still hadn’t reached the end of the driveway when he saw an area where he could pull off and leave the truck, deciding not to drive right up and announce his arrival when he didn’t know exactly what he was dealing with. He opted for his Taurus instead of the sawed off this time, as it would be easier to move with in the snow that was up past his ankles. The bottom of his jeans were soaked and his feet were starting to get very cold by the time the trees opened up to a large field with a ramshackle house sitting a ways off, past a windmill that spun lazily but didn’t appear to be functional at all. Even from a distance the house was clearly huge, a wide porch wrapping all the way around both levels, the grey roof in need of repair and the dingy windows shuttered. To the left was a barn that had also seen better days and an enclosure that must have housed livestock at some point - goats or pigs or something small. It wasn’t tall enough for cattle and there didn’t appear to be any barbed or electrified wire. Several automobiles in clear disrepair dotted the property, though he didn’t see any signs of life.

The open fields weren’t going to provide him much cover on his way up to the house, but he did his best not to be so completely obvious as he headed past the porch and over to the barn to check it out first since the door was ajar. He wasn’t too surprised to find it empty, but the three cages were definitely a shock, especially how sophisticated they seemed to be when everything else on the property was so badly rundown. The thing that was pulling him wasn’t interested in the barn anyway, urging him towards the house with a growing, pulsing heat pressing from his navel back to the base of his spine like a white-hot iron rod. It was impossible to resist, fogging his mind with frightened, whispered voices, like he was hearing everyone who had ever been held in these cages at once, overlapping and crushing him until his only option was to run towards the house to escape it. The icy afternoon air brought him somewhat back to his senses, the whispers dying away, but it was a few moments before he felt focused enough to continue to the back of the porch to find a way in and confront whatever was drawing him there.

A side door was unlocked, the one that led to the driveway, and he let himself into the dark, dust-filled interior, hearing the Victrola that had played in his dream the night before. The door opened into a hallway that was jammed full or random, rotting junk, and as he stepped carefully over it while praying there were no loose floorboards to be stepped on he could hear talking coming from the front of the house. Two men, arguing that “Lee” was off cleaning up the mess “Jared” made, and that “Pa” didn’t understand - the boy had been a crack shot with that busted up bow. Pa told Jared he’d better hope to god his leg didn’t end up infected or they were sawing it off and then he’d never be able to hunt again, and just as Sam was coming around the corner at the end of the hall a voice behind him said, “Hello Sam.”

The alpha whipped around, gun trained, to find a little girl standing at the end of the hall behind him, her hair a matted mess, dark grey dress filthy, skin looking like she hadn’t bathed in months at least. It was a mistake, he knew that as soon as he heard the men coming up behind him, turning back as a man with a grey beard, equally filthy clothes, teeth yellowed and rotting out was charging at him, a younger, dark haired man dressed much the same limping behind on a makeshift crutch. The smell of these two alphas was overpowering, urine and sweat and decay masking their underlying scents of dirt, seaweed, and frankincense.

“Good work Missy,” the younger man - Jared - said with a smile that showed more disgusting teeth as the older man - Pa - tackled Sam to the floor.

There was no way the old alpha could have known what a mistake that was, but after only a few moments of grappling for the gun Sam got a hand on a small tea table against the wall and brought it and its contents crashing down on the man’s back. It wasn’t enough to hurt him, just to stun him while Sam got a hand free and grabbed his throat, squeezing and lifting him up so the fingers fumbling for Sam’s revolver weakened. Pa gave up trying to get the gun with both hands and clawed at Sam’s fingertips with one, giving Sam free range to bring the gun up and put two bullets in his center mass. The whole fight was over in less than a minute and Sam was only winded from the initial tackle.

Jared was after him next, swinging wildly with the crutch even though his hobbled leg wasn’t going to do much to support him, catching Sam in the forearm that he threw into the air to block the hit coming for his head. The wood cracked against his arm but it was easy enough for him to twist his hand around it and pull it away from Jared entirely. Jared stumbled as Sam raised the gun and warned, “Don’t,” but before he could do anything the man’s head twisted sharply to the side with a sickening snap and he crumpled to the ground in a heap. Sam was aiming the gun back down the hall at the little girl a fraction of a second later before being thrown into the fireplace mantel on the far side of the room at the end of the hall. Unlike the hit from Pa this really took his breath away, a burst of pain rocketing around his ribcage and constricting his lungs as he bounced off and landed face first on the grimy carpet.

“Sam, Sam, Sam,” the little girl said, slowly stalking him down the hallway as she ran her fingers along the wall. “What _do_ I have to do to get you to pay attention to me?”

“Ruby?” he gasped as he struggled to get to his hands and knees.

“Nope.” Her eyes flicked over to yellow and she grinned, dark and wolfish. “Guess again.”

“Azazel.”

“Bingo! You didn’t like my daughter, and you didn’t like my son, so I thought I’d try out a look that was a little more...well, little.” Sam felt himself being dragged up by his shoulders and slid across the floor until he was deposited in a green velvet chair so old and broken he was surprised it held his weight; a marionette at the mercy of his strings and the puppetmaster in front of him. The yellow eyes were trained on him, looking him over appreciatively, and everything in the room seemed to grow darker until those eyes were all Sam could see. “Thanks for the lead on who gave you the knife you used to kill my daughter. Ruby always was a little bitch of a lapdog for Lilith. I should have known it was her.”

“What do you want?”

“Oh Sammy. You know what I want.” The delicate fingers of a little girl trailed down the side of his face, the smell of sulfur so thick it nearly made him choke. “You, by my side in the war that’s coming.”

“That’s not happening,” Sam snapped, jerking his head away from the hand of the meatsuit Azazel was wearing. “Not after what you did to Jess, what you did to Dean’s mom…”

“Ah, yes, Dean.” Missy-wearing-Azazel took a step back and appeared lost in thought for a moment. “I underestimated that, for sure. Thought pretty little Jess was the one for you, that getting her out of the way would be enough to make you want to burn down the world hunting me and then, well, you’d have a nice inky black soul by the time you found me. In my defense, I _am_ a demon and don’t really understand the concept of true mates or whatever it is you think you have with your pretty little omega.”

“Don’t you talk about Dean.”

“I’ll talk about whatever I damn well please.” There was no malice in the demon’s voice, more amusement at Sam’s misguided belief that he had any power in this situation. “Dean was a wild card I didn’t really anticipate. That and you shooting one past the goalie and going all domestic. Though I do understand family - having children myself. Well, child, since you killed my little girl.” Azazel was back in his face, sitting astride his lap and grabbing a fistful of his shirt. “I’m thinking maybe I’ll kill your little girl just so you know how it feels. What do you say?”

Sam didn’t say anything - couldn’t say anything around the wave of rage that swelled up from his toes and flooded through his body, the room going red as he tore free from the chair and tossed the demon into the wall one handed. The child Azazel was possessing hit with a horrifying “thunk” all the way from her toes to her head, and Sam was fairly certain that if she’d been alive when Azazel took over she probably wasn’t now. It took a moment before she was back on her feet, laughing at him and actually applauding as Sam balled his hands into fists, the fury continuing to swirl around his brain until the edges of his vision were black and all he could see was the red tinged Prince of Hell in front of him.

“ _That’s_ my boy,” the demon said appreciatively, taking in the full length of Sam’s height. “That kind of fighting spirit is exactly what I like to see. No holding back just because I’m walking around in a twelve year old - go in straight for the kill.”

“If you come anywhere near my family I swear to god…”

“God? God’s got nothing to do with what’s going on between you and me, Sammy. God’s gone fishing and he ain’t comin’ home anytime soon.” He tipped his head to the side and smiled again, a wide grin that made Sam feel sick just looking at it. “But that’s enough for now. I didn’t really come here to hash anything out, we have plenty of time for that. I just thought it was time we met face to face somewhere nice and quiet with no distractions. I’ll be seeing you around, though. Don’t you worry.”

Before Sam could move the girl’s head flung back and a long column of black smoke poured out of her, shooting for the ceiling before vanishing into the floor. Her body collapsed like a pile of wet rags, blood immediately beginning to pool beneath her head where the hit to the wall had cracked her skull open. Sam wanted to feel bad about that, to scream and cry at just having killed a child, but the darkness inside him was still churning, still overflowing with ire at the thought of Azazel coming for Dean or Elliott or Lizzie. Besides, he had three dead bodies he needed to take care of, and there was a fourth member of this sick family - Lee - still somewhere out in the wind. Though honestly that didn’t worry him too much. Whatever these people had been doing, however long they had been hunting he didn’t think it was the kind of operation one person could do alone. In the end he torched the house and the barn, leaving the trophy photographs and some of the trinkets made of human bone sitting inside one of the cars on the property just in case anyone ever came looking and wondered what the hell had happened, then hurried back to the Escalade to leave the encounter with whoever these people were behind him.

His phone buzzed with a call from Ellen while he was starting up the truck and he answered to hear her no-nonsense voice telling him she’d found Jo and Adam in a campground bathroom, but they needed him to get there as soon as he could because some sick fuck had followed them through the woods with a rifle and now they had a body with an axe sticking up out of it courtesy of Adam that they needed to take care of and sure could use a hand. Sam told her briefly about the family he’d encountered that were clearly related to the dead guy since he’d overheard them talking about Lee being out cleaning up the mess. He didn’t tell her there was a little girl on the property, just that there was a father and two other children and he hadn’t had a choice but to shoot them trying to get away. She bought it easily enough, undoubtedly because she was in the proximity of a crazed hillbilly with a gaping stomach wound who was almost certainly as disgusting as the rest of the family. He could hear Jo crying in the background while Adam tried to calm her down, though he honestly didn’t sound much better, and headed officially into the park to find them. Sam knew the victims of this family deserved better, that the people who were missing them deserved closure even as he was figuring out where they could burn Lee on this godforsaken farm that wouldn’t be right out in the open, settling on the padlocked freestanding garage that he hadn’t been in. He prayed there were no cameras up on the campground or they could quickly find themselves on the state’s radar and with his grandfather no longer in a powerful position with the FDH it would be hard to make this go away if anyone caught them. After everything they’d been through today he very much did not want to end up sitting in a jail cell, not when he’d finally met old yellow eyes and was four completely unacceptable hours from Dean.  


	78. What Are the Odds that This Ends Well?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John's A+ parenting in spades.

Bobby had to hand it to Dean. Even though he hadn’t managed to graduate from high school, he certainly was giving it the old college try when it came to keeping himself together with Sam the next state over, his brother missing, and his father in the wind. He was moving better than he had the day before and wasn’t quite as tense as he’d been on Thursday, when his grand solution to how helpless he was feeling had been to go across the street and then almost take a header on the way back to the house, but as the day progressed and they didn’t hear from Ellen and Sam he could see the cracks starting to form. The omega tried to act like he was fine, imagining the beta would somehow have forgotten those months he’d spent taking care of the young man when he first found out he was carrying and remembered Shreveport back-to-back. He’d improved so much since Sam had come back into the picture just by having a sense of security and stability despite the boatloads of crap that had been heaped on him after they got back from Chicago, and why wouldn’t he? It was the first time since Millie died that Dean had someone to depend on no matter what. It made the old hunter worry even more about Sam’s demon blood problem and what exactly would happen if he couldn’t keep it under control. As much as Dean liked to pretend he was an island unto himself, he needed Sam, and now that he’d lived with the sense of safety an alpha could provide it’d be very hard for him to go back to the life he had before.

Bobby had done everything he could to make his boy feel like he had a home to come to whenever he wanted, and Adam had tried his best to convince his brother he would one day provide him with someplace he could feel safe, but no beta was ever going to be able to give an omega the permanence Sam did; the kind of permanence John had denied his son for years. So of course it had only taken about twelve hours from the time Sam left for Dean to start reverting back to the version of himself that needed to count to thirty-five before opening a door, or attacking store managers who just wanted to clean up toilet paper displays because he perceived them as a threat. He didn’t fall all the way back into that constant state of near panic, but his anxiety as he tried to find ways to distract himself while they waited by the phone was palpable, particularly when there was so little he was allowed to actually do now. When the doctor called with an MRI time and he realized he was going to need to reschedule because they didn’t have a car seat for Lizzie in the Impala he just about had a breakdown, and Bobby had to pull every soothing trick he’d learned out of the depths of his memory banks to avert it.

It was therefore a surprising relief when there was a knock on the door around twelve thirty in the afternoon and none other than John Winchester was standing on the stoop. Bobby and Dean were in the kitchen cleaning up from lunch when Hannah made a beeline for the living room, barking her head off, and by the time Bobby made it out to the foyer John was already knocking. Dean limped out shortly after as Bobby was restraining the dog to make sure she wasn't going to go running, hesitating in the dining room entryway until a glance at the driveway revealed John’s truck. His forebrain wanted to be really pissed off at how his father had just left him in the hospital before he even woke up, but his omega was so pleased to have an alpha he knew on his doorstep that he almost strained something else making his way to the door to throw it open.

“Dad!” he exclaimed, trying unsuccessfully to hide his elation as his dad moved past him into the house, duffel swung over his shoulder and eyes scanning the room for signs of a threat. John was still wearing blockers but even with them his scent was raw and irritated, the slightest hint of fear underlying it. “What are you…”

“I got your message,” his father said, stopping as he closed the door to examine Dean for signs of injury. “Where did you run into him?”

“At the doctor’s office,” Dean told him, watching his father moving quickly down the downstairs hall to sweep the first floor of the house. “Dad…”

“Are you alone?” John demanded as he came back into the foyer to continue with the rest of the floor.

“Hardly,” Bobby grumbled from where he had the dog on the couch, and John stopped to register him.

The look on John’s face spoke of something deeply wrong, his eyes frantic and his hair wild. Now that he was standing still it looked like he hadn’t slept in days. That he clearly hadn’t noticed Bobby was even in the room was frightening, and he blinked as if clearing his vision.

“Bobby,” he finally stated, his voice changing from his typical confidence to something that sounded much more uncertain. “What are you doing here?”

“Well, hello to you too, John,” the beta groused.

“He’s helping me, Dad,” Dean said, limping his way over to the family room.

John realized Dean was having trouble moving with a full body flinch, dropping the duffel to the floor as he hurried back across the room to his eldest child to look him over again.

“What’s going on?” he demanded, his concern palpable and disconcerting. “Why are you hurt? Where are Adam and Sam?”

“Adam’s missing,” Dean told him. “Sam’s looking for him.”

“ _Missing_?”

“Something grabbed him a couple of days ago,” Bobby explained. “We got a lead on him and Sam went to check it out.”

“Shit.” John ran a shaking hand through his hair, which seemed to have gone much greyer since Dean saw him last a few weeks ago. “Shit.”

“Dad…” Dean placed a hand on his father’s shoulder and the eldest Winchester practically jumped out of his skin. “Jesus, Dad! When’s the last time you slept?”

“I don’t sleep, Dean,” John replied thickly. “I can’t. Not when things are starting.”

“Things?”

His father grabbed him by both shoulders and shook him so roughly Dean froze, swallowing the frightened whimper that wanted to force its way out. Hannah, who had settled down to low, threatening growls, exploded into angry barks and Bobby had a hard time holding her back. After a few seconds John realized he was scaring his son and ran his hands down Dean’s face and shoulders, missing the way the omega winced when his father pressed against the scar on his left side.

“When is Sam coming back?” John asked at last, struggling to keep his voice calm. “Do you know? I need you to be safe.”

“I don’t…”

“Adam’s _missing_ , John,” Bobby repeated, which got the alpha to loosen his grip on Dean’s arms. “Why don’t I take you upstairs so you can lay down, and once you’ve gotten some sleep we can talk this out?”

“I can’t…” John was swaying on his feet, the adrenaline that had been driving him finally starting to dissipate. “I can’t sleep, Bobby.”

“The house is warded,” Dean explained as calmly as he could. “Benny...he had the place built and he had them etch sigils into the supports. There’s salt laid in the foundation. You can sleep for a while and then we’ll talk.”

“Benny…” John relaxed, his limbs starting to grow slack as his eyelids grew heavy. “Benny was a good friend to you. I’m sorry you lost him.”

“Yeah, Dad.” Dean swallowed thickly, steering his father to the couch with faltering steps as Bobby pulled Hannah away. “Yeah he was.”

“Caleb and Pastor Jim are dead,” John slurred before collapsing onto the sectional and passing out. Bobby wasn’t so sure he was relieved anymore that John had been at the door.

The alpha slept until dinner time, which wasn’t nearly long enough judging by the bags under his eyes and the way his hands trembled when he woke to Hannah barking at the neighbors across the street. He reached under the pillow on the couch on instinct for a gun or a knife that wasn’t there, jumping half out of his skin when he realized a large dog was laying on his feet like he was invading her territory, then jumping out of the other half when he heard a baby shriek and turned to discover his son with an infant on the floor. He glanced around, taking in the room properly, then chanced a look out the front windows before reaching up to yank the curtains closed. The smell of lasagna and garlic bread was wafting out from the kitchen as John sat, pulling his feet out from under the disgruntled dog who jumped down and then right back up, and watched Dean as he played with Lizzie on the other side of the coffee table.

“Thought you were gonna sleep all night,” Dean said without turning to look at him, too wrapped up in bicycling Lizzie’s little legs. His right leg was stretched out to the side of him, and he seemed to be trying to work out a kink in his hip. “You look like you need it.”

“It’s been a long couple of weeks,” John told him, his eyes burning with indignation at being used when all they wanted to do was hide behind his eyelids for a while longer. “You said Adam was missing?”

“Yeah, he was. Sam called a little while ago. Found him up in Michigan. They were getting him checked into the hospital for exposure.”

“Is he okay?”

“Dunno. Sam’s gonna stay until he gets settled and then head back. I guess he ran into some of Ed Gein’s extended family or somethin’.” John ran a shaking hand through his hair as his eldest child watched him carefully. “Are _you_ okay, Dad? You said Pastor Jim and Caleb were dead…”

“Demon got ‘em.” His breath rattled uncomfortably as he exhaled, tipping his head back against the pillows. “It was trying to get to me. Thought it could draw me out. It’s why I came when I got your message about Crowley. You can’t trust him, Dean.”

The spike in omega aggravation had the alpha looking up immediately into very angry green eyes as Dean carefully rolled Lizzie over onto her tummy and turned her to face towards him instead of away. His welcoming demeanor from earlier in the day twisted into defiance, too much stress having been added to his plate despite knowing Adam was safe for him to keep it together in the face of his father's doubts about his ability to assess a threat.

“You think I trust him?” Dean scoffed, still staring at his father as he held his fingers out for Lizzie to grab onto and pull. “Jesus, you really do think I’m stupid, don’t you? Just a stupid omega all hopped up on hormones and useless without an alpha to turn to, is that it?”

“I didn’t say that, Dean.”

“You didn’t have to.” He turned his full attention back to the burbling little girl, wishing he could just get up and storm off. Bobby had looked up some stretches he could do to help his hip, and he really regretting trying them out while the beta was working on dinner. “I’ve spent most of my life tryin’ to prove to you that I know what I’m doin’, that I can handle myself, and you just can’t see me as anything other than a weak little om.”

“That’s not true.”

“It’s _not_? Then why the special trip? You never just stop by to see me, Dad. You always come when you think I can't handle somethin’. If you really thought I wasn’t a fuckin’ moron you could’ve just called. It’s not like my number has changed.” Lizzie let out a happy little screech, Hannah wufed and went to check on her, and Dean told her, “You are not allowed to say fuckin’ moron or tell Sam I said fuckin’. It’s not a nice word and I’m already goin’ broke with your swear jar.”

John sighed in frustration, too tired to try to figure out how this conversation had gone off the rails so quickly. He just wanted to check on his sons and make sure they had all their fingers and toes, not get into an argument with Dean about his designation and how John did or did not view him. He shouldn’t have contacted Crowley after he found out what Sam’s cousins had done to Dean. He shouldn’t have left him at Bobby’s, or locked himself into finding Azazel as his top and only priority. After running from a hellhound for almost two months it was becoming clear to him this was one hunt he wouldn’t likely survive, and if he didn’t he would have wasted all this time he could have been there for Dean and the grandchild he was resigned to never meeting. It was clear when he’d left Dean in the hospital here that things between John and Adam were beyond salvageable, and the last thing he wanted was to fight with the only son who would talk to him.

“You’re good with her,” John said after a while, smiling softly at the sight of his boy with a baby. He reminded John so much of Millie it physically hurt.

“I’d hope so,” Dean shot back, a growl humming in his chest. “I’ve been takin’ care of babies since I was six and three quarters.”

The specificity drew a laugh out of his father, who smiled as he echoed, “Six and three quarters?”

Dean threw a sneer over his shoulder at John before turning his attention back to Lizzie.

“Those extra three quarters of a year matter when it’s the end of your childhood, Dad.”

Well damn. John definitely wasn’t expecting that sucker punch out of his oldest. Adam, yes - he expected all kinds of shit from Adam, deserved it even after he’d simply taken the boy from his mother and never looked back, though after Windom he sure wasn’t going to apologize for it anymore. A living son who hated him was better in any universe than a dead son who loved him. Dean though...Sure, they’d butted heads the last couple of years, but to have the mistakes John made as a father just laid out like that was hard to stomach.

“You know I never wanted this life for you, Dean,” he said after his eyes stopped stinging.

“What, you mean a dog and a house and a couple of kids?” Dean quipped. “Cuz if that’s the case, you’re a little late to stop it. I mean, really...” He half turned to his father and patted his abdomen where Elliott was pounding on him. “That ship has sailed.”

“Lasagna’s on,” Bobby announced, drying his hands on the “Kiss the Cook” apron tied around his waist before John could push past Dean’s deflection. “And you’d better clean your plates. That stuff’s a bitch to make. You want us to try gettin’ you up off the floor princess, or should I bring you a plate in here?”

“I have to get up or my hip’s gonna lock on me,” Dean replied, extending an arm up to the beta and planting his other hand on the coffee table. “And Lizzie needs a bottle and a change before we eat.”

“Well, Grandpa there can take care of it,” Bobby said with a nod towards John as he got the omega very shakily to his feet. “I’m sure he’s out of practice so it’ll do him good.”

“What’s wrong with your hip?” John asked, not moving from where he was on the couch and making it clear just through his posture that he didn’t intend to until someone gave him an answer he found sufficient. He remembered now that Dean hadn’t been moving well when he got there, but John really wasn’t alert enough at that point to truly absorb the information.

“He fell comin’ back from across the street,” Bobby told him frankly, and Dean hissed as his back spasmed briefly. “Even though the doc put him on bed rest after that damn Campbell kid nearly killed him…”

“Bed rest?” John echoed, shooting to his feet.

“Bobby…” the omega ground out between his teeth.

“What?” The old hunter raised a challenging eyebrow at him. “I said I wouldn’t tell Sam. Last I checked, your dad wasn’t Sam.”

“What were you doing across the street?” John demanded, glowering at his son, who glared back at him defiantly.

Well, at least having John here to fight with seemed to be pulling Dean out of his funk, Bobby thought, and decided to poke the bear.

“He was checking out the creepy neighbors that live in the house across the way.”

“Bobby!”

“Creepy neighbors?”

“They keep bringin’ over baked goods and inviting Jo to join their book club,” Bobby replied easily, getting a swat on the arm from Dean.

“Jo...Harvelle?” John guessed, not knowing any other Jo.

“She’s been stayin’ here for a bit,” Bobby explained. “Got nabbed with Adam by those freaks who like huntin’ long pig. The neighbors have been real interested in her apparently.”

“What do you know about them?”

“The neighbors or the Michigan cannibals?”

“The neighbors. I’m presuming Sam already took care of the cannibals.”

“That he did.” Bobby scratched his beard and decided just how much more he wanted to rile John. Dean was pretty exasperated already, but the beta just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to make damn sure the omega had learned his lesson from a couple of days ago. “Well, the one across the street is a Tarot reader. That’s all Nancy Drew over here was able to figure out before he came back home and nearly sent himself into labor fallin’ in the driveway.”

“I did not…” Dean looked incredulously from Bobby to his father, who appeared to be genuinely concerned and angry that Dean had done something so dangerous. “I did not almost send myself into labor. I threw out my hip and probably my back, but I’m _fine_.”

“Which is why I had to just drag you up off the floor,” Bobby deadpanned, and Dean rolled his eyes so hard it was a wonder he didn’t strain something else.

“I have all the mobility of a beached whale,” he snapped as his father moved to pick up Lizzie while Hannah watched him for signs of treachery. “You’d have to drag me up off the floor regardless.”

“You haven’t let them in the house, have you?” John asked, the baby up against his shoulder and drooling all over his shirt.

“What?” Dean demanded. “ _No_. Not stupid, remember?”

“Stupid enough to go outside and wipe out on the way back to the house,” Bobby muttered, earning himself a scowl from the omega. “Don’t you give me that look. You can act like it’s no big deal all you want but you’re lucky that doc of yours didn’t chain you to a hospital bed, _and_ that nothin’ happened to your kid!”

“Dammit Dean,” John snapped, all alpha fire and fury. “You can’t put yourself at risk like that!”

“Yeah, well, I guess some life lessons you don’t unlearn in just a couple of months,” Dean snapped back, earning a heavy sign from his father.

“Have you been watchin’ the papers at all?” John said, his tone measured in a way he rarely used when he wasn’t discussing a hunt. It made the hairs on the back of Dean’s neck stand up.

“No, we’ve been tryin’ to figure out where Adam and Jo went.”

“Okay.” There was a set to his jaw that made Dean feel further unease at his father’s instant interest in Renee Van Allen. “There are some things I need to stash before we talk. You got a safe around here?”

“Yeah, there’s one in the den,” Dean told him. “I’ll give you the combination.”

“Let me get that done after I change the baby and then we’ll discuss this over dinner.”

That certainly didn’t help the knots tying themselves in Dean’s stomach as Bobby showed John upstairs and pointed out the nursery so he could get to work changing Lizzie before coming back and suggesting they set the table. Sam called back to say that both Adam and Jo were suffering from frostbite and hypothermia and were going to be stuck in the hospital for a while as the doctors worked to rewarm them, which apparently was a variable process depending on the extent of the patient’s condition. Jo was much worse off than Adam, having a smaller body mass to begin with and having dressed for work in a warm bar instead of being out in the cold in any way, and Sam and Ellen were looking into how soon they could be transferred down to St. Mary’s. Adam would undoubtedly be stable first, but he was already refusing to go anywhere without Jo, who was of the same opinion about going anywhere without Adam. It was good they found them when they did, because there was a storm coming through and Sam was going to be stuck up there until tomorrow at least, possibly Monday, making Dean’s chest clench though he wasn’t going to say anything and have Sam risk driving home in a blizzard. Dean said that Sam needed to remind Adam of the great lessons to be learned from _Speed_ and _Speed 2: Cruise Control_ , primarily that even Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock couldn’t make it work when the relationship was built on intense experiences and she eventually ended up with Jason Patric who, granted, had a better profile but worse hair. Sam laughed and promised he would make sure Adam knew not to be Keanu Reeves. Sam didn’t tell Dean about Azazel and Dean didn’t tell Sam that John was there, and Bobby raised an eyebrow at him wondering why he chose to withhold that little bit of information and thinking he already knew. He recognized the look on John’s face when he’d found something that needed to be hunted down and killed, and his questions about the neighbors across the street had been too pointed to just be idle curiosity, not to mention the query about the newspaper. John Winchester only ever read the newspaper for one reason.

This time that reason was Janet Dutton. She’d lived on Mayfair Circle, which was a few streets over in the cul de sac, and early Thursday evening after a long business luncheon event with her mate she’d come home, spit all her teeth out into the sink, and died of massive internal hemorrhaging while the unlocked bathroom door refused to open for her mate. The medical examiner was still conducting the autopsy, but she suspected some type of poison. It was the only logical explanation she could think of for why Mrs. Dutton’s organs had all but liquified, though it didn’t readily explain why her teeth fell out. Bobby and Dean both remembered when Ellen had called to say the two of them were stuck on the main road into the cul de sac because emergency services were diverting everyone, and apparently that was because of the sad ending to the lovely Janet Dutton. John expressed disbelief that none of the people currently residing at 59 Sunset Trail had picked up a paper or paid attention to the news the day before when the story broke, to which Bobby grumbled, “Carrying omega, missing beta, John,” and Dean’s father shut right up.

What Dean didn’t understand was how John read about the death and made it to Fort Wayne in such a short amount of time, since Janet had only died two days before and typically it took at least a week from the time Dean actually needed his dad until he even got a voicemail returned. John claimed he’d still been in the state, having dispatched a pagan god that had been possessing a scarecrow over in Burkittsville. He’d just finished reading the paper when he got Dean’s voicemail that morning about meeting Crowley and came straight away, worrying that whatever happened to Janet had been a way to get John’s attention. It was only a few streets over from where his pregnant son now lived and he just didn’t believe enough in coincidence to chalk it up to chance or a random, horrific allergic reaction. He’d hoped to team up with Sam as soon as he got there to go talk to the mate, Paul, and see what they could learn about two nights ago, though at the same time he was starting to worry about the hellhound that was closing in on him and didn’t want to bring that to Dean’s doorstep. Now that Sam wasn’t likely to be back until the next day he was inclined to head off on his own so long as Sam and Bobby could look into it. As well warded as Dean said the house was, the Winchester patriarch wasn’t convinced it would hold against a demon’s literal bitch bent on tearing John to pieces for ruining her deals. Under normal circumstances Dean would be all on board the “we’ll figure it out, we always do” train, but the last two days spent laid up due to his foolish belief that he could just simply walk across the street and back without anything bad happening had him rethinking whether or not he should punch that ticket. He did, however, insist that John was staying the night, since the man clearly needed more sleep, and between his scent blockers, the goofer dust he’d acquired a week ago, and some additional sigils and a mojo bag that Bobby could throw together with things he’d brought from Sioux Falls should keep him safe until Sam got back.

Once the discussion of the case was done - at least as much as John was willing to allow when his son was in no condition to be working a case - the conversation turned towards Adam and what exactly had happened to him, at least as far as Dean knew. It gave Dean the chance to try to gauge just how badly his father had screwed things up with Adam while Dean was out of it in the hospital, since all Adam had told him about Dad’s absence after he woke up was “He was a jerk and they kicked him out.” He’d said it with a jaw clenched so tightly Dean thought he’d certainly crack a molar and hadn’t pushed further. It’s not like he’d expected his dad to be there anyway when he woke up. John Winchester didn’t do hospitals. Still, he was a little surprised that after how well the vamp hunt went - before Johnny showed up and Dean’s life went down the shitter - Adam and their father might be getting along better, especially with how different John had been when Dean saw him; even with the hellhound on his trail. It seemed like the perfect time to let bygones be bygones and sweep everything under the bridge or whatever, but John had left them again and Adam now seemed completely resigned to never having any relationship with Dad. What’s more, Dad seemed completely resigned to Adam’s resignation. The best he could hope for now seemed to be that when Elliott was born the two men would be too busy playing doting uncle and grandpa to remember that they were virtual strangers.

And on the subject of virtual strangers, having John around for once and not completely distracted by a case gave Dean the chance to ask him about Grandpa Henry and what his dad knew of the Men of Letters. The most recent offer of the travel spell to the bunker and a potential elixir that would allow Sam to claim Dean without the usual delayed agony of them not being knotted when they mated burned at the back of his mind as something that seemed almost too good to be true. Sam definitely thought they needed to be cautious, but Sam thought they needed to be cautious about everything these days ( _not without reason, his back reminded him with a very uncomfortable twinge_ ). Discussing his father was somewhere between a root canal and colonoscopy on John’s list of “favorite things to do” but he still told Dean everything he knew about the organization. From what he understood, the bunker Henry was offering was their main one, though they had outposts scattered throughout the country and at one point had various initiation halls. His father had belonged to the Men of Letters for as long as John could remember and it had never interfered with his family until John was in his teens. Then all of a sudden he was leaving for longer and longer stretches of time, until finally he just up and left. There was some kind of master spellworker in the ranks who wanted to take Henry on as an apprentice, and Henry thought rising through the ranks of the MoL was more important than taking care of his family. The irony of criticizing his father’s obsessive behavior while sitting across from his son, whose life had been devoted to the cause of slaying monsters because of John’s obsession with finding the thing that killed his mate was not lost on the alpha. Despite that he warned Dean to make sure he really knew what he was getting into before involving himself with Henry. John may hate the bastard, but he didn’t think his father was an inherently bad person, just someone who didn’t have his priorities straight and got swept up in something without thinking through what it would do to his family. That irony wasn’t lost on him either.

At the end of the evening they’d laid down extra salt lines at all the doors and windows, despite there being salt in the paint throughout the house ( _when the workers came in to redo Ben’s room they’d thought Sam and Dean were nuts for requiring it_ ) and that had finally relaxed John enough that he’d laid down to sleep in Ben’s-Jo’s-Ellen’s room, even after he’d insisted the sectional would be sufficient for him. Dean caught snippets of his father’s phone conversation with Crowley later in the evening through the not-quite-thick-enough bedroom door, wondering at how normal he found the idea that a demon like Crowley would have acquired a cell phone and that his dad would have the number. He tried to piece together what they were talking about but couldn’t make out much beyond them talking about a gun, which led him to think of that magic gun Garth had told him about when he first called about the whole Azazel situation. Garth hadn’t thought it existed, but if he was hearing John right it did. More than that, it sounded like John might even have it.

Dean wanted to keep eavesdropping, but his omega was desperately afraid to be involved in this, that fear being a sensation he had grown used to yet it was completely overpowering in this instance. His instincts told him to avoid this gun and the impending confrontation with the yellow-eyed demon like the plague and the drive to do so was so strong he couldn’t have hoped to resist it. Instead of continuing to listen in he retreated to his room and tried to go to sleep. It would have been easier to close his eyes and drift off to dreamland if Hannah hadn’t spent the entire night pacing the house and barking, marking the first night since they got her that he felt a pang of regret. That lasted only so long as the next morning when Bobby went to take her out to do her business and they found the claw marks all over the front lawn, the deep gouges trailing all the way around the house but not being able to breach any doors or windows. The Pyr was unconscious on the couch, having spent the whole night guarding against whatever tried - and failed - to get in. It wasn't difficult to discern what had circled them the night before; not with the yellow powder all over the snow and the scent of sulfur so strong in the air. John was clearly going to have to step up his efforts if he wanted to lose that hellhound.


	79. This is What You Dream About?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Michigan. It could be going better...

Of all the places to be stuck in a blizzard, West Shore Manistee Hospital right off of Lake Michigan was not where Sam and Ellen would have ever picked. For one thing, it was a hospital, and Sam had had just about all he could take of hospitals for, well, eternity. Also, it was called West Shore Manistee even though it was on the eastern shore of the lake, and the stupidity of that made him want to hit someone. As for Ellen, she simply wanted to pack up her daughter and take her somewhere that she could feed her soup and wrap her in blankets and keep her from all the evils of the world, and this hospital sure wasn’t it. It might not have been so terrible if they actually had the betas for company, but the doctors wanted to get them warmed for a few hours and get some fluids into them before letting any visitors in. This left the two hunters waiting in the lobby, trying to decide if they wanted to risk the trip down the highway to a motel, when a hospital administrator showed up, asking if Sam was indeed with the Federal Department of Hunters, because if that was so she sure could use his help.

It wasn’t that Sam meant to tell anyone that he was with the FDH. Despite it being an official government agency, for the most part he liked to keep a low profile. Sometimes it helped with cases and sometimes it didn’t, and when he wasn’t on a case ( _like now_ ) it was usually best to keep it to himself so as not to panic any civilians with concerns that they were about to be attacked by werewolves. Most hunters operated that way, but since they’d brought Jo and Adam in on the premise of them deciding to take a winter hike in the National Forest and getting lost the local P.D. had gotten involved. Neither Sam nor Ellen had even thought about the fact that the park was closed for the winter and their hastily made up story would mean Jo and Adam could be charged with trespassing, though it was unlikely anyone would be pressing charges under the circumstances. Running their names through the system brought up the missing persons case in Fort Wayne, which brought up Dean’s name, which brought up the Sioux Falls OPS case, which brought up Sam’s name and job. God how he hated government paper trails.

At any rate, the administrator - one Ms. Kelly Kline - was concerned about the death of a friend of hers and his mate. Anthony Giles was an accountant with the hospital and his mate Karen was a nurse. Tony had been found in his home office with his throat slit a week ago, the cut so deep the spinal cord was visible, but the door was locked from the inside, there was no sign of a break-in, and the room was clean with no fingerprints, DNA, or other trace of how the killer got in or out. He also had ligature marks on his wrists but wasn’t bound, and there were no trace fibers to indicate what he might have been tied with. A few days later Karen had died the exact same way, though this time she was on the phone with Kelly when whatever it was got to her, and she had been screaming about a woman with red eyes and a slit throat. When the call dropped Kelly dialed 911 to send someone over to the house and they found Karen in Tony’s office, the door locked, her throat slit and ligature marks on her wrists. When it was clear to the very frightened Ms. Kline that Sam wasn’t convinced there was anything worth looking into with this case she upped the ante. Both times there had been a page of writing on the office printer with the same thing written over and over again: Liz Smetter 2911. The police had done a search on the name but come up empty, eventually dismissing it as nonsense. Kelly might have agreed with him if the day before she hadn’t been working on a document and watched as “Liz Smetter 2911” filled her computer screen and then disappeared. Now she was terrified that whatever had killed Tony and Karen was coming for her and couldn’t get the police to take her concerns seriously. Even though the couple had obviously been targeted they didn’t think there was any reason to worry about family or friends and so poor Kelly was hoping Sam would look into it.

The problem of course was that Sam didn’t want to look into it. It wasn’t that he didn’t necessarily care that two people had been murdered by a vanishing assailant that seemed to be tied to a spirit or that Kelly now seemed to be in danger, he just wanted to get back to Indiana as soon as possible and already resented being stuck in Michigan by the weather. The absolute last thing he wanted to do was get involved with a case while he was there that he’d either have to abandon outright if he couldn’t figure it out quickly or drop once the weather cleared so they could go back home even if he had figured it out. Ellen was already going to stay behind of course, and while he trusted her to be able to handle herself on a solo case she wasn’t with the FDH and if things got sticky she could find herself in legal trouble. He didn’t want that to happen either. Any way you sliced it, Sam was going to end up doing something he didn’t want, and finally accepted that his conscience simply wouldn’t allow Kelly to end up dead like her friends, agreeing to look into it for her with the clear understanding that once the weather cleared he needed to be on his way back to Indiana.

Kelly was thrilled and Ellen bordered on furious that Sam would agree to this distraction, wanting to do nothing more than take care of her only child who had almost frozen to death hiding in the woods from a bunch of backwoods psychopaths who had confused the Donner party with motivational speakers. She had far fewer qualms about telling the young lady she was on her own, or to contact the FDH if she was really that concerned about her safety, though Sam suspected her anger was due largely to the stress of finding Adam and Jo half frozen in a campground bathroom. It was a good thing Adam had forced the last of that messed up family back to the playground before laying him out with the axe, as they were able to avoid the hassle of figuring out how to clean up all that blood, a problem they could do without considering how desperately the two betas needed medical attention. They were all shaken by the encounter, since none of them were in the habit of killing people, and Ellen trembled as she helped Sam load the body into his truck, kicked snow over the pool of blood that would eventually melt into the ground, then followed him back to the family property to stow the body in the garage and burn that down with the still smoldering house and barn while the betas huddled together inside Dean’s truck, the heater going full blast. Now that they were in the quiet of the hospital and Jo was hooked up to a couple of machines to monitor her vitals and breathing and the doctors were talking about the potential for permanent numbness in her toes, Ellen was starting to crumble and just didn’t have anything to give a stranger who may or may not be dealing with a vengeful spirit.

Ellen might have stood a chance of convincing Sam to just let the whole thing lie if - not half an hour after she had cornered the alpha - Kelly hadn’t come running to find Sam after encountering the same red eyed spirit in the staff bathroom and coming out of it with bruises on her wrists in the shape of ligature marks. The ghost of a young blonde woman in her late twenties had cornered her and tried to tell her something, but her throat was slit so she couldn’t do anything other than make wet, gurgling noises. Unable to communicate with the young administrator, the spirit had turned on all the hot water taps and in the steam on each of the mirrors written “Liz Smetter 2911.” Given how late it was getting in the hospital no one else had witnessed the event, but the fresh bruises on her wrists spoke to the truth to her tale. There was no getting around helping this woman.

At least the case was easy. Really easy. Frighteningly easy. The kind of easy that made seasoned hunters wonder when the serial killer was going to pop back up, impervious to bullets. The victims’ house was only a block away from the hospital, so despite the terrible weather Sam drove over with Kelly ( _Ellen refused to leave Jo_ ) and broke in to look for clues. While they were there the printer whirred to life, spitting out a piece of paper covered in “Liz Smetter 2911” even though the computer wasn’t on. While the printer was working the temperature in the room dropped markedly and the spirit reappeared, filthy and bloody and gurgling, her arms outstretched towards the spot where Sam and Kelly stood by the desk. Sam raised the shotgun he’d brought in with him and dispelled her with a blast of rock salt, but when he turned to check on his companion he spotted a picture of the Gileses with an attractive blonde in her mid twenties that Kelly recognized as a nurse that had worked at the hospital until about nine months ago. On a hunch, Sam grabbed a red and black pen from the desk and colored over the photo where the blood and dirt had been on the ghost, revealing them to be one and the same.

Kelly couldn’t remember her name, so back to the hospital they crawled in Sam’s truck to check out the past employee records and find out who she was. After a brief search they found Claire Becker, who had been fired for suspicion of stealing OxyContin from the pharmacy. The doctor who reported her to HR was Kelly’s current boyfriend; a surgeon named Jeff Rooney, whom she’d been seeing for about six months. Kelly remembered vaguely that Claire had gone missing shortly after being fired. The police had come looking for information on her, hoping to build a case against her for intent to distribute, but she’d already skipped town, her house at 1921 Melitzer St. vacant. Jeff had never mentioned her.

Sam took her employee file, looking at her address, wrote out “Liz Smetter 2911” under “1921 Melitzer St.” and laughed with a shake of his head. Kelly found that odd, considering nothing about this case was funny from where she was sitting, what with the ghost of a woman her lover had gotten fired from the hospital just days before she vanished terrorizing her and all. Sam explained that the answer had been right in front of them, that ghosts trying to communicate through the veil didn’t have the easiest time of it and messages frequently got jumbled, like REDRUM. Liz Smetter 2911 was an anagram that had been staring everyone in the face if the police had spent more than five minutes looking at it. Back out into the poorly plowed streets they went, the eight minute drive to Melitzer St. taking closer to thirty, and after breaking in easily to the house that still stood vacant Sam took out his EMF meter and started sweeping the place so they could find where the body was buried, Sam hoping with everything he had that it was somewhere inside. If she was out in the yard there would be no way to dig her up to salt and burn the bones until spring at least, and it certainly didn’t seem like Kelly had until spring with the way the ghost was pursuing her. Eventually they found a wall in the basement that had the meter going nuts and had mortar of a decidedly different color than the rest of the basement around it; again, something else the police should have noticed if they’d taken five minutes to look. There were some tools already down in the basement, among them a pick axe, so Sam didn’t have to go out to his truck to take down the wall and find the mummified remains of Claire Becker. Her wrists had been bound and a deep gash in her throat was evident in what little remained of her soft tissue. Most disturbing was the necklace she was wearing. It was custom made by a jeweler in town, and Kelly’s boyfriend had given her one just like it. It was clear by the condition of the corpse that Claire wasn’t a vengeful spirit; she was a death omen. Jeff had almost certainly killed her, and Kelly almost certainly knew something about it that she didn’t even know that she knew, and it was putting her in imminent danger. Sam called in the discovery of the body and they sat down in the living room to wait for the police to arrive and take things from there. Whatever reason Jeff had for killing Claire and probably the Gileses was something the police could figure out. Sam had done his due diligence locating the remains and keeping Kelly from getting killed, not caring in the slightest for the mundane Matlock aspects of the case. These really were the best kind of hunts.

It was after he was back at the hospital that the supposedly dead serial killer rose from the grave. He tried to talk Ellen into heading to a motel but she wasn’t willing to budge. Sam figured he probably shouldn’t leave Adam alone either, and they were finally letting the two betas have visitors, so Sam took up the recliner in his room - a position he was sick to death of just over a fortnight into the second month of the year - shot Dean a text with an update on the weather, and clicked on the television to find something he could fall asleep to. Eventually he landed on _Two Weeks Notice_ and thought that would suffice, even if it did fall apart in the final act, and no it wasn’t like he’d seen it once or twice or five times. Romcoms were easy to fall asleep to, that was all. He’d hoped to talk to Adam a little more, at least to tell him he’d done a great impression of Kyle Reese out there that would make James Cameron proud, but after the adrenaline wore off once Ellen found him he hadn’t been very coherent. So Sam settled into the chair and pulled one of the thin hospital blankets over him and drifted off to the sounds of Hugh Grant trying to bribe the people with the camper to let Sandra Bullock use their bathroom before she ruined her white tennis outfit in the worst way possible.

When he opened his eyes the lights were flashing and the room was freezing. _Two Weeks Notice_ had long since finished and now the television was showing an infomercial for Snuggies, which Sam’s slumber-heavy brain told him he should buy for Dean because the man’s feet were never warm. Adam was still sleeping, oblivious to the cold, and the entire hospital felt vacant. The wind was howling outside and moments later the power went out completely, just as they were starting to list the various colors Snuggies came in. Sam waited for a few minutes, expecting emergency generators to kick in and the power to come on, but it never did. The lights stayed off, the television stayed off, and the monitors keeping track of Adam’s breathing and heart rate stayed off. All of his instincts told him to stay put, that once he stepped outside this room he’d be in danger, but still he rose from the chair and wandered out into the hall, now bathed in the pale glow of the emergency lights.

At the far end of the hall he saw the figure of the woman he’d spent the last few days trying to find standing in a direct line of the emergency lights so there was no way he could miss her. Jo couldn’t possibly be up and walking around with how cold she’d been when they got her here and the bad shape her feet were in, yet there she was smiling at him, her fingers still bright red at the tips. He hadn’t expected she would even be awake this evening and wondered how much time had passed. There was no one else in the hallway - honestly there didn’t appear to be anyone else on the floor - and he moved cautiously towards her as she waved.

“Sam!” she said brightly, taking a few steps in his direction. “I can’t thank you enough for everything you did for me and Adam. I’d be dead if it wasn’t for you.”

She stopped, the smile still affixed to her face, as a hand came up to her forehead to tip her head back while another arm came around with a curved blade to slit her throat wide open. Sam flinched and froze where he was, what would normally be an instinctive drive to save her completely suppressed, then watched dumbly as she didn’t react to the cut at all but continued to beam at him. Finally she turned and headed back down the hall, leaving a trail of bright red plasma in her wake, and he saw the other blonde beta in the crop top and sleep shorts standing behind her, a gash on her stomach spreading as she moved towards him. Sam tried to run as her abdomen split wider and wider the more she moved until her intestines were spilling out and tangling with her feet but his legs wouldn’t work. The smell of her bowels emptying on the floor as she stepped on them and tore the muscle made him want to vomit, yet he was still unable to move away from her, not even when she reached a blood soaked hand up to touch his face.

“Hey Sam,” she said sweetly in a voice he had almost forgotten, he hadn’t thought about it in so long.

“Hey Jess,” he replied, trying to stop the trembling in his limbs and his voice. “What are you doing here?”

“What do you mean, baby?” she laughed, moving up against him and soaking his shirt in the mess of her blood and internal organs. “I missed you. I haven’t seen you in so long.”

“Yeah, it has been a while,” Sam agreed, turning his face away as she rose up on her tiptoes to place delicate nips along his jaw.

“Did you miss me?” she purred, hands winding up the front of his shirt to spread her blood on his skin.

“Yeah, Jess.” Her skin was clammy but her blood was warm, and he felt something ( _maybe her spleen_ ) land on his foot with a sickening, wet thump. “Of course I missed you.”

“Mmm.” Her lips vibrated against his neck as she hummed. “Liar. You don’t even remember what you promised my parents you would do. You said you’d find the thing that killed me, and instead you’re shacking up with that omega bitch.” She was pressing into him closer now, so close he could feel the expanse of her ribs against him whenever she drew in a breath. “Christ, if I’d known I never stood a chance with you maybe I’d still be alive right now and he’d be pinned to the ceiling. Maybe he still will be. Did you ever think of that?”

“Jess, I’m sorry for what happened to you.” She moved her lips up his jaw, drawing ever closer to his mouth, and he closed his eyes as he turned his face away. “I didn’t know about the deal my mom made.”

“No, you didn’t.”

His eyes snapped open at the change to Jess’ voice, at the withdrawal of her hands from his body, of the feeling of her heat changing to cold in an instant. Another blonde woman stood in front of him now, this time wearing a white nightgown but with the same slashed abdomen Jess had. Half of her flesh was seared off, all the way down to the muscle, while the other half was skinned from her neck down to her wrist, something that looked alarmingly like a hatpin shoved straight through her eye and deep into her brain. Sam wasn’t sure he was ever going to be able to attend a barbecue again after this moment with the stench of burning human skin assaulting his nostrils. She was hard to recognize, since he’d only ever seen her in pictures and she hadn’t looked anything like this.

“Hey Mary,” he choked, trying not to lose his dinner.

“Mary?” She looked hurt for a moment, before taking up the position Jess had been occupying, right up in his space, and wrapping her arms slowly around his back, bits of her from the roasted side sticking to his clothing. “I’m your mom, Sam. Call me Mom.”

“I think I’ll pass.”

“But I carried you around inside me for forty weeks. Right here.” She reached through the skin on her abdomen and pulled out her uterus to show him. “I hated every second of it, too. I couldn’t help but think how wrong you were, that you should have been John’s pup instead of Steven’s. Someday you’re going to have to tell me how you managed to land a Winchester. I tried _everything_ and he still chose someone else in the end.”

“Well, not for nothing Mary, but you were kind of obsessive. Alphas don’t really like that.”

The arms around him tightened and he felt the thing wearing his mother’s face pick him up and fling him to the end of the corridor. He hit a gurney that rolled away from him and bumped into the wall, and upon looking up saw Jo standing over him, studying his face as the blood from her neck dripped down into his eyes.

“You know, just because you helped out that administrator tonight it doesn’t mean you can trash the place, Sam,” she told him with a disapproving scowl as his mother approached from where she’d been standing when she tossed him.

“You’ll have to forgive my son,” Mary said, pulling the hatpin out and her eye right along with it. She regarded it for a few seconds before popping it in her mouth like an olive. “He grew up spoiled rotten by my father. He doesn’t understand the value of things. He thinks he can buy anything he wants. Hell, he’s doing it right now with son of the man I wanted to be my mate. I wanted John to claim me, and now Sam wants to claim Dean so he’s pulling out all the stops.”

Jo laughed, throwing her head back so the slash in her neck split wider, the muscles tearing and her spine peeking through.

“If he wants to claim Dean he sure has a funny way of showing it,” she said, blood bubbling up and dripping from the corners of her mouth as she spoke. “What with trying to kill him a couple of weeks ago and all. Hey, if Dean’s dad had claimed you, he’d be your son too!”

“That’s true,” Mary agreed. “You can’t exactly call it incestuous, but it sure seems pretty Appalachian when you think about it.” She bent down over Sam, a cockroach crawling out of her skull through the empty eye socket and skittering down to disappear in a hole in her neck where the skin was flayed. “You know he can’t really love you. Not the way an omega should. He’s too broken to ever allow himself to submit to an alpha the way a true mate would. He’ll never beg for you through a heat, he’ll only let you claim him for convenience. There’s just too much pride in him to truly accept that he needs you.”

“Yeah, well, you don’t have the best track record with relationships so you’ll have to forgive me if I don’t exactly trust your advice,” Sam spat, again finding himself unable to move farther away from her even as the charred muscle began to smoke again and catch fire.

“He’s just holding you back, Sammy,” she insisted. “Him and that little bastard you’ve pumped into his belly. They’re both just going to hold you back from your true potential.”

“You could rule over all of Hell at Lilith’s side if you would just focus on your task of killing Azazel,” Jo said, and Jess added from where she was now sitting on the gurney, her innards still pooled on the floor beneath her, “You promised you would, remember?”

“I’m not interested in ruling over Hell,” he snarled, finding the strength to move across the floor away from them until he was sitting with his back against the wall. “I didn’t ask for this and I don’t want it.”

“Oh, Sam.” The three women parted like the Red Sea to allow Ruby to move forward into the space between them and the man on the floor. “You don’t get to decide that now. I know, it’s hard having this...darkness inside you, but you did tell me you were the guy for the job. If I thought you were just gonna bail on me I never would have given you that knife. I’m in some pretty deep shit for that downstairs, as you can imagine. And then you go and exorcise me with so many demons just pissed right the fuck off at me handing the blade over to you. That wasn’t nice, Sam. That’s not how friends treat each other.”

“Last time I checked friends didn’t try jacking each other off in a bathroom without consent,” he told her, drawing a small nod of agreement.

“Fair enough,” she said, crouching down on the floor in front of him and running a finger down his blood and gore soaked shirt. “And I _did_ burn down your friend’s bar with one of your friends inside, so I’m thinking we can call it even and get this show back on the road. What do you say?”

“Fuck you.”

She laughed outright at his bravado when he could barely move and was still struggling not to throw up as Jess, Mary, and Jo continued to crowd him, the floor so thick with blood he couldn’t have escaped without falling even if he made his way to his feet. She dragged her shirt off over her head as she straddled his legs, tearing his tee shirt in half with a simple yank down his chest and pinned his hands to the floor.

“Speaking of that, you stopped me in the bathroom and I was _so_ curious about what you’re hiding down there,” she said, rocking her hips against him. He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth, memories from the bar coming back to him in an unwelcome rush. “I know Tom just tried this with you, but he’s not as creative as I am. He lacks a woman’s touch and all that. Besides -” She licked some of the blood Jess had left behind on his neck off, her teeth turning pink from it. “I know you like blondes.”

“Get off,” he grunted as she ground down on his lap so hard that it was painful. If she intended to replay Marge’s she was definitely off the mark, though the longer she stayed where she was the more he doubted she was after anything other than hurting him. “I’ll kill you this time.”

“Oh Sammy.” She leaned forward to nip at an earlobe, her fingers flicking across his nipples. “You aren’t _nearly_ that strong yet.”

“You were wrong about Tom not being creative,” Sam snapped as she reached to undo his pants. “This is like a half-assed sequel that isn't even trying to entertain. At least he used a girl who's attractive for this part.”

Sam almost didn't believe it when Ruby actually stopped at that comment, but he wasn't going to spend too much time thinking about it. Apparently demons could be vain, and he definitely planned to use that to his advantage.

“You should be nicer to me,” she growled, her eyes flicking over black. “You don’t know where I _really_ am, after all. I could be here in the hallway with you or this could be just a hallucination and I could be waiting outside Dean’s house for him to head out for that MRI so I can split his womb wide open and get rid of the two things holding you back from doing what you promised you would do.”

“You promised, Sam,” Jess said from the gurney.

“You should always keep your promises, Sam,” Mary added.

“You’re not a real alpha if you can’t keep a promise, Sam,” Jo told him.

“So what’s it gonna be?” Ruby asked, and the weight holding his limbs down vanished, allowing him to spring up, grabbing her by the shoulders and slamming her into the wall. She coughed, blood staining her teeth as she grinned at him. “There you go Sam. That’s what I’m looking for.”

He slammed her into the wall again, feeling Mary, Jess, and Jo grab hold of his shoulders to try to pull him off. Somewhere he heard people screaming his name as he pounded her against the plaster a third time, and then he was being thrown off and away, blinking in the sudden bright light overhead, the sound of sobbing reaching his ears. It took a minute for his vision to clear against the fluorescence of Adam’s hospital room where he laid up against the empty bed across from his, blinking up at the beta standing over him as Ellen and a nurse were checking the hospital administrator by the door, who was hysterical and coughing up blood. Security appeared in the doorway, drawing tasers as they approached. It appeared to be morning, but he couldn’t really tell because his head was swimming.

“Adam?” he said blearily, his throat dry and tongue thick. “What’s going on?”

“I just came to thank him…” Kelly was explaining between choked sobs as the two alpha guards hauled him up to his feet, one of them taking out a pair of handcuffs.

“Wait…” Sam insisted, his legs trying to get with the program before they went out from under him.

“You just attacked her, Sam,” Adam told him, his tone guarded but patient. “You were having some kind of nightmare and she shook you and you attacked her.”

“What?” Everything was coming online for him slowly, the pins and needles from his foot that was still asleep underscoring for Sam that what Adam was telling him was probably correct. “I...I’m sorry...I thought it was a dream…”

“You can tell it to the cops,” one of the security team told him as they walked him towards the hall. He at least had the presence of mind not to fight back.

“Please…” he said to Kelly as he passed, “I thought I was dreaming…”

“It’ll be okay Sam,” Ellen told him while Adam, exhausted, sank back down onto the bed, his feet screaming at him for trying to use them again so soon. “We’ll figure it out.”

It took everything he had to force down his instinct to fight against the men leading him down the hall to the hospital holding room to wait for the police to arrive. Logically he knew it was only going to make things worse for him if he struggled but that didn’t make it easier. In the course of a day he’d encountered both Azazel and Ruby and they’d both threatened Dean. He needed to get Lily on the phone as soon as possible, see if she might help convince Kelly to drop the charges against him that he was sure would be forthcoming before the end of the day. Sam only hoped she’d take his call on a Sunday morning. He couldn’t be stuck locked up in Michigan with his omega the next state over; he just couldn’t.


	80. Burn, Witch, Burn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things are getting complicated in the cul de sac.

Dean hated being stuck in Indiana while Sam and Adam were up in Michigan, a situation that had only been slightly tolerable because Sam had found his brother and Adam was safe ( _hospitalized for hypothermia and frostbite, but safe_ ). It had been a relief to have Adam call around ten o’clock on Sunday to update Dean himself on his condition, what he and Jo had been through ( _demons Dean got; people were crazy_ ), and how long he figured they’d be stuck up north. It had not been a relief to find out that Sam had attacked a hospital administrator in the middle of some kind of night terror and been removed by security. Now, knowing that Sam was in a jail cell while Ellen and Adam tried to convince said hospital administrator not to press charges against him for assault, Dean was practically crawling out of his skin. His father’s presence in the house, insisting he and Bobby research Janet Dutton’s death while Dean do some stretches, put his feet up, and maybe read a book just made it all that much worse. The only thing that could have soured his mood any further was if his father brought him some milk and cookies and then patted him on the head. He truly felt every inch the helpless little omega who wasn’t good for anything beyond keeping house and having babies and it made him want to punch someone.

It therefore gave him a considerable amount of glee when John wanted to go interview the victim’s mate, Paul, and Bobby told him he needed to stay in the house with Dean until they figured out how to get rid of the hellhound that tried to tunnel into the basement by way of the front yard the night before. John was who Dean inherited his hatred of being stuck on the sidelines from, after all, and having a beta of all people talk sensibly of the alpha parking it and putting in some time changing diapers and making bottles really set him bristling. Dean wished his hip was a little more solid and his back a little less sore - though they were slowly getting better - just so he could bring his dad a plate of cookies and some milk.

Bobby would have liked to wait an extra day before interviewing Mr. Dutton so that he could approach him at work instead of within the housing development to keep a lower profile. Unfortunately they had no way of knowing if what had killed Janet Dutton was gunning for him next, and since it had already been a few days since she spit out all her teeth and turned to strawberry jam on the inside it seemed a bigger risk to just hold their breath and hope than it did for Bobby to break out his suit ( _since of course he’d brought it_ ) and go knock on the man’s door. He knew it was cruel of course. The man had just lost his mate in the worst way and almost certainly wasn’t going to want to talk to some old guy saying he was with the CDC; not his preferred cover but one that seemed logical in this instance. The case was up on the FDH website this morning and the medical examiner’s office had determined the cause of death was “unknown,” and when dealing with liquefied organs the CDC was always a safe way to go to get in front of surviving relatives and ask them some questions without freaking them out about monster involvement.

Mr. Paul Dutton was only in his early 30s, a dark haired alpha who seemed unassuming and lost when he answered the door in his bathrobe and pajamas at twelve thirty-one in the afternoon, his hair a disheveled mess and some serious stubble darkening his cheek. Bobby flashed his CDC badge and asked if it was a good time to talk to him about what happened to his mate, getting a robotic nod in response before Paul wandered away from the door and into the living room to sit down. The man was clearly not doing well, but the report on the FDH feed said Janet was an omega, so it was to be expected. For an alpha not to be able to protect an omega from such a grisly fate in their own home would only compound the intense grief he would already be experiencing, and Bobby only hoped he could get some answers from the man that would point them in the direction of his mate’s killer.

As far as witnesses went there wasn’t a whole lot Paul could tell Bobby about Janet’s final moments, having been locked out of the bathroom while his mate died. He did say the door was open when he heard her yelling for his help, and that some of her teeth had already fallen out before the door slammed shut on him and he couldn’t get to her. She was crying and terrified and having to relive the evening left the man in tears, feeling just as helpless in his living room as he had days before with his mate bleeding out on the cool tile beyond the bathroom door. He didn’t understand why the M.E. hadn’t been able to determine what kind of poison had killed Janet, though obviously with the CDC at his house he now understood that there may be some kind of disease at fault instead. Bobby confirmed that indeed that’s what they suspected now, getting a list of all the people who had been at the party the Duttons attended before his mate met her tragic end so that he could follow up with any of them to see if they’d experienced any troubling symptoms. Paul didn’t seem to be too worried about himself, suffering as he was under their claim breaking, but hadn’t noticed anything different about his health. No teeth had fallen out and his organs hadn’t imploded - at least not literally. He certainly felt like his heart was no longer in one piece or working properly, and he had no problem giving Bobby permission to take a look at the upstairs bathroom once he ended up sobbing on the couch. He hadn’t been back into the bathroom himself, wasn’t even sleeping in the bedroom, and hadn’t cleaned it after the police and paramedics came through so if it was some sort of disease that killed Janet there would be plenty of blood to take for samples. Realizing how nonchalantly he was discussing the evidence of his mate’s demise sent him spiraling even further, and Bobby hastened to check out the upstairs before the alpha was beyond functional.

The bathroom was indeed a mess and spoke of just how brutal Janet’s death had been. There was blood all over the vanity, blood on the back of the door and the knob where she’d pounded for her mate and tried to get herself out, blood pooled on the floor where she’d fallen, blood smeared where Paul had lifted her to try to see what he could do, then tracked it out of the bathroom when he went to call paramedics. Some of her teeth were still in the sink, allowing Bobby to see that they really had just fallen out of her mouth, the roots still perfectly intact. He pulled a pair of latex gloves out of his pocket before he began to search the room, checking the cabinets, the fixtures, behind the toilet, until finally coming up with a little paisley silk bag tucked way back in underneath the sink. There was a sigil on the outside that appeared to be drawn in blood, and he tucked it quickly into his pocket, then tossed the gloves in the trash and headed back downstairs. So, there were probably witches in the neighborhood and they didn’t like Janet Dutton for some reason. He thought of course of Mrs. Renee Van Allen, but despite her bizarre propensity for bringing them baked goods and the Tarot reading she didn’t set off his “dangerous witch” radar, which was pretty well calibrated.

Paul had calmed down a bit by the time Bobby reappeared, no longer crying but sitting at his kitchen table with a cup of cold coffee in his hands, cupcakes and pies surrounding him, staring out the window in his own little world. He jumped when the beta touched him on the shoulder, apparently having forgotten he wasn’t alone.

“I’ve taken the samples I need, thank you,” he said as the alpha blinked up at him, adjusting to his presence. “In case it doesn’t come back as a virus, I need to know if your mate had any enemies.”

“I’m sorry?” Paul asked, clearly not following Bobby’s train of thought.

“Is there anyone who might have wanted to hurt her? If it’s poison it’s particularly lethal. More people could be at risk.”

“You think…” The man’s eyes were brimming with tears again as he choked on the emotion swelling up from his chest. “You think someone did this to her on purpose?”

“Would anyone want to?”

“What? No, no, there’s no one that…” He stopped, sucking in a breath and staring at his coffee mug, and if Bobby hadn’t been a beta he bet he’d be able to scent guilt in the air. “Everyone loved Janet.”

“Okay.” The old hunter smiled at the young alpha while straightening his suit coat. “Thank you for your time. I’ll get out of your way now.”

Paul nodded, sort of, his eyes wandering back out the window again, and Bobby hastened back to the living room to throw on his overcoat and drive back to Sunset Trail.

It was obvious the second Bobby entered the house that John and Dean had not been having a swell time while he was gone. Tension hung heavy in the air, they were pointedly ignoring each other, and Hannah had set herself up at Dean’s feet on the sectional to glare at John where he sat at the dining room table working on Sam’s spare laptop. Dean had Lizzie in her little lamb Rock n’ Play next to the couch, his hand absently rocking her back and forth as he stared at the copy of _What to Expect_ … even though he obviously wasn’t reading it. Bobby didn’t know what happened between the two and frankly he didn’t want to know. Or maybe he did, especially if it had anything to do with that demon Crowley or that other one, Azazel, but now was definitely not the time to play Dr. Phil to the Winchesters.

“Well, we got ourselves a hex bag,” he said, palming it out of his pocket as he slipped his coat off and hung it up before heading over to sit on the sectional. “Give me a minute to get Hannah upstairs and we’ll take a look.”

“A _hex bag_?” Dean groaned as Bobby led the Pyr away. She got the hint and headed up into the master bedroom without any protest, undoubtedly thrilled to have a chance to lay on the bed with no one to tell her to get down. “Gross.”

“Get a grip, Dean,” John grumbled, and his son shot him a withering glare as the alpha closed the laptop and slid it aside. “There are a lot worse things out there we could be dealing with.”

“You say that like this hasn’t been my life for the last twenty years,” Dean snapped.

“Stow it, both of you,” Bobby ordered, moving to sit between them and providing a badly needed buffer before they really got going. He tossed the little paisley bag on the coffee table and John cut it open with the boot knife he’d already pulled out. “Let’s see...bird bones...rabbit’s teeth...I’m bettin’ this cloth was cut from something the vic wore.”

“So we’re thinking witches,” John said, picking through the items in the bag.

“That was my first guess. And this looks old school, too. None of those hug-a-tree types runnin’ around these days burnin’ their sage and bakin’ bread for Lammas. We’ll have to check the ingredients to figure out what we’re dealing with.”

“Man, I hate witches.” Dean scrunched up his nose, leaning farther away from the coffee table on the couch as the other two men continued examining the bag, working to try to identify the herbs and incense used. “They’re always spilling their bodily fluids everywhere. It’s disgusting. Hell, it’s downright unsanitary. And now it’s all over my coffee table.”

“You wanna talk about unsanitary, you should have seen that woman’s bathroom.” Bobby whistled high through his teeth and took off his suit coat. “It was a bloodbath in there. Whoever did this meant business.”

“What’d the mate have to say?” John asked as he went back to the dining room to retrieve the laptop.

“Not much, ‘cept I don’t think he was bein’ entirely truthful. Said everyone loved Janet but the evidence suggests otherwise.”

“No kidding.” Dean picked up a rabbit tooth and dropped it back down quickly. “Man, why’s the rabbit always get screwed in the deal? It’s like _Fatal Attraction_. Poor little guy.”

“ _Fatal Attraction_.” John rubbed a hand along his jaw as he pondered the situation. “What if it’s not someone who hated Janet? Or instead, someone who hated Janet because of her mate?”

“Go on,” Bobby prodded.

“Here we are in the dead of winter in the suburbs. Lots of bored housemates hanging around looking for something to occupy their time. What if it’s someone who _wanted_ her mate, and Janet was in the way?”

“What are you thinkin’? Mr. Happily Mated Man has an affair with Endora that didn’t work out for her the way she wanted?” Dean asked.

“And she kills the omega standing between her and her storybook ending. Could be.” John’s face darkened as he poked through the hex bag contents some more. “We already think there’s something wrong with the neighbors, and we’re already pretty sure we’re dealing with a witch. A woman scorned is nothing to mess with.”

“He did clam up real quick when I asked if Janet had any enemies,” Bobby told them. “ _Real_ quick, like he knew exactly who would have it out for her but wasn’t going to admit it. Still, he didn’t really strike me as the cheatin’ kind. He seemed genuinely broken up by what happened to his mate. I may only be a beta, but he didn’t look like he was fakin’ his grief. He really loved her.”

“You can love a mate and still make a mistake,” John said dully.

“It also fits with the way she was killed,” Dean added. “Teeth are associated with beauty. When you dream about your teeth falling out, it usually means you’re worried about your looks. A spell like this would be a way to take the vic down a peg before she died, send a message to Paul about how the witch saw Janet in comparison to her.”

“Mrs. Renee Van Allen certainly seems the type who’d want to take someone down a peg,” Bobby surmised, but the omega shook his head.

“Nah, she’s more of a Becky Sharp than a Betty Broderick. If she were gonna have an affair it would be the pool boy. A mated alpha in the same cul de sac could get messy.”

“Just ask Janet Dutton,” Bobby observed, and John said, “Dean, what do you know about the other women who meet for book club?”

“Not a whole lot,” Dean replied. “Just that Renee is a Tarot reader, her kid never goes to school, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen her mate. The rest of ‘em I could probably pick out of a lineup because they’re over there so much, but we’ve never met.”

“We’re gonna have to change that,” John said, scooping up the hex bag and re-tying it. “When do we think Jo’s getting out of the hospital?”

“A while, I guess? It’ll probably be a couple of days at least, both Sam and Adam said she’s in real bad shape…”

“I know you aren’t thinkin’ of just sittin’ on our hands until that _kid_ gets back here after nearly freezin’ to death and then sendin’ her over to see if we’ve got a coven across the street,” Bobby snapped, his arms folded firmly over his chest as he stared at John.

“She’s our best shot for getting in the door,” John insisted, but Bobby was already shaking his head and getting up to move away from the couch before he punched the man.

“I’m with Bobby on this,” Dean said. “Maybe a week ago we could’ve asked her to do this and she’d have been fine, or, I dunno, in a month when she knows if her fingers are ever gonna work right again, but waitin’ on her to get out of the hospital and then hoping she doesn’t panic…”

“She’s Bill and Ellen Harvelle’s kid. She’s not gonna panic, Dean.”

“She’s a _mess_ , Dad! You’d _know_ that if you’d talked to Adam when he called instead of sayin’ you’d call him later because you wanted to keep researchin’ your damn case. _Especially_ when we both know damn well you’re never gonna call him back.”

“I’m not getting into this with you again. Adam doesn’t want to talk to me and that’s all there is to it.”

“How the hell do you know that? The two of them just got chased through the fuckin’ Michigan tundra by a pack of inbred pig farmers and he could have _died_. For the second time in two fucking months he could have died, and you think he wouldn’t want to talk to you?”

“Your brother has never wanted to talk to me.”

“No, you’ve never wanted to talk to _him_. You’ve never even _tried_. You dropped us off at boarding school when he was fucking four years old and you never went back for him!”

“You’re damn right I didn’t. That was the only place I could be sure you’d both be _safe_!”

“Is that why you’ve acted like he doesn’t exist for the past two years? Because you want him to be _safe_?”

“It’s because he didn’t want to be a hunter!” John roared, slamming a fist down on the coffee table and storming away from the sectional as Dean flinched despite himself. “Every time you had me pick him up, it was clear he didn’t want this, didn’t want to be with us! He wanted out of this life, Dean, and I’ve let him get out. He wanted to go to college, I let him go to college. He wants to hate me, I’ve let him hate me! Why do you keep trying to force us back together when I’ve worked so hard to let him go?”

“Cuz when you finally get yourself killed I don’t want to have to bury you alone!”

“Stop being a baby, Dean.”

“I’m sorry Dad. I didn’t realize not wanting my father to get torn apart by a fucking hellhound counted as being a baby. I’ll file that away for future reference, assuming you _have_ a future.”

Bobby was starting to become seriously worried about Dean’s blood pressure, though at least he was now reasonably sure whatever had the atmosphere in the house the relative temperature of an icebox when he got back from interviewing Paul Dutton had to do at least in part with Adam phoning to check in earlier in the day. He was going to have to call up to Michigan himself to talk with Ellen just as soon as he got Dean and John back to their corners before they tried to go all fifteen rounds in one afternoon and at the very least find out what was going on with Sam and how soon he was going to be back in Indiana. He’d hoped having John around would help keep Dean calmer, but all it was doing was winding the omega up, making all his pent up anger at his current state boil over now that he had a target to unleash it on, and he was in no condition to be venting his spleen all over the living room.

“So tracking down this witch,” Bobby said slowly when he was fairly certain they’d stopped for the moment. “Are we thinkin’ the book club is a legit angle to pursue, or are we just latchin’ onto it because they’re convenient?”

“It’s not because they’re convenient,” Dean snapped, expecting his father to take up the opposite position just because he was being a royal dick today. “Somethin’s been off about them since we got here. We’ve all noticed it. They keep offerin’ to babysit and bringin’ us baked goods and tryin’ to get Jo to join them. And yeah, that could just be the way people are in Indiana, but Adam’s spidey senses have been goin’ off all week and he may not be a hunter, but his instincts are solid and he’s the only one who’s been _really_ watching them. Plus the house is warded and they’ve never once tried to talk their way inside.”

“Come to think of it, someone has also been bakin’ Dutton a lot of sweets and desserts,” Bobby mused. “They were all over the kitchen. Casseroles I expect when someone dies. Tarts and souffles not so much.”

“All right then.” John was clearly ready to back down from the fight, noticing how thick the air had grown with his son’s anger and deciding it probably wasn’t doing him any good. It was better to give up an argument he was never going to win anyway than make Dean sick. “How are we going to get in if we don’t want to wait for Jo to get back?”

“I’ll go,” Dean said simply, ignoring the look he got from the beta and focusing on John. “Their club meets Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, so they’ll have a meeting tonight. Bobby can whip up a cheesecake or something and I can just walk it across the street to thank them for all the stuff they’ve brought over here and introduce myself to the rest of them.”

“You think you can handle that?” John asked at the same moment Bobby was snapping, “Like hell you will!”

“I’m not going to go inside!” Dean insisted. “It’ll be like a couple of days ago when I went across to return the baking pan. I’ll just wait until they’re all there, go over, introduce myself, and come back.”

“May I remind you that a couple of days ago you fell flat on your ass and we’re still tryin’ to reschedule the MRI to check on your back?” Bobby growled. “And that Sam was none too pleased to find out how dumb you’d been?”

“I fell because I was rushing. I’ll take Hannah again and go slow. I won’t go past the porch.”

“You won’t go _period_!”

“Do they have any clue you’re a hunter?” John asked, and Bobby could have slapped him for even considering this.

“No,” Dean told him. “I don’t think so.”

“That ain’t good enough by half,” Bobby snapped, trying to derail this train before it really took off from the station and wishing he weren’t the only one in the house with a lick of sense.

“I told Renee I was a yoga instructor at Lisa’s studio,” Dean said. “She seemed to buy it.”

“Playing up the omega angle.” John smiled at him. “That’s smart.”

“Are you out of your mind? _Nothing_ about this conversation right now is smart!” Bobby shouted. “We can’t seriously be decidin’ on a plan that sends a carrying omega to figure out if there’s a coven of witches across the street that - oh right, may have already killed someone! I don’t care how good Dean is at this job, John. We are not doin’ this!”

“That’s up to Dean, Bobby,” John said.

“The hell it is! What the hell happened to ‘You can’t put yourself at risk like that, Dean’? It just goes out the window now that we’ve got a probable suspect instead of a hypothetical one?” John suddenly felt that he and the beta were on their way to another fight like the one when Bobby wanted him to leave the boys in Sioux Falls, or when John was going off to hunt Azazel after finding out about Shreveport, and Bobby wasn’t done by a long shot. “Since you apparently have forgotten overnight, your son’s havin’ a baby in just under three months, and he’s got certain obligations to that baby that he seems to be ignoring at the moment. Him I can forgive for that, since I know how stressed he’s been waitin’ for someone to find your _other_ son, and _you_ certainly haven’t been helpin’ that stress. His judgement ain’t the best when he’s upset like this, but you John? Are you actually willin’ to risk your first grandchild instead of puttin’ your foot down and tellin’ your son ‘no’? Are you so obsessed with gankin’ a couple of witches you can’t think about anything else when you’re working a case? Is bein’ a decent parent really that hard for you?”

Before John had a chance to answer that question the doorbell rang, sending Hannah into a flurry of furious barking upstairs. The sound of her nails on the bedroom door gave John a start, remembering the claw marks on the front yard, and he headed for the kitchen so he wouldn’t be seen by whoever it was at the door. Beyond his healthy paranoia he wasn’t in the mood to continue this conversation, too proud to admit Bobby was right and he should be putting his foot down with Dean. Maybe it was because he was still sleep deprived, or maybe he just wanted to keep his eldest from turning against him by indulging him and making him feel like John _did_ know just how good Dean was at the job, but he obviously wasn’t thinking clearly about this and it was a damn good thing the beta was there to keep both Winchesters from doing something idiotic. Bobby took a few moments to collect himself as Dean limped across to the door to see who was there. He realized he probably shouldn’t have been surprised to see Renee standing there holding a plate of chocolate chip cookies, but he _was_ surprised to see the other two women with her. He recognized them from the last few weeks watching them go into the house, but still the sight of the beta with dark, short hair and cold eyes and the long-haired brunette who appeared much warmer was a bit of a shock, particularly the way they flanked Renee.

“Renee!” he exclaimed upon opening the door, flashing her a wide grin complete with fluttering of eyelashes. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Well, I’ve been telling my friends how nice the new neighbors are for a while now and they wanted to come meet you,” she replied, extending the plate to him. “We thought we’d bring you some of Elizabeth’s cookies!”

“They’re low sugar,” explained the beta with the long brown hair, giving him a genuine smile. “Renee mentioned you were worried about gestational diabetes.”

“Heh, not me so much as my doctor,” he told her. “It’s tough bein’ an om!”

“So I’ve heard,” said the short haired woman, her eyes dark and guarded.

“This is Tammi Fenton,” Renee said of the short haired beta, then turned to the long haired beta and added, “and Elizabeth Higgins.”

“I knew Lisa from Zumba,” Elizabeth told him. “It was a real shame what happened to her and Benny.”

“Yeah,” Dean agreed softly. “Yeah it was.” The silence threatened to turn awkward, but before it could he said, “I thought Amanda was the one that made the desserts?”

“She is,” Renee said. “But she’s home sick today.”

“That’s why we’re here, actually,” Tammi spoke up. “We like to have a fourth at book club and Renee said you missed a lot of the classics when you left school.”

“Yes,” Dean replied without missing a beat. “Yes I did. _The House of the Seven Gables_ , _The Great Gatsby_ , _The Scarlet Letter_ , I pretty much missed ‘em all.”

“Maybe you’d like to join us then,” Renee suggested, and Elizabeth said, “We’ve been hoping Jo would want to join, but she hasn’t been around for a while. Did she get her own place?”

“No, she uh...she had an accident. She’s fine though.” He tried his best to give them a flirty smile but could feel it was stretched a little thin, especially after they’d mentioned Lisa and Jo. “So wouldn’t I be the fifth? The three of you and Amanda are already four. Unless you’re just lookin’ for a placeholder for the day…”

“To tell you the truth, Amanda doesn’t really fit in,” Tammi told him, her voice low and conspiratorial. “She’s a bit of a flake, I don’t know why we bothered including her. She’s only comes to half our meetings. Hell, she missed Thursday’s meeting and now she’s not coming today either! Better to just replace her.”

“Much better,” Renee agreed. “So, what do you say?”

“I…”

“Sorry ladies,” Bobby cut in, moving into the foyer and slinging an arm around Dean’s shoulders before he could do the stupid thing the beta saw him itching to do. “Dean took a little tumble a couple of days ago and the doc doesn’t want him heading outside for a while. Sam would kill me if I let you all drag him off for an afternoon of readin’ and gossip.”

“Oh drat.” Renee pouted at them both. “Well, that’s our loss. Perhaps when Sam gets back we’ll be able to convince him to share Dean with us.”

“Where is he exactly?” Tammi asked. “Renee has told us all about the colossal alpha who moved in across the street. I do love a tall man.” She threw a wink at Dean, who shot her a sarcastic smile. “No offense Dean.”

“None taken. Besides, I’m not too worried about him wandering off with someone else.”

“How far along are you?” Elizabeth said in a clear attempt to change the subject, her tone so strikingly different from Renee’s and Tammi’s that Dean had to wonder what she was doing associating with them. Whether they were a coven or not, Renee and Tammi were clearly cut from a different cloth entirely than Elizabeth.

“Just over twenty-eight weeks,” Dean replied easily, and she smiled at him, open and sincere.

“You two must be so excited,” she said, and he nodded.

“Yes we are.”

“Do you know if it’s a boy or a girl?” Tammi asked, not sounding nearly as casually interested as Elizabeth. It made Dean’s stomach clench.

“We don’t,” he told her, crossing his arms over his abdomen as Elliott gave him a few roundhouse kicks. “We want to be surprised.”

“That’s the best way,” Renee assured him. “That’s what we wanted with Zoey, and _boy_ has she been a surprise!”

Dean was reaching his limit in terms of small talk, Hannah was still going off upstairs, and it was growing painfully obvious that the three women expected to be invited into the house, something Bobby was clearly not going to allow judging by the semi-scowl on his face as he tightened his grip on Dean’s shoulder. Thankfully Lizzie woke up in her Rock n’ Play and started kicking up a huge fuss, giving the old hunter a chance to say, “Oh darn, looks like someone needs her mama. You’ll have to excuse us ladies. I know I speak for Dean when I say how nice it was to meet all of you, but we’re not tryin’ to heat the whole outdoors here.”

Renee was opening her mouth to say something as Bobby shut the door straight in her face, steering Dean back around to the living room to attend to Lizzie. Seriously, that kid was going to have a Porsche the minute she knew how to drive if Dean had anything to say about it; her timing was just impeccable. Bobby was in the process of getting her up out of the Rock n’ Play and Hannah was finally calming down when John came back into the living room.

“Who was that?” he asked, clearing away the hex bag so Bobby could lay the baby down to let Dean change her very wet diaper.

“The coven across the street,” Bobby replied flatly, then went upstairs to let Hannah out. With only one Glinda in the group it didn’t seem like a good idea to keep her locked up, especially with Sam in Michigan and Dean thinking it would be a good idea to play nice with the girls from _The Craft_. “All but one. Amanda, who likes to bake and isn’t feelin’ well.”

“We got a last name?”

“Nope,” Bobby said. “But we can access the phone book online to do a search on Amandas in the area.”

“And we’ve got a map of the cul de sac to narrow it down by street,” Dean added. “Found it in Benny’s office last week. It’s up on the fridge.”

As John went to retrieve the map and the phone book Dean pulled Lizzie’s leggings up and stood her up on the coffee table before moving her from sitting to standing a couple of times to get her to start stretching her legs, which she did with an enthusiastic, “Oooo.” Bobby took up a seat on the sectional as Hannah trotted over to sniff the excited little girl, watching as the omega refined his baby tending skills and thinking about the women who had showed up at the door. He’d had enough run-ins with witches in his time to know them when he saw them, and Dean’s instincts looked to be right. Renee may think she was the leader, but that Tammi was the one who was really in charge. The power practically oozed off of her, power that was dark and old; power he was fairly certain the two other betas were oblivious to. They should probably try to pass this off to someone else, but witches didn’t tend to bring hunters running unless they were poisoning wells or blighting entire towns. They could be waiting weeks for someone to pick up on this case, and he wasn’t comfortable at all with the idea of Dean living across the street from a coven for that long.

Bobby scowled as John came back from his scavenger hunt, plunking the items down on the table on the other side of the baby. Having John around certainly wasn’t the benefit he’d thought it would be, and to the contrary was throwing Dean right back into his old, reckless habits, needing to prove to his father that he was as good as any alpha hunter out there. Bobby was going to need to keep a close watch on him until Sam got back; both of them in fact, since that hellhound probably hadn’t gone very far and John already seemed like he was itching to get out of the house. The two of them sparring was going to drive at least one of them to do something rash. The beta certainly didn’t need either of the Winchesters acting like idjits when Renee and Elizabeth currently had the market cornered on stupid, Tammi practically vibrated with danger, and they didn’t even know who or where Amanda was. It was rapidly becoming clearer as John fired up the laptop and they started cross referencing a long list of Amandas in Fort Wayne against the street names in the cul de sac that Jo and Adam weren’t the only ones who’d managed to get themselves in a pickle.


	81. Daddy's Blunt Little Instrument

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Monday morning dawns and John acknowledges some uncomfortable truths.

John felt like he was losing his mind. Maybe that’s what happened when a hellhound was after you and you only got an hour or two of sleep a night ( _if you were lucky_ ), but whatever the reason it had clearly been a mistake coming to see Dean. When he’d been here a few weeks ago he still had enough of a hold on his sanity to be able to enjoy seeing Dean with Sam, pampered the way a carrying omega should be despite the terrible circumstances. Now though it had just been too damn long on too little sleep and his nerves were completely frayed. Thinking of his eldest as a hunter was so deeply entrenched in the way they related to one another, no matter what his dreams for the omega getting out of the life and settling down might be, that he couldn’t fight against his automatic reaction to treat Dean as his good little soldier the minute Dean seemed to be volunteering for the job.

On some level he’d had to accept a long time ago that he’d raised Dean to function in a world of death and terror and his boy just might always need to seek it out in order to feel like himself, would always run towards the monsters instead of away from them, even with a womb full of Sam Campbell’s kid. No matter how much he wanted, far too late, to push his eldest towards a normal life it was becoming clear that wouldn’t be possible as long as John was around. Dean felt like he had too much to prove to his father whenever they were together, and that was John’s fault, too. He’d bungled things so badly when Dean presented as an omega that he doubted it would be possible for his eldest to ever be in the same room with him for long without needing to posture and prove his worth. John had raised Dean to be just like him, an addict to the hunt, never thinking that Dean would be anything other than an alpha; that if he had children someday it would be someone else carrying them. Even now, despite being able to see a little foot or fist push against the inside of Dean’s stomach, he was acting like a junkie who’d met up with an old friend that was in rehab, thinking of how much better the high would be if he just had some company while shooting up and not caring if that company was pregnant.  

It had just scared him to death when he got Dean’s voicemail that Crowley was trying to get in touch with him and to please pick up the phone the next time the demon called and he couldn’t stop himself from running right back to Fort Wayne. He wanted to keep both of his sons as far away from his demon deal as possible, and the fact that Dean hadn’t even sounded shocked that Crowley and John knew each other made him wonder if it wasn’t the first time they’d met. Then he got here and found out Dean had hurt himself and Adam had been taken and he’d fucked up how he reacted to both of those situations, too. After the initial shock of finding out he took a fall, John had immediately reverted back to the roll of drill sergeant with Dean, expecting his subordinate would just blindly follow orders, even if it meant sucking up a not insignificant injury to march out onto the field of battle. And why shouldn’t he? That’s what he’d trained Dean to do for most of his life. As for Adam, John just continued to be the same coward he’d always been when it came to trying to bridge the chasm he’d dug between them. He’d spent so many years breaking their relationship he didn’t know where or how to begin fixing it and it was easier not to try.

All these reasons, as well as his desperate need for sleep, were what had him breaking open a bottle of his always faithful friend tequila after Bobby, Dean, the baby, and the dog had gone to bed. There had been no more arguments after they got their list together of all the Amandas living in the cul de sac, a task that took most of the afternoon, though they hadn’t decided yet on how they were going to actually talk to all of these women with John and Dean not being able to leave the house and Renee right across the street to see Bobby coming and going. If he were back in Sioux Falls there were a couple of spell books the beta could have pulled out to help narrow the list of a dozen women to just one or two, but of course that wasn’t an option under the current circumstances. Dean suggested just going over there again and got a very gruff, “Do the words ‘back labor’ ring a bell?” from Bobby in response, at which point he dropped the matter entirely. John thought that might ease the tension in the house and instead it just made it worse now that Dean had been effectively cut off from the case, left feeling like a helpless little omega again.

Bobby’s call to Ellen around dinner time hadn’t made things better, with her informing them that Sam was hopelessly stuck in the county lock up overnight waiting for a bond hearing on Monday. The hospital administrator he attacked might be thankful he’d saved her life, but apparently that wasn’t enough to get her to budge so far on pressing charges against him. Ellen may or may not have used the words “ungrateful bitch” in her description of one Ms. Kelly Kline. Lily Sunder was sending up an associate to meet with Sam before his bail hearing to see what the charges were and start putting some sort of plea deal together. There were unfortunately too many witnesses to think he was going to get off without at least a couple of days in jail if this Kelly Kline continued to pursue the case. Dean had immediately called Lily to find out why the hell they weren’t doing more for Sam and thrown a fit when she said they were doing everything they could and were hamstrung by this happening on the weekend. Bobby had never met the woman but knew she was an omega, a fact he was infinitely grateful for when Dean shoved the phone at him to finish the conversation while he limped off to the den to throw things. Lily assured the beta she wouldn’t take all the screaming Dean had just done personally, that he was undoubtedly terrified of his alpha being so far away, particularly with the OPS case coming up in just over a week, and by the time he hung up Bobby was surprised to admit to himself that perhaps not all lawyers were bottom feeding leeches. By the time Dean came out of the den he’d tweaked his back again and just having John around was pissing him off. There was nothing comforting about his father’s scent anymore, and it wasn’t even nine o’clock before he dragged himself upstairs to curl up in the bedding that smelled like Sam. Bobby had followed soon after with the baby and the dog, getting Hannah settled in Dean’s room and Lizzie settled in the nursery before vanishing into the guest bedroom with a good book. That was when John clicked on the television to try to find something that would drown out the low growls he heard outside the family room window and broke out the booze.

The Cary Grant marathon he found seemed to be as good a thing as any for him to tune into, even though he’d already missed a lot of _The Awful Truth_. Thankfully he hadn’t missed the recital scene, as watching the polished Mr. Grant tip over and become entangled in a side table was always worth a laugh. Millie had loved Cary Grant and so of course he’d suffered through most of the actor’s movies, never admitting how much he actually liked watching one of the greatest omega actors of all time. It wasn’t just that he was beautiful - though of course he was. It was the confidence he exuded even when taking pratfalls or running from crop dusters. It reminded him, too, that there was a time omegas were valued by society for more than just propping up an alpha’s ego, when they weren’t stopped from being whatever they wanted to be just because of their designation, and he wished that was the world Dean had been born into so he would have less that he felt he needed to prove. That just reminded John that it was his own damn fault Dean felt like he had to prove anything, and by the time Grant and Debra Kerr were promising to meet on the top of the Empire State Building in _An Affair to Remember_ half the bottle of tequila was gone.

“You never used to drink so much.”

John would have flinched at the voice coming from the far end of the sectional except he was too drunk to do so. He was too drunk to do much of anything, in fact, and was damn lucky his son had inherited a heavily warded house since he didn’t even have a gun or a knife in proximity to go for to fend off whatever it was that had just spoken to him. All he could really accomplish was turning his head in the direction of the voice and not falling off the couch ( _though the latter was definitely a struggle_ ), and blink in astonishment at the blonde woman in the white nightgown sitting there.

“Millie,” he breathed, his chest tightening and voice catching in his throat.

“Hi John,” she said with a soft smile.

“Am I dreaming?”

“Obviously.” She laughed at him, and god he wanted to burst into tears. It had been so long since he’d heard her laugh. “It’s the only way I’ve ever been able to visit - when you’re so blind stinking drunk you just pass out.”

“You’ve visited before?”

“Mmhmm. And you ask that every time.”

The thought that he had dreamed of Millie before this and forgotten it was more than he could bear. She was so lovely, with her big blue eyes and her dark lashes and her apple cheeks, skin pale in the light from the table lamp across the room. He thought of the last time he ever saw her, how her skin was grey and smeared with blood, the blue eyes dull, one pupil still blown wide but the other contracted with the rigor mortis that had set in and passed before he ever made it home. He could scent her again - lilacs and white wine and morning dew - and when the first tear slid down his cheek she moved closer, just not quite close enough to touch.

“I screwed everything up, honey,” he choked, reaching an arm along the back of the couch in the hope she’d move closer still. Her smile grew sad, but she didn’t. “All of it.”

“Yeah, you really did,” she agreed gently. “Especially my baby boy. You’ve made a real mess of him. What happened, John?”

“You died.”

“So?”

“I had to...I had to find the thing that killed you.”

“You didn’t, though.” She finally slid up against him, slotting herself against his chest and laying her head on his shoulder to breathe in his scent. He felt his heart shattering against his ribcage and falling in pieces to the pit of his stomach, running his hands through the silky tresses of her hair as he sobbed like a child. “You didn’t have to find it. Now it’s going to kill you, too.”

“I know.”

She looked up at him with agonized blue eyes, touching his face as she asked, “And Dean?”

“No,” he insisted, taking her face in his hands and running his thumbs along the lines of her cheekbones, memorizing her anew so he wouldn't ever forget again how soft her skin was. “I’ll never let it hurt Dean.”

“It already has,” she told him, squeezing his wrist between her delicate fingers. “It took me. It took our home.” She smiled, fingertips ghosting across his forehead and down the side of his face to trace his jaw. “It took you, long before it’ll manage to finally _take_ you. It’s going to take Sam, too, and then who will Dean have left?”

“He’ll have Adam,” he replied thickly, knowing even as he said it how inadequate the suggestion was.

“Your other boy is sweet, John, but we both know he’s not going to be enough. You should have let it go before it was too late. Gone off and been with Kate.”

“I didn’t _want_ Kate. I wanted _you_. I was just too stupid to know it when it mattered.”

“Well. You _are_ an alpha, so stupidity is to be expected.” She smiled at him and tipped her face up to press a gentle kiss to his mouth. “You’ll be with me soon.”

“You promise?” he murmured, and she whispered back, “I promise.”

He jerked awake at the sound of Hannah barking upstairs in response to the snarls that had grown louder outside, the tequila bottle having spilled all over the couch and filling the room with the stench of booze. He was glad the dog woke him up, though he wasn’t sure why. He was breathing hard, his heart racing with fear, and had the distinct feeling he’d been dreaming, but it was already starting to slip away. After taking stock of where he was for a moment he noticed that his cheeks were wet, and lifting a hand realized he’d been crying. _An Affair to Remember_ was finished and _His Gal Friday_ was halfway through. He rubbed at his eyes, trying to recall the dream to no avail, then searched for the remote to click off the television before rising with a groan from the couch to crawl upstairs and into bed.

Dean and Bobby were already up and having breakfast in the kitchen by the time John dragged himself downstairs the following morning, Dean stoic and pale as he stared at his eggs and the sausage he wasn’t technically supposed to have because it was processed meat, but which Bobby was allowing him to indulge in since he clearly needed to be indulged. He’d been waiting for his father to get up so he could take a shower, not trusting himself to get into or out of the stall without assistance, and though John wasn’t entirely sure how long they’d been up he could guess it had been a while just by the pinched expression Dean threw his way as he staggered over to the kitchen island. The MRI had been rescheduled for eleven and without Sam around Dean hadn’t been able to shower since Friday night, a fact that was simply intolerable if he needed to leave the house and be seen by people. He’d been grimy enough when the witches of Eastwick stopped by the night before. By now he felt positively disgusting.

John’s timing turned out to be perfect regardless of how his son felt about it, because it meant Dean got in the shower late, and while he was in there Lily’s associate called, fresh off her meeting with Sam, and the news wasn’t exactly great. Bobby was sure the young alpha, whose name was Tessa, must be good at her job or Lily wouldn’t have sent her to Michigan to get Sam out of trouble; and sure, she’d managed to get him released from jail on ten thousand dollars bond, but he wasn’t allowed to leave the county and the hospital administrator was no closer to dropping the charges. She assured Bobby that she had a strategy for keeping Sam out of the clink and wrapping up this case as quickly as she could within the constraints of the legal system, which wasn’t very comforting when she said in the next breath that she wanted Dean to brace for the possibility that Sam was going to be in Michigan for two weeks until his trial date. That, of course, meant he might miss the hearing with the OPS if the judge wanted to be a real dick and not grant him a waiver to travel to Fort Wayne for the day. It all seemed a bit excessive for a simple assault charge where the victim hadn’t even been badly hurt, just frightened, and Sam really hadn’t been himself when it happened. Unfortunately, Sam’s family name and fortune had gone a long way towards making the small-town judge feel like he needed to make an example of someone who could easily flee the county and the state if the courts didn’t take this seriously. It was an election year after all, and he couldn’t be seen as going soft on crime, especially when the offender was a wealthy, out-of-state alpha. Tessa considered filing an appeal for the excessive bail, but an appeal wouldn’t do anything other than pushing back the trial date and quite probably pissing the local cops and district attorney right the hell off, making them much less likely to offer a plea bargain. It just wasn’t worth it to force the issue when Sam could be facing a year in jail if convicted. If Dean had actually been available for the conversation, neither Bobby nor John thought for a second he’d be in any shape to get that MRI.

Something must have happened to John in the overnight that Bobby was hesitant to ask about, because he had done a complete one-eighty from the day before and was back with the game plan of keeping Dean as calm and content as possible, and certainly not getting him involved with whatever was going on across the street. All of John's bouncing back and forth was making Bobby a little seasick trying to keep up, but there was no way he planned to push the issue. John helped get Dean into and out of the shower without complaint, didn’t argue when Bobby insisted they weren’t telling Dean about the phone call until after the appointment, and put up no fight whatsoever to being on baby and dog duty while the two of them were gone. He even agreed to give Adam a call, and had actually done so by the time they got back with the results of the test showing Dean had in fact ruptured his fourth lumbar vertebrae and was going to need to see a chiropractor. Just the way the omega scowled as he spat out, “chiropractor” was enough for John and Bobby to wordlessly agree that it was still not the time to update him about Sam, even if they knew his reaction was going to be worse the longer they put off telling him the alpha was not coming home anytime soon.

Their plans to avoid the conversation were thwarted when Dean got a call from one Kevin Tran around three o’clock, right about the time he was really starting to insist they should have heard from whoever that associate was Lily sent up to Michigan to get Sam out of jail. Gwen had given the kid Adam’s number so they could communicate directly when he had Dean’s employment history with the FDH restored, but he’d been calling Adam for days now and he wasn’t picking up the phone. Ignoring the kid’s pissy attitude took a lot of effort, but at least Kevin sounded sufficiently remorseful after Dean explained in brief that Adam had been kidnapped and was in the hospital making sure he didn’t lose any extremities due to exposure. At any rate, Kevin had the files downloaded to a CD and needed to know where to send it, which led to a discussion of Annie Hawkins, which led to wanting to tell Sam the good news, which led after a lot of hemming and hawing to a fight for the keys to the Impala and Dean screaming that either one of them was driving him to Michigan, or he was driving himself, and if it came right down to it he’d fucking walk because it was _Sam_ , and they were nuts if they thought he was going to sit on his hands and play the dutiful little house omega.

They were so engrossed in arguing they almost missed the sound of the ambulance tearing past the end of the street at a rate of speed that clearly spoke of something bad happening. It was followed immediately by three police cars, sirens also blaring, and before John or Bobby could do anything Dean had snatched the keys to the Chevy and was limping towards the front door. Bobby managed to head him off, John in the process of dealing with a dog who had been upset by the arguing and a baby who needed to be fed and changed, and the beta almost got himself punched before finally agreeing to let Dean ride along _only_ if he stayed in the car while they checked out whatever it was, even though it was probably nothing.

It was so not nothing. That was clear as soon as they rounded the corner onto Fairfield Terrace and saw the police cordoning off the house. Bobby was trying to figure out what cover story he could use with the officers to try to get an idea of what was going on, kicking himself for having run out of the house in his denim and flannels, but Dean was already struggling his way out of the car, having spotted Mrs. Gladys Ganem on the sidewalk in front of the house, a tiny Yorkshire terrier barking at her feet, just finishing up giving a statement to the police. Bobby was out like a shot after him, grabbing an arm to help steady the younger man as he limped in the direction of the white haired lady with the thick lenses. They slowed their pace as Dean whispered that it was the blue hair Renee read Tarot for when Bobby demanded to know what the hell they were doing, and the officer was well out of earshot before they were close enough for Dean to call out, “Mrs. Ganem?”

“Good heavens!” the woman shrieked, causing Dean to wonder what had happened to her in her life that she jumped and shrieked at anything sudden, or if she was just one of those people who expected not to be bothered by commoners. The way the Yorkie went nuts made him think it was probably the latter. She took a moment to size him up before a sneer curled her lips. “Oh, it’s the unpleasant omega with the even more unpleasant wolf dog.”

“Uh, yeah,” Dean said, suppressing the urge to throttle her for insulting Hannah. “I’m sorry, we were just...headed to my whelping class and we saw the ambulance. What’s going on?”

The woman made an irritated huffing noise and then declared, “What’s going on is that I need to find a new dog walker.”

“A new...what?” Dean asked, well aware of what a dog walker was but surprised that someone who was just talking to police about whatever had happened inside the house was more distressed about walking a dog than the body they were rolling out on a gurney in the black body bag to load it into the ambulance.

“You don’t think I walk Petunia _myself_ , do you?” she scoffed, then turned towards the house. “That poor girl.”

“What poor girl?” Bobby asked, and she assessed him with cold eyes, seeming personally offended by the fact he was wearing flannel.

“And you are?” she said, her tone as cold as her eyes.

“This is my uncle,” Dean told her, and when she eyed them both up and down again as if to inquire why she should care he batted his eyelashes and placed both hands protectively on his abdomen. “Please, do you know what happened? I need to know if my baby and I are safe in this neighborhood.”

She seemed to ponder that for a long time before her features softened just a fraction and she leaned in to both of them. Apparently Mrs. Ganem’s love for gossip was greater than her hatred of plaid.

“It’s Amanda Burns,” she replied lowly, as if she were imparting the secret location of Atlantis. “She always walked Petunia for me, but when she didn’t show up today I came over to remind her of the time. That’s when I found her inside, wrists slit and blood everywhere.” She shivered, waving a gloved hand in front of her face. “Poor Petunia, I don’t know as she’ll ever recover from the sight.”

“Amanda Burns?” Dean repeated, and took a guess. “The same Amanda that’s part of Renee’s book club?”

“The very same!” Mrs. Ganem exclaimed. “Troubled girl, that one. Well, it’s no wonder she ended it all after what happened with Paul.”

“Paul Dutton?”

“Yes! Do you know him?”

“We’ve met,” Bobby said for the both of them, and that really got her busybody juices flowing. “What does Amanda have to do with Paul?”

“Well, the rumor around the cul de sac is that they had an affair, but he broke it off once he realized Amanda was a little...well…” She glanced over her shoulder at the ambulance, then turned back to them. “She wasn’t the most stable girl to begin with. I warned her not to become involved with a mated alpha, but she ignored me. How he managed to keep Janet from knowing I’ve no idea. Though perhaps she looked the other way because it was such a brief fling. It certainly sent Amanda right off the deep end. The things she had in her living room…”

“What do you mean?” Dean asked, casting a quick glance to Bobby who, judging by the expression on his face, was of the same mindset that they’d hit the jackpot finding this old bird.

“To begin with…” Gladys leaned in very close and made sure no one was looking before continuing. “There was a dead rabbit hanging over this table, and there was this circle drawn under the floor where she was laying with this star inside it. And she had candles all around - how it didn’t cause a fire I don’t know, but only one was still burning when I found her. Then there was a bowl that looked like it had teeth and needles in it, and a rancid meal covered in maggots. I don’t know where she’d have gotten all those things or _what_ she’d be doing with them, but it looked like she was a Satanist or something.”

“A Satanist?” Dean said conspiratorially. “Really?”

“Yes!” she breathed, seeming titillated by the thought. “And here I’d always thought she was an Episcopalian!”

“You don’t think there are any _other_ Satanists around here, do you?” Bobby asked, looking from her to Dean and putting on an excellent show of being concerned. “I’d hate to think Dean’s in any danger.”

“Oh I don’t think so, no,” she assured him. “Everyone else in the neighborhood is quite normal. Now if you’ll excuse me, I do need to get Petunia back home. This weather is no good for her little feet!”

Without so much as a “good day” she was off and away, and Dean shot Bobby an entirely too self satisfied smirk for the beta’s liking. The young hunter wasn’t about to say it was a good thing he’d gone across the street to Renee’s house and met the old lady in the process, but Bobby could tell the gloat sat right on the tip of Dean’s tongue. His slight slip on the way back to the car wiped the self satisfaction right off his face, however, and if he clung tightly to Bobby until he was all the way down in the passenger seat the beta sure as hell wasn’t going to complain about it.

Having gotten some good intel out of Gladys, Bobby decided to head out to question Paul about his relationship with Amanda Burns, figuring he’d swing by her place on the way home to see if the police had left any of her spellwork in place. He doubted she’d just drawn herself a pentagram and killed a rabbit to slit her own wrists, so they needed to figure out what she was up to. Paul wasn’t home to question about anything, and even though Bobby staked out his place for most of the night he never returned. On the way back he managed to get into Amanda’s house through her back door, making sure to leave his gloves on as he looked around and tried not to hold the flashlight up high enough to attract outside attention. The police hadn’t done much of anything with the scene besides taking down the rabbit and leaving the rope it was suspended from hanging from the overhead light. With very little effort he found another hex bag tucked in underneath the coffee table that the police surely would have seen had they taken more than a few minutes to take in the scene and dismiss it as a straightforward suicide. They certainly hadn’t taken the heavy black book laying open on the sofa behind the oversized red stain where Amanda bled out, and after shaking off the fingerprint dust from it he stowed it under his coat and made for the back door. Dean was already upstairs in bed by the time he made it back to the house and fortunately the hellhound they now seemed to be plagued with hadn’t shown up yet, but John was still sitting up with a bottle of scotch and a tumbler when the beta padded through the door.

“What’d Dutton have to say?” the alpha asked, muting the television as Ron Popeil was demonstrating how to cook four chickens at once in his rotisserie oven after you “set it and forget it.”

“Nothin’,” Bobby replied, crossing to the sofa and plunking the heavy tome down on the coffee table. “He never came home from work. Found this in Amanda’s house, though.”

“A grimoire?” John said, leafing through the pages. “Looks like Celtic. That means it’s old.”

“Mm,” Bobby agreed as he went to grab himself a tumbler from the kitchen. “I see you managed to get Dean into bed.”

“That was Sam.” John sighed and poured himself another glass, then leaned over to pour Bobby one as well as the beta lowered himself onto the sectional. “I think he ordered him. Dean was pretty upset when they got done talking. He’d have probably waited up to see what you found if he had a choice.”

“It’s gonna be fun trying to keep him away from this,” Bobby grumbled, thumping the pages of the book with his thumb.

They drank in silence for a while, Bobby pulling the book closer to him to continue looking through it for anything that might give a hint to the spell used on Janet Dutton while John scanned the pages but didn’t really see the words written on them. He thought of how obstinate Dean had been when Bobby put his foot down about going to talk to Paul alone, how genuinely distressed he was that he couldn’t get closer to Sam than a phone call, how he’d blamed the tears that spilled over his cheeks as he limped up to bed on hormones, and finally sat back to sip his scotch. Something had been nagging at him all day, a dream he couldn’t remember from the night before that sat in his stomach like a bad burrito and left a terrible aftertaste in his mouth. He wished he could recall what it was.

“To answer your question, yes,” he said at last, and Bobby blinked up at him in confusion.

“What question?” Bobby griped. “How long have you been sittin’ here drinkin’ scotch alone?”

“Being a decent parent really is that hard for me.” He downed the rest of his drink in one shot as the beta stared at him, not sure what John expected him to say - if he expected him to say anything - and pushed himself to his feet with a hand on the book. “We need to keep Dean away from that tomorrow. Hell, we might have to find something to tie him to until Sam gets back.”

Bobby nodded in agreement, muttering “‘Night John,” as the alpha headed upstairs to his room and turned back to study the grimoire. Tomorrow he’d figure out where Paul Dutton worked and track him down there to put an end to this. It was possible Amanda was the only one of the coven who was off the rails, but after today having them right across the street left the old hunter feeling like it was only a matter of time before the whole thing blew up on them, and he doubted Sam would make it back in time to stop the explosion.


	82. The Only Person Who Can Get Me Out of This Thing is Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Michigan. It still sucks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: There may be some triggery stuff in here. I honestly never know with these things.

Sam fucking despised Michigan - not that it had ever been one of his favorite states, but it was definitely ruined now. He’d always avoided anything bordering a Great Lake once winter rolled around because the Great Lakes in winter sucked. There was entirely too much snow and too much cold and even though it could be made more palatable by staying in five star hotels like the Peninsula ( _which they still would never be patronizing again_ ) should one be stuck somewhere like Chicago for a chunk of time in early January, the Northern Lower Peninsula right smack dab on Lake Michigan was just about irredeemable in his opinion. The horrible weather, terrible driving conditions, bitter cold, and complete lack of any recreational activity that didn’t have “ice” in the title would have been bad enough, but Sam literally couldn’t leave this godforsaken winter wasteland until after his trial date, all because some backwater hick judge considered him a flight risk and had gone above and beyond to ensure he wouldn’t skip town. He didn’t care so much about the exorbitant bond he’d needed to post in order to not spend the next two weeks bunking with a beta named Rob who smelled of onions so much as he cared about the ankle monitor they’d slapped on him. The lawyer Lily sent up - Tessa, who had very dark hair and pale skin and reminded him a bit too much of that girl Sarah from the bar - had done everything she could to argue the fines and restrictions on Sam were excessive, but Kelly Kline was a beta and the state of Michigan took alpha assaults against a beta very seriously. So Sam found himself with a rented room at a crap motel that was going to be his home for a fortnight, banned from the hospital and climbing the walls as he waited to hear from Tessa on how the negotiations she had already started with the district attorney were going.

Ellen at least was still in town, not willing to leave until Jo was released from the hospital and that wasn’t going to happen for a while. She was recovering well from the hypothermia but the doctors were still very concerned about the frostbite, especially the damage she may have sustained in her feet and pinky fingers on both hands. Adam was on track to be released by the end of the week, and he was promising to keep Sam company, since he was a witness and needed to stick around anyway. Sam would have preferred Adam go back to Indiana, wanting to crawl out of his skin since they left the state on Friday and unable to shake the dreadful sense that something terrible was going to happen while he was gone. Of course, that may have had something to do with the nightmares.

There had been the one in the hospital that landed him in jail in the first place, and it had been nothing compared to the one he’d had two nights in a row now. Dealing with his mother, his dead girlfriend, a house guest who barely tolerated him, and a demon who was rapidly becoming his biggest regret was nothing compared to the basement of his grandfather’s house in Shreveport - a house that was now his and that he hadn’t decided what to do with yet, though burning it down was right at the top of the list. Unlike the precognitive dreams he’d been having for a while, these were postcognitive, starring his cousins and a string of beta and omega women drugged into unconsciousness that they took turns fucking and flipping around like rag dolls. Christian and Mark always found time to play, Tyler usually posted as lookout and if he was “lucky” getting a chance to force the girls to blow him before his bigger, stronger cousins took over for the real fun. The first night he had the dream it ended with Mark leering over at him, like he was looking into a camera except Sam was the camera. The second night it ended with Dean being marched into the room and ordered to drink a glass of amber liquid, before being forced to sit on the bed facing Mark. Tyler scampered off to watch the door at Mark’s command, complaining about his cousins taking too long and making sure he got his turn. It made Sam want to raise the three of them from the dead just so he could kill them all over again, slowly - test out how long it took to kill someone through the death of a thousand cuts. He felt a particular swell of pride when Dean said, despite being drunk and drugged, “I’m gonna cut off yer dick an’ feed it to you.” He wished his omega had been able to do that, even more so when Mark slid his cock between Dean’s perfect lips and began to pump his hips, grabbing the back of Dean’s head to keep him positioned the way Mark wanted until finally Dean passed out and slid sideways onto the bed as Sam woke up.

The third night it started with Dean and went through the forced fellatio, but Sam couldn’t wake up afterwards. Mark complained - actually _complained_ \- that they’d drugged Dean too well and he hadn’t gotten off, and just as he’d done to all the betas and omegas he rolled Dean onto his back like a sack of flour, stuck a couple of fingers onto his channel to open him up, and then sunk in deep, groaning and thrusting, his hands digging into Dean’s pectoral muscles possessively as he ground the omega down into the mattress. He pulled out just before he came, shooting thick white stripes across Dean’s stomach and the sheets and backing away, yanking his pants up as Christian stepped forward to turn Dean ass up on the bed. As Christian repeated the minor prep before settling between Dean’s legs, Mark looked straight at the Sam-camera and said with a grin, “He still dreams about this, you know. Every time he goes stiff in your arms, he’s dreaming about me and how I felt inside him. He just doesn’t tell you, Sammy.” He licked his teeth, considering how much to reveal as Christian grunted away behind him, then added, “I wonder if he can still smell me.” It drove Sam straight out of bed and into the bathroom so he wouldn’t vomit on the too-thin motel carpet.

The dreams continued throughout the week, growing more focused on Dean until the other victims disappeared all together. Despite Mark or Christian turning their attention to chatting Sam up about the best part of getting Dean compliant on his back or on his stomach ( _“You know, when you think about it, you weren’t really his first alpha, Sam - ain’t that a bitch?”_ ) it was clear these weren’t just visions sent by Azazel or Ruby or whatever demon was the flavor of the day. He was seeing what happened in the basement, and though he finally understood why Adam had wanted him to watch the tape - so that he would _know_ \- it still left him feeling like he was violating Dean’s privacy and all he wanted was to be back in Fort Wayne keeping the omega safe.

His phone conversations with Dean didn’t exactly make him feel any better. Monday night he didn’t get to talk to him until late, between how long it took from his bail hearing to when he was actually able to get out, then getting fitted with the stupid ankle monitor and having to straighten things out with the motel to extend his stay. The omega had done his best impression of someone who was just fine that he was carrying and separated from his not-quite-mate by a legal system in another state, but he wasn’t very good at impressions. At least he was able to tell Sam that Kevin had tracked down his employment records, but that left the alpha worrying about how to make it back to Indiana for the OPS hearing. Dean had eventually ended up in tears, trying to convince Sam that he could make the drive up if they took lots of breaks so he wasn’t in the car for too long, and the alpha had to command he go to bed. Tuesday, despite all of his protestations to the contrary Dean sounded worse instead of better; more morose at the situation and less like he had the capacity to cope with this latest bump in the road. Sam was starting to doubt if calling every day was a good idea or if it might be better to only touch base if there was something new to tell him and maybe just text a little to stay in touch. It wasn’t like either of them were insecure about where they stood with one another, and he didn’t want to keep making Dean sad, no matter how much calmer it made him feel to hear the omega’s voice. It seemed Dean had the same thought, since Wednesday Sam couldn’t get him on the phone at all, and even though he knew it was probably saving Dean a lot of anxiety it left Sam a growling mess, confined to his motel room to wear a tread in the floor with all his pacing.

On Thursday he heard from Tessa again, and she brought him danish and coffee as she sat him down in his small kitchenette with a serious expression on her face. Ellen was spending some time with him, needing a break from the hospital now that Jo was doing better and Adam was about to be released, and though Tessa wanted to discuss the case with him in private he didn’t see a point. Eventually he’d end up telling Ellen everything they talked about anyway.

“The district attorney has agreed to a plea deal,” she said hesitantly as Ellen sipped the coffee Tessa brought for Sam, who had been feeling wired for days and certainly didn’t need any caffeine to add to his edginess, his knee bouncing as he looked at her across the cheese and cherry breakfast pastries.

“That’s great!” Sam exclaimed, and Ellen asked, “Isn’t that kind of quick?”

“The judge may be gunning for Sam but the D.A. knows it’s going to be a huge waste of public resources if this actually goes to trial,” Tessa told them both, her mouth still turned down in a frown as she tucked a strand of raven hair behind her ear where it had broken free of her ponytail. “He wants a win without having to get one the hard and expensive way.”

“That’s a good thing though, isn’t it?” Sam said, noticing how carefully neutral she was trying to keep her expression and not quite managing it.

“I’ve been arguing with him that there are mitigating circumstances to the assault,” she replied after a moment in which she was clearly deciding how to explain the deal. “You were in the middle of a nightmare, it was a stranger who touched you, your job is particularly high stress and traumatic, you had in fact just completed a job with the beta you assaulted that led to the discovery of a murder victim walled up in a basement. Fortunately, and unfortunately, you don’t have a record of violent behavior like this, so while there’s no pattern of you being a danger to others it’s difficult to build much of a defense around the idea that you suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder or night terrors. However, the D.A. was still willing to consider you might have underlying psychological issues that contributed to attacking Ms. Kline.”

“You’re doin’ an awful lot of tap-dancin’ around the question, hon,” Ellen said, setting her coffee down and making Sam feel immensely grateful for having a mom in the room, even if she wasn’t his. It certainly seemed like he was about to get some very bad news from his lawyer wrapped up in pretty packaging to make it seem less like very bad news. “Spill it.”

“They’re willing to drop the charges if Sam agrees to voluntarily commit himself for a seventy-two hour psychiatric evaluation.”

That. Was very bad news. Certainly not what Sam was expecting, and definitely not something that sounded like a particularly good idea with how much more frequently he was having visions, both waking and sleeping. Being locked in a building with a group of people whose sanity was in question seemed a recipe for disaster. Still, he needed to get back to Fort Wayne sooner rather than later, with the OPS hearing now less than a week away. Seventy two hours, even in a nuthouse, seemed a better bet than waiting for a court date in a week and a half, though he had to wonder…

“What’s the catch?”

Tessa sighed at him, happy and exasperated to have a client who was smart. It always helped when defending someone if they were intelligent enough to assist in the defense, but there was always the possibility of getting pushback, even when she was giving someone their best option. This was definitely Sam’s best option for getting out of this state with a fine and no jail time.

“It’s twofold. First, it’s in a state facility two counties over, which has had some suspicious deaths in the last few months that the authorities haven’t been able to figure out.”

So a case was attached. That to Sam wasn’t a deal breaker.

“And second?”

“It’s going to be a real evaluation.” She gave him a long, serious stare to make sure he understood what she meant by that. “If they think they need to keep you, they can. Indefinitely.”

“Indefinitely?” Ellen asked, arching an eyebrow as she slid instinctively into mama bear mode. “You’re sayin’ if they decide Sam’s a few pliers short of a toolbox they don’t have to let him go?”

“I don’t see that happening, but yes.” At the wide-eyed expression on Sam’s face she barreled ahead. “They seem much more interested in finding out what’s going on with these deaths without having to involve any official investigation by the FDH that would shut the facility down and require them to find alternate facilities for the residents.”

“So basically after paying a bond amount that borders on extortion, they want to save money by avoiding taking me to trial _and_ having me work a potential case solo so they can keep open an asylum that should probably be closed,” Sam said, his jaw working furiously as he struggled to suppress detailing all the ways in which the state of Michigan and Manistee County in particular could go fuck themselves.

“Basically,” Tessa said.

“Will he be able to have any visitors while he’s in there?” Ellen pulled a chair up to the table and snagged a danish. “He’s not gonna have the chance to do research on anything he might find inside and sendin’ anyone on a hunt alone is a great way to get that someone killed.”

“He can. I wouldn’t even have considered this as an option if he was going to be cut off from the outside.”

“They need to drop the potential to keep me past the three days,” Sam snapped. “I do my seventy-two hours, _try_ to figure out what’s going on, and they cut me loose.”

“This isn’t really a negotiation, Sam,” Tessa warned him, and he growled, “Make it one.”

Lily apparently chose her associates carefully, as Tessa came back around five o’clock with an agreement from the D.A. to Sam’s terms and the hospital files for each of the residents who’d died at the psychiatric hospital he was slated to be admitted to the next day. All had suffered massive heart failure, though none of them had shown any indication of vascular issues during their regular physicals, which were conducted quarterly on all residents to check for side effects from medication. Additionally, two of the five victims had been only in their twenties - not exactly prime candidates for heart attacks - and all had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. Finally, they had all died shortly after light’s out, which came at eight o’clock sharp, and two separate guards insisted the lights had flickered each time someone died. It definitely struck Sam as more than just coincidence.

A search of the hospital’s history revealed, among other things, a riot in the 1970s in the south wing where the sickest patients were housed. The wing had been closed for close to thirty years until a neighboring county shut down their mental health facility and the patients needed somewhere to go, so the south wing had been renovated and reopened about six months ago. Back in the ‘70’s riot a handful of patients as well as a few hospital staff were killed, and the deaths had begun shortly after the renovations were finished, leading Sam to believe they were likely dealing with a vengeful spirit. Narrowing it down without getting inside would have been nearly impossible though, so it was just as well Sam was being admitted as a patient without having to come up with some kind of cover story.

Knowing that he only had to spend three days in the ward and that he had an active case to solve didn’t make the admissions process any easier, between the initial evaluation with Dr. Fuller, who seemed to pick up on Sam’s anger almost immediately, the delousing, scent blocking, and the very thorough physical examination, all of which started at eight in the morning. He’d left Dean a voicemail the night before and called him again before dropping off his phone upon check-in, along with everything else on his person, right down to his underwear. After being admitted he was released to the day room, which was educational to say the least, between the woman waltzing with the invisible man, the other woman playing checkers with herself, and the man who was babbling to himself about angels while painting pictures of clowns. That everyone’s scent was heavily blocked was more than a little disconcerting, though he was sure it helped keep fights to a minimum. It also meant that the only thing anyone could really smell was the heavy aroma of multiple medications and antiseptic. Group therapy was just before lunch and was where he got his first lead on the case from one of the other patients, a man named Ted who insisted they discuss the white haired lady that was coming to kill them all. Dr. Fuller was quite adamant that they weren’t going to talk about the white haired lady again, and had to threaten to call the orderlies before Ted calmed down.

Lunch was something that was an approximation of meatloaf and mashed potatoes but didn’t quite rise to the occasion, after which he had an individual therapy session with Dr. Cartwright, who surprised him while he was back in the day room, having just been pushed up against a wall and kissed by a very attractive beta who purred that she liked him because he was “bigger.” Than what he had no idea and didn’t really care to ask, and was frankly grateful when the man with the short grey hair, dimples, and deep chin cleft approached in his white lab coat and scrubs.

“I see you’ve met Wendy,” he said with a smile. “I’m Doctor Eric Cartwright and I’ve been assigned to your case. Please, have a seat.”

He gestured to the table the checkers player had abandoned earlier, waiting for Sam to sit before taking up a seat across from him. At several inches shy of six feet tall he must have been a beta, but even so he had a commanding presence. His wide grin and penetrating gaze made Sam a tad bit uncomfortable.

“I thought Doctor Fuller was in charge of my case,” Sam said, starting to suppress his unease until he remembered that his scent was blocked so it wouldn’t matter what he suppressed and what he didn’t. The thought was liberating.

“Doctor Fuller is in charge but he only oversees group therapy,” Dr. Cartwright replied. “I get to deal with you one on one.” There was the smile again, and Sam shifted a bit in his seat. “So, Sam, I understand you’re in here because you’ve got some anger issues.”

“I’m in here because of a misunderstanding,” Sam corrected, returning Dr. Cartwright’s smile with one that was thin lipped. "But you've got my file so you already know why I'm in here."

“Well, I'd still like to hear your side of things. Why don’t you help _me_ understand it?”

For a moment Sam strongly considered telling him to shove it or making something up, but he remembered that he was somewhat at the mercy of the hospital staff, and he _was_ being legitimately evaluated as part of his plea bargain, so he decided to play nice. Visiting hours were at three o’clock and he already had a lead for Ellen to look into for him. He couldn’t risk being denied the chance to talk to her for mouthing off to the doctor working his case.

“It’s pretty simple, actually,” he finally said with a shrug. “I was having a nightmare. Someone shook me awake. I slammed her into a wall.”

“And that’s simple to you?” Cartwright asked, earning another shrug.

“It wasn’t intentional. I thought she was someone else.”

“Who?”

“It doesn’t really matter. I didn’t know it was her, and wouldn’t have hurt her if I had.”

“Do you hurt a lot of people, Sam?”

The question drew him up short, and he wondered if it was some kind of trap. He thought it had to be, since his job as a hunter would be in his file, and everyone knew what hunters did.

“I hurt a lot of _things_ ,” he said carefully after he’d thought about the best way to phrase it. “I wouldn’t say I hurt a lot of _people_.”

“Do you like hurting _things_?”

“Not especially.”

“Then why do it?”

“Because someone has to.”

“Ah.” Cartwright opened the folder and scanned it, letting the air hang heavy between them long enough for Sam to start shifting in his chair again. “Maybe it’s also a good outlet for all the anger you have pent up inside of you.”

Sam flinched, tried not to clench his jaw at the comment and failed.

“Who says I’m angry?”

“You slammed a woman a foot shorter than you into a wall because of a dream you were having. I’d say it’s pretty obvious that you’re angry.”

“I already told you, I didn’t know it was her.”

“I can also feel it flowing off of you.” Cartwright set the folder down, his hands intertwined on his chest as he leaned backwards. “The way you carry yourself is like you’re ready for a fight. The way you glance around the room - even now - is like you’re looking for one. And then of course the line of work you’re in. I doubt anyone gets into the monster hunting business without being very angry at something. What is it with you?”

Sam genuinely disliked this guy, the darkness starting to swirl inside him at all these ridiculous questions and assumptions. Dr. Cartwright didn’t know him, didn’t know what he dealt with on a daily basis. How dare he presume anything about Sam based on a couple of pages in a manila file?

“Demons,” he spat, wondering how much longer he’d have to endure this interrogation. “A demon killed my mother and my college girlfriend. Though if I’m being honest, I was raised to go into the life and even though I tried to get out I didn’t have much of a shot.”

“It must frustrate you how unfair that is.”

“I dunno. There are things I’m happy with that wouldn’t have happened if I weren’t a hunter, so there’s always a silver lining. And I’m planning to get out of the business again, so there’s that.”

“Get out of the business? Even with demons running around killing people you love?”

“There are ways to protect against demons.”

“Even the most powerful ones?”

“Even those.”

“So you’re planning to run from your anger for...what, the rest of your life?”

“If I have to.”

“I see.” There was the smile again as Sam glanced around, trying to find a clock and wondering how much longer he was going to have to endure questioning by this doctor; if it were a set amount of time or just until Cartwright felt he’d gotten all the answers he needed for the day. “So these demons, why are they killing the people you love?”

“They want something from me,” Sam said almost in spite of himself. “I don’t really know what, I just know it’s bad.”

“You aren’t curious to find out?” Cartwright asked, still with the smile, and Sam’s eyes narrowed as he studied the man across from him.

“Not particularly,” he replied after a bit. “Would you be?”

“Yes,” Cartwright said with very little hesitation. “I think if I had demons pursuing me I’d want to know why.”

“Well I don’t.”

“You’d rather just be angry about it without any sort of resolution in sight?” The doctor shook his head, gathering up the file. “That’s not a very healthy way to look at things, Sam. I see we’re going to have our work cut out for us.” He stood and smiled down at the alpha, waving the file in his direction. “And we don’t have a lot of time, so I’ll have to get a move on with you, won’t I?”

Sam gave him a final shrug but stayed where he was, watching as the doctor headed away down the hall. It wasn’t until Cartwright was leaving the room that he turned back, and Sam could have sworn his eyes flashed yellow for a moment. He shot to his feet and across the room, fast enough to have a couple of orderlies on him, which was a mistake because it triggered Sam’s fight or flight response, and his brain went for fight. He very quickly found himself with a dose of sedatives in his system and missed visiting hours, noting as he quickly blacked out that Cartwright was nowhere to be found in the long hallway between the day room and the admissions area. While Sam was sleeping off the sedative Ted died of a massive heart attack. The guilt the next day at having screwed up was a lot to take, though at least under sedation he wasn’t troubled with any of the dreams that had plagued him throughout the rest of the week.

His second day in the psych ward went smoother, if only because he knew what to expect. Breakfast, then the day room, then group therapy, then lunch, then the day room again. Cartwright didn’t appear for a one-on-one session, Sam didn’t freak out on anyone, and Ellen showed up for visiting hours. Something seemed off about her, but when Sam pressed her on it she insisted it was just too much time spent in the hospital and too much stress waiting for Jo to either be released or transferred back to Indiana. Adam had already been released and was back in Fort Wayne, which struck the alpha as odd since he’d been determined not to leave the state without Jo. It made Sam worry that Dean was not faring well without him, but Ellen said she hadn’t spoken to the omega and brought him back around to focus on the case. He had a description of the ghost from the latest victim and told her to see if she could find a record of a woman with white hair who died in the riot, and where she might be buried. Digging up a body to salt and burn it would be a bitch in the dead of winter, but the county was either going to need to figure out a way to handle it or they’d have to close down the south wing until spring when the remains could be properly disposed of.

Wendy was back for more attempted kissing after dinner during rec time, and without the benefit of sedatives the nightmares returned. This time they were relatively benign, but instilled a sense of terror in him nonetheless. Dean was in a kitchen that wasn’t Benny’s, dressed in the kinds of clothing more oppressed omegas typically wore - a gauzy green silk shirt that had a single button in the front at the waist, leaving it hanging open in a deep vee the entire length of his chest and most of his abdomen, and a pair of linen pants that were studded from hip to heel with snaps, allowing them to be easily removed with one or two yanks. He was barefoot and wore a heavy black collar around his neck, the kind that only oms who were housebound were forced into. It was no longer socially acceptable to collar omegas in public, but there were still plenty of alphas who never allowed their oms to go out into society or who insisted they wear them at home so collars were easy to procure. Lizzie was in a high chair, a few months older than she was now, and there was a newborn in the crook of Dean’s arm as he prepared breakfast for a man with short, light brown hair and a narrow face. He was just barely shorter than Dean and watched him with hawkish brown eyes that were wide and perpetually lust blown - an alpha by the looks of his reaction as his eyes washed over Dean’s wide shoulders and wandered down to his trim waist, pausing for only a moment to scowl at the baby. Sam could tell by the disgust that the baby did not belong to this alpha. Dean was obviously holding Elliott, his stomach and chest flat, the extra weight around his hips all but vanished. The man was saying something Sam couldn’t make out, and when Dean didn’t respond he moved across the room to run a hand down the omega’s back to rest against the swell of his ass. Whoever the alpha was he was small enough that Dean could have easily bested him, his shoulders narrow and frame wiry, but Dean’s fear was palpable in the dream and for reasons Sam couldn’t understand he dared not move; wouldn’t even lift his green eyes to look at this other alpha. When the man moved in to plant a kiss on Dean’s cheek before caressing his back again Dean went rigid, and Sam woke with his heart racing and breath coming in gasps. Moments later there was yelling in the hall, followed by a general commotion as multiple footfalls came rapidly in his direction. Ignoring his rabbiting pulse, Sam went to his door to try to get a glimpse out of the window and didn’t take long to determine that there had been another death - Wendy, two doors down from his room. He tried to convince someone to let him out to no avail, slamming his fist so hard into the wall of his room that he nearly broke two knuckles.

His last day was passed the same as the other two, though still Dr. Cartwright did not return, and Dr. Fuller tried vainly to convince Sam he needed to enter therapy to deal with his anger issues. Sam had barely talked during the group sessions, but apparently the way he sat and scowled with a set jaw and dark eyes was enough for someone with Dr. Fuller’s experience to recognize an alpha at his breaking point. Sam gave a halfhearted promise to look into anger management courses or something once he got home, counting the hours until Ellen would come back and tell him what she found out. What she found out was a goldmine. There was a nurse named Glockner that had white hair who was killed in the riot and had been suspected of murdering some of the patients who were the most hopeless; the ones who were so ill they had no hope of rejoining the rest of the society. They hadn’t much evidence against her at the time to prove she was an angel of mercy killer, but it was uncanny how many patients who were in excellent physical health came into the infirmary with mild conditions like coughs and colds and died of heart attacks. The kicker was that Glockner had been cremated, but her daughter was still in the area and Ellen planned to check in with her to see if maybe there were other remains to be salted and burned.

There clearly were, Sam realized at eight thirty when the ghost materialized in his room, waking him from a sound sleep that hadn’t yet turned nightmarish. He should have stashed some salt packets in the pockets of his drawstring pants at dinner, because suddenly there she was with her hand on his chest, eyes bloodshot and hair wild, hissing at him that he was the sickest one of all. He reached desperately for anything in his room that might be iron, wondering if he could somehow roll her into the bed frame that he was pretty sure was made of the ghost repelling metal, his heart struggling to pump blood through his veins as he felt a terrible cold envelope him, like he’d been dunked in ice water. Then just as suddenly as she appeared she was off of him, backing away and vanishing with a scream in a fiery blaze. The next day he would hear from Ellen how Glockner’s daughter kept a lock of her mother’s hair, but at the moment he’d just been glad to have survived.

At precisely six o’clock the following morning they’d begun to process Sam’s release papers, returning his belongings to him and reminding him again that they were recommending continued therapy and anger management classes. Dr. Fuller offered to provide input on anyone Sam might want to see back in Fort Wayne, as he would be able to look into their credentials quicker and easier, but it was an offer Sam declined. Once he got out of Michigan he was never looking back.

Ellen picked him up in his truck, Adam having taken Dean’s, and Sam didn’t think he was imagining her still being cagey with him, though he’d just spent three days in an asylum so he couldn’t be sure. She helped him pack and assured him she’d be just fine getting back to Fort Wayne with Jo, that if necessary she’d just hitch a ride with the ambulance that would transfer her down to St. Mary’s in a day or two so Jo could continue to regrow some of the skin on her hands and feet. Sam thanked her for helping him out with the ghost but she wouldn’t hear of any thanks, telling him to get back to Indiana to be with his omega. Something about the way she said it left him feeling deeply unsettled, yet she still remained tight-lipped and merely insisted that he get on the road. The troubled feeling stayed with him the entire four hour drive that he made in just over three, growing more intense the closer he got to Fort Wayne, especially when Dean wouldn’t answer any of the seven calls he placed to tell him he was on his way home before his phone battery completely died. Surely Dean must have realized how anxious the alpha would become, having not spoken to him for nearly a week, and the longer he went without hearing back from the omega the more anxious and angry he became. The black pit rumbling in his gut wasn’t taking hold yet, and he didn’t think it would before he got back to Sunset Trail, but he still planned to give Dean a piece of his mind when he saw him.

Except Dean wasn’t there when he pulled into the drive. No one was there. The cars were gone and the house was empty. Even the dog was missing. His phone was charged so he tried calling Dean again and was more than a little panicked to hear it ringing in the kitchen, where it was plugged into the wall. He tried Adam’s cell before remembering the crazed rednecks took it from him, then tried Bobby’s cell only to have it go straight to voicemail. Growing even more frantic he rushed across the street, thinking the creepy, nosy neighbor might know what was going on, but their car was gone, the house was locked, and there were no signs of life inside, leaving Sam damn near hyperventilating on their doorstep.

Where the hell was everyone?


	83. My Father Was an Obsessed Bastard

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What exactly happened the last day Sam talked to Dean?

Paul Dutton was dead. They didn’t even have to track him down to wherever he worked, it was right there in the paper Tuesday morning, a story of interest since his wife had died of mysterious causes just a few days before and now he had died from the same thing while in his office on his lunch hour. The story stressed that whatever killed them did not appear to be contagious so there was no reason for alarm, and promised future updates should they be relevant to the public interest. Bobby and John could make neither heads nor tails of the grimoire, since neither of them were particularly strong on the Celtic languages, and when they were still coming up empty at lunch time the alpha did something Dean was sure he’d never do: he contacted Henry. That John even knew how to get in touch with Henry was something of a surprise, though the omega didn’t suppose it should have been considering their grandfather was the reason they got into Acteon, so obviously John must know how to reach him. And of course knowing that he knew how to reach his father and just...didn’t was perfectly logical. That was John Winchester’s modus operandi after all. When it came to his family it was as if Dean’s father developed a deadly allergy to telephones.

Not that a telephone would have been useful in reaching Henry. John had inherited his communication issues from somewhere, after all, and wherever Henry lived now it was someplace that apparently didn’t have a phone. Contacting him required some kind of spell that John had committed to memory, even if he rarely used it, a mirror serving as a kind of long range video conference system to let John explain to his father what they were dealing with and the book they had on hand after Henry answered the call. At first it didn’t seem he was going to come take a look in person, but after John agreed he could take the grimoire back with him for his library the eldest Winchester was happy to help.

Having three generations of Winchesters under one roof was one of the stranger experiences of Bobby’s life, particularly when the eldest member looked younger than his son but was so obviously John’s father it would have been funny if it weren’t so uncomfortable. The obsessive nature that plagued John and had been drilled into Dean was apparently directly inherited from Henry, who - despite insisting he could only stay for a few minutes - was there for well over an hour reviewing the grimoire and the ingredients in the hex bags in an effort to determine the prowess of the witches involved in the spellwork. It was clear he was a researcher and not a hunter based on how giddy he was about the objects that needed his expertise, as he clearly didn’t register at all that three people were dead and they suspected a coven was in residence across the street. In fact, the idea of having a coven across the street seemed to make him even more excited.

“This really is quite the remarkable book you’ve discovered, Bobby,” Henry said as he turned to the front and pointed out a faded mark on the interior of the first page before a table of contents of sorts. The red ink was faded to the point where it was barely visible, but Henry seemed to be able to tell what it said just by running his fingers over it. “It’s close to two thousand years old, though I can tell you it didn’t belong to the witch who was killed yesterday. The spell she used to dispatch that couple was entry level, something any initiate could cast with just a little training. There are far better ways contained in this book to kill from a distance that wouldn’t attract nearly the amount of attention as liquified organs, but they require a much higher level of skill. As does the spell that was used to compel the girl to kill herself. I would postulate that a high priest or priestess cast that spell to punish your victim for violating one of the four pillars of the Witches’ Temple; specifically ‘to keep silent.’”

“Yeah, we already figured Amanda wasn’t the big fish,” John told him, taking up a seat next to him at the kitchen island, Bobby already on his other side. Hannah, having remembered their last encounter, sat at Henry’s feet hoping for a chance at some more bacon. Dean sat on the floor in the living room with Lizzie, scowling at them through the dining room every now and then since he had been banned from participating in the conversation. “We’ve got three other options, and according to the world wide web two of them have had runs of good luck in the last six months big enough to make the news. Elizabeth Higgins won every gardening competition she entered this past year and Renee Van Allen’s husband was promoted to senior vice president of his bank. The third, Tammi Fenton, hasn’t made the news. Seems she’s the best candidate for this priestess you’re talking about, but we need to know how powerful she is so we can go in there prepared.”

“The answer to that question is quite powerful,” Henry stated, turning the book so John could see the mark. “This writing here that’s all but faded indicates the ownership of this grimoire, and it isn’t a witch. It’s the demon Astaroth.”

“Astaroth?” Bobby echoed, looking to John. “You run across that one in your dealings?”

Henry’s head snapped up as he looked at his son, feeling the instant desire to scold and recognizing he had no right to do such a thing. However, he couldn’t help but ask hesitantly,  “You’re dealing with demons, John?”

“ _A_ demon,” John corrected.

“In pursuit of the one that killed your mate?”

“I’d ask how you know about that, but I don’t really need to and it’s not your business anyway. I have a business arrangement with the one demon I know, and no, I’ve never heard of Astaroth.”

“That’s a good thing,” Henry said, his expression dark and his mouth set in a hard line. “Astaroth is a Grand Duke of Hell and beyond the realms is known as the Corruptor. His goal is to turn souls to Hell through rewards or gifts.”

“Like a crossroads demon,” Bobby stated with a pointed look at John.

“Not quite,” Henry said. “Crossroads demons operate on the premise of selling souls. The human knows the terms and willfully signs a contract for a fixed reward and a fixed collection date. Astaroth uses subterfuge. Most humans who find their way to Hell through deals with him have no idea they are even on the path. He hasn’t been very active since the Middle Ages, but recently he’s made a reappearance with the spread of...what do you call it...New Age religions?”

“You mean crystals and singing bowls and shit brought this guy back?”

“Sort of. As old practices have become new again under the guise of recovering ancient, nature worshipping ways - Wicca and Paganism, for example - Astaroth has experienced a reawakening. Centuries ago people would have known the difference between spellwork done by a natural witch or a wise woman and spellwork tied to demonic power, but with the rise of Christianity those paths were largely abandoned and the knowledge lost. Astaroth is preying on the ignorance that has stepped into the void. Your average civilian would find it impossible to determine the difference between a book by Raven Grimassi and one belonging to a spawn of Hell.”

“Fantastic,” Bobby grumbled.

“You must understand, just because this is Astaroth’s grimoire it doesn’t mean you’re dealing with the demon himself,” Henry cautioned, flipping to a page in the back. “It’s possible one of his disciples is here. You see this list of names in the back? This is every witch to whom Astaroth has presented this book as a gift for as long as they walked the earth. A bit like who signed it out of the library last.”

John and Bobby looked over the list, neither particularly relieved to see it was so short, and while Bobby was reviewing John said, “There are only four names here. How long has he been presenting this book to witches?”

“For as long as this book has existed,” Henry replied. “This is written with the Ogham, which records date back to first century A.D. Truly powerful witches can easily live for centuries unless they are stopped by someone, surviving wars and plagues with little difficulty. Frankly it would surprise me if there were _more_ than four names on this page. This is why it’s so important to find out whether you’re dealing with Astaroth himself or the latest recipient of this grimoire. Killing a demon is a very different process than killing a centuries old witch.”

“Any ideas on how we can figure that out without gettin’ up close and personal?” Bobby asked, drawing a sigh out of the alpha.

“Not with what I have on hand. Were we in my library I could easily whip up something that would be able to determine not only what but who your mark is.”

“We could ask Crowley,” Dean piped up from the living room as he paused while playing peekaboo with Lizzie. “He probably knows and he wants to talk to you anyway.”

“We’re not asking Crowley for a single other damn thing, Dean,” John spat, shooting a glare his way. “We don’t need to offer up another quid pro quo, we just need to think outside the box since we can’t sit on our hands waiting for them to kill someone else, I can’t leave the house, you’re not going over there, and we’re not just serving Bobby up like a sacrificial lamb.”

“Why can’t you leave the house?” Henry asked, finding his son’s glare turned to him in a clear nonverbal response that it was none of his damn business.

Still, John replied, “I’ve got a hellhound after me. Haven’t found a way to get it off my tail yet, but I will.”

“I thought you said you didn’t make a deal.”

“I didn’t. I’m on the bad side of a crossroads demon, name of Dar. I found a loophole to some of her deals for a few Hell bound souls and she isn’t exactly happy with me.”

“Well then I think there’s a solution in this book to both of your problems.” Henry turned back to the front of the book to check the table of contents and quickly leafed through to a page that had a short list of ingredients, what appeared to be simple instructions, and a diagram of a sigil neither of the hunters in the kitchen had ever seen. “This is a cloaking spell, something even a novice could cast, to hide the wearer of this mark from unwarranted pursuit. It’s the sort of thing that would be used in ancient times if an alpha were showing undue interest in an omega or a beta and weren’t accepting of a rebuff, but it should work in this instance as well. You haven’t made a deal for your soul so the hellhound chasing you is doing so without adequate cause.”

“But, if we did that wouldn’t whoever this book belongs to know we had it?” Bobby asked. “I’m bettin’ that’s a big reason Amanda was killed. Not just that the killings landed in the news; she probably stole this book from our head honcho and whether it’s a high priestess or a Grand Duke of Hell I doubt they were too pleased.”

“And that’s why I said it was a solution to both of your problems,” Henry replied. “Both a witch and the demon will know the grimoire is in use, but only one will be able to do anything in retaliation. You’ve not let any of these women in the house, correct?”

“Right,” Bobby said.

“Then only Astaroth will be able to reach you within these walls, since the witch won’t have had the chance to plant a hex bag.”

“But the house is warded,” Dean objected, pulling a sleepy infant into his lap. “Demons can’t get in here as long as the wards are in place.”

“This house is heavily fortified, that’s true,” Henry agreed. “However, this book is bound in human skin and shares a link with the demon. If it is Astaroth he won’t be able to get in, but he will be able to exert his influence on anyone casting a spell in proximity of this book. I can leave it with you until you know what you’re dealing with.”

“Can you be a little clearer on what we should expect to happen?” Dean demanded as Lizzie sighed heavily in his arms. “Cuz I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but I’ve got a baby right here and ‘exert his influence in the proximity of this book’ is a little vague for my liking.”

“I’m sorry, Dean. I wish I could be more specific. I _can_ tell you that if it’s Astaroth you will need him to end his retaliation before you can kill him. The spell won’t stop just because he’s dead.”

“This is all well and good,” John sighed, “however it doesn’t fix the problem of us not being able to read whatever ancient version of Celtic we’re looking at.”

“I can have this translated for you within an hour or so,” Henry said simply, stunned at his son’s inability to grasp the obvious.

“Oh.” John blinked at his father, unwilling to admit aloud that maybe what Henry did with the Men of Letters had been important. Not important enough for him to have abandoned his family by John’s estimation, but it wasn’t as if John was a shining example of good parenting to really be able to judge at this point. “Well. You should do that then, I guess.”

“Seems like a better plan than me headin’ over there like Betty Crocker and waitin’ to see if someone’s eyes go black,” Bobby agreed as Hannah began to dance at his feet.

“Whoa, hold up a second,” Dean insisted from the living room. “Are we sayin’ we’re going to use Dad as bait for this thing?”

“We don’t have a better option, Dean,” John replied firmly, his tone brokering no argument. “Adam, Sam, Ellen, and Jo are stuck in Michigan until god knows when. We can’t just let a juiced up witch or a high ranking demon hang out across the street while we wait for someone else to die.”

It was clear by the omega’s expression that he desperately wanted to argue the point, but he was already sidelined to the living room and he didn’t doubt it if came right down to it they’d confine him to the upstairs until they’d gone through with what sounded like the beginnings of a really stupid plan. He’d just talked to Sam for the first time in days last night and they weren’t planning to talk again until later today, leaving him feeling more than a little raw and ill equipped to deal with his dad putting himself right in the line of fire of yet another dangerous thing. With a huff he grumbled, “Fine. Can you at least put Lizzie up in her crib before you try to get yourself killed? Bobby, Hannah’s doin’ her potty dance.”

“I noticed,” the beta said, already up and heading for her Halti harness as he talked to Henry. “There should be a notepad in the den so you can start translating. I brought a bunch of ingredients with me from the house so hopefully we have everything we need right here.”

“They’re quite basic,” Henry assured him. “No bone of a lesser saint or anything like that. If there’s anything missing you can probably procure it at a butcher’s shop or grocery store. The incantation really is the tricky part to translate.” He looked over to Dean as John disappeared into the foyer with Lizzie and Bobby disappeared out the door with the dog, smiling at his grandson. “The bunker in Lebanon would have everything we needed at our fingertips. And of course you would be well protected within its walls against even the strongest demons.”

“That’s nice and all, Henry,” Dean said, using the coffee table to get to his feet, “but Sam mentioned the spell that could fix our little problem with not being mates and how it’s not exactly kid tested, mother approved.”

“Ah, yes.” His smiled faded and he sighed. “I’ve completed my research on the elixir I mentioned to Sam, and there are some side effects that should be of some concern, However, none of them deal with a pup in utero. I couldn’t find anything out about that, unfortunately, though the standard side effects lead me to believe it would be quite dangerous for you to take it while carrying.”

“What kind of side effects are we talking about?”

“For one thing, it would stop your heats until after you had properly mated. It would stop Sam’s ruts as well, which is logical as the whole purpose of this particular spellwork is to aid an alpha and an omega who haven’t got the time for a proper claim. If mates are going to be separated it would be beneficial for both not to be driven to need the other when they might not be available. That isn’t of great concern, however the longer a couple goes between the omega being claimed and properly mated, the greater the likelihood he or she will end up unable to bear offspring. Though whether that’s because the omega ends up sterile or the alpha ends up sterile I couldn’t determine.”

"So...how long are you talking about between claiming and mating before we couldn’t...” Dean stopped short, the thought of this magical elixir resulting in him and Sam being unable to have more children sending a chill down into his bones. Not that they’d discussed having more children, and after his most recent self-inflicted complication Dean wasn’t sure how he felt about carrying another child at all - at least not right away. Still, there was a big difference between making a conscious decision not to have more children and having that decision made for them by magic. “I mean, are we talking weeks? Months? Years?”

“My research didn’t turn up anything very specific,” Henry replied. “It merely indicated the longer the time in between, the greater the odds of sterility.”

“Then I’d say you’re right for thinking it would hurt Elliott,” Dean said quietly. “Thank you for looking into it for us anyway.”

“Yes, of course,” Henry agreed. “I would very much like to see a Winchester back in one of our bunkers, Dean. Even if you’re not technically allowed to be a member of the Men of Letters.”

Dean gave a short, humorless laugh, and shot back, “Yeah, well, story of my life,” before limping off to the bathroom to empty his bladder.

The spell wasn’t quite as easy to translate as Henry had anticipated and it was closer to two hours before he finally had the text written out in plain English so they knew what they were saying, and then written again phonetically, by which point he was experiencing severe abdominal pain that had even John worried about his health. Henry waved away the concerns as he always did, but by the time he’d gone through the spell with Bobby and John to make sure they both understood how it worked he was pale and had broken out in a cold sweat. When he was ready to cast the magic to travel back to his home ( _which, okay, everyone had to admit was pretty amazing_ ) he was struggling to breathe and he nearly spilled the contents of the bowl as he passed through the rip in space and time. Dean tried once again to broach the subject of how bad their plan was as Bobby checked through the supplies he’d brought to see what they were missing ( _he had the bay leaves, black salt, sage, and mint, but was missing the orange candles and cow’s blood so Henry had been right about finding a butcher_ ), but John shut him down again, leaving Dean to sulk on the floor in the living room as he worked on stretching out his hip and back some more.

Around six o’clock Dean gave Sam a call to see if any progress had been made on the case up in Michigan, and couldn’t hide his distress at hearing that Tessa was working on it but it still looked like the alpha was going to be stuck until the trial in a few weeks. He didn’t have the energy to pretend things were fine when they so clearly were not. Sam was stuck in Michigan, Dean had a pinched nerve and ruptured disc, Bobby and John were in the dining room casting a spell from a demonic grimoire, and there was a coven across the fucking street. The latter two points he didn’t mention, despite them being the most pressing issues in his mind, because he didn’t think it would be helpful for Sam to know anything about what they were facing in Fort Wayne when he’d already been arrested once for attacking someone. He didn’t need to be arrested again for trashing a motel room, and that’s the direction Dean was pretty sure things would end up going if he told the alpha about Astaroth.

Book club ended up being later than usual, Elizabeth and Tammi not showing up at Renee’s house until after seven o’clock. Dean was just starting to think they might be able to avoid this whole stupid thing for at least another day and he might have time to talk his father out of his little kamikaze mission when Elizabeth drove up and popped inside, Renee leading her to the living room where they could see her sending Zoey off to her room before drawing the curtains closed. Tammi arrived a few minutes later, bouncing into the house with a heavy bag slung over her shoulder, and not long after they could see the lights dim through the small space between the drapes. Dean was left completely out of the loop in terms of the plan, having been relegated to lookout duty with absolutely no other information on exactly what his father and surrogate uncle had planned, and with no small degree of trepidation announced, “Tammi just showed up.”

“All right, showtime,” Bobby groused, and John began the ritual, speaking the incantation Henry had written out for him as they stood at the dining room table, Dean watching from the sectional so he could keep an eye on both his father and the neighbors across the street.

It was as simple as Henry said it would be, practically idiot proof so long as one could recite ancient Celtic. The ingredients went into a copper bowl in a specific order while repeating the invocation a second time, topped off with the cow’s blood, a little stirring, a little flame, and voila - instant cloaking spell paint. They needed to wait a few moments for the fire to die before Bobby could proceed to paint the sigils on John’s chest and back, which Henry assured them his skin would absorb so he wasn’t walking around smelling like cow’s blood. Dean tried to keep his breath even as the beta dipped his fingers into the surprisingly cool mixture before referring to the grimoire for what the sigil should look like, but more than once he felt his chest clenching in anticipation of whatever was bound to happen. All three were shocked when they completed the spell, the sigils flashing blue on John’s skin before vanishing, and five minutes later they were still just staring at each other, waiting.

“So I guess we’re dealing with a witch,” John said at length, before both he and Bobby doubled over in agony, the beta going right to his knees on the floor as John grabbed hold of one of the dining room chairs to keep himself on his feet.

“Dad! Bobby!” Dean shouted, springing to his feet despite the strain in his hip and back as John coughed and a thick glob of blood fell from his mouth onto the dining room table.

“Don’t...Dean…” Bobby rasped, holding a hand out to keep him where he was. “Stay there…”

Dean understood immediately. He was safe in the living room because he wasn’t in proximity of the grimoire. Any effects Astaroth could project must have a small radius affecting anyone near it and not just whoever was casting a spell, and he grabbed Hannah’s collar before she could get past him and into the dining room. He had no idea what the effects of the demon’s powers might have on a dog, but he didn’t want to find out.

“What do I do?” he demanded, Lizzie starting to cry in her bouncer as his pulse pounded in his ears. He was trying very hard not to panic but the demon killing knife Ruby had given them was upstairs. He had no way to get it without getting stuck on the second floor. “Dad, tell me what to do!”

“The Colt…” More blood came up as John coughed and collapsed to the table. “Gun safe...den…kills demons...”

The Colt. That was obviously the gun he heard his dad talking to Crowley about the first night he was here, and he had no doubt now it was the mythical weapon Garth said could take down Azazel. It was just like his dad not to think it was worth mentioning having a demon killing gun at his disposal until the situation was dire. When this was over they were going to have a serious conversation about keeping secrets and how it got people fucking killed, since he figured using the Colt was John’s plan all along yet he hadn’t even bothered to have it at the ready. Obviously he’d been counting on Bobby to be able to get to it if they learned they were dealing with Astaroth and hadn’t considered the possibility of the beta getting caught up in the aftermath of completing the spell. The yelling about his father’s lack of a plan B would come later though, and Dean raced off to the den, the adrenaline pumping through his system making him oblivious to the protestations of his back and hip as he retrieved the gun from the safe. Somewhere in the back of his mind a thought was buzzing that he should probably put on shoes and a coat and hook up the dog, but he was already halfway across the street by then and his socked feet were giving better grip than boots would anyway, registering faintly that Hannah had opted to take off for a run down the street and deciding once he saved their asses his dad wasn’t allowed back in the house unless he found Dean’s dog.

Renee’s door was locked and it was probably a terrible idea to kick the door in with a pinched nerve in his hip, but he didn’t really have another choice and at least the doorknob was situated so he could plant on his right leg and kick with his left. He knew he almost certainly shouldn’t ignore the way his abdomen pulled when he did it, he simply didn’t have the luxury of obeying every single warning sign his body was trying to throw him right now. He heard screams coming from the living room to his left and flicked the light on as he stormed into the entryway, the three women jumping to their feet by the altar on the coffee table as he leveled the gun at them.

“Dean!” Renee exclaimed, her eyes wide as she stared at the gun. “What on _earth_ do you think you’re doing? If you changed your mind about joining us, you could have just _asked_!”

“Let my dad and my uncle go,” he growled at the beta with the short dark hair, cocking the gun. “You know what this is, you know what it does, let them _go_!”

“Your dad?” Elizabeth asked, seeming on the verge of tears. “We don’t have your dad. We were just getting Renee a lower mortgage rate!”

“That’s what you _think_ you’re doing,” Dean snapped. “You mind telling them what you’re really up to, Astaroth?”

“What?” Tammi cried, her eyes watering. “We’re not up to _anything_!”

“Yeah, I’m sure that’s how you sold it to them, too,” he shot back. “A little garden club victory here, a lower mortgage rate there, and their souls belong to you without them even knowing.”

“I don’t...I don’t know what you’re talking about…” Tammi protested, her lower lip quivering. “I don’t even _know_ you! Why would you think…”

“ _I know what you are_!” Dean shouted, advancing towards Tammi to have a clear shot without being too close as he felt a disconcerting twinge on the underside of his abdomen. “Let Bobby and my dad go or I put a bullet between your eyes.”

“Are you crazy?” Tammi demanded, though she didn’t move from where she stood between the table and the couch.

“You have three seconds to get away from the altar,” Dean warned as Elizabeth and Renee screamed and huddled together, darting away from the coffee table. “One…”

“I...I can’t...I’m not…”

Dean ignored the stab of pain in his back and the sweat beading on his forehead and barked, “Two…”

“Sweet Lucifer you Winchesters are _tedious_ ,” she growled, her eyes rolling over black as she flicked Dean against the wall and held him there with the flat of her palm. “I expected something like this with the way Amanda practically left a trail of breadcrumbs right to me.”

“Tammi, what’s wrong with your eyes?” Elizabeth gasped, and Renee demanded, “What are you doing?”

“Renee, shut your painted hole,” Tammi snapped, and Renee’s face flamed red with indignation.

“What?” she sputtered. “I...I will...You can’t...Not in my house, Tammi Fenton!”

Even with black eyes that betrayed no expression it was clear to see how annoyed the demon was with the blonde beta, and with a snap of her free hand Renee’s neck twisted with a sickening crack and she crumpled to the floor in a heap amid Elizabeth’s shrieks.

“Shh, Lizzie, it’s okay,” the demon soothed as she approached the omega. “I’ll get to you in a minute. Right now I just want to talk to Dean.”

“My dad…” Dean gasped where he was pinned against the cracked drywall.

“Should have known better than to mess with my stuff,” she snapped. “I can’t believe you just took the bait like that without stopping to wonder why I would have left the grimoire at Amanda’s house for someone to find. Don’t worry though, I’m making sure John and Bobby die a slow, painful death. It’s kind of my thing.”

“Just let them go,” he begged, gritting his teeth as he felt more pain spreading low against his hips. “Please. We won’t hunt you, I swear.”

“Oh Dean.” She pouted at him, running a finger down his jaw. “I wish I could believe that. Well, I do when it comes to you, but your father? Sorry, I just don’t trust him to let this go. He’s kind of got a rep for being relentless when it comes to demons hurting his family.”

“Please…” Dean repeated, breaking off with a cry as the pain in his abdomen intensified like he’d been gutted and knocked the wind out of him. He slammed his head against the wall to try to distract himself when the pain continued to build, and when it subsided after about a minute or so he dropped his chin to his chest, gasping. It was then he noticed the thin trail of blood running down from the inside of his left leg and dripping off his foot. “Oh Christ…”

“Oh, _he’s_ not going to help you,” the demon laughed. “You’ve got better chances praying to the Easter Bunny.”

“Please…” Dean begged, fighting back the panic constricting his throat. “I swear to god, we’ll leave you alone!”

“Well, that _is_ really all I wanted. But then Amanda had to go and steal my spells and get all messy, bringing hunters right to my doorstep. Well, Renee’s doorstep.”

“Tammi…” Elizabeth sobbed from where she was huddled behind the couch. “Let him go! He’s carrying for god’s sake!”

The demon tossed the beta against a wall with a flick of the wrist, knocking her out instantly as she snapped, “Then he should have thought of that before he came in here all guns blazing, shouldn’t he?”

A child’s voice replied, “This has always been your problem, Astaroth. You’ve never been able to see the big picture.”

Dean looked up from the red puddle slowly forming beneath him at Zoey standing in the doorway, her eyes pure white as she moved directly into Astaroth’s space. Astaroth snarled, releasing the hold on Dean and he crumpled to the floor, struggling to remain conscious against a wave of dizziness and nausea.

“Lilith,” the taller demon sneered, giving the child she was wearing a once over. “I should have known you’d turn up eventually, what with Renee’s brat always running around.”

“What can I say?” Lilith purred. “I have a type. And now I really must insist you stop your little spell and let Dean go. John Winchester is very important to my fight against Azazel and he’ll be less inclined to hold up his end of the bargain if you kill his friend and his son.”

“You’re expecting me to take a side in your little tussle, then?” Astaroth demanded, and Lilith shrugged her tiny shoulders.

“No one gets to be Switzerland in a battle for Hell,” she replied smoothly.

“Ugh, fine,” Astaroth grumbled, snapping her fingers. “I’ve stopped melting their lungs. Happy?”

“Very,” Dean grunted from where he’d reached the Colt on the floor as he aimed up to shoot the Grand Duke through the heart.

The demon’s body flashed gold, the entire skeleton lighting up like a Christmas tree as Astaroth screamed out against the injustice of it all. After a few moments of violent shaking Tammi Fenton’s body dropped to the carpet in a heap as Dean turned the gun on Lilith and struggled to sit up against the pain in his abdomen and the rapidly growing wet red spot in the seat of his pants.

“Oh Dean,” she said, smiling and showing the two teeth Zoey was missing. “You don’t need that with me. I want us to be _friends_!”

“Yeah, that’s not gonna happen,” he told her, but another agonizing stab hit him and he screamed, folding in on himself.

“I can see why Crowley likes you so much Dean,” she giggled. “You’re so pretty and brave. Well, a stupid kind of brave anyway. Don’t worry, you get your dad and your Sammy back on track with killing Azazel and we won’t need to talk again, okay? I definitely don’t want to have this conversation more than once.”

She patted him on the head before a long line of black smoke tore from her mouth and she collapsed onto him, Zoey’s heartbeat fluttering against his fingertips as he caught her, a hand under her neck to support her head even as he felt like he was on the verge of throwing up from the pain. He heard Elizabeth groaning across the room and someone frantically shouting his name but he couldn’t really process any of it as the edges of the world went dark and he was pulled beneath a velvet blanket of unconsciousness.


	84. This Whole Thing is Spinning Out of Control

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Should probably see how Dean's doing...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have taken liberties when it comes to some medical stuff, though I have researched it all thoroughly to make sure I'm still in line with what one would understand of some of the things in this chapter. Having said that, 1) this is an alternate universe where I am God and therefore what I say goes when it comes to biology and how medical institutions function (it's good to be God), but more importantly 2) the characters aren't *actually* human as we understand humans to function physiologically. I mean, men can get pregnant in this universe. There are going to be some differences.
> 
> The moral of the story being, if you are actually seven months pregnant you should not attempt to kick down a door and slay a demon, as it will end *very* badly for you.
> 
> Also, comments are now moderated because there's always one person that spoils it for everyone.

Dean couldn’t tell if he was out for ten hours or ten seconds, but he jerked awake to a jolt of pain through his abdomen sharp enough to make him think it might be the end of him. Tammi Fenton’s meatsuit lay dead about ten feet from him on the floor, her skin already grey and starting to decay around her face and neck, Renee was in a heap on the other side of the coffee table, Elizabeth was groaning behind the couch, and Zoey was snoring lightly on the floor. The Colt had fallen from his hand and was just out of reach, resting at the feet of a square-jawed, dark-haired man with a five o’clock shadow and black eyes. Dean’s reach for the gun was stopped by another stab of pain wrapping around to his back as the demon put his foot down on the weapon to keep it where it was.

“Hey Dean,” he said, grinning as his eyes raked over the omega’s form, pausing with a flash of glee at the pool of blood spreading beneath his hips. “You look like you’re having a rough night.”

“Well, considering you’re the third demon I’ve had to deal with today, yeah, you could say that,” the omega spat, swallowing down the bile that had risen in his throat at the pain.

“Oh, you don’t have to worry about me,” the demon assured him. “I’m not corporeal, just poking around in your head a bit. Since you seem to like Crowley so much, I thought the two of us could have a little chat.”

“Fan-fucking-tastic,” Dean growled. “Chatting with demons is my favorite pastime. So are you a Jet or a Shark? Cuz I gotta say, I’m startin’ to feel like I should walk around snapping my fingers and whistling every time I leave the house.”

The man laughed, kicking the gun behind him across the floor.

“You are a charmer, Dean. The name’s Tom. I’m the one who’s gonna get your Sammy to listen to reason about helping out my dad.” He knelt down as the hunter’s green eyes narrowed, running a hand through Dean’s hair. “Well, _our_ dad. Although, Sam is more like Cousin Oliver to my Bobby Brady, technically speaking.”

“Then you’re batting for Azazel’s team?” Dean asked and felt fingers twist against his scalp to yank his head back.

“I do like suiting up for the winner.” He took a long, deep inhale of the omega from shoulder to ear, leaning back with an appreciative sigh while keeping an iron grip on Dean’s locks. This was the reason, the hunter thought bitterly, that he liked to keep his hair short. “I gotta say though, I understand why Sam doesn’t want to give you up. You smell amazing, even to me. But he’s going to, and the sooner you accept that the better off you’ll be.”

“Is that right?”

“Hey, I’m trying to help you here. You really think Sam’s not going to go ballistic when he finds out what you’ve done to his kid?”

Dean doubled over in pain at the mention of Elliott, wondering where the hell his father and Bobby were, and feeling a deep fear growing in the pit of his stomach at the idea he might have taken too long to kill Astaroth.

“You say you’re not corporeal. Does that mean I’m dreaming?”

“Ding ding ding! Give the man a prize. I needed to wait to get you out of the house before I could sit down with you to have a talk. You and your Sammy both. But neither of you are quite ready for a face-to-face.”

“If this is a dream, why does it hurt so much?”

“Duh,” Tom snarked, rolling his eyes. “Because you’re having a baby way the fuck before you’re supposed to. You think I can block that out just because I’m roaming around inside your noggin? Then again, if I could, why would I want to? It warms the cockles of my cold, black heart to see you in this kind of pain. If only Sam were here. That would be _really_ fun to watch. You’ll be lucky if he doesn’t kill you for this. If I were you I’d find a deep, dark hole to hide in.”

“That’s a good presentation you’ve got there, Tommy Boy,” Dean hissed through the pull across his abdomen. “But I think you want me out of the way so it’s harder for Sam to fight you and your dad. Course, you could kill me, except then he _really_ wouldn’t listen to you, would he? Killing Jess got him back in the game, but it didn’t exactly bring him running to daddy.”

“You keep telling yourself that, Dean,” Tom said, wrapping a hand around his throat and squeezing until Dean’s eyes rolled back in his head. “Just remember when Sam’s beating you to death, I tried to warn you.”

Bobby was the first to stagger through the door to Renee’s house, still feeling like he was breathing through water, arriving just in time to see Dean pass out, and only moments later start seizing, his body jerking like he’d stuck his finger in a socket as he gasped for breath. John was only a few steps behind, but the beta was already on his knees sliding the little girl aside and shaking the young man, whose abdomen visibly tensed at the same moment the blood pool beneath him grew larger.

“Shit,” John breathed, as Bobby repeated “Dean” over and over, a hand on the omega’s stomach to confirm his suspicion that Dean was in labor. “Oh, shit...fuck…”

“Help me get him up,” Bobby ordered as the seizure passed and Dean started breathing normally again, hooking his arms under Dean’s. The alpha didn’t move; seemed incapable of it, truthfully, his entire body trembling as he absorbed the terrible sight of his son unconscious on the floor, pants soaked in blood. “John!”

“Shit,” John repeated, turning his face up to Bobby, the look in his eyes vacant. “Jesus, Bobby…”

Bobby let go of Dean long enough to slap the omega’s father, the crack echoing back off the walls as he yanked John towards him by two fistfulls of shirt.

“Get your head outta your ass and help me get him into the car!” he roared, Dean’s eyes fluttering open at the sound of the beta’s raised voice, and he muttered thickly, “Bobby…” before he was out again.

“Yeah…yeah, okay,” John said, tucking the Colt in the back of his pants before getting his hands beneath Dean’s legs and doing his part to hoist him into the air.

John Winchester had no idea how many times his oldest son had nearly bled out in the back seat of the Impala, but thought surely it was a number he ought to be able to at least approximate if he wanted to consider himself any kind of father. What he did know was that not a single one of those times had been scarier than this, with Bobby on the phone with 911, who were relaying their situation to the hospital; Lizzie in a car seat on the back floor because they didn’t have a base to strap her in properly; Dean barely conscious; and the alpha trying to time his son’s contractions - the ones he wasn’t supposed to be having - while he ran every red light he could without getting them killed. Dean hadn’t starting seizing again, which was good since John doubted he’d have been able to keep the car on the road if his son started flopping around in the back seat and choking the way he’d been at Renee’s house, but it was of little comfort in the end. The terror he felt in the car was dwarfed by the gut wrenching fear he experienced when they got to the hospital and after starting Dean on a blood transfusion, taking his vitals, and evaluating both him and the baby he was wheeled away to the omega ward by his doctor and four nurses, an oxygen mask over his face as they sprinted with the gurney for the elevator, leaving John and Bobby behind with Lizzie to await further instructions on where they were allowed to be.

At least the spell appeared to have worked, since there wasn’t a hellhound bursting into the hospital lobby while the player grand piano two doctors had donated tinkled out _Penny Lane_. Not that it made anything better, but at least it was something that could go in the “win” category as Bobby and John argued over who was going to take the car back to the house to get Lizzie’s diaper bag. John, of course, wasn’t about to leave when he had no idea what was going on with Dean or the baby, but Bobby knew more about the medical issues Dean was facing and how far along he was. Hell, Bobby had even met Dean’s doctors, was on a first name basis with the one back in Sioux Falls, and had been the one to take Dean to get the pregnancy test so it definitely seem like from a practical standpoint he should be the one to stay if anyone needed to answer questions about the omega’s turbulent pregnancy. After nearly an hour of arguing with no word on Dean’s condition the alpha finally caved and headed back to the house to throw some necessities into a bag for both Lizzie and Dean, begrudgingly taking the directions Bobby wrote out for him so he’d make it back to the house without getting lost.

Hannah was curled up on the front stoop, nose tucked beneath her voluminous tail, when the Impala pulled into the driveway. John was grateful she’d decided to rethink her plan to run a marathon after dark in February, as the last thing he wanted was for Dean to come home and find his dog was missing. That’s if Dean came home. The back of the car was stained red in a way he’d couldn’t ever remember seeing after one of their hunts went bad, and he’d already been turning a frightening shade of white when Bobby and John made it to Renee’s house after hearing the gunshot. He wanted to call Sam but couldn’t think of what good it would do at the moment when there was no way for the young alpha to get to Indiana and when they didn’t actually know anything beyond Dean being in labor and losing a lot of blood. John also wasn’t entirely sure he could talk to anyone coherently about what was happening when he could barely breathe beneath the metric ton of guilt currently crushing him.

He should have had a better plan in place. He should have considered more thoroughly what “in proximity” would mean when casting the spell and had Bobby start with the sigil on his back, then done the sigil on his front himself so the beta wouldn’t have to be in the room. He should have contacted another hunter to come provide a contingency in case something went wrong so that their only option to kill the demon wasn’t his son, even though he couldn’t think of another hunter still living who would help him on such short notice. He shouldn’t have been so worried about bringing in an outside party and letting them know about the Colt, as if protecting the gun was more important than protecting his family. He shouldn’t have brought the case to Dean’s doorstep in the first place, or just not brought it up once he found out Sam wasn’t there. So what if more civilians died? They hadn’t been able to prevent Paul or Amanda’s murders anyway, and now there was the real possibility that Dean and his baby were going to be added to the list of the dead. John had always thought that there was nothing that meant more than getting the job done and it was a kick square to the balls realizing just how wrong he’d been. Even more so when he had to accept he’d raised Dean to believe his life - and by extension now, Elliott’s life - was worth less than some random stranger’s; that he didn’t deserve to live if it meant someone else died. That John was an alpha and had so warped his omega son, who was predisposed to rely on him for guidance, just made it that much worse.

There wasn’t much that had changed when he got back to the hospital about an hour later, realizing too late that he hadn’t grabbed Dean’s cell phone to keep track of any messages from Sam, something he was sure his son would want to know about. As it was it didn’t really matter. One of the Om-OB/GYN residents came down shortly before midnight to let them know that Elliott had arrived about two hours before and been stabilized and settled into the NICU, though he wasn’t quite out of the woods yet and they wouldn’t be able to see him until the morning. Dean, on the other hand, had suffered a placental abruption and was continuing to hemorrhage. Though they were still hoping to get the bleeding under control it wasn’t uncommon for male omegas under these circumstances to end up bleeding to death, so John and Bobby should be prepared for the worst. If they were successful in controlling the bleeding Dean would need to be carefully monitored for at least 72 hours to ensure it didn’t start up again, or that he didn’t develop blood clots. Pulmonary embolism in particular was going to be of grave concern for the next six or so weeks, assuming he survived until the morning. When she asked if they had any questions, Bobby made sure to tell the doctor-in-training that her bedside manner left much to be desired and she should really work on it.

It was well past two in the morning before Dr. Johnson came out to update them on the omega’s condition. They had managed to avoid a hysterectomy and he was comfortable, but with the volume of blood he lost it was likely he’d be more or less unconscious for the next twenty four hours or so. He was in the ICU for the overnight and unfortunately they wouldn’t be able to see him until he was transferred to a standard room the next day, provided there were no further complications. While she understood neither wanted to leave without seeing either Dean or the baby, there was very little they could do, and the hospital lobby wasn’t going to be the easiest place to try to get some rest with a four month old in tow. It took Bobby a good while to talk John around to seeing sense, and it was edging towards three thirty by the time they finally pulled into the driveway at 59 Sunset Trail and staggered up to bed.

It was Bobby’s idea not to call Sam just yet when they both finally got up around eleven on Wednesday. It seemed a stupid thing to do until they had some concrete idea of what was going to happen with Dean and Elliott, and at this point it was looking like Thursday before they’d have anything to tell Sam that wasn’t going to send him into a panic. From Bobby’s perspective, the two of them had done enough stupid things to put Dean at risk in the last day or so. They didn’t need to add working Sam into a tizzy to the list of bad decisions. Fortunately Bobby knew about the demon blood, and he knew that John knew about the demon blood, so it wasn’t going to be something he needed to pussyfoot around when trying to get John to understand how tenuous Sam’s grip on his temper was these days. They could deal with the explosion they’d be facing after they had an idea of when Sam was going to actually be home and try to head it off before he took it out on Dean. Riling him up when he was stuck in another state for assault and needed to keep his head clear and not look like a menace to society would just make this whole bad situation that much worse.

The police showed up around noon to ask about what happened across the street the night before, Renee’s husband having arrived home after Elizabeth frantically called him, snatched his daughter, and made for the nearest hotel. Elizabeth had given them her statement but didn’t know what transpired after the demon threw her into the wall, and the police weren’t very happy to hear neither the alpha nor the beta could fill in the gaps. Much as they would have liked to keep Dean out of it, Elizabeth had already said he was there, which meant this report was likely to end up part of the OPS case next week, with very little time for Dean’s lawyer to prepare to address it and no guarantee that either Dean or Sam would be able to actually attend the hearing. At least John’s FDH credentials were all that was needed to convince the authorities that Elizabeth wasn’t suffering some sort of mental breakdown - there really had been a demon possessing one of her friends. It also explained why the medical examiner insisted Tammi Fenton had been dead for at least three months before she was found in Renee Van Allen’s house with a bullet hole in her chest.

The hospital hadn’t called by the time they got Lizzie ready to go, Hannah walked, and the mess from the night before cleaned up in the dining room. They finally headed back around two o’clock, wanting to make the short window of visiting hours between two and four for extended family in the NICU, and still not entirely sure they’d be able to actually see Elliott or Dean. The answer in both instances turned out to be “not really.” Elliott had developed some breathing problems and needed to be put on a ventilator, so they were only allowed to look at him through the window to the nursery where he and one other premature infant were being cared for. Actually getting a glimpse of him didn’t make either of them feel better when he had multiple tubes and wires running from him to different machines that were helping him breathe and feeding him through his nose and making sure his heart didn’t just suddenly stop. At just under twenty-nine weeks and just over three pounds he definitely looked like a baby, just a frighteningly small one. John tried to figure out who he favored, but there were too many things strapped to his face to get a good look. Though the nurse said he’d been awake a short while ago, he was asleep now, so they just had to take her word for it when she told them his eyes were green.

Despite Dr. Johnson insisting there was no point in stopping in to see Dean, they did anyway because no one was going to tell either of the men there was no point when they both so badly needed to confirm he was still alive. Not that he really looked or acted it when they reached his room and found him pale and listless under too-thin blankets. His skin was blanched, his lips were colorless, and his freckles had vanished completely. His eyes were half open but he didn’t seem to be aware of anything, like he was heavily medicated even though they knew he wasn’t. John was trying to get his son to understand that they’d been up to see Elliott when Dean started hemorrhaging again and he was rushed back to the ICU. Wednesday, as a result, turned into little more than waiting and drinking and hoping the omega and the youngest member of the Winchester clan were finally stable enough by the next day that they didn’t have to worry about planning a double funeral.

Thursday things were comparatively better. They found short term boarding for Hannah so they wouldn’t keep coming home to messes from a frantic dog who didn’t know when anyone would be back to let her out, and had learned roughly how many bottles and diapers Lizzie went through a day so they could keep her comfortable at the hospital. Elliott had officially hit twenty nine weeks, and though he was still on the ventilator he was awake when John and Bobby visited and yes, he did have green eyes. At the moment only the bitch and sire ( _and boy, did both of them ever want to take someone’s head off at finding out Indiana still used that antiquated terminology_ ) were allowed in to see him, but if he kept improving over the next forty-eight hours they’d start letting extended family in, provided their inoculations were up to date against the various diseases that could very easily and quickly kill a premature pup. It was actually a relief that they had two days to get their ducks in a row, since neither had even thought of non-supernatural dangers like whooping cough. They needed to find a doctor willing to get them in for vaccinations on short notice, as well as needing extra time to move past Dean being referred to as “the bitch” instead of “the mother.” Dean was also awake and lucid when they went to visit him, if one could call being barely able to speak and needing help to get a cup of ice water to his colorless lips “lucid,” and after the scare on Wednesday he was being kept in the ICU just in case. His seventy-two hour window had essentially been reset, so now instead of getting the all clear on Saturday they were looking at Sunday before they could be reasonably sure he was out of the woods and would allow him to leave his room. He still had absolutely no color in his skin, and though he claimed to understand that Elliott was up in the NICU when Dr. Johnson checked in on him, he told John and Bobby that he knew the nurses were lying, and his recklessness had killed his baby. Both men tried to convince him that just wasn’t true, that they’d seen Elliott, but they couldn’t get him to stop crying, and when they wouldn’t let him hold Lizzie because he was simply too weak he’d taken it to mean they didn’t trust him with her, resulting eventually in the nurses needing to sedate him. Bobby didn’t even have to argue with John that they still shouldn’t call Sam yet; it was a silent agreement between them before they even left the hospital.

Friday was when the wheels finally started to come off the cart, in the form of Dean’s very angry beta brother, who threw aside his insistence at staying with Jo and arrived at the house around four o’clock, wanting to know why no one had picked up when he called from the hospital or his new cell phone and why no one was responding to the news that Sam was going into an asylum for three days. Until that point things had been better; not exactly a triumph, but steadily improving, just as Thursday had been an improvement over Wednesday, even if it did still kind of suck towards the end. The two hunters were finally feeling like themselves after Astaroth’s attempts to melt their lungs and found a clinic in the morning to give them the list of required immunizations the hospital provided so they could eventually go in to see Elliott. They hoped this would make Dean feel better, like the baby had a whole support system, but all it had done was remind Dean he’d missed Lizzie’s four month appointment with the pediatrician to get her the second round of boosters for multiple vaccinations. Though it had reduced him to a puddle of insecurities and guilt at how terrible of a parent he was to both of his kids, he didn’t need to be sedated again, and Bobby and John were able to visit with him for quite some time before he just wanted to take a nap. Elliott’s vitals were being checked when they went up to the NICU before going back home for a few hours and one of the nurses brought him right up to the window so they could get a really good look at him. He didn’t seem too impressed by either man and started wailing meekly, which set Lizzie off in sympathy, and when she didn’t settle after a solid ten minutes of rocking and walking and soothing they took it as their cue to head out. When they saw Dean’s Ford in the driveway it took a few minutes to figure out it meant Adam was there, but far less time to figure out Adam was pissed.

“I have been calling for _days_!” the beta was snapping at Bobby from the doorway the minute he stepped out of the Impala. “I know neither of you have the hospital number programmed into your phones, but would it hurt you to pick up a goddamned unknown number once in a while?” He paused in his tirade and blinked when he realized it was his dad getting out of the passenger seat and not Dean. “Dad? What the hell? Why are you still here? Where’s your truck? Where’s Dean?”

“Truck’s in the garage,” John said. “Dean’s in the hospital.”

“What? Why?” John heaved a heavy sigh and bent to get Lizzie’s car seat up off the floor, and that had his son storming over to snatch the little girl from him without letting him get a word in to answer him. “You’ve got Lizzie riding around _on the floor_? Do you have _any_ idea how dangerous that is? Not to mention if you get pulled over with a car seat not properly secured you’re probably going to get yourself tossed in jail and Lizzie thrown back into foster care!”

“Adam, just calm down, please.”

“I will not calm down! Why is Dean in the hospital? What did you do?”

“What do you mean ‘what did I do?’’’ John demanded, his hackles rising at his son’s assumption, no matter how correct it might be, as he stormed past Adam and into the house. “Why would you automatically think I _did_ something?”

“Because you just said he’s in the hospital and you haven’t run for the hills yet,” Adam snapped, slamming the door behind him and setting the car seat down. “The last time I heard from Dean was on Tuesday. Since I _know_ he wouldn’t stop checking up on me because he’s _Dean_ , and his phone is in on the kitchen counter with a dead battery, I’m gonna go ahead and guess he’s been in the hospital probably since some time on Wednesday. It’s now Friday, and if you _didn’t_ do something that made you feel guilty enough to stick around, you’d have already bailed.” The way John ran a shaking hand over the back of his neck, casting his eyes down at the floor, made Adam rethink his presumption as a growing sense of alarm spread through his core. “Unless he’s in really bad shape and you’re afraid to leave him.” He felt perspiration break out along his forehead and back when John still said nothing. “Dad? What happened to Dean?”

“Premature whelping,” Bobby said quietly from where he’d stopped just past the dining room entry in case he needed to play referee. He came back over as Adam blinked at him to unstrap Lizzie before she started to fuss. “Happened Tuesday night. He’s had some complications, but he seems to be coming out of it, finally. At least physically.”

“He...what? What kind of complications?”

“It doesn’t really matter,” John told him, not wanting to relive it at the moment. “He’s going to be fine.”

“At least physically,” Bobby repeated, throwing a glare at the alpha. John glared back, and the older beta patted Lizzie up against his shoulder, adding as he headed to the kitchen, “I’ll let you fill him in.”

“Dad…” Adam growled, taking off his coat and scarf but leaving on a thin pair of mittens once Bobby had retreated.

John looked at his youngest for a moment, noticing the damaged skin on his ears, cheekbones, and nose, and how just generally unwell he appeared. Dean had been right. He should have talked to Adam more than the one time to see how he was doing while he was up in Michigan.

“He lost a lot of blood,” he admitted at last, watching as Adam seemed to pale in sympathy for his older sibling. “There was the chance we could lose him, but we’re past that point now.”

“And the baby?”

“Fine. Well, not totally fine, not right now, but he should be. They’ve got him on a ventilator but he should be able to come off that sometime in the next few days.”

“Him, huh?” Adam smiled and shook his head, looking at the car seat. “Poor Lizzie, surrounded by so many boys.” He ran a hand through his hair and sat on the bench by the door, his energy deflating as the fight went right out of him. “You obviously haven’t told Sam.”

“No,” John confirmed, moving to sit opposite him on the stairs despite the protestations of his knees and hips.

Adam snorted, marveling at his father’s stupid allergy to communication and dropping his elbows to his knees and his head into his hands.

“Then no one’s checked Dean’s phone at all.”

“No. Why?”

“Sam’s on a three day psychiatric hold.” John looked like he was about to choke at the thought of the father of his grandson being locked up in a loony bin. “He went in this morning. Did either of you even try to get in touch with him?”

“We didn’t think it would help much, what with his current legal problems. Why is he on a psych hold?”

“It was a plea deal his lawyer arranged. Something about Sam having anger issues and PTSD and I don’t know what else. According to Ellen they’ve got something killing patients in this one mental hospital and when they realized they could get a hunter involved without bringing in the FDH and shutting the whole place down they cut a deal. He gets out Monday morning, so you’d better figure out what you’re going to tell him before then. And one of you needs to fucking call Ellen and let her know what’s going on, or she’ll shove a boot up both your asses as soon as she and Jo get back here.”

“We’ll tell Bobby to call her,” John said, earning a head shake out of his son.

“Of course we will,” Adam grumbled. “God forbid you actually communicate with anyone, right?”

“You got something you wanna say to me?” the alpha demanded, braced already for the hate-filled eyes his son leveled at him.

“What would be the point?” Adam shot back, leaning down to unlace his boots and wincing slightly at the sting in his fingers. They still felt so cold all the time, but at least he could feel them again. He supposed it was just something like phantom pain and hoped it would eventually pass. “So are you going to tell me what happened to Dean or do I have to wait for Sam to show up and beat it out of you?”

John really, really did not want to get into this with his youngest, not when he’d just gotten his guilt suppressed enough to be able to function in Dean’s presence, but it was obvious by the scowl on Adam’s face that there was no way he was letting this go. He braced himself against his knees, prepared for the fury, and replied, “Your neighbor across the way was into witchcraft. Turned out she was involved with a Grand Duke of Hell.”

“So?” Adam was barely containing himself, pink springing to his cheeks as he stared daggers through his father. “ _Please_ tell me you didn’t get Dean to take care of something like that.”

“Not...not on purpose.”

“Holy fuck, Dad!”

“It got a hold of me and Bobby,” John snapped as Adam started to wear a tread in the floor between the foyer and the living room. “It was _killing us_ , Adam.”

“So, what, you sent Dean in as canon fodder?!” Adam shouted, wanting so badly to punch his dad square in his fucking face and knowing his knuckles couldn’t take the impact; not now, anyway. “Do you care about him _at all_?”

“Of course I care about him!” John roared, dangerously close to losing control of his alpha as his son continued to posture against him without even realizing it. “We didn’t plan for him to get involved! In fact, we planned for him to _not_ get involved. Things just went sideways! He saved our lives!”

“And almost lost his. After going into premature labor.” John had no retort for that, so he snapped his jaw shut and simply met Adam’s indignant glare. “Congratulations on not _quite_ killing your son and grandchild. Well done there, John.”

He moved to the bench seat to slam his feet back into his boots, as John sighed, “It wasn’t like that…”

“Oh, I’m done talking to you,” Adam snapped, snatching his coat and throwing it back on as he moved into the living room to call to Bobby. “Is Dean back at St. Mary’s?”

“He is,” the old hunter replied as he reappeared with a baby busily chugging down a bottle in the crook of his arm. “Room fifty oh five.”

“Thanks.”

He threw one last withering glare at his father before storming out and tearing off in the truck, a trail of steam billowing from his ears practically following him the entire way. The steam hadn’t dissipated in the slightest when he returned several hours later after seeing for himself just how badly off Dean was and how many machines were helping to keep his nephew comfortable, slamming every door he encountered, from the truck to the front door to the bathroom door when he went to take a piss. Bobby was getting Lizzie ready for bed while John had already broken out the scotch for the evening, and the old beta hunter made the mistake of saying, “Dinner’s in the fridge if you’re hungry,” because the next thing he knew the bathroom door was slamming again and they were both suffering under a pair of infuriated blue eyes as Adam whipped out his phone and held it up to their faces, a photo of Elliott pulled up on the screen.

“You’ve left him believing for _days_ that people were just telling him his son was in the NICU to keep him calm! Neither of you thought to have one of the nurses take a fucking _picture_ to prove to him Elliott wasn’t dead?” he screamed, chest heaving as he openly considered who he should pound into the floor first. They gaped at him like a pair of fish flopping around on a pier, then watched as he stormed off growling, “ _Morons_!”

“Well, we definitely deserved that,” John grumbled before pouring each of them a couple of fingers and knocking his back quickly because Christ, he needed a drink.

“We deserve worse than that,” Bobby agreed, feeling deep in his bones that they’d definitely _get_ worse than that just as soon as Sam came home.

Adam was still seething on Saturday, practically forbidding John and Bobby from going to see Dean with him and instead trading shifts with them so Lizzie didn’t have to spend time in the hospital when she needed her immunizations updated ( _and_ **_why_ ** _it hadn’t crossed either of their minds that bringing an insufficiently vaccinated infant to a building full of sick people might be a bad idea he couldn’t fathom_ ). By Sunday Dean had gone long enough without hemorrhaging that he was allowed up to see Elliott, which just resulted in him breaking down and being taken almost immediately back to his room to try to manage his stress, though Adam was fairly certain whoever thought separating Dean from his son was going to _lower_ his stress hadn’t really thought that one through. They let him try again later in the afternoon and he actually got to hold Elliott during his feeding time, managing to keep it together despite “feeding time” involving a tube instead of a bottle. The NICU practiced something called “kangaroo care,” and the omega was encouraged to come up for every feeding, provided his doctor gave him the okay. They were also pack friendly and wanted as many immediate family members as possible to have access to the pup, given how studies had shown that early exposure to a supportive pack helped premature pups to thrive. That’s where Dean was on Monday - the first day Elliott was going to be allowed to be seen by extended family - John, Adam and Bobby waiting in the hall with a newly immunized Lizzie while they hooked up the formula to Elliott’s feeding tube, when a frantic Sam finally managed to get Adam on the phone, relieved his hunch had been right that Adam would have kept the same number and demanding to know what was going on; why the house was empty.  

The conversation did not go well.


	85. Your Father was Supposed to Protect You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam's back.

Sam was well aware that he was dangerously close to being tossed out of St. Mary’s Hospital and banned from the premises, but quite honestly he felt like he was allowed to be a little irrational when it had only been about half an hour since he learned he had an almost-week-old premature son, his omega had come dangerously close to dying, and both of these facts had been deliberately kept from him, even though it all happened before he went in for the mental hygiene hold. How he made it from the house to the hospital without crashing his truck he didn’t really know. Everything was a bit of a blur from the time he got off the phone with Adam to the time he was demanding the nurses in the NICU allow him in to see his son, the betas understandably reluctant to do so when Elliott had been their patient for six days and this was the first time his sire had bothered to show up to see him. Sires may have a lot of rights outside a hospital, the head nurse explained, but within the walls doctors had tremendous leeway in determining what was best for their patient. Granting NICU access to a red-eyed alpha standing nearly six and a half feet tall who appeared disinclined to listen to reason did not seem to her to be in the best interest of a twenty-nine and a half week old pup.

Dean’s Om-OB/GYN eventually came to the rescue after Sam insisted they call Dr. Johnson to verify he was Elliott’s father. His name was on all the records, of course, yet despite showing them his driver’s license they still wanted someone to confirm his identity and Dean was off having some tests run down in the omega ward. It was a tense twenty-two minutes until Dr. Johnson was able to make it up to the NICU, and when she told the nurses that he was Elliott Winchester’s sire Sam all but ran down the hall to the incubator room, the head nurse calling after him that he’d missed the noon feeding and visiting hours didn’t start until two o’clock.

He had no idea what to expect, but it wasn’t a baby with pruney pink skin sleeping on his stomach, legs tucked up under him and diaper too big for his butt. He was small of course - frighteningly small - though still bigger than Sam had imagined when Adam said “premature” on the phone. He looked to be about the size of a butternut squash, and while that was still way too small for a baby Sam felt strangely calm looking at his son. Sure, he was scared shitless about having their little boy outside of Dean’s body ten and a half weeks too early, but Elliott looked _good_ , all things considered. There were wires and monitors and he was on oxygen and it looked like he had a feeding tube, but he’d come off the vent that morning and Jesus, this was scary as all hell but it wasn’t the _scariest_ thing he’d seen in his life, not by a long shot. Sam had spent more time than he would ever admit to Dean researching preterm whelping, given how shaky the omega’s odds were of making it to forty weeks with the incompetent cervix even before he was put on bed rest. This wasn’t the way he wanted things to go, obviously, but he felt prepared for this and he knew without having to ask anyone that Elliott’s odds of survival right now just due to how far along he was were around ninety percent. In Sam’s world that was damn near a sure thing. There was obviously the possibility that something disastrous could go wrong but something disastrous could always go wrong, and given the circumstances and the terrible things Dean’s body had been through while carrying him, their little boy looked fucking fantastic to Sam. The realization that he wasn’t panicking about this made him feel like the worst father on the planet for all of about two minutes until Elliott stuck his thumb in his mouth and started sucking away in his sleep. After that he was just too darned elated to see his son, even if it was through a wall of glass, to waste time on any other emotion, not when he had ten little fingers and ten little toes, a dusting of dark hair, and even Dean’s feathery eyelashes. The nurses softened towards him considerably as he stood at the window with huge tears of joy splashing down his face, and pointed to the incubator marked “Winchester” with a stupid grin, declaring, “I made him.”

He was tempted to stay there until visiting hours started, having missed the first six days of Elliott’s life and not very inclined to miss any more. He did stay around for a while, getting a chance to talk to the physician overseeing his son’s care ( _his son’s care - he had a son_!) and find out how he was doing. The doctor gave him a rundown of Elliott’s condition, marveling at his improvement given how stressed the omega was and how difficult the birth had been, and congratulating the alpha on siring his first son ( _he already knew it was going to be a long time before he stopped telling people he had a daughter and a_ **_son_** ). He’d had a couple of complications right after birth but none of them had been unexpected for a pup at his gestation. Though the doctor obviously couldn’t say with certainty that Elliott wouldn’t face medical challenges throughout his life, at the moment he was a textbook preterm pup who was very strong and gave the medical staff every reason to think he would grow up to be perfectly healthy if they weren’t hit with something out of the blue, like bleeding on the brain.

Hearing Elliott’s birth had been “traumatic” had the alpha feeling a desperate need to make his way down to the omega ward to check on Dean as well, thinking with glee that they could go back to the NICU to spend time with their son as a _family_ if Dean was feeling up to it. Adam hadn’t given any indication of what, if anything, had sent his brother into labor early, though Sam expected it was likely just stress. Dean had sounded so anxious the last time they spoke the prior Tuesday, and he knew Elliott had been born that night, making it the logical conclusion that the situation with Adam and Jo and then Sam getting thrown in jail had simply been too much for him. At least Bobby had been there to help, and while he was pissed that no one had said anything to him when it happened he could understand why they didn’t want to tell him over the phone when there wasn’t anything he’d be able to do about the situation. He could even forgive Ellen for not mentioning it when she came to visit him, despite knowing now that Bobby had already updated her on the situation. It really wouldn’t have helped him any to have a psychotic break or something while in an actual psych ward. The D.A. might have gone back on their deal and never let him out. So yes, he was upset, but nothing had been done that he wasn’t prepared to forgive, certainly not when riding the high of having a _baby_ who still looked a little bit like a big headed alien and appeared to have his nose.

That high vanished as soon as he entered Dean’s room. He was back from his tests and in the middle of eating lunch, and he looked like he had almost died. Which, rationally, Sam _knew_ Dean had almost died because Adam told him, he just wasn’t prepared at all for the shock of seeing the omega propped up in bed, his skin far too pale, no freckles, and only the faintest hint of pink returning to his lips as he struggled to cut his chicken parmesan and looked like the effort was exhausting him. The fact that Adam was with him and immediately moved to take over cutting for his brother despite still having trouble with his hands spoke volumes on Dean’s physical state. He’d seen Dean in terrible conditions before this; obviously he had, given how often Dean had been in the hospital in the short time they’d been together, yet the way he looked now froze Sam in his tracks in the doorway, his stomach lurching in terror.

Sam had been stuck in Michigan, and Dean had almost died in childbirth.

Whatever happened to him, the details of which Adam had been hesitant to give up, it appeared to have Dean so wiped out that it even impacted his sense of smell. Neither the omega nor his brother noticed Sam’s presence as between the two of them they managed to get the chicken parm cut up in a routine that would have been comical had it not been such a horrifying depiction of how physically damaged the Winchester boys both were at the moment. Dean practically jumped out of his skin, the cutlery clanking away from him and skittering to the floor when Sam said, “Dean?”

The pungent smell of terror - real, deep-seated terror - flooded the room as Dean’s eyes went wide and his breathing picked up, the juniper green orbs glassy and focused on Sam as he shrank back slightly into his pillows. Adam was on his feet instantly, moving to the opposite side of the bed between Sam and his brother. It was deeply troubling to see them react to him this way, and he wanted desperately to know exactly what happened in the last week, though he forced himself to remain calm and sent as many soothing pheromones out as he could.

“Hey Sam,” Dean croaked back, sounding like speaking the alpha’s name was making him sick.

“Baby?” He moved slowly into the room, shooting Adam a quizzical look that seemed to have the beta relaxing somewhat. He wanted nothing more than to throw himself at Dean and hold and kiss him, but it was obvious that wouldn’t be welcome. What exactly did the two of them think he was going to _do_? “You okay? You smell really stressed.”

Dean snorted bitterly, though his scent didn’t mellow in the slightest, and ran a violently shaking hand through his hair.

“Yeah,” he replied, moisture clinging to his eyelashes. “I’ll bet.”

Sam decided to risk approaching the bed, and while Adam tensed he didn’t try to stop him. Dean went stock still, his entire body trembling as he stared at the alpha, who had no clue what was going on. Did Dean think he was going to hurt him? Had Adam not backed up Sam’s insistence that the only reason he attacked that hospital administrator was because she woke him in the middle of a nightmare? That didn’t make any sense, not after Adam told the police up in Manistee County that Sam hadn’t been awake when the assault started, and he stopped as soon as he did wake up. He wouldn’t change the story now that he was back with his brother, would he? Adam had to know Sam wasn’t _really_ dangerous.

Dean watched as the alpha very gently lowered himself to the edge of the mattress, down by his feet, hearing the wild pounding of his heart in his ears, the blood he was still reproducing pulsing through his veins so rapidly he could feel it in his neck. He could tell how close he was to passing out, and god he didn’t want that. They planned to release him tomorrow if he didn’t have any more setbacks, and while the thought of leaving Elliott in the hospital left a gaping wound in the center of his chest, he just couldn’t stay in the hospital one minute longer than necessary. His life was going to be revolving around the NICU for months. Even if he spent all day, every day here until they kicked him out he needed to be able to go somewhere to get real food or change his clothes or shower and not be forced to stay in a hospital bed. He focused on his breathing, which was coming in shallow pants, gripping the sheet with what little strength he had to try to ground himself.

“I went up and saw Elliott,” Sam told him. Dean flinched like he expected to be hit, his full body tremor impossibly growing worse. Sam hastily moved up the bed to sit next to him and stroke his face and hair, running his thumbs along Dean’s cheeks and jaw as he looked closer for the freckles that normally sprayed like a galaxy across his nose. “He’s perfect. You did a great job, Dean.”

Dean thought that Sam must have lost his damn mind up there in the snowy forests of Michigan. There was no way the alpha could possibly be soothing him and smiling at him and telling him he did a “great job” after how reckless Dean had been with himself and their baby if he hadn’t gone completely insane. In no universe would Sam ever think that Dean kicking down a door and taking on a demon was even remotely acceptable when he had a baby on board, which was exactly when the omega realized that no one had told Sam what he’d done. He was going to have to explain to the alpha how he ended up in labor through his own careless actions. Sam would undoubtedly kill him once he knew, just like the demon in his dream said he would, and he would absolutely deserve it.

“Sam…” he choked, unable to hold back the tears breaking for freedom from the ducts in his eyes. “I didn’t do a great job…”

“Yes you did,” Sam insisted, punctuating his statement with a kiss.

“Sam…” Dean tried again, but before he could figure out how to tell Sam the awful thing he’d done to their son he just broke.

He hadn’t allowed himself to really break down since Friday when Adam showed up and Dean confessed that he knew everyone was lying to him about the baby, and his younger brother promptly found a nurse, talked with her quietly for a bit, then fifteen minutes later had a picture of Elliott on his phone. He had a bit of a blubber fest when he got to see Elliott finally on Sunday but had managed to rein that in pretty quickly. The stress of holding it all in left Dean feeling physically ill the entire weekend, and he knew it was impeding his recovery but he couldn’t give up or in to the guilt or it was likely he’d never stop crying. Now he was sobbing and Sam had him in his arms, pressing kisses to his face and his lips to try to calm him down, and it just made everything so much worse, because once Sam knew the truth that would be it. If Dean managed to survive the rage Sam would undoubtedly unleash on him there was no hope they’d make it back to this, realistically speaking. It was too much to be wrapped in Sam’s scent and feel safe and protected and loved knowing it was all about to end. Not only that, but he had no doubt that Sam would claim Elliott now that Dean had proven he was completely unfit to be anywhere near their son, and he’d probably never see either of them again.

Sam, of course, didn’t understand why Dean smelled of utter desolation, thinking it must have something to do with the baby, and said, “Elliott’s going to be fine, Dean. They said he’s improved so much over this weekend alone. It’s just going to be a while before we can bring him home.”

“That’s not…” The omega’s face was covered in snot and tears, the touch of pink in his lips slowly vanishing as he hiccuped and gulped in air. He plucked at the hem of Sam’s shirt, struggling to get his breathing back under control. “You don’t…”

He broke into even harsher sobbing, slotting his face into Sam’s neck and all but collapsing against him as he shook and coughed and cried. Sam was at a total loss of what to do, already holding Dean tightly to him and massaging every inch of him he could reach without being obscene, trying to overwhelm him with pheromones so he would relax. Nothing was working. He’d seen Dean a mess more times than he could count in the last two and a half months between the panic attacks, nightmares, flashbacks, and grief over the Laffittes, but none of that came close to whatever was happening with Dean right now. He supposed it might have something to do with hormones, postpartum depression being at the top of his “to be researched” list that he’d not had time to get to yet. Whatever it was, Dean was inconsolable in a way Sam had never seen before and he just didn’t know how to make him stop crying.

“Adam, could you give us a minute?” Sam asked, and Dean instantly choked, “No, Adam…” leaving the beta standing awkwardly by the bed as he looked for something he could blend into. The two definitely needed privacy, but he wasn’t very inclined to leave his brother alone with _anyone_ when he was this fragile and upset. He’d end up bleeding again or throwing a clot or any other number of things stress could bring on to complicate an omega’s recovery after a difficult birth, and then Dean would end up stuck in this goddamned hospital again.

Adam was saved from having to make any decision on whether to stay or go by Bobby and John returning from lunch in the cafeteria, Lizzie gurgling in her car seat as they came into the room. It was about fifteen minutes until they could go up to visit Elliott and they were eager to actually get in to hold him today, and while they knew Sam had been on his way to the hospital they were still taken aback by the sight of him in Dean’s room while Dean blubbered and Adam looked like he’d welcome death over having to be there one second longer. Ever the clueless one when it came to interpreting his son’s emotions and mistaking the confusion and stress that had spiked in Sam’s scent, John moved quickly into the room, saying, “It’s my fault this happened, Sam. You can’t blame Dean for any of this.”

“Wha...John?”

The alpha hadn’t even registered the presence of the others in the room, too focused on his efforts to calm Dean down, but seeing John made him strongly suspect for the first time that this situation might not be the result of Dean stressing himself into labor. After all, the elder Winchester wasn’t the type of man to swing by just because his son almost died giving birth. The thought that Dean and Elliott may have ended up here because of a case occurred to Sam like a light bulb switching on and brought with it not a small amount of anger.

“Sam…” Dean rasped, the word a plea as much as a name, presuming the flash of rage that burst forth from the younger man was directed at him.

John thought the same thing, a growl rumbling out of his chest at the perceived threat to his son.

“Why don’t we step out into the hall?” he asked as Sam straightened, his eyes narrowing as he stared at the older hunter. “We don’t need to do this in here.”

“Dad, hang on…” Adam started, realizing even without the benefit of a heightened sense of smell that things were coming dangerously close to spiraling into violence, and that the hospital wasn’t the best place to explain what happened with the neighbors. Hell, there was a reason Adam hadn’t told Sam much over the phone.

“I can handle this, Adam,” John told him with a roll of his shoulders, like he was gearing up for a fight. “I made this mess, I’ll clean it up.”

“What mess are you talking about John?” Sam demanded, moving a few steps from the bed. The darkness was starting to pulse low in his gut and it seemed a good idea to put a little distance between him and Dean while he still had it easily under control.

“All right, let’s just all take a breath and remember we’re in an omega ward,” Bobby said evenly as he passed Lizzie off to Adam and then moved back towards John to give Sam the space that he very clearly needed. No one missed how Adam shifted slightly to stand closer to his brother as John postured, hackles raised at a beta sticking his nose in where it didn’t belong.

“Yeah, we are,” Sam snapped, leveling a glare at the grizzly man in the trucker’s cap. “And no one’s been really clear yet on _why_ that is, so maybe John should start talking.”

“You need to know it wasn’t intentional, Sam,” Bobby told him, his measured tone that was meant to keep the new father calm having the opposite effect. “And Dean wasn’t supposed to get involved.”

“Involved in what?”

“Your neighbor across the street wasn’t running a book club,” John said. “That was a coven.”

Adam thought grimly that his dad really needed to learn how to back the fuck down, because the way John snarled his response to Sam’s question wasn’t helping the situation. His not-quite brother-in-law worked his jaw furiously, his hands clenched into fists at his side. Dean had finally managed to rein in his tears but now looked like he wanted to run from the room. Adam was therefore trying to decide on the most direct route to the door for when they’d have to make a break for it once Sam and John came inevitably to blows.

“There was a coven across the street?”

“Yes. Like I said, Dean’s not to blame for any of this. He didn’t have a choice. This is my fault. If you’re going to be mad at someone, be mad at me.”

Sam was more than happy to take John up on that offer.

“I _know_ you’re not going to tell me you brought my pregnant omega on a hunt for some low level witches,” he grit out, his eyes flashing red as he flexed his shoulders. “You can’t possibly be that stupid.”

“No, I didn’t,” John snapped, still too full of pride to recognize that he should be standing down and submitting like the best, most obedient omega on the planet instead of trying to prove he was the top alpha in the room. “Their leader turned out to be a high ranking demon and the plan took a hard left. We’d be dead without Dean stepping in to handle it.”

“Stepping in…” Sam ran his hands into his hair, the wild, evil blackness winding its way up over his ribs and into his throat, making him feel like he was either going to choke or vomit as wave after wave of outrage swept over him, carrying him away from rationality as surely as a riptide. “While I was in another state, you came to our door with a case that you then botched _so badly_ you needed an omega in his third trimester to pull your asses out of the fire by facing down a demon, which I’m guessing is what landed him and my _son_ here, but you didn’t mean for him to get involved. Have I got the gist of it, John?”

“That’s about right,” Bobby said quietly.

“Did you know about the ‘high ranking demon’ before or after your brilliant plan took a hard left?” Sam demanded, complete with air quotes.

“Before,” Bobby confirmed. “Though we couldn’t be sure that's what we were dealing with.”

“And you couldn’t wait until I got back from Michigan? Or until Adam got back at least?”

“We’d just found out you got arrested. Didn’t know when you’d be back.”

“Then call in another hunter! Call in the FDH! Jesus, Bobby, what was the rush?”

“They were killing people,” John spat, nostrils flaring at the rumble like thunder emanating from the younger man’s throat. “I understand how upset you are, but lives were at stake. Civilian lives!”

“Don’t give me that ‘civilian lives’ bullshit,” Sam hissed. “This isn't Vietnam, John.”

“You're right,” John shot back. “This is worse. This is a war against Hell, and the first thing every soldier learns is that there are always going to be casualties in war, so I'd suggest you get with the program, Sam.”

What made John decide that was the route to go was something even he couldn’t have explained, since it was just about the most wrong thing he could have chosen to say and even _he_ didn’t believe it. His alpha was simply so enraged by having his status challenged for him to rely on rational thought, instead falling back on the mantras he’d told himself for two solid decades to justify the way he’d raised his children. He might have understood the danger in making such a ridiculous comment had he realized his love for Millie from the beginning of their matehood, or thought back to the story he told Dean about the time she wore scent blockers when she was carrying and John just about scrubbed a hole in her neck in desperation. That his panic hadn’t just been about missing Dean’s scent, but being unable to determine if his mate was all right when the smell of her was gone. Maybe he could have thought back to how panic-stricken he’d been on the drive up to Minnesota after learning of Adam’s birth, fearing he would arrive too late to claim him after some other terrible thing had torn both Kate and his newborn son to shreds. Instead he found himself completely unprepared for the right hook Sam threw that knocked him backwards into the door frame, ending up down on one knee from the loss of balance at the blow.

Bobby moved to get between them but John was already back up, driving Sam into the room with a right cross and then a left hook, standing tall as the younger alpha took a moment to wipe the blood from under his nose. Adam, Bobby, and Dean were all trying to talk them down despite neither man listening to them. After regaining himself Sam came back with a roundhouse that John effectively ducked before driving his shoulder into Sam’s stomach and propelling them to the far side of the room, getting in a couple of body shots and a knee to Sam’s stomach before the younger man had much of a chance to recover from slamming into the windows.

Once it became clear neither alpha was backing down Bobby hastened to close and lock the door to Dean’s room, thanking all manner of deity that he didn’t have a roommate and praying to whichever ones might be checking out the proceedings to keep the hospital staff from walking by during the fight. John was of the incorrect opinion that they were just about done, but Sam ducked the left hook he threw and countered with an uppercut that cracked a couple of John’s teeth and had him spitting out blood as he staggered backward. The elder Winchester tried a jab as a rejoinder, but Sam had his legs back under him and began pummeling the other alpha mercilessly. A series of roundhouses and crosses left John reeling, most of Sam’s shots aimed at his head though a couple made contact with his ribs and kidneys. The nightstand by the vacant bed got destroyed when John was knocked through it, the vacant bed got moved when John was thrown against it, and an armchair was broken over the older man’s back, all while his attempts at deflecting the beating were for naught and only a small fraction of his returned punches landed. Sam was relentless in asserting his dominance not only in the room but as Dean’s proper alpha, and all the while the evil thing raged within him, a gleeful voice in his head shrieking out “ _KillKillKill_!” Every other sound in the room faded into nothingness as he sent John careening into the windows with one final right hook, a high whining sound blocking everything out as he glared down at the man before him on the floor, whose canines had recessed and eyes reverted from the bright glowing red they’d been just moments before. The shrieking didn’t stop at the sight of John’s submission, and not a cell in his body objected when Sam knelt down to place both hands around the throat of the older alpha to choke the life out of him.

The shouting behind him grew more desperate as John struggled to peel Sam’s huge hands from his neck, but Sam still couldn’t hear anything through the whine, and the look on John’s face as he slowly had to accept he was powerless to stop Sam from doing anything brought a rush of satisfaction to the young man. There were hands on his right arm trying to pry him away, but he threw them off without ever having to take his left hand from John’s throat, then the hands were on his left arm attempting the same thing. He threw them off, too. When an arm came up around his neck from behind he reached back with his left hand to grab hold of a handful of shirt and waistband and flip Adam over him to the floor, knocking the wind out of the beta while Lizzie wailed somewhere behind him. The sound of her cries was the first thing that began to break through the haze, though it wasn’t enough when the hands returned ( _this time to his shoulders_ ) to stop him from springing to his feet and whipping around, his right fist connecting with a jaw. John coughed behind him, gasping for breath but too beaten to retaliate; Adam was checking on his father as his head swam; Bobby was using the chair Sam had thrown him into to get to his feet; and Dean was sprawled out on the floor where he’d hit the metal bed frame, his lip split by Sam’s punch.

“Sam, _stop_ ,” Dean gasped, and Sam came to his senses instantly, like he had been lifted up out of his body by something the previous few minutes and was now slammed back into it.

He drew in a ragged breath, seeing how delicate Dean looked huddled on the floor in his hospital gown, the blood on his lip the only color to be found on his face. The serpentine thing coiled around his chest pulsed with the order to snap the neck of the disobedient omega who had almost killed Sam’s child, but the bruise forming at the corner of Dean’s mouth gave the alpha something to anchor to, to reel it in. Even then his grip on sanity was tenuous at best, the voice in his head growing louder as it screeched “ _ **KILL**_!” until he felt himself vibrating in his struggle to contain it. He could see the look of horror on Bobby’s face in his peripheral vision, yet he dared not shift his focus for fear the evil blackness might take hold of him again if he tore his eyes from Dean. He didn’t even turn when John choked, “I’m gonna kill you, Sam.”

“No, you won’t,” Sam snapped back coldly, throwing so much intent behind his words he knew, unlike the first time he’d done this with his grandfather, that there was no need to stare into John’s eyes. “You will never even try to kill me. I’m going to go see my son and then we’re leaving to hunt Azazel together, provided you still have the Colt.”

“I do,” John confirmed, feeling the words torn from his lips entirely against his will.

“Good.” Dean was staring up at him with such open pain on his face that Sam longed to hold him and soothe him and assure him everything would be fine one last time before he left, but he couldn’t. If he touched Dean again either his resolve would falter or he'd end up strangling him, so instead he said, “I promised you I’d go if I couldn’t get a handle on it. If you and the kids weren’t going to be safe around me. And I just...want to fucking kill you right now. I want to smash your head into the floor until you stop breathing, and I barely have a handle on it, so I’m gonna go. I’m sure it’s going to screw up the OPS case in a couple of days and I’m sorry, but this isn’t going to end until he’s dead and I can't be here like this.”

“Sam…” Dean started, the blood from his lips staining his teeth as his eyes welled up with tears.

“Please give me an hour with Elliott before you go to see him,” Sam interjected, ignoring the harrowing pain in his chest at the thought of simply walking away from both of them. “John and I will head back to the house once I’m done and then we’ll go. I’ll come back when I can, if you want me to. I don’t know how often it will be.”

“Sam, you need to think about this,” Bobby said, ever the voice of reason, and lord was Sam glad that he knew about the demon blood, no matter how badly they may have wanted to keep him out of this. “We can find somethin’ else to help you keep it under wraps.”

Sam probably _should_ think about this, he knew that, given how substantially things had changed from where they were when he made that promise to Dean in the shower just a few weeks ago. Dean was still the one thing keeping him grounded. Leaving him was probably a terrible mistake. But the darkness that had been crowding the edges of his vision, that he was sure meant his eyes had gone black again, was just starting to recede. He couldn’t risk going off the rails like this if he and Dean were alone and something upset him, or if he were taking care of the children. After all, they had two now, one of them premature, which was as much of a reason to leave as it was to stay. Sam knew himself well, and if he started thinking now he’d stay forever, no matter how much danger he was putting Dean in just by being in the same room. And no one could deny he was putting Dean in danger. The omega’s bloody mouth was proof of that. No, he didn’t have the benefit of being Hamlet at this point.

“I love you Dean - so much,” he said finally, and left the room.


	86. I Saw It On The Good Wife

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just a little courtroom drama. Or, the "THEN" portion at the start of every episode.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Being sick for three days throws you off a bit.

Adam marveled at his brother’s ability to build walls. If the ancient Chinese had hired him, he could have built their wall at twice the speed and half the cost. While Adam had assumed Sam leaving him would be Dean’s last straw and he would lock himself into a dark room to listen to The Cure and eat Haagen Daaz until he puked, appearing only occasionally to shower so he could visit Elliott in the NICU, instead he somehow managed to encase himself fully in a hard protective shell not even two days later when he had to be in court for the OPS case. Though still terribly pale and visibly weak, no one could have possibly confused Dean Winchester with a simpering omega who needed an alpha to protect and guide him, regardless of the utter mess he was on the inside. Montgomery Scott would have been proud of how quickly he got those shields back up, particularly when his lawyer was having a hard time containing her anger at the direct photon torpedo hit their case had taken.

Dean could tell that Adam had changed his mind and decided Annie Hawkins was a stone cold bitch, and Dean didn’t really blame him for wanting to swoop in protectively from where Adam was sitting behind him in the courtroom, but he also couldn’t blame Annie for being upset. After all, they had a great case for getting Dean out of this mess, centered primarily around how helpless Dean was and how there was just no way an omega as needy as him could possibly navigate the world without Sam at his side, and not only was Sam _not_ at his side, Dean was showing no willingness whatsoever to play the damsel in distress card. She’d made very clear her recommendation that someone go out and buy Dean more typical omega attire before the court date, yet here her client sat in maternity jeans, a maternity tunic, and one of Sam’s flannels, wincing every now and then at the pain in his back and his hip but otherwise doing everything he could to give the appearance that he could kick anyone’s ass who had the stupid idea of tangling with him, despite having been in the hospital until the day before. Really, the fact that she didn’t just walk out on him when he showed up with two betas and a baby instead of a doting alpha spoke volumes of her integrity; or at least her commitment to collecting a substantial legal fee.

The problem also wasn’t just Sam’s absence. The morning of the hearing the Indiana OPS had petitioned the courts to remove Dean, Lizzie, and Elliot not only from Sam, but from all familial care due to the events the previous week at Renee’s house. That Dean’s own alpha father hadn’t thought twice about putting him in such obvious physical danger illustrated that the omega had spent his life as the victim of serious neglect as far as Indiana was concerned, and now that he had two pups the State considered it an obligation to sever ties between them. As with the South Dakota case Adam would not be considered an appropriate caregiver, since he was only a beta, and though Dean admitted his grandfather was an alpha he was difficult to contact and would never consider petitioning for custody of Dean. Annie managed to get an emergency audience with the judge in the morning, shoving their hearing time back from nine to eleven, and argued that they hadn’t been given nearly enough time to refute these charges. She insisted the Indiana OPS had withheld them until the morning of the hearing as a way to subvert Dean’s rights, but the OPS lawyer replied that this new petition’s timing was just coincidence, and had more to due with the agency needing to wait to file papers until they knew Dean was actually going to survive the whelping. That hadn’t even been clear to doctors until Sunday when he finally passed the seventy-two hour threshold for no more bleeding and was declared out of the woods, delaying the filing until Monday morning. The judge dismissed Annie’s request to delay the second case and insisted they would be reviewed together, so clearly she had a right to be pissed. Dean was just grateful that neither OPS agency seemed to know about Sam attacking Kelly Kline or getting shipped off to a mental hospital. If that had been in the case file there wouldn’t have been a point in bothering to show up today.

“I don't plan to put you on the stand, but the OPS or the judge may want to call you to testify,” she said as Dean fiddled with a pen on the tabletop while she laid her coat over the back of her chair. “If they do, make sure you aren’t fiddling with anything -” she snatched the pen from him “- and don’t have that look on your face.”

“What look?” Dean asked, his jaw set firmly and eyes impassive.

“ _That_ one,” she snapped, dropping the pen into her bag as he folded his hands in his lap and sighed. “And don’t _sigh_ , either. It gives off the impression that you’re bored and this whole proceeding is beneath you.”

“I kill monsters for a living,” Dean groused. “It kind of is.”

“No, you _used_ to kill monsters for a living,” she corrected. “While your removal from the FDH database was a clerical error, and you are, in fact, still a registered hunter with them, you do not intend to remain so now that you have two children to look after.” When Dean merely stared at the judge’s bench with a scowl, she insisted, “ _Say it_.”

“Obviously I don’t plan to keep hunting,” he hissed as the OPS lawyers pushed open the double doors and took up their seat on the opposite side of the courtroom. “This whole thing is ridiculous. I’m a fucking adult, I’m no longer carrying, I don’t need some kind of babysitter making sure I eat my vegetables.”

“The fact that you’re no longer carrying when you _should_ be makes my job harder, Dean, not easier,” she whispered as the bailiff announced, “All rise. Family Court of Fort Wayne, Indiana is now in session, the Honorable Judge Devereaux presiding.”

Judge Devereaux was the kind of alpha who might easily be mistaken for someone pleasant if one were unable to scent him. He wore round, wire-rimmed glasses, his features were soft, and if he had a beard and moustache to match the shortly cropped white hair on his head he could easily have been mistaken for Santa Claus by a small child. However, the firm set to his mouth coupled with the way he marched to his chair from his chambers behind the bench, like someone much younger and taller, plus the irritation that wafted off of him betrayed his obstinate nature, and Dean heard Annie mutter, “Fuck,” under her breath as the judge took his seat and everyone followed suit.

“Is there a problem?” Adam asked softly from behind them, Lizzie cooing away on his lap as the bailiff was reciting Dean’s case on the docket for the judge.

“Yeah, his mood’s worse than it was this morning,” she whispered, earning a snort from Dean and a quiet grumble about bad moods.

“Ms. Hawkins,” the judge snapped, making her jump without even looking up from the case file. “I would strongly recommend you rein your client in. The inability to behave appropriately in a court of law will not help prove he understands his roles and responsibilities as an omega.”

He peered over the top of his glasses at Dean, seemingly trying to bore a hole through him with his glare, and in spite of himself Dean felt a flush attempting to rise to his cheeks. He wasn’t sure how he’d forgotten that average alphas could be such condescending dickbags in the last couple of weeks, but he had. Or at least had pushed it to the back of his mind, being effectively insulated against them by Sam and having more pressing concerns to worry about. It made sense to let the knowledge that most alphas were assholes, and especially ones in positions of power, just slide off to the side while he was dealing with his brother being kidnapped and his baby’s father getting tossed in jail and the witches across the street and, oh yes, giving birth almost three months early. Now that he was being reminded of it so acutely he felt like a moron for ever having pushed it aside, for having believed that Sam was never going to leave and he wouldn’t have to deal with crap like this anymore because he’d have a mate. He tried very hard not to let his bitterness leak into his scent, and tasted blood in his mouth as he bit through his cheek to keep from talking back.

“Yes your honor,” Annie said. “Mr. Winchester has had a difficult week and is under considerable strain.”

“Then he should have taken more care not to drive himself into premature whelping,” Devereaux replied evenly, at least making it clear from the onset the uphill battle they were going to face in his courtroom. He stared pointedly at Annie for a moment before turning his attention to the opposing counsel. “Calling the case of the State of Indiana Omega Protective Services and the State of South Dakota Omega Protective Services versus Samuel Campbell and Dean Winchester. Will Counsel please identify themselves for the record?”

“Good morning, your honor. Antonia Bevell on behalf of Omega Protective Services for the State of Indiana,” the OPS lawyer said in a crisp British accent, her blonde hair pulled into a tight French twist, giving her delicate features a decided sharpness.

“And Eldon Styne on behalf of Omega Protective Services for the State of South Dakota,” added the blue eyed lawyer beside her as he adjusted his suit jacket and ran a hand along his temple to ensure his golden hair was being kept sufficiently in place by his pomade.

“Good morning, your honor. Annie Hawkins for Mr. Campbell and Mr. Winchester,” Annie replied.

“Good morning to you all. Are we ready to proceed or are there any preliminary matters?”

“Your honor, I would like to repeat my request for an extension on the case of the State of Indiana against my clients, as I was only made aware of the petition a few hours ago and have not had time to prepare,” Annie said immediately as Lizzie became increasingly cranky behind her and Adam and Bobby tried to calm her as quietly as they could.

“Your honor,” Bevell sighed, not bothering to hide her annoyance, “the petition from Indiana is based largely on the same evidence as the South Dakota case with the addition of three incidents that have occurred within Fort Wayne’s jurisdiction. If Ms. Hawkins is prepared to argue against the South Dakota petition she should be prepared to argue against the Indiana petition.”

“I agree,” Devereaux said. “I see no reason to waste the court’s time separating these hearings when the petitions are nearly identical. Ms. Hawkins, your motion is denied. Bailiff, will you please remove the betas with the infant from the gallery until they can calm her? I see no reason to force the court to endure a squealing pup.”

“Your Honor, the pup is my client’s daughter and the young man behind me is Mr. Winchester’s brother…” Annie began, but the judge was having none of it.

“And they’re both betas, so while I’m sure you’re going to tell me the omega would like them here for emotional support, I can assure you no beta can fulfill an omega’s emotional needs,” Devereaux snapped.

“The fuck…” Dean muttered under his breath.

“Would you repeat that for the Court, Mr. Winchester?” the judge demanded, and Dean was fairly certain he felt a molar crack with how tightly he clenched his jaw.

“I was going to tell my brother to let Lizzie suck on his pinky finger,” Dean replied as evenly as he could, struggling with his body’s attempt to switch into fight mode. He had tamped down on “flight” and didn’t think it would help him if he started flashing his teeth and golden eyes. “I’m pretty sure she’s getting her first tooth.”

“Very well, I will allow them to stay so long as they can keep her from disrupting the proceedings. And any more outbursts from you will result in a finding of contempt of court. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, your Honor,” Annie hastened to say before Dean could muck things up any further.

Adam’s finger was in no position to be sucked on by a teething baby, so he transferred Lizzie to Bobby as Devereaux asked, “Are there any other preliminary matters?” At the chorus of “No”s from the three lawyers he nodded his head, then turned to the OPS piranhas in their matching dark grey suits. “All right then. Since these are basic petitions we’re going to move this right along and see if we can’t get out of here by lunch.” Given that this had started at eleven o’clock, Dean found this statement highly disconcerting. “Mr. Styne you may proceed, as South Dakota made the initial claim.”

“Thank you, your Honor,” he said, Dean catching a slight drawl he’d missed when the man first spoke. It reminded him of Benny, and he dug his fingernails into his palms hard enough to draw blood. “The State’s case against Mr. Campbell and Mr. Winchester is, to our mind, quite clear. On no fewer than four separate occasions, Mr. Campbell’s employment as a hunter with the Federal Department of Hunters had a direct, negative impact on the health and safety of Mr. Winchester, a carrying omega and resident of Sioux Falls. Two of these instances occurred in the State of Minnesota, where they were documented in the interstate Omega Protective Services database though no case was filed at the time.” He reached into the manila folder on the table in front of him, taking two stacks of papers and walking them up to the judge’s bench to turn them over to Devereaux, explaining as he went, “As you will see in this patient report and accompanying FDH reports, Mr. Winchester was involved in a ghoul hunt with his father, brother, _and_ Mr. Campbell that resulted in a fifteen inch gash to his right ribs as well as a diagnosis of incompetent cervix. While in the hospital he and his brother were nearly killed by a demon, whose target was Mr. Campbell.” He was already headed back to the table, where he immediately began leafing through the contents of the folder again as he continued to lay out the State’s case. “Mr. Winchester returned to South Dakota first and spent two weeks without incident until Mr. Campbell joined him, at which point they encountered another demon in a bathroom at a bar in downtown Sioux Falls, where Mr. Winchester sustained a cracked skull, bruised kidney, and four broken ribs. Finally, just over one month after receiving these injuries, Mr. Campbell took Mr. Winchester to yet another bar in downtown Sioux Falls and while investigating a suspected vengeful spirit they encountered a poltergeist, resulting in a new cracked rib, a lung contusion, and a dislocated left shoulder for Mr. Winchester.” He handed the remaining two files to the judge, walking only halfway back to the table before saying, “It was this final incident that triggered the OPS system to pull up the flagged files from Minnesota, which showed a clear pattern of neglect. Because of the blatant negligence in care taken by Mr. Campbell to protect a carrying omega’s health, due in no small part to the nature of his employment and his insistence on involving Mr. Winchester in his work, the State of South Dakota hereby petitions the Court to place a restraining order against Mr. Campbell, limiting his access to Mr. Winchester and their pup to once monthly supervised visits for the period of one year, with annual assessments on the nature of Mr. Campbell’s relationship with Mr. Winchester to continue monthly for an additional five years.”

“I see this petition was filed before Mr. Winchester took up residence in Fort Wayne,” Devereaux mused, leafing through the papers on the bench. “Would you mind telling me how you let the omega flee the state if you were so concerned about his well being?”

“Your Honor, if I may?” Annie asked, and he nodded at her gruffly. “My client had formed a bonded pack with Benjamin Lafitte, Sr. and Lisa Lafitte, residents of Fort Wayne. They were killed a few days before the petition was filed, and Mr. Winchester was allowed to attend the funeral. Before he was able to return to Sioux Falls he was placed on bed rest with significant travel restrictions.”

“That issue is part of the State of Indiana’s case, your Honor,” Bevell said smoothly. “If I may proceed?”

“You may.”

“Thank you.” Bevell began to take out papers of her own quickly and efficiently, saying, “Mr. Winchester and Mr. Campbell arrived, as Ms. Hawkins has stated, for the funerals of Benjamin Lafitte, Sr., Lisa Lafitte, and Benjamin Lafitte, Jr. While the State feels sympathy for Mr. Winchester’s loss, we also feel is is important to note that the Lafittes’ lives were lost in a vampire attack. Instead of removing Mr. Winchester from Fort Wayne once this fact was known, Mr. Campbell and Mr. Winchester’s father and brother stayed to hunt the nest, leaving the omega unprotected. Mr. Winchester was subsequently attacked by Mr. Campbell’s cousin, who attempted to force a claim on him. Not only did this put the omega in legal jeopardy with the danger of being charged with manslaughter, as Mr. Winchester killed the attacking alpha to escape him, it is as a direct result of this attack and the subsequent claim break that Mr. Winchester was placed on bed rest for the duration of his term.” She dropped the first stack of evidence with the judge, adding pointedly, “Had Mr. Campbell returned with Mr. Winchester to South Dakota this attack would almost certainly not have happened.” Devereaux’s mouth by this point was set in a hard line as he looked over these new papers, though at least he had the decency to keep the disgust out of his scent and just let it show openly on his face. “Since being placed on bed rest, Mr. Winchester decided to go outside to walk his dog two weeks ago, despite being restricted from doing so, and fell, sustaining a hip and back injury that frankly should have sent him into labor, according to his doctor’s medical notes. Mr. Campbell was not home at the time to prevent him from doing this. Last week Mr. Winchester’s alpha father returned to Fort Wayne after having abandoned him in the hospital while he was recovering from the claim break previously mentioned, immediately involving him in a hunt for a coven of witches. Because Mr. Winchester was senselessly brought into this hunt by his father he went into premature whelping last Tuesday and nearly bled to death. Mr. Campbell was in Michigan at the time on yet _another_ hunt, this time for a vengeful spirit.”

“And that’s why Mr. Campbell isn’t present today?” Devereaux directed at Annie as Bevell dropped the final packets of paper on the bench.

“No, your Honor,” Annie replied, finding it difficult to hold her tongue as Bevell and Styne blatantly misrepresented everything.

“Let me guess,” the judge snarked, his low opinion of Sam evident in his tone. “Another case?”

“Yes, your Honor.”

“I see.”

“For these reasons,” Bevell rejoined, “the State of Indiana petitions that Mr. Winchester not only be removed entirely from the care of Mr. Campbell, his father, and his brother, but also barred from contact with all family members except Mr. Campbell, with whom he shares a pup.”

“Wait, what?” Dean exclaimed, shooting to his feet despite the protestations in his back. “Adam hasn’t done anything!”

“Mr. Winchester, I will not warn you again,” Devereaux growled, and Annie hastened to pull Dean back into his seat. “As I’ve already stated, your brother is a beta and incapable of meeting your emotional needs. Removing you from his care and barring contact would be a mere formality to ensure your family has no influence over you for the period of time requested by the State. Do you have anything more to add, Ms. Bevell?”

“In fact I do. Given the circumstances, it is clear that not only has Mr. Winchester been grossly neglected by Mr. Campbell, who has yet to claim him despite siring a pup with the omega, but he has also been conditioned by his father into not understanding or accepting his role in society. We would therefore ask the court to enroll Mr. Winchester in the National Omega Rehabilitation Program, where he can be placed with a suitable foster alpha who can train him to behave appropriately for his designation.”

It was Bobby’s turn to stand and shout, “ _What_?” and the judge ordered, “Bailiff, remove that man from the gallery,” as Annie shot to her feet.

“Your Honor, this request is outrageous,” she snapped, glaring across the courtroom at Bevell and Styne. “For the State to ask the court to place my client in a retraining program when we’ve just received word of this petition…”

“Yes, Ms. Hawkins, I know your feelings on the matter of whether you’ve had enough time to prepare,” Devereaux snapped back as Bobby was forced out of the room with Lizzie. “Ms. Bevell, how long does the State request Mr. Winchester be placed in this program?”

“One year,” Bevell replied. “To run consecutively with South Dakota’s request of a probationary year for Mr. Campbell’s restraining order and visitation. We would not want to reintroduce Mr. Campbell to the omega’s life until he had fully accepted his designation. Considering Mr. Winchester has a preterm pup at St. Mary’s, we would of course request a local alpha be found temporarily until such time as the pup is released from the hospital and Mr. Winchester can be moved to a more permanent location.”

“Your Honor, my client co-owns a house in Fort Wayne,” Annie insisted. “He inherited it from Benjamin Lafitte. I see no reason for him to be removed from Indiana at all.”

“This is part of the State’s problem, your Honor,” Bevell shot back. “The idea of an omega owning property is antithetical to everything understood about their needs. Maintenance of a mortgage and upkeep of a house is more than should be expected of any unmated om with two pups to rear. Mr. Winchester has been raised to behave as if he were an alpha and it has led him to allow not only himself to be endangered but his unborn pup as well on numerous occasions.”

“Have you anything to add, Mr. Styne?”

“No, your Honor,” Styne said, half-rising from his seat. “The State of South Dakota concurs with the State of Indiana’s assessment.”

“Very well. Ms. Hawkins, you may proceed with your defense.”

“Don't say a word,” Annie growled quietly at the omega, though she had nothing to worry about. Dean was too busy trying to wrap his mind around the possibility of getting shipped off to another part of the country like an abandoned pet in an overcrowded shelter to think up any smartass remarks to direct at the judge or OPS lawyers. “Your Honor. While admittedly the States’ cases appear to be damning to my clients, Ms. Bevell and Mr. Styne have omitted key details in order to prop up their house of cards.” With little ceremony, she withdrew a large box from under the table to plunk it down in view of the judge and opposing counsel. Styne’s eyes went wide and Bevell looked pissed as Annie flipped back the lid from the box to begin removing evidence. “To begin with, you will note that though South Dakota’s case is predicated upon the incidents in Minnesota, the Minnesota OPS has made no petition against my clients. This is due to the simple fact that South Dakota filed their petition under the incorrect assumption that Mr. Campbell was the only employee of the Federal Department of Hunters and was somehow endangering a civilian omega in each of these instances. In actuality, Dean Winchester has been with the FDH for eleven years and is one of the best and most active hunters in the country. He remains with the FDH to this day. His name was removed from their database prior to the South Dakota petition through a computer glitch.”

To punctuate her statement, Annie dropped a manila folder several inches thick in front of the judge with printouts of the information Kevin sent over on the CD. Devereaux was openly torn between being irritated and impressed by the stack of paper, as his hopes to have the case wrapped up by noon appeared to fly out the window. Annie returned to the box to retrieve the next piece.

“Furthermore, as you will see not only in the records provided by the FDH, but this volume maintained by Benjamin Lafitte, Sr., Dean Winchester has in no way been reckless with his health, nor has Sam Campbell knowingly put him in any undue danger. Mr. Campbell and Mr. Winchester worked together to dispatch a vampire’s nest in Laramie, Wyoming in early August, which is when Mr. Winchester became pregnant. From then until the case in Windom, Minnesota, Mr. Campbell didn’t even know Mr. Winchester was carrying, as they had not seen each other nor worked together since August. Additionally, Mr. Winchester had worked _no_ jobs from the moment he learned he might be carrying until his brother, Adam Winchester, asked for help to locate his mother, who was missing. Benjamin Lafitte's scrapbook shows this is in direct contrast to Mr. Winchester working non-stop prior to the nest in Laramie. In Windom, my client agreed only to verify that there was a case, specifically to get the FDH involved, and had no intention whatsoever of doing any hunting himself. Unbeknownst to Mr. Winchester, Mr. Campbell and John Winchester - my client’s father - were already investigating what turned out to be a ghoul infestation. Mr. Campbell and Adam Winchester were nearly eaten by these ghouls and John had been incapacitated by them when my client intervened. Without his help three additional people would have died: his father, his brother, and his pup’s sire. Anyone in these circumstances would have been forced to act, regardless of personal risk.”

She plunked Benny’s scrapbook down with an impressive “thunk,” before moving back to the table for more items.

“While Mr. Winchester did suffer a significant injury to his right torso, according to the American Association of Omega Obstetrics and confirmed by Mr. Winchester’s doctor on Sioux Falls, as many as seventy-five percent of male omegas present with an incompetent cervix during pregnancy and he would have been checked for this routinely at his next prenatal appointment. His condition may have presented early because of the ghoul attack, but was in no way caused by it. It's genetic.” Thunk, thunk. “As Mr. Styne indicated, the demon that tried to attack both Mr. Winchester and his brother, Adam, was targeting Mr. Campbell, but as has been established both men are employed by the FDH and these types of instances are as common as a judge getting hate mail from a convict they sentenced to a lengthy prison term. There was also no way either of my clients could possibly have predicted a demon encounter in a hospital after they had just been reunited.” Thunk. “I would therefore request that the two cases from Minnesota be removed from the petition submitted by the State of South Dakota, as they are immaterial in addition to happening outside of the State’s jurisdiction.”

Devereaux looked extremely unhappy with the South Dakota case being so loosely knitted together that it was unraveling in front of him and Styne turned bright red when the judge snarled, “Agreed. The Minnesota cases will not be considered.”

“Thank you, your Honor,” Annie said, suppressing a smile. “Regarding the other incidents in Sioux Falls, we concede they happened at establishments focusing primarily on the sale and consumption of alcohol, but that also paints an incomplete picture. Until he learned he might be carrying, Mr. Winchester lived above Marge’s, the establishment wherein the first South Dakota incident occurred, which was also a completely unpredictable demon encounter. My clients were there to see Mr. Winchester’s former landlady and let her know he was all right, as he had abruptly moved into the home of Mr. Robert Singer, the beta you asked the bailiff to remove, right after learning he might be carrying. Mr. Singer is a lifelong family friend and Mr. Winchester felt a house would provide a more stable environment for a pup than an apartment over a bar. The second event at McCarthy’s was on Mr. Winchester’s birthday. He had a craving for greasy food and a game of darts and Mr. Campbell acquiesced, as any loving alpha would.”

“Spare me the embellishment, Ms. Hawkins.”

“My apologies, your Honor. As with the Windom case, when my clients overheard some of the staff talking about the trouble with the basement, they intended only to confirm a spirit’s presence and then contact the FDH. They did not plan to hunt the ghost themselves nor expect to encounter a poltergeist. While it may have been foolish, there was no intent to purposely endanger Mr. Winchester.”

“All right. What about Indiana?”

“Mr. Campbell’s grandfather, now deceased, was opposed to his relationship with Mr. Winchester and upset that Mr. Campbell didn’t intend to claim the pup and remove it from Mr. Winchester’s care. Once again, neither of my clients could possibly have known Mr. Campbell’s grandfather was sending a cousin to claim Mr. Winchester himself to keep the pup in the family. The police have interviewed Mr. Winchester about the incident and are not pursuing any charges.”

“Fair enough, but it seems reckless to me that Mr. Campbell would have been off hunting vampires when he was an expectant sire.”

“The nest had been active in this area for decades, your Honor, but did not catch the attention of the FDH until the Lafitte family was murdered. Mr. Winchester and Mr. Lafitte had been close friends for over a dozen years. As I mentioned, he had formed a bonded pack with the Lafittes, which the scrapbook clearly shows. My clients had visited them the day before they died. It was an intensely personal case for both of them. As for the rest, Mr. Winchester did defy his doctor’s orders about going outside, but he didn’t see the harm in taking his dog out the front door into his own yard so she could go to the bathroom. Contrary to Ms. Bevell’s description, he did not ‘take her for a walk.’ Finally, Mr. Winchester can hardly be blamed for inheriting a house across the street from a coven. He had no idea there were witches in his proximity until his father showed up with the case looking for Mr. Campbell, who was out of state at the time.”

“How did your client end up involved with the case and in premature whelping then?”

“The witches attacked John Winchester and Robert Singer and without my client’s intervention they both would have died.”

“So, another instance where anyone in his situation would have been forced to do the same?”

“Yes, your Honor.”

“I see. Is there anything else?”

There was, of course; all the statements they’d compiled to prove that Sam was a loving and protective alpha, that Dean needed him to avoid nightmares and panic attacks, but they were useless without Sam actually there, so Annie said, “No, your Honor.”

“All right.” Devereaux flipped through the scrapbook and FDH files for nearly ten minutes before removing his glasses and leaning back in his chair. “Mr. Winchester, I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

Dean cast a sidelong glance at Annie, who didn’t look like this concerned her too much, though he had the feeling it wasn’t necessarily a good thing. Still, he didn’t have much of a choice but to say, “Yes sir?”

“How long have you wanted to be a hunter?” the judge inquired calmly.

Dean was pretty sure that was a trick question, but couldn’t work out how. He looked to Annie again, and got a nod of encouragement.

“Uh, all my life, I guess,” he replied. “It’s all I’ve ever really known, so yeah, all my life.”

“You’ve _never_ wanted to be anything else?”

“When I was five I wanted to be a police officer, but other than that…” He shrugged. “There was other stuff, I guess, but I always knew I was going to be a hunter.”

Devereaux leaned forward, staring right at Dean with something that almost looked like sympathy, his hands crossed in front of him on the bench as he asked, “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did you always know you were going to be a hunter?”

Dean really couldn’t guess what the guy was driving at, but this was all getting too touchy-feely for him. He was here to fight these ridiculous OPS assholes that were treating him like a little kid who didn’t know what was best for him. There was no way he was playing along with this.

“Because I’m good at it,” he said stiffly. “Because I’m as good at it as any alpha, better than damn near all of ‘em, and someone’s got to stop the things that go bump in the night so normal people can have a good night’s sleep.”

Devereaux continued to look at him for a long while, his expression unreadable. Well, it looked like they were getting out of here in time for lunch after all. He unclasped his hands and sat back in his chair.

“Thank you for your honesty, Mr. Winchester,” he said, nodding to him and then to Annie. “Ms. Hawkins, you’ve presented some very compelling evidence, and have managed to provide some much needed context to the petitions submitted by the States. Thank you for making this an easy decision for me.” He put his glasses back on and looked to the table where Bevell and Styne were positively seething at the mountain of evidence refuting their claims, saying, “Ms. Bevell, I am granting the State of Indiana’s petition to place Mr. Winchester in the care of Omega Protective Services and enroll him in the National Omega Rehabilitation Program for one year. Likewise Mr. Styne, I am granting the State of South Dakota’s petition to hold Mr. Campbell to one day monthly supervised visits with his pup and Mr. Winchester, as well as the five year probationary period afterwards. These will not run consecutively, as I feel that would be excessive, especially with a pup involved, but will be concurrent.”

“Your Honor…” Annie started, blatantly stunned by the ruling, as Dean stared at the judge completely unable to process the words that had just come out of his mouth.

“Ms. Hawkins,” Devereaux cut in tiredly, “I admire your passion in these cases, but rarely have I seen such a clear-cut case of omega abuse in my courtroom as this. Mr. Winchester’s abilities as a hunter are impressive, as I would expect from anyone trained at Actaeon, and while I have no doubt his father expected him to present as an alpha when he enrolled, the simple fact of the matter is he presented as an omega instead. At that point he should have been barred entirely from hunting by his father, via alpha command if necessary, and found a suitable alpha for a mate. Instead it is clear he was encouraged to continue pursuing a career path entirely unsuitable for his designation. What’s more, his first pup has been sired by a hunter, to whom he _still_ remains unmated, all but ensuring he will remain at risk for the kinds of incidents that have been shockingly frequent since Mr. Campbell re-entered his life. That Mr. Campbell has not yet claimed him nor ordered Mr. Winchester himself to refrain from any kind of dangerous activity - not to mention his absence from this courtroom today - tells me all I need to know about his character and ability to act as Mr. Winchester’s alpha. I appreciate what Mr. Winchester has done for our country, and have no doubt he has saved countless lives, but a world of witches, vampires, and demons is not where we want our most vulnerable members of society; namely omegas and children. Frankly, while I am not a medical doctor I’m astounded he and his pup survived to this point with no strong alpha to guide him. My hope is that by spending a year with an alpha guardian who can correctly enforce society’s expectations for Mr. Winchester, both he and Mr. Campbell will come to understand the importance of an omega’s docile and obedient nature. The State has until March eighth to find a suitable temporary alpha in Fort Wayne and the surrounding area so as not to inhibit Mr. Winchester’s ability to visit his pup in the hospital as frequently as he wishes. If you have any additional requests or medical requirements for your client that must be met Ms. Hawkins, you have until the eighth as well to submit them. Court is in recess until one o’clock.”

“All rise,” the bailiff said, and somehow Annie, Dean, and Adam managed to stagger to their feet as Devereaux climbed down from the bench and disappeared into his chambers.

Bevell and Styne were congratulating themselves as Adam grabbed hold of Annie’s arm to jerk her around to the gallery, snapping, “What the hell just happened?”

“I don’t know,” she snapped back, pulling her arm free and turning to collect the remaining items on the table. “I _just_ proved the States’ case was absolute shit and built on nothing but circumstantial evidence. We shouldn’t have lost.”

“No,” Dean told her calmly. “What you just did was prove to a civilian judge how fucked up a hunter’s life is. When you spell it out like that it sounds nuts, even to me.”

“Dean…I’m sorry,” Annie said. “I thought we could still win this without Sam.”

“You’ve got nothin’ to be sorry about,” Dean replied. “You didn’t make me an omega.”

“We’ll file an appeal,” she insisted. “I’ll fix this.”

“It won’t do any good.” For an instant Adam thought he saw a crack in his brother’s facade, but as soon as it appeared it was gone, plastered over with more mortar and brick. “Can you find out if they’ll back down and let me see Adam, though? The only thing he’s ever done is try to get me outta the life. And my dog. I don’t want to lose my dog. Pretty sure there’s no point in asking to keep my car.”

“I’ll see what I can do.” She laid a hand on his arm, still clearly in shock. “I’m so sorry, I did not see this coming.”

“I’ve been through worse,” Dean assured her. His knees buckled slightly, hip and back twinging in tandem, and both Annie and Adam reached out to grab him. “I need lunch and a nap, then we need to get back to the hospital.”

“Let’s go tell Bobby,” Adam said, helping him out into this aisle as his back twinged again and Annie continued to pack up. “We’ll figure this out.”

“Sure Runt.”

Dean supposed it was too much to hope to get placed with an alpha who was decent in a program that involved with word “retraining,” and was also pretty sure this whole thing was going to be worse than it sounded. Luckily he already knew exactly what he was going to do about it, though unfortunately it hinged on getting his dad to return a phone call. Now that he and Sam were off hunting old yellow eyes there was no telling how long that would take, or if he’d be allowed to take phone calls by the time John got around to dialing his number. A part of him wanted to panic outright, but he really didn’t have the luxury of that anymore now that he was on his own with two kids and maybe ( _though probably not_ ) a dog. As long as he set things in motion before his first post-birth heat hit he’d be fine. He had five or six months before he had to worry about that, according to Dr. Johnson, and hell, maybe Azazel would even be dead by then. If not, surely his dad would call him back within half a year. At least, he hoped so, or he was screwed.


	87. That Is Not How We Communicate From a Place of Yes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean gets his first introduction to rehabilitation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is undoubtedly triggery stuff in here. Though honestly, if you've made it this far you must know the odds are good you'll encounter triggery stuff.

The State of Indiana thought it a particularly bad idea to allow the omega in question continued contact with his younger brother, even though his younger brother was in no way affiliated with the FDH and was in fact enrolled in the nursing program at Duke University. They also thought it was a particularly bad idea to allow the omega in question continued contact with one Robert Singer, who was not a blood relative but had been involved in the events at Sunset Trail and was clearly considered family by the Winchesters. Finally, they thought it ludicrous to even suggest that the omega in question be allowed to care for a nearly ninety pound dog when he had a four and a half month old pup and a premature pup in his care. The particular breed of dog was known for needing an owner with a commanding temperament that demanded respect, and that certainly would not blend well with the retraining he was to begin once the final arrangements were made to move the omega in question in with Dr. Asa Fox. He was a well respected neurologist at St. Mary’s Hospital, making him an obvious choice for placement, as the omega in question needed significant rehabilitative services for his back, hip, and shoulder due to the various injuries he had sustained while he was carrying, and of course his pup wouldn’t be released from the NICU until mid-May. As being allowed to keep his 1967 Chevy Impala was absolutely off the table, the omega in question was going to need someone who could shuttle him to and from the hospital, and since it was Dr. Fox’s place of business and Dr. Fox had a personal driver it just made sense.

It had been less than a week, and Dean was already going to shoot the next person who referred to him as “the omega in question.” Or at least he would if he were allowed to keep his gun, which of course he wasn’t. He wasn’t allowed to keep his house, either, and had to sell it to Adam for a dollar to keep the state from auctioning it off. Of course, once the house belonged to Adam, Dean could no longer live there, and ended up in an OPS safe house where he could be guarded by Agent Sheridan and Agent Reidy, a dark haired beta with pale skin and beady eyes. Dean didn’t know what they figured they were guarding him against. Much as Adam would have liked to barge in, beat them into unconsciousness, and rescue his brother from this absurdity he never would have dared anything that might backfire on Dean in an even worse way, not after the way things had gone in court. And obviously it wasn’t like Sam or John were going to do anything. Dean had called John as soon as they left the courthouse and knew it would be a while before he heard back from him. He hadn't called Sam because...well, he hadn't, and had no plans to. Annie was trying to reach Sam, and that was good enough for him.

It wasn't that he didn't want to talk to Sam. He did ( ** _god_ ** _how he did_ ). He simply couldn't, not without probably crying, and undoubtedly yelling, and possibly begging, and just in general behaving like the worst kind of cliched omega to ever om. He knew part of that was due to how screwed up his hormones were at the moment, and how he still felt like someone had run him down with a truck, backed over him, and then run him down again, but a larger part was due to feeling completely abandoned and missing Sam so goddamned much he didn't know how he was managing to breathe. What he _did_ know was that Dean Winchester was not some pathetic, needy stereotype, and he sure as hell was never crying again. At least, not when anyone could see him; not when he was going into some kind of government run brainwashing program that was going to try to force him to be a good little breeder who said “Yes, alpha” and “No, alpha,” and “May I have another please, alpha.” They might be able to break other omegas. They weren’t going to break him.

Playing along to just get through this was going to be a lot harder than he thought, however. He figured that out the minute they took his phone away and only allowed him a single bag of clothing before they moved him to the safe house. At his protestations that he wouldn’t have any way to contact Sam without his phone in case something happened to Elliott, he was informed that the State would be sure to contact the alpha should anything urgent come up with their pup, and that omegas had no need for their own cell phone. After all, no proper omega left the house without their alpha, and they certainly didn’t make any social plans without their alpha. Dean realized with growing horror that the government’s idea of retraining was to apparently take a book on omega etiquette from the 1940s and implement it step by step. Losing his home came first, then losing his phone, then came the shopping spree at the agency’s expense, which he resented not only because he could buy his own damn clothes if he wanted to but because there was nothing wrong with what he already had. The OPS clearly disagreed.

A beta social worker who introduced herself as Joyce Bicklebee ( _as if Dean would care_ ) came to the safe house his third day there to take him around to some shops in Fort Wayne that specialized in omega clothing. He was being moved in with his temporary alpha the next day and needed “appropriate attire.” None of the shops were as high-end as Maxim’s, but they each had an area where he could leave Lizzie while he tried things on, and all but one had small, but respectable sections for male omegas. That is, if you could count flowy, gauzy fabrics that looked like they’d tear if the wind blew too strongly “respectable.” Joyce was at least somewhat nice about the whole thing, a definite change from the other people he’d dealt with ( _Sheridan and Reidy leered a bit too openly_ ), and accepted that he simply wasn’t going to try on the open style shirts that seemed to be the standard for male omega attire – not when he still had moobs and his belly was all puffy and mushy. It was going to be a while before he’d be able to get back into any kind of exercise regimen between his shoulder and his back, so at that point he just had to watch what he ate and wait it out while his body returned to something that looked relatively normal. He was certainly not putting his postpartum physique on display for all the world to see.

As it turned out, society had figured out a solution to that as well, something called “foundation garments,” which obviously was just a fancy term for girdles to make an omega who just gave birth look like they hadn’t just given birth. It was the only thing Joyce tried to insist he buy, and Dean came very close to throwing an actual tantrum in the middle of the store. Even her explanation that it would help with his ruptured disc did nothing to convince him it was something he actually needed for any other reason than to appease an alpha’s vanity by making it look like he didn’t have a fat, out of shape omega on his hands. Were he still with Sam he might have considered one, for no other reason than to feel a little less jiggly and a little more human, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to pretty himself up for some snobby doctor who was just going to parade him around as his new toy for the next two months.

It really just went downhill from there. After heading back to the safe house with bags full of soft, impractical clothing in soft, impractical fabrics and soft, stereotypical pastels they were off pillow shopping. His hopes for a trip to Bed, Bath & Beyond were quickly dashed when he realized they were shopping for _those_ types of pillows. The ones that went on the floor for an omega to kneel on, because omegas weren’t worthy of a chair. The ones that looked like big dog beds made out of velvets and satins, or covered in canvas if they were being used as a punishment for when the omega misbehaved. They were typically considered a fetish item these days, but were easy enough to find because apparently lots of omegas liked pretending to be household pets. Dean adamantly refused to even acknowledge the things until it became obvious that there was no way he could get around having to use them and if he didn’t pick them out Joyce would. He settled on the manliest ones he could find, one that was dark green velvet and another that was brown corduroy, figuring he could give them both to Hannah when he finally got through this year of hell and had her back. Then it was shopping for collars and leashes, since he was expected to arrive at the doctor’s house like some kind of show dog, and he was expected to wear the collar at all times. As Joyce explained, it would help remind him of his designation in everyday life, but it would also be a signal to anyone who saw him outside the house that he was in the process of being trained, and they should treat him accordingly; namely, refraining from eye contact, speaking directly to him, deferring to his wishes, or in general treating him like a person. Again he gave in and selected one only because he didn’t have a choice – he was going to have to wear one no matter what, and at least he could get something close to flesh colored so it wasn’t completely obvious. Unfortunately, Joyce seemed to know exactly what he was up to as he was reviewing a line of delicate peach collars with no embellishments and steered him away towards the heavier collars in dark, obvious colors like black and red, most of them with rivets or studs. They would look ridiculous paired with all the pale green and blue clothing she just made him buy, and he finally grabbed one that was silver – thin, shiny, a bit garish, kind of like jewelry and impossible to miss – just so he wouldn’t look like someone that couldn’t put an outfit together. _That_ bit of vanity he would at least allow himself. Omega training or not, no one was ever going to accuse Dean Winchester of not knowing how to coordinate.

By the time they were done with the shopping it was almost two o’clock, which meant Dean had missed Elliott’s morning _and_ noon feedings, marking the second day in less than a week that his time with his son had been encroached upon after the mess at the hearing, and he was seething. Joyce was babbling on about something to do with hand feeding and how he’d come to really understand it as the loving caretaking gesture it was meant to represent as she headed towards the safe house, which was in the opposite direction of the hospital, and he simply snapped. He had mentioned at the pillow store that he wanted to go see Elliott, that they could do this later, and then again in the collar store as he was being fitted by the sales associate he stated really quite clearly that he wanted to go directly to the hospital so he made it in time for visiting hours. When she turned left at the stoplight that would take them to St. Mary’s if she turned right instead, he lost it. Grabbing hold of the wheel with an enraged growl, he yanked them over to the shoulder of the road, nearly causing two separate accidents, and when she turned to him, furious at his behavior, she was met with glowing gold eyes and descended canines. Before she could protest further, he grabbed her by the throat and snarled, “Take me to see my son or I’ll throw you out of this car and drive myself there.”

“Dean!” she exclaimed as best she could with her constricted airway. “This is grossly inappropriate behavior…”

“I _told_ you I wanted to see my son,” he snapped, squeezing until her eyes were bulging in their sockets. “Turn the car around, and drive me to the hospital, _Joyce_.”

She nodded enthusiastically, her hands shaking on the wheel even after he released her. By the time they got to the hospital he was still growling and vibrating, but at least his canines had receded. He ordered her not to park but to just let him out at the front entrance, and he barely gave her a chance to stop before he was out of the car, yanking open the back door to grab Lizzie’s car seat and diaper bag then storming away, kicking the door closed behind him as he struggled to remove the collar from his neck with his free hand. He was inside before he remembered the damn thing needed an actual key and Joyce had been adamant about holding onto it, and stubbornly ignored the protestations of his hip and back at his rapid pace as he stalked through the lobby for the elevators. He felt the stares of the people around him at his glowing eyes, halting gait, and collared throat but just didn’t give a damn. He’d been forced to leave his son alone all day and anyone who tried getting between him and the NICU was going to deeply regret it.

Much to Dean’s surprise and delight, Bobby and Adam were in with Elliott when he got to the NICU, and though the feeling was mutual it quickly waned when the two betas saw the silver collar strapped around Dean’s neck. The hospital staff also reacted differently to his presence - clearly uncomfortable, which made no sense as he’d been there nearly the entire day before, from Elliott’s morning feeding straight through his evening feeding, and everyone had been warm and accommodating. Now the head nurse excused herself immediately after his entrance, and the two remaining nurses looked extremely tense as he moved to where his brother was sitting, Elliott cradled up against him and looking up with big doe eyes.

“Get your butt outta that chair and give me my kid, Runt,” he ordered with as much humor as he could muster, which wasn’t a whole lot since his hormones were really testing his new “Dean Winchester doesn’t cry” rule.

Adam smiled, his eyes flicking to the collar and then away as he decided it would probably be easier for his brother if they all just ignored it, and as the nurses were working on transferring Elliott from Adam to Dean, Bobby said, “Give me my girl. I bet she’s missin’ Uncle Bobby somethin’ fierce.”

“It’s true,” Dean replied as he got settled with Elliott against his chest, breathing in his distinct new-baby smell. “You’re all she talks about.”

“Course I am,” the beta agreed, lifting Lizzie up out of her car seat to bounce her in the crook of his arm. “The kid knows a good thing when she sees one.”

“How are you holding up?” Adam asked quietly as Bobby walked the little girl around the room, pointing out all the bright lights and interesting sounds. The other baby who had been in there with Elliott was released the week before so it was just them.

“They took my phone and bought me a bunch of omega crap,” Dean said, his eyes glued to the tiny little boy gripping his pinky finger. “What’s the matter kiddo? You miss me today?” Elliott responded with a huge yawn for such a little person and closed his eyes to doze against his mother’s chest. Dean pressed a kiss to his forehead and murmured, “I sure missed you.”

“Mr. Winchester?” Both Adam and Dean looked up to where the head nurse was standing in the doorway, looking equal measures embarrassed and apologetic, undoubtedly because of the two security guards standing behind her. It took a moment to realize she was looking at Adam, who bristled as he turned to her fully. “I’m very sorry, but there is an OPS order against you. You can’t be here when the omega is visiting his pup. You either, Mr. Singer.”

“What?” Dean demanded, hoping the way his heart began pounding inside his chest didn’t wake Elliott. “How are they supposed to see him if they can’t be here when I am?”

She only glanced at him for a moment before looking straight past him, reminded by the damned collar that he was only kind of sort of a person and she shouldn’t be paying attention to him. She waited patiently as the guards waved for the two betas to come over to them and Bobby reluctantly put Lizzie back down into her car seat.

“How can we see my nephew if we can’t be here when my brother is?” Adam asked since she obviously wasn’t going to answer Dean.

“You’ll have to coordinate with him to know when he’s going to be here and when he isn’t,” she replied, clearly wanting to be anywhere other than the NICU having to deal with this.

“They’ve taken his phone,” Adam protested. “We can’t coordinate if he can’t get in touch with us.”

“I’m really very sorry, but there’s nothing we can do. Maybe you can work something out with his court appointed alpha.”

“We aren’t allowed to know who his court appointed alpha is!”

“That would be me,” interjected a tall man with a long nose and narrow face. He was pale and dark blond, his coloring similar to Dean’s, with an angular jaw and sharp eyes. The blockers he wore were extra strength and gave away nothing of his scent and he wore a suit with a white lab coat over it. “Dr. Asa Fox. I wasn’t expecting to meet you until tomorrow, Dean.” He turned his flashing eyes from the omega to Adam and held out a hand, smiling broadly. It had the bizarre effect of doubling the size of his chin as the beta reluctantly shook with him. “I’m terribly sorry for the protocol, but Omega Protective Services is very strict about these sorts of things. Here’s my card.” He pulled it deftly from the inner pocket of his suit coat and held it out to Adam. “You can give me a call when you’d like to visit the pup. Why don’t you stay for now? I need to speak with Dean privately for a moment anyway and he can come back later for the pup’s evening feeding.“ He turned to glance at the nurses before giving a short nod and saying, “ _Dean_?”

It wasn’t really just a statement of the omega’s name of course, not when the doctor had blatantly used his alpha voice. Dean struggled to stay where he was, but felt compelled to follow him. The nurses came to take Elliott from him despite his protestations, but even if they hadn’t it wouldn’t have mattered. Why his resolve was failing him when it came to ignoring an alpha command he didn’t know. It was terribly disconcerting. Adam and Bobby clearly thought so as well, giving him matching uneasy looks as the nurses assured Dean they’d bring Lizzie to Dr. Fox’s office once the betas were done with their visit.

Dr. Fox was waiting just outside the NICU for Dean to catch up with him, and without so much as a word he clicked a short silver chain to the D-ring on the front of the collar, pulling the omega through the hospital to the wing that held the office suites then heading through a door with a sign that said “Neurology.” It was a long walk and gave plenty of people time to gape at the omega who must have done something serious to warrant being led through a hospital on a leash. At the reception desk he instructed the admin working it that he was still on his lunch hour and to please hold all calls. The woman didn’t even acknowledge Dean as they headed back to the doctor’s office.

Once inside with the door firmly closed behind him, the doctor led Dean over to a leather couch, unclipping the chain as the omega took in the office. It spoke of someone who was very good at what he did, with a large cherry wood desk, a wall of matching shelves, and two leather armchairs facing the leather desk chair where presumably patients sat to receive bad news. His diplomas hung on the wall by the door and there were various photographs of the good doctor at local charitable events, always with a different collared omega on his arm, each of them beautiful. Asa dropped the chain onto his desk, tapped his fingers for a moment, and sighed.

“This really wasn’t the way I would have liked to meet you, Dean,” he said, sounding resigned, as he turned to take in the man standing rooted to the floor by the couch. He wasn’t that much older than Dean, maybe ten years at the most, but he exuded a tremendous amount of power and confidence, undoubtedly due to his profession. “Your social worker paged me from the parking lot. She said she had a bit of a problem with you after getting the supplies you’ll need to be comfortable in my home.”

“I told her more than once I wanted to see my son,” Dean growled, and with an understanding nod Asa stepped forward and backhanded the omega so hard he tumbled over the arm of the couch.

Dean was so stunned he didn’t know what to do, which was ridiculous because he was a hunter, goddammit - the best one in the fucking country. He’d faced down all manner of monster by himself, a couple of pagan gods, no telling how many restless or vengeful spirits, but facing a random alpha in a suit and lab coat who was just barely his height and not nearly as broad shouldered had him frozen in place for a moment, hand on his cheek where it was already beginning to swell. Once he had recovered himself he glared up at the doctor and moved to stand, his eyes flashing gold in fury, but before he could get to his feet an open palm connected with the other side of his face, knocking him back down again. It took him no time at all to rebound after the second slap, yet even as he shot upright he was slapped again, this time feeling the skin at his cheekbone split. Not only was he having trouble believing this was happening, he couldn’t understand why his body hadn’t sprung immediately into fight mode. If _anything_ required him to fight back it was something like this.

“What is it you’re doing wrong, Dean?” Asa asked calmly, so calmly that if anyone had walked in they certainly would have thought Dean simply fell and hit both sides of his face on something, not that he had just been slapped three times for simply existing in arm’s length of the doctor. Dean glared at him again and was rewarded with another blow. His back was twinging from his body twisting with the force of an alpha not holding back on him and he was beginning to regret refusing those foundation garments. “What is it you’re doing wrong, _omega_?”

Instantly Dean understood, pink rushing to his cheeks as he clenched his jaw and instead of looking back up at the alpha kept his eyes trained carefully forward, somewhere between the desk and the floor, head tipped slightly to display the length of his neck. He could feel Fox relaxing, even as Dean was trying to gauge whether he could get to the letter opener on the desk before the doctor could stop him. He decided against it when Asa moved right where Dean had been planning to bolt and sat down casually in his desk chair, like he hadn’t just been assaulting an omega the State had placed in his care and who was moving into his home tomorrow.

“That’s much better,” he praised, indicating the chairs across the desk from him. “Please have a seat so we can chat.” When Dean remained on the couch he heard a rumbling growl starting in the alpha’s chest and braced himself for another hit. “I understand from your file that you’re quite the expert at ignoring alpha commands, but I assure you Dean, the way your hormones are going to be fluctuating until your next heat is bound to make that particular talent pretty useless. I’d rather not have to order you to come here and sit, but I will. This is also one of the rare times I will allow you to use a chair. I suggest you take a seat.”

Wordlessly, as he was fairly certain that saying anything without permission was going to get another slap or maybe a punch thrown his way, Dean rose from the couch and moved to the chairs across from the doctor to sit as instructed. Rage coursed through him, making him feel slightly dizzy considering how far from one hundred percent healthy he still was. When Asa didn’t begin to speak immediately, Dean risked raising his eyes again to look at him, not feeling comforted in the slightest to see the gentle way the man smiled at him.

“I’m very sorry I had to do that, but you must understand you’ve been placed in this program for your own well being,” he said as if he were speaking to a misbehaving child. “I know you’ve spent most of your life as an independent omega, but the fact of the matter is that omegas aren’t meant to be independent. Without an alpha to guide them, omegas end up in all kinds of trouble. Surely you must agree with that, given your current medical problems and your bastard pup up in the NICU.” Dean’s eyes flared again and he dropped them hastily to the desk rather than risk another hit. He needed to regain his strength before he would be in any kind of shape to take on this dickwad. He caught Asa smiling at his submission out of the corner of his eye and suppressed a growl. “This isn’t the way I like to begin any of my rehabilitative projects, but you assaulted a beta and you have to understand that’s inappropriate for someone of your designation. I can accept you were upset that she wasn’t bringing you to see your pup, but you _are_ moving in with me tomorrow and therefore she was on a tight schedule. Returning to the OPS residence with your purchases would have been a much better use of your time.”

“So this is how you’re planning to retrain me?” Dean asked, struggling to keep his voice even. “Just slap me around some until I learn to submit?”

The doctor leaned forward, placing his interlaced hands on the desk, and replied, “I sincerely hope not. You’ll only be with me for the next two months or so. I’d much rather you think of me as your protector and friend, and that will be difficult to achieve if I’m constantly having to punish you. Besides, there are more effective punishments if you decide to act out the way you did today with Janice.”

“Joyce,” Dean said automatically for no other reason than to one-up the alpha, who definitely looked irritated at having been corrected but decided to let it go.

“Joyce,” Asa said. “Of course. I hope you won’t try something like that again with my housekeeper or driver, since you frightened Joyce and I don’t like my employees frightened by my charitable projects.” He rose from the chair and moved around to sit on the edge of the desk and lean down into Dean’s space, hooking a finger underneath the collar and running it along the omega’s skin. “It would be very unfortunate if you were confined to my home and unable to attend your physical therapy sessions...or visit your son.”

Dean was pretty sure he’d heard the man wrong, as all those diplomas on his wall indicated that the guy was smart. No one smart could possibly look at Dean Winchester’s file and then think it was a good idea to threaten to keep him from his child.

“Come again?” he asked evenly, going stiff as Fox dragged him forward by the collar to scent him obscenely, his nose buried behind Dean’s ear and his hand moving to grip Dean’s throat like a vice.

“Your ability to leave my house for _any_ reason depends entirely on your ability to accept what you are and behave accordingly,” the alpha snarled against his neck. “I take my role as a foster alpha very seriously. There are certain lines I will not cross with you without your consent, but I have no qualms whatsoever in keeping you completely housebound should you remain defiant. There’s a reason the court took away your phone, your car, and your family, Dean. You do not know your place. Omegas are not warriors. They’re not soldiers. They’re not hunters. You have not accepted your designation. I’m here to help you with that, whether you realize you need that help or not. The faster you get with the program the easier this will be for you.” He released Dean and sat back as the omega gasped for breath, watching for a moment to make sure his message had come through loud and clear before going back to his desk chair. “I’m afraid I can’t let you talk to your brother, but I’m sure you’d like him to be able to visit your pup, so we can plan for him to come by during visiting hours if you like. Obviously not every day. I wouldn’t want to see him get too attached, not when you’re only guaranteed to be here for two months.” He picked up his desktop phone and dialed out to his receptionist, saying, “Marsha, can you get in touch with the NICU and ask them to bring my omega’s older pup to the office? I’d prefer he wait here until Harry can take him back to the OPS safe house.”

He hung up the phone after a brief conversation about the rest of his appointments for the day, after which he was saying something to Dean about his driver, Harry, who would be picking him up tomorrow anyway to move him into the doctor’s home, so it was good for them to get to know each other. Dean didn’t really hear any of it. He was stuck back on the part Fox had said about being in charge of whether or not Dean ever left his house. That couldn’t possibly be legal. There must be something Annie could do if he was being coerced by the alpha who was supposed to be “protecting” him into compliance by threatening to keep him from his child. The problem there of course was he had no way of getting in touch with her without his cell. The OPS safe house didn’t have a phone, and there was clearly no way Sheridan or Reidy were ever going to let him use theirs. He hoped she’d gotten in touch with Sam by now. Maybe if Sam came back to see Elliott…

Dean stopped that train of thought dead in its tracks, nodding at something Fox was saying that seemed to require it and hoping he shouldn’t have been shaking his head instead. If looking the alpha in the eyes was enough to get his face blackened he didn’t really want to know what giving an answer that made it clear he hadn’t been listening would get him. He needed to stop thinking about Sam, stop hoping Sam was going to swoop in to rescue him. Sam was off hunting with his dad now, and if he knew anything about the way his dad hunted it was not to rely on him turning up more than two to three times a year. He absolutely couldn’t wait for Sam to come back and learn just how deep the shit was that Dean was in. Dean was going to have to figure out how to dig himself out on his own without the benefit of a shovel and both arms tied behind his back.


	88. Leaving You There on Your Own, That Was a Dick Move

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What Sam and John are up to.

Sam was truly beginning to understand why John drank so much. Weeks had passed since they left Fort Wayne and they had yet to come up for air. There was the ghost of a psychic killing charlatans in New York. A shapeshifter with a hard on for classic horror movies was killing people in Pennsylvania. A trio of teenagers in Massachusetts were messing around with demons and one of them inhabited Sam’s body for a couple of days while they tried to arrange to serve John up on a platter to a low-level player who wanted to impress Azazel. A haunted inn in Connecticut had them ganking the ghost of a little girl who didn’t want the place sold outside the family. Then John’s storage unit in Buffalo was broken into and had them heading back to New York to retrieve and destroy a cursed rabbit’s foot that John accidentally touched. Revenants down in Kentucky finally drove them out of the Northeast, but as soon as they were done with that there was an arachne in Rhode Island, and then they tracked a snarly yow from Maryland into West Virginia. Following that they were forced to go to Lawrence to deal with the fight over Samuel’s will, and while Sam spent the day dealing with his lawyers and cousins, John found a poltergeist to take care of that was terrorizing a single mother and her two young children. From there they drove straight through to Wisconsin to take care of the Shtriga Dean hadn’t been able to kill when he was only ten, as it had finally come back around in its feeding cycle, and immediately afterwards there was another shapeshifter in Milwaukee that was committing a string of high stakes robberies and leaving a trail of bodies in its wake. It was punishing and exhausting, but thankfully so all consuming it left him with no time to succumb to any outbursts of rage - a good thing when he’d lost contact with Dean and didn’t know when he’d get it back.

It hadn’t helped the sick feeling refusing to release his coiled stomach, which had been pressing insistently upon him the idea that he’d made a _terrible_ mistake leaving Fort Wayne, to learn just how terrible of a mistake he had actually made. They were so busy hunting he missed the call from Annie Wilkins about the OPS case, and he wasn’t able to get back to her for a couple of days. Not only had they lost the case, it wasn’t just the one, it was two. A separate petition was filed the morning of the hearing and they were now on the wrong side of both South Dakota and Indiana. When he tried immediately to call Dean to find out what the hell was going on, he discovered the omega no longer had a phone; it had been removed from his possession by the State of Indiana specifically so he couldn’t keep in touch with the alpha. That was just one of the many panic-inducing things he learned in the follow-up call to Annie, which also brought with it the horrific revelation that Dean had been placed with some doctor named Fox in some kind of rehabilitative program that was going to teach him how to be a “proper” omega, and aside from the single monthly pre-arranged visit Sam could have with Dean and Elliott he was not allowed within five hundred yards of his desired mate or the doctor. Sam wanted to return immediately but Annie advised against it, especially given how little the judge thought of him. Turning up now and doing something rash would make things harder for Dean. They needed to focus on proving Sam _was_ a good alpha by respecting the legal limitations set on them so in a couple of months they could file an appeal and at least get Sam’s visitation rights increased. While Sam called the hospital every day thereafter to check on Elliott, he had no idea what was happening to Lizzie and Dean. Though there was some comfort to being able to build a rapport with the nursing staff to keep tabs on his son, the baby _was_ still in the NICU, no matter how well he was doing ( _and he was thankfully doing incredibly well_ ), and the staff was forbidden from answering his questions about the omega or the other pup. The constant strain of worrying about Dean and their two kids had Sam strongly considering living out of a vodka bottle, stopped only by the memory of what happened the last time he got drunk. He did break down and have a couple of shots when he finally got Adam on the phone to confirm that he, Bobby, and John had also been banned from any contact with Dean, leaving the omega pretty much completely on his own.

The one bright spot to the whole thing was that Ellen and Jo were back in Indiana and they were trying to figure out how to get Jo into Dean’s orbit, since the courts didn’t seem to know about the Harvelles at all. Bobby had headed back to Sioux Falls, Rufus Turner making it clear he couldn’t watch Rumsfeld and the salvage yard any longer while they tried to untangle the bureaucracy in which Dean was ensnared, but Ellen sure as hell wasn’t leaving. Even though Jo was out of the hospital they still weren’t sure what would happen with her feet long term, and she was having some psychological issues dealing with being kidnapped and hunted by cannibals through the snow. Between the three remaining betas they didn’t doubt they’d come up with something that could help Dean weather this terrible legal debacle. Sam wanted nothing more than to throw Dean over his shoulder and run away with him but that was simply impossible when Elliott wouldn’t be able to leave the hospital until early May, and on top of that they actually seemed to be closing in on Azazel. If they could just get that hunt done he could go back and un-fuck all the things he’d fucked up with the reasonable surety that his eyes weren’t going to roll over black and have him beating one of the kids to death if they spilled something on the rug.

Complicating the matter with the OPS was John’s reaction to the situation. Things between him and Sam were strained, if one wanted to be kind in the description of it, and after what happened in the hospital he wasn’t exactly going to say it was a bad thing that the government was stepping in to protect his son. If he were going to be honest with himself for once, he didn’t think Sam was the only alpha Dean should be guarded against. The circumstances surrounding Elliott’s birth were definitely proof that John wasn’t capable of putting Dean’s needs first, and if it took the entire state of Indiana to keep him from harming his son any further he wasn’t going to try to fight it. All the incident with the witches across the street had done was illustrate to him how completely he had failed in his role as a father and an alpha, and while it may not have been fair for Sam to be caught up in it, it was probably for the best that they were both barred from contacting Dean. It made him particularly unwilling to discuss the topic of his eldest son or his grandchildren even when he was three sheets to the wind.

Because of this, Sam had no hope of convincing John to head back to Fort Wayne until they had a legitimate break, not after they’d already had to take a detour to Lawrence. The first opportunity to touch base in Indiana came when they landed three hours away in Chicago looking into the case of a young beta who had been found ripped to pieces in her locked apartment, chain on the door, the alarm system fully armed. It was the second such attack within the month, the first being an alpha who was left strewn about in little bits all over in his town home, also fully locked and armed. The landlady was sharp as a whip, seeing right through their FBI disguises due in no small part to Sam’s age and hair length, and with a scowl John ( _who hadn’t seen a reason to go in as FBI on this one_ ) pulled out his FDH badge, explaining that they were sorry for the subterfuge but they didn’t want to panic the other tenants.

“I can understand that,” said the landlady, a non-nonsense grandmotherly type who proceeded to lead them up to the beta’s apartment and let them in. “I’m the one who found Meredith. It was definitely enough to panic someone. Never seen anything like that in my life.”

“What was it that prompted you to check on her?” Sam asked as they reached the door and the landlady spun through her keys to the right one. “Were there any unusual sounds or smells…”

“Oh, there was definitely a smell,” she assured him, the lock tumbling open. “No unusual sounds or anything, though. Her employer called. She hadn’t shown up for work for a couple of days and when they tried her emergency contacts no one had heard from her. I have to tell you, I don’t think I’m ever gonna forget that smell.”

The door to the apartment was swung open and neither Sam nor John doubted what she’d just said. Even days later the stench of death clung to the fabrics in the room, though it was more than just that. It smelled like something was still in the apartment rotting. Sam took out an EMF meter and began to scan the living room, looking for anything that would indicate a hidden body, while John walked forward to the carpet in front of the couch where the blood splatter was. The meter went wild, lighting up all the way, but the EMF wasn’t centralized to one spot. It was all over the room.

“Did you notice anything off about the room when you found her?” John asked, feeling as he looked at the carpet that he was missing a clue and not quite able to put his finger on it. “Was anything moved or missing that you’re aware of?”

“No, everything was in perfect condition. Except Meredith.”

“Yeah, we’ve seen the file,” Sam murmured.

“The police are saying it was some kind of animal attack,” the landlady said, hugging her arms as she watched the two hunters survey the apartment. “But I’ve never heard of an animal that could do...what was done to her. And now that you’re here, are you thinking it was some sort of creature?”

“We don’t know, ma’am,” John replied, scrubbing a hand down over his face. “We definitely don’t think it was an animal. The police are being pretty tight-lipped though, so if there’s anything else you can remember it would help. Anyone who may not have _liked_ Meredith?”

“No. Far as I know she didn’t have problems with anyone. She was a real nice girl. Paid her rent on time, kept to herself. I never had any complaints from the neighbors.”

“All right, thank you,” Sam said, ushering her towards the door. “We’ll let you know if we have any other questions.”

She nodded and was gone, clicking the door shut behind her as Sam tucked the EMF meter back into his jacket, convinced there wasn’t anyone buried in the walls. Whatever set it off was the thing that killed Meredith, and it had left behind the rotting smell. John was already looking around the room and leafing through drawers until he found a roll of masking tape.

“So killer comes in and out without undoing the locks, setting off the alarm, or leaving behind any prints,” Sam said as John began to tear off pieces of tape. “What it did leave behind was a whole lot of EMF. Hellhound maybe?”

“Nah,” John replied as he lined up the various large splatters of blood on the floor with the tape. “Hellhounds shred you. They don’t turn you into kibble.”

“What are you doing?” Sam asked, watching as he finished with his tape.

“This blood spatter,” John replied gruffly. God he hated working with this kid, but at least Sam was smart and had learned a lot more formally at Acteon about symbols and sigils than John had been able to pick up just through casework. He might recognize right off what John couldn’t quite put his finger on about the carpet. “Come here and take a look at this.”

Sam obliged as his phone buzzed with an alert, heading over to take a look at the symbol the masking tape made. It was sort of a backwards “S” with a zero in the center. He cocked his head to the side as he ran through his mental rolodex of the various marks he learned in Ancient Symbology his senior year, trying to pull a corresponding origin from his memory banks. After a long moment he said, “It’s Zoroastrian. I don’t remember what it’s for, though.”

“Looks like we’ve got some research to do, then,” John said as Sam’s phone buzzed a second and then a third time. “You want to look into the symbol or Meredith’s work?”

“Well, she was a waitress at a bar a few blocks from here,” Sam replied as he pulled his phone out to see he had an alert for three new emails from Adam. “It’s supposedly some kind of college dive so it might make more sense for me to go.”

“Yeah, but they might take an adult more seriously,” John countered, thinking for sure that would get a rise out of the younger man and looking forward to it. They hadn’t verbally sparred in a couple of days and he was itching for a fight. If he couldn’t break whatever hold Sam had put on him with the declaration that they were hunting together, the least John could do was make their partnership unpleasant. Sam, however, was glued to the emails Adam sent over and not paying him the slightest attention.

The first was only two sentences - “ _Found this while job hunting. You need to get back here_ ” - with a broken attachment. The second was also only two sentences with a broken attachment - “ _Did the photo come through_? _Doesn’t look like it did_.” The third said, “ _Try this link_ ” with a website included in the body. The reception inside the apartment wasn’t the best and it took a moment for the site to open, but once it had his eyes went red and he nearly crushed the phone in his hand.

It was an online article from the society pages of the _Fort Wayne Register_ , which was shocking not only because the _Fort Wayne Register_ still had society pages ( _though the section was called “Life” now_ ), but because of the image accompanying the article. It was a full color photo of three couples at some kind of annual charity event from April first, so just the previous weekend, which appeared to be a harlequin themed masquerade ball. There was a man and a woman in matching costumes of red, yellow, grey, and black diamonds, the man in a six pointed hat with bells at the end of each point, the woman in a fantastic headpiece that looked like ram’s horns. Another man and woman were in costumes closer to a clown’s attire, alternating squares of black and white with large red ruffles around the waist and at the collar and cuffs and matching striped socks. The man had a tiny red top hat perched at an angle on his head while the woman wore a wig that was half black and half white with huge curly pigtails tied in red ribbons, her dress so long and full it looked like there was no way for her to comfortably sit down. The final couple was two men just about the same height and coloring in costumes that were half silver and half black, like mirror images; except that one of the men was in something like a proper suit, the coat buttoned all the way up to his neck and pants comfortably fitted, while the other wore a top much closer to a tunic, split in a deep vee down the front and skimming just below his crotch, with pants that couldn’t even be called that. They were more like velveteen leggings, a silver collar prominent around his neck with a thin silver leash attached to the D ring on the front that had been doubled up to look like a long pendant draping down and drawing attention to his bare chest. His stomach and chest were flat, if slightly soft, and though he smiled at the camera with everyone else he was flushed pink with embarrassment all the way down to his collarbones, the arm of the other man wrapped around him, hand pressed possessively against his hip. They all wore masks coordinated to their outfits, which nearly hid how dull the man’s green eyes were but not quite, and at least preserved a bit of his dignity by partially obscuring his face. The names of the people photographed were listed below, but he really only cared about two: “Dr. Asa Fox” and “Unidentified Omega.”

“Sam?”

“Look into the symbol,” Sam said through clenched teeth, the growl rumbling in his chest making John curious to know what he was looking at despite himself. “I have something I need to take care of, then I’ll head to the bank where Ben worked and Meredith’s bar. I’ll text you when I’m there so we can meet up and compare notes.”

“You care to elaborate on what _exactly_ you need to take care of that’s more important than figuring out what the hell we’re up against?” John snapped as Sam moved resolutely to leave.

“Dean needs clothes,” Sam snarled without even looking back, slamming the door behind him.

Sam had wished numerous times since leaving Indiana that they’d taken both trucks instead of leaving John’s at Sunset Trail and packing up the Escalade, but that wish had never been as strong as it was now so he could get around Chicago under his own power. Though admittedly if he’d been able to just drive off to Fort Wayne and dump John on his own on this hunt he would have, and that wouldn’t have made anything better; not with how furious he currently was. After wandering several blocks he found an L station and figured out how to get to the Magnificent Mile, trying to remember exactly where Maxim’s was. The twenty minute train ride gave him plenty of time to stew over his omega appearing collared, leashed, and practically half naked in a newspaper. Not that Sam would have minded Dean wearing something cut down almost all the way to his navel, or leggings that hugged those magnificent bowed legs if that’s what he was comfortable in, but he knew Dean. He knew that flush, the fake smile, the set line of his shoulders. While it was possible he wasn’t being made to wear that kind of revealing clothing all the time, the fact that Dr. Asa Fox had him dressed that way for a formal event he must have known would end up in the papers left Sam feeling it was highly unlikely Dean got to dress more modestly in private. Annie had given him a rundown on the way the national retraining program worked, and among the things Dean would have no control over anymore was the clothing he wore. It seemed the least Sam could do after having abandoned his omega to such a humiliating fate was to replace his wardrobe with something that might strike a better balance between traditional omega attire and the tee shirts, flannels, and jeans that Dean preferred to wear.

A delightful beta named Amy was working the boutique solo that day, and she was happy to show him the new summer line that had just come in. The colors coming into season were all delicate, far more delicate than he thought Dean would ever wear if given the choice, but at least the purple ( _Amy said it was orchid_ ), mint green, and sky blue shirts weren’t too bad. The pants, however, were horrific. Snaps and zippers were apparently hot upcoming trends, and there were very few styles that didn’t look like something a stripper would wear at the start of a set, meant to be discarded with a quick tug. Just the thought of buying any of them for Dean felt like a violation, and it had Sam shaking with rage, something it was of course impossible for the sales associate to miss. After some gentle prodding and reminders that retail therapy actually did many people a tremendous amount of good, the floodgates opened and Sam told the beta everything that had happened since Elliott’s birth. Amy turned out to be a very good listener, and while he wasn’t typically the kind of guy to go around spilling his problems to total strangers, he needed desperately to talk to someone about how screwed up things were now between him and Dean, how insurmountable their problems currently seemed, and how he just wanted to do whatever he could to comfort the omega when he wasn’t allowed to be with him, even if the only way he could do that was to make sure he had a proper pair of pants and shirts that actually covered his chest. In the end he spent a small fortune and wasn’t quite sure how he was going to get all the bags back to the hotel, but he managed it, leaving a voicemail while on the train for Annie that he was working a job in Chicago and wanted to schedule his visit with Dean and Elliott within the next few days.

It was after dark before he met back up with John at the bar where Meredith worked. He’d talked to the owner and learned only that she waited tables, was a great employee, everyone was her friend, and she hadn’t done anything unusual before she died. John hadn’t figured out the symbol yet, but he’d managed to eliminate a lot of possibilities and only had one book left to go through. He also flirted some information out of the lead detective on Meredith’s case ( _Sam barely managed to contain his shock at the idea of John successfully flirting_ ), who let him in on the fact that her heart had been missing, and that it had been kept out of the papers because they also suspected her death and the previous one were due to supernatural forces. They simply didn’t want to start a city-wide panic somewhere as large as Chicago when they had no clue what might link the two deaths. The detective was worried it could be a werewolf, since she did know that werewolves ate the hearts of their victims, but John assured her the lunar cycles were wrong, thus ingratiating himself with her further.

“So we don’t have any idea how the two victims might be connected?” John asked as he took a long pull on his beer, trying his best to ignore _(Don’t Fear) the Reaper_ playing in the background like some kind of ludicrous irony.

“Not at this point,” Sam replied, still preoccupied with the image of Dean looking every inch the trophy mate at that charity event. “Meredith worked here, Ben worked at a bank all the way across the city. None of his friends had even heard of this place, so it’s unlikely he ever came here. They moved in completely different circles, didn’t know anyone in common - unless they sat next to each other on the L or something I doubt their paths ever crossed.”

A hand landed on his shoulder, causing him to jump and almost spill his beer as a voice said, “Sam?”

He barely managed not to reach into his boot for a knife as he swiveled on his chair and spotted the beta standing behind him, her long honey brown hair tumbling around her shoulders as she smirked up at him and winked. She looked very different from earlier in the day when her hair had been up in a high ponytail and she was helping him pick out shirts and underwear. He was surprised not only to see her there, given the size of the city they were in, but by her sudden familiarity. It all seemed very strange.

“Oh, hey Amy,” he said, smiling uncomfortably as she stepped into the vee of his legs. “Nice to see you again. And thank you for your help this afternoon. I really appreciate it.”

“Just doing my job,” she told him, placing a hand lightly on his forearm. “Though it was a pleasure. Any time you want to drop by Maxim’s I’ll be happy to give you my undivided attention.”

This was getting very weird very quickly, and Sam fought back the blush trying to spring to his face as he felt John’s eyes boring into the back of his skull. There was no telling what the man thought at this pretty little beta looking like she wanted to crawl into Sam’s lap and talking about a place called Maxim’s. Things between them were strained enough as it was without this Amy person complicating matters any.

What John was thinking was that Maxim’s sounded an awful lot like some kind of high end strip club or escort service and that he really wanted to know exactly what Sam had been up to earlier that had him delaying getting down to interviewing people who knew the vics. Expecting him to just believe that the young alpha had gone off to buy Dean clothing when an attractive single beta was trying to sit on him was asking a lot. It had been a very long time since John fell off the turnip truck, after all.

“You want to introduce me to your friend there, Sam?” he asked, barely suppressing a growl as he stared at the two young people across the table from him.

“Yeah, um, John this is Amy,” Sam said, hastily disentangling himself from her to turn half back to the irritated older alpha. “Amy was helping me pick out some clothes for Dean earlier today.”

“That’s some pretty impressive retail service, checking in with a customer this far after the sale,” John snarled. “I hope Sam picked out some nice things for _my son_.”

“Your…” Amy’s eyes went wide and then strangely narrowed as she moved to stand almost in front of Sam to glare at John. “Well, I hope you’re proud of yourself for the way you’ve screwed up Sam’s life.”

Sam had no idea what was going on now, but he watched in confusion as John got to his feet and glared down at the young woman, who didn’t seem cowed by him in the slightest.

“Excuse me?”

“What you did to your own son, how he almost lost their baby, and _now_ you won’t even agree to drive with Sam back to Fort Wayne to visit?” She looked like she wanted to spit on him, and John had to work very hard to overcome the urge to throttle her. He wasn’t the kind of alpha who went around hitting women, but boy did this random beta make it seem enticing. “Stop dragging him all over the country!”

“Amy, it’s fine…” Sam interjected, John’s glare now turned on him.

“I’m gonna go get another drink,” the eldest Winchester growled before pushing his way back to the bar.

Sam watched him go for a moment, bumping shoulders with younger patrons, several of whom were clearly considering making a big deal out of getting shoved before catching sight of John and deciding against it. He turned to Amy with a small smile as she continued to stare after him, openly seething. This was easily the most bizarre encounter he’d ever had with a sales associate.

“Sam, I’m sorry,” she told him, her hand on his arm again. “It’s just...I work with omegas all the time, and the way you talked about what happened between you and Dean...if it were me, I’d kill him. Or at least dump his ass here in Chicago and go back to Fort Wayne by myself.”

“It’s all right,” he replied, flashing her his dimples even as he tried to figure out what the hell was going on. “He knows he screwed up.”

“Well, I hope so.” She smiled back, moving in to press against his knees as she added, “If you guys are going to be around for a while we should get together. I can show you all the city’s best bars. No reason you shouldn’t enjoy yourself if you’ve got to be stuck away from Dean, right?”

“You know what, that sounds like a great idea,” he agreed readily, pulling out his cell phone. “Why don’t you give me your number?”

“Sure thing,” she said, her fingers lingering on his as she took his phone away to punch her number into his contacts.

“I didn’t get your last name,” he mentioned casually as she was doing so, and she smiled up at him as she said, “Pond. So you’d better call.”

“Scout’s honor,” he told her, and she winked and walked away, throwing in a little extra wiggle to her hips as John glared at them from where he was leaned up against the bar.

Sam was already busy doing a reverse lookup of Amy Pond’s phone number when John took his chair back, the beer replaced with a tumbler of scotch, which he sipped easily before asking, “You wanna tell me what that was all about?”

“I don’t know.” Sam was engrossed in his phone, reading up everything he could find about the four Amy Ponds who lived in Chicago to find the one that had her phone number. “She works at this omega clothing store…”

“An omega clothing store?”

Sam didn’t even need to look up to know John had an eyebrow skeptically arched at him, but he did anyway, throwing the older man what Adam had always affectionately referred to as bitch-face number twenty-three.

“Yes, John. An omega clothing store. Remember I said I was getting Dean clothes? She helped me find him some things that weren’t just awful, and we got to talking…”

“That much is obvious. Clearly you spoke highly of me.”

“ _Anyway_ …” Sam pointedly ignored his sarcasm and put down his phone at last. “It’s odd running into her here. I mean obviously she lives in the city it’s just...something’s off. She wasn’t snippy like that in the store. And it’s not like I _know_ her for her to be so...possessive or protective or whatever.”

“So what are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking one of us needs to finish researching that symbol and the other should follow her and see if there’s more to her than just a random girl in a shop.”

“I bet I know which job you’d like to take.”

John Winchester was rapidly cementing his status as one of Sam’s least favorite people on the planet, which was particularly awkward considering he was Dean’s father and Elliott’s grandfather, and as such he hoped the man would be around for a very long time. But Christ, John had not been punched in the teeth nearly as frequently as he should have been over the years. Sam knew he was still pissed at getting the snot beaten out of him back in Dean’s hospital room, and he obviously was going to have a problem with being compelled to work with Sam and not being able to give in to his homicidal impulses. However, John had nearly gotten Sam’s omega _and_ his baby killed, and now Dean was stuck going to freaky costume galas with a handsy doctor that was dressing him up like a Barbie doll so as far as Sam was concerned he was letting the older alpha off easy. John didn’t have to like their situation - lord knows Sam didn’t - but he could at least stop acting like a whiny little bitch about everything.

“I don’t particularly care, actually,” he shot back coldly as he shoved his phone back in his pocket. “I’ll keep an eye on Amy or I’ll look into that Zoroastrian sign, makes absolutely no difference to me. I just want to finish this damn job so I can get back to Fort Wayne and find out what the hell is happening to my family. You remember family, right John? That thing you claim is more important than anything, except the job of course? Nothing’s more important than the job. Not your sons. Certainly not your grandson. Hell, I’m surprised you didn’t find some gypsies you could sell Lizzie to so you’d have money for one of your shitty motel rooms and some ammo. She’s not biologically our kid, after all.”

“That’s some pretty big talk there, Sam,” John growled, his hand clenched around the nearly empty tumbler of amber liquid. “You think being a father for a month or so gives you the right to talk to me like we’re equals?”

“Equals?” Sam outright laughed, standing and grabbing his coat. “John, we haven’t been equals since you dropped your kids off at school when I was six years old and I started making sure they had clothes that fit them for the year and presents at Christmas.” It was clear by how vibrantly John’s eyes flashed that if he were able to kill Sam in that instant he would have, but Sam was truly out of fucks to give. “I’m taking the truck and stalking Amy. Call me when you figure out what that symbol is for. Here’s money for a cab.”  

He flung two twenties at the older man and stormed out to wait for Amy to leave so he could follow her home. John considered very seriously calling in the remaining two hunters he knew would talk to him these days, Roy and Walt, and letting them know all about Sam Campbell’s demon blood. In the end he decided against it, finishing off his scotch and heading outside to catch a taxi. Dean would never forgive him if he did something like that, and though he wasn’t sure Dean would forgive him as it was, he certainly didn’t want to lessen his chances. Even so, hearing Sam talk about giving the Winchester boys Christmas presents stung, and John was awfully glad he stopped at that liquor store on the way back to the hotel and got himself a bottle of tequila, because all those bags marked “Maxim’s” filled with clothes for Dean sure didn’t help the eldest Winchester feel like much of an alpha.


	89. Find A Girl That’s Not So Buckets Of Crazy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What's going on with that sales associate?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, super early post, but this chapter and the previous chapter are kind of a matched set and my posting schedule will be off some the next two weeks because of the holidays.

Sam knew he was a gigantic knothead, and not because he was sitting outside some random girl’s apartment watching her change her shirt and walk around briefly in a black lace bra. The comment to John about the clothes and the presents had been such a low blow. It was exactly the sort of thing his grandfather would have said to someone to put them in their place, as if having gobs of money were the most important thing in the world. He didn’t even mean the insult to be about the “stuff” he’d conned Samuel into buying Adam and Dean when they were kids. There had been lots of students at Actaeon who didn’t have the newest gadgets or more than two uniforms to wear throughout the year, but at least those kids for the most part had families who cared. John’s neglect wasn’t tied to the fact that he was essentially a penniless drifter, struggling to get by on credit card scams before he finally caved and joined the FDH. The lack of creature comforts was just the manifestation of his real problem; the inability to recognize that his boys _needed_ new clothes or that Christmas fell on the same date year after year and he could at least send them a card, even if he had to make one out of motel stationary. Sam had merely been trying to point out that he was a better alpha than John before he even presented as one because he noticed, not because he was rich. Still, the way he worded his criticism would have made Samuel proud, and that made Sam feel sick.

He sincerely hoped that John was making more progress back at the hotel looking into the symbol from the room, because he was bored out of his mind waiting for Amy to do something besides wander around eating Ramen noodles, watching television, and changing her clothes. Early April in Chicago was better than January, but not by much, and he was currently freezing his ass off in the truck, knowing how much he looked like a peeping Tom. He tried to stay focused on what Amy was doing, his mind wanting to wander to Dean and that jackass doctor who was teaching him how to be a “proper” omega. He wanted desperately to know what that entailed, just what kind of liberties the man was legally allowed to take in the name of rehabilitation. He thought back to the dream that kept haunting him, of the man in the kitchen touching Dean. Though the mask had obscured most of Dr. Fox’s face, he didn’t look like the man Sam kept seeing. He was too tall and his face shape and hair color were wrong. Annie had mentioned Dean would likely be moved to another alpha once Elliott was released from the hospital, and unsettling as the dream was it left Sam wishing it would go on longer so he had a better idea of who this other alpha was. Something about him seemed far more dangerous than just playing dress up in public and the longer he sat watching Amy putter around doing nothing the more anxious he grew about Dean’s situation.

When his phone rang shortly before midnight he was fully expecting to see John’s name on the caller I.D., as he’d had more than enough time to go through the last book on ancient symbols and figure out what they were hunting. He certainly didn’t think it would be Adam on the other end, and though they’d talked once or twice the conversations hadn’t ended well. The fact that it was so late had Sam breaking into a sweat despite the chilly interior of the Escalade.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” he demanded. “Is it Elliott? Is it Dean?”

“ _Well, hi to you too, Sam_ ,” Adam replied, and hiccuped. “ _Don’t worry, nothing's wrong. Can’t a guy just call up his best friend_ ? _Shit, man, we never talk anymore_.”

Adam sounded strange; sad, and not like himself, and his words were slightly slurred. If Sam didn’t know better he’d say that Adam was drunk, except Adam didn’t drink. The way the beta seemed just a little out of it certainly didn’t make Sam feel better.

“Sorry,” he said, trying not to overreact to a late night call. “I should call more, I know. Your dad’s got us running all over the place on cases. I’m glad we’re talking I just wasn’t expecting to hear from you at...eleven fifty-three on a Monday. Figured something must have happened.”

“ _Couldn’t sleep_ ,” Adam told him, and yep, he was drunk. “ _Wanted to know if you got those emails I sent_.”

Shit. Sam had been so consumed with his own anger at the situation and trying to get this case closed he hadn’t responded to the messages Adam sent. Clearly the photo would have upset Adam, too - seeing Dean so exposed to the world.

“Yeah,” he sighed. “Yeah, I got them. I should’ve shot you back a message, this job we’re on is just so messed up.”

“ _Where are you_?”

“Chicago.”

“ _You think you can swing by soon an’ see Dean_?”

“I’m trying to. I gave Annie a call to schedule something but she hasn’t called me back yet.”

“ _Good_. _That you’re plannin’ to come out, not that she hasn’t called you back_.” There was a long pause, the quiet extending between them until Sam was starting to worry the younger Winchester had fallen asleep on the other end of the line. Then suddenly Adam’s voice came back, giving the unmistakable impression that he might be having to fight back vomit. “ _That hearing was such a shitshow, man. Dean never stood a chance_.”

“Annie told me. I should have been there.”

“ _Wouldn’t’ve made a difference. The stupid asshole judge just woulda lectured you about being a crappy alpha._ ” Adam seemed to realize how that sounded, because he hastily added, “ _Shit, man, you know_ **_I_ ** _don’t think you’re a crappy alpha, right_ ? _I was talking about the stupid asshole judge_.”

“Yeah, Adam, it’s fine,” Sam assured him, desperate to bring the conversation around to the reason Adam was hammered. “So why are you drunk dialing me? You're sure nothing's wrong?”

“ _No, just...can’t get that picture out of my head, you know_?” Sam did, he really did, though he wasn’t sure he wanted to talk about it. Adam, however, wasn’t going to give him a choice in the matter. “ _You saw it, right_? _You saw how he looked_?”

“I saw.”

“ _It’s like there’s nothing there. In his eyes. I don’t even get to see him now ‘cept in fucking pictures in the paper. That guy...Fox...I can’t even break his face for putting Dean in that...whatever the fuck that was_. _I gotta talk to him if I wanna see Elliott._ ” He laughed without humor and ended up crying. “ _That fuckhead might as well be paradin’ him around naked. Wearing a fucking_ **_collar_** _. Shit, I’m so fucking drunk…_ ”

“Hang on, Adam, back up. What do you mean you have to talk to him if you want to see Elliott?”

“ _That’s the way it works, Sam. The dude has control over_ **_everything_** _. Where Dean goes. What he does. Who he talks to. He pro’lly can’t take a piss without checking first_.” He laughed again and took a swallow of something. “ _Thought if I played nice with him he might lemme see Dean. That he might think, yeah, this kid’s okay and just...not care what the judge said. But he's never gonna lemme see Dean. Barely get to see the Alien. Never get to see Lizard._ ”

“Alien and Lizard? You’re nicknaming my kids?”

“ _Gotta. Before Dean comes up with somethin’ worse._ ”

“I thought we were going with Sunshine for Lizzie.”

“ _Eh, Lizard's more, I dunno, obvious. And you said that first...uh...the ultrasound. You said he looked like an alien, so...They just kinda came to me._ ” He hiccuped and paused again, his voice sounding thick like he was pushing down vomit a second time. “ _This is kinda my worst nightmare, y’know_? _Since he presented an’ ev’ryone started calling him pretty. Fuck, he was always pretty, it’s just like...like he’s wearin’ a sign now that says open for business. Shoulda found a way to protect him_.”

“No, Adam,” Sam sighed, leaning back against the headrest as he thought of the many ways he had failed Dean, was continuing to fail Dean. It had been five weeks since he walked out of the hospital and he hadn’t made any effort to see him or Elliott, preferring to focus on the hunt for yellow eyes rather than think about how empty he was without the omega and their babies or how he really _was_ a crappy alpha. He didn’t even know if they’d let him see Lizzie, since she wasn’t legally his. “I’m the one who ran away and left him to this.”

“ _You had to, man. Bobby told me. Why you left. You_ **_gotta_ ** _kill that demon if you wanna keep him safe_.”

Sam was very unsure at the moment if he actually _did_ have to kill the demon in light of this conversation with Adam. He knew from talking with Annie that the rules Dean would have to live by were going to be strict, but hearing that no one could get to Dean to even talk with him without going through this Dr. Fox made him understand why “I’m never drinking again” Adam Winchester was shitfaced. Letting Adam wallow and pull him down too wasn’t going to help the situation any though, especially when Sam had no guarantee he was going to be allowed his monthly visit now, no matter what the court said he was entitled to.

“Have you figured out how to get Jo closer to him yet?” he asked as Adam took another swallow and he heard liquid sloshing in the background.

“ _Kinda_.” Adam paused to burp. He was going to be very unhappy in the morning. “ _That kid at the FDH, whatshisname, Kevin_? _We kinda built up a rapport. Turns out he’s an om, too. Thinks Dean’s a total badass. Had him check the doc’s background. Dude throws, like, a bazillion dinner parties. Always hires help to serve food and make drinks and shit. Uses the same agency ev’ry time. Gonna see if there’s an in there_.”

“Is Jo up for that?”

“ _Yeah, she’s doin’ real good. Her feet are still sorta not okay, but otherwise she’s doin’ real good. She’s been sayin’ I should call you but s’not like you can help. I should get to bed before she wonders where I went_.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“ _Pffft. S’not like that. She has nightmares sometimes. Wakes up thinkin’ they had to ampu…_ ” He hiccuped. “ _Amputate her fingers. Helps if I’m there is all. She’s_ **_super_ ** _pissed you left, just so you know_.”

“That’s her default setting with me. What about you? The way our last conversation went I was pretty sure you'd taken back your blessing on me mating your brother.”

“ _Too drunk to be pissed. ‘Sides, you're the only one who can see him. Can’t afford to hate you right now._ ”

“So I'm a necessary evil. Great.” As Adam chuckled he glanced across the street and saw Amy heading out of the apartment, jingling a set of keys in her hand, remembering with a jolt that he was sitting in his truck for a reason. “Shit, I gotta go. I’ll be there as soon as I wrap up this case, and I’ll figure out what’s going on with Dean.”

“ _‘Kay. I’m gonna go to bed_.”

“Drink some water and take some aspirin. And don’t puke on Jo.”

“ _Yes mom_.”

Sam hung up quickly as Amy headed off down the street, giving her time to get far enough ahead of him with her much shorter legs that he wouldn’t catch up too quickly and risk being spotted. She went a couple of blocks from the residential district into an industrial area, cut through an alleyway, and after glancing behind to see if anyone was following her slipped through an unlocked, graffiti covered door into an abandoned warehouse. Sam hastened to follow her, entering the decrepit space in time to hear a door closing nearby. He felt his way along the molding wall until it turned off to a short stairwell, struggling to see in the half light streaming in through the boarded up windows as he came to the locked door at the top of the stairs. He could hear footfalls beyond it, and could have kicked himself for being too distracted by Adam’s phone call to remember his lock-picking kit. Heading back down to look for another way up, he found the freight elevator, one of the old-style models with a gate instead of doors. The elevator was obviously not operational, stuck in the basement, but the gate slid open for him with only a slight creak so he could use the floor to ceiling gates on the opposite side to climb to the second floor.

Luckily he didn’t have to climb higher than that before finding exactly where the overly friendly sales associate had gone. Amy was standing at an altar roughly waist high, a scrying mirror laid out in the center with four thick black candles lit at each of the compass points. There was a brass bowl, the contents of which he couldn’t see from where he was huddled in the corner of the elevator shaft, trying to neither fall nor be seen. There were cards placed beside each of the candles, a dagger, and part of a small animal, though from a distance it was impossible to tell what it once had been. The symbol John was researching was drawn on the mirror in what was obviously blood, and it was the only thing he could see clearly from where he was perched. Moonlight spilled through the skylights overhead, casting long lines of shadows across the floor, contrasting starkly with the warmth of the candlelight on the altar. Amy lit a match and dropped it onto a brass plate that held several different kinds of incense and herbs, none of which Sam was able to pick out by smell from a distance, a blue flame leaping up in a burst and then dying immediately to nothing more than smoke. She leaned across the altar with her eyes closed, waving her hands to draw the smoke to her face to breathe it in, speaking in a language Sam had never heard before, finally leaning back again to take up the brass bowl. She dragged two fingers through the ash on the plate before dipping them into whatever the bowl contained and swirling them counterclockwise three times. After a moment a breeze blew through the room, carrying with it what could only have been called a whisper that responded in the same unknown language.

“I don’t know as you should come,” she said, the wind whispering in response. “Yes, Sam is here, but so is John Winchester.” Again the wind whispered, and she became visibly agitated. “But father, he undoubtedly has the Colt.” A small whirlwind blew around the altar, the candles flickering wildly, and she sucked in a breath. “Yes father. I will wait until you come.”

The wind died away as she blew out the candles and poured the contents of the bowl - at least a pint of blood - over the plate to extinguish the incense. It dripped down off the altar and began to fall in little droplets to form a puddle on the floor as she headed out through the locked door. Sam waited until he heard her footsteps on the stairs, and then the opening and closing of the graffiti covered door, holding himself in place for several long minutes more just to make sure she was actually gone before pulling himself up into the room. The candles were still smoking but the contents of the plate were completely extinguished and ruined by the blood. The cards appeared to be some kind of ancient Tarot he’d never seen, and something peeked from beneath the mirror - a second symbol drawn in red chalk. He recognized the inverted triangles, filigrees, and scrolled “V” immediately as the sigil of Lucifer, and he carefully replaced the mirror in case Amy was planning to come back. He took a picture of the altar, then flipped through to John’s number and hit the call button.

“ _Hey Sam_ ,” came the slightly slurred greeting when the older hunter answered after the third ring. Great. Both Winchesters he was allowed to talk to were drunk.

“Hey, I’m sending you a picture of the black altar I’m standing at in a warehouse down on Erie Street,” Sam told him quietly, hurrying over and locking the door to make sure he wasn’t surprised. “I followed Amy here and just listened to her have a conversation with a bowl of blood. Real old school scrying. This setup has our symbol in the center. Did you find out what it is yet?”

“ _Sure did. Looks like your girlfriend has got herself a Daeva._ ”

“A Daeva? As in ‘demon of darkness,’ predates Christ by about two thousand years?”

“ _That would be the one. These things are savage, Sam. Animalistic. Very hard to summon and harder to control - like demonic pit bulls, and they don’t like being chained up. Have a tendency to bite the hand that feeds them first opportunity they get._ ”

“And judging from what was done to Meredith and Ben, their arms, legs, and torsos. What do they look like?”

“ _No one knows. No one’s seen them for a couple of millenia. If that Amy summoned one, then either she’s a major player or whoever she was talking to is_.”

“I think I might know who she called. Double check the salt lines, I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

John certainly didn’t like being ordered around like this was his first hunt, but he didn’t say anything about it once Sam got back to the hotel, primarily because the intel Sam had was just too good. Though he wasn’t one who believed in gifts falling in his lap, from what the young alpha said about Amy’s side of the conversation he tended to think that Sam’s gut instinct was right, and she had been talking to Azazel. They knew he had at least two children - Meg and Tom - and demons weren’t choosy about keeping their gender consistent with the vessels they wore. Astaroth had been in a female beta, after all. It was more than possible for Tom to have dropped the man he’d been possessing, since Sam had given John a thorough description of him, and picked up Amy. It was also possible that Azazel had more than two kids. While there was always the chance they were after something else, the Prince of Hell was definitely the demon who had the most to fear from John and the Colt, and with a limited number of bullets it wasn’t like he was going to go around wasting them on every black eyed skank in a meatsuit. Sam was sure Amy hadn’t seen him, so the obvious thing to do was stake out the warehouse until she met up with whoever she’d been talking with.

Sam hoped they wouldn’t have to wait long, since Annie called the next day to let him know she’d spoken with Dr. Fox and he had an opening between appointments on Friday when Sam could come for his supervised visit. He’d jumped at the chance to see Dean and Elliott, deciding immediately that even if they hadn’t caught whatever was coming it was just going to have to wait, or John was going to have to handle it solo. He knew it would be foolish to throw away what seemed to be their first real shot at the yellow eyed demon, but he was having enough trouble focusing on the job as it was when all he could think about was the omega. It had been far too easy since leaving Fort Wayne to fall into John’s obsessive routines and lose himself in the hunt. The emails from Adam and the phone call with him the night before had been like a bucket of ice, awakening him to the reality that no matter how many times he’d told himself Dean would be fine without him, the omega obviously was not. He’d already put finding Azazel in front of Dean once and it had ended with Dean living with some random alpha, cut off from everyone he knew. He was reluctant to commit to killing Azazel first and foremost when there was no guarantee he was even the demon coming or that they would be successful in getting rid of him.

He wasn’t stupid enough to broach this topic with John, of course. The man had dug deeper into the backgrounds of the two victims and discovered they were both born in Lawrence, Kansas, where Mary had cut her deal with old yellow eyes. That was all the proof he needed that Azazel was trying to send Sam a message and lure him to Chicago, not anticipating they’d be working as a team. From Sam’s retelling of the evening, Amy had said as much when she cast her spell, and though they knew they’d lost something of the element of surprise after running into her in the bar, Amy had no idea that John and Sam were onto her. Sam even headed back to Maxim’s to do some more shopping and flirting, just to sell the lie that he was completely in the dark about who or what Amy really was. John was ready to camp out in the warehouse on Erie Street until doomsday if that’s what it took to kill Enemy Number One. No way was Sam going to tell him he was headed back to Fort Wayne no later than Friday, whether or not the demon’s head was on a pike.

As it turned out, they only had to stake out the warehouse for two days before Amy was on her way back there late at night, this time arriving after they’d loaded up on scent blockers and taken up a position in the room itself, over behind a stack of crates that were still filled with the buttons they used to make in the factory. They each carried shotguns loaded with rock salt, Sam having the Kurdish knife tucked in a holster on his ankle while John had the Colt snug inside his jacket, just waiting for Azazel to show himself. Amy took the blade on the table and sliced her arm, letting the blood run into the brass bowl as she set down the knife and then lit the black candles. Once she felt she had bled sufficiently she began to recite in the unknown language again, stopping about halfway through to laugh.

“Guys,” she said, turning on her toes to stare at the crates. “Hiding is a little bit childish, don’t you think? Why don’t you come on out?” John met Sam’s eyes, signalling that they should go on the count of three, and she sighed, “All right. Have it your way.”

With a flick of her wrist the crates flew past her to the far side of the room, smashing against the brick and leaving the two hunters completely exposed. They stood and cocked their guns in tandem, both aiming for her center mass as they pulled the trigger. It launched her back across the room from the force of the blow but didn’t do much to hurt her, and with a snarl she flicked her wrist again and yanked the guns from their hands.

“Now that,” she growled, getting slowly to her feet and tipping her head to either side to crack her neck, “was not very nice.”

“Neither is unleashing a Daeva on Chicago,” John spat, pulling a flask full of holy water from the inside of his coat. “Where’s your little friend anyway?”

“Oh, around,” she told him with a smile. “Look all you like. Daevas are invisible. Personally I find it more exciting that way.”

“So who were you talking to a couple of days ago?” Sam asked, slowly drawing the knife as he inched towards her. “Who are you waiting on?”

She laughed again, throwing her head back, and when she dropped her face forward her eyes had gone red.

“You two, silly,” she said, seconds before the shadows on the wall sprang to life as huge, spindly forms with claws at least six inches long. That was all either alpha could see before something flung them into the walls again, slashing at Sam’s face and John’s arm, both of them knocked unconscious in nearly the same instant from the force of the impact. John went first, struggling to sit up where he’d landed against the crates, while Sam reached feebly for the knife that had fallen from his hand before he slipped into darkness.

When Sam woke John was already struggling against the ropes binding them to the support beams in the room while Amy stood at the altar working on a spell. His head was swimming and his cheek hurt like hell, pulling painfully as he strained against the knots around his wrists and ended up splitting one of the gashes open with his grimace. Amy was humming to herself as she mixed various ingredients into a mortar and began to crush them together with a pestle, pausing in her work when Sam asked, “So, this was all a trap then to lure me in?”

She turned to him with a smile, her eyes flicking over to red and then back again, saying, “You have a very high opinion of yourself, Mr. Campbell. This has nothing to do with you. This is all about John. You’re just a means to an end. I was actually hoping you’d dump his ass here and make this easier for me.”

“Who are you?” John demanded as she turned back to the altar, thinking he was entitled to know since she did just admit to setting a trap for him.

“Don’t you recognize me, Johnny boy?” she asked with a pout. “I’m hurt. After all that time you spent messing up some of my best deals. It knocked me way down the corporate ladder. I’m practically starting my career again with the interns.”

“Dar?” She stopped with a laugh and turned to him, winking, then went back to her spell. “Then you’re not meeting Azazel?”

“Ha - no, no I am not meeting Azazel,” she told him, dipping into the bowl of blood and starting to draw various sigils on the tabletop. “I honestly can’t believe Sammy here fell for that. I felt I was playing it a little on the nose between the whole random girl at a bar acting weird and then the ‘yes, father’ but he went right for it. You did too.”

“If you’re not meeting Azazel, why are you doing this?” Sam asked, the knots gradually loosening as he flexed and relaxed his arms.

She turned to him with a scowl and paused in the spell, palpable anger bursting off of her.

“Because he’s been hiding from my puppy,” she hissed. “Ophelia has been chasing him since December, and then a month ago he just drops off the map and she can’t track him anymore. She’s been beside herself. I haven’t been able to get her out of her kennel to reap a single soul. Laertes has been doing all the collections by himself, and let me tell you, that’s exhausting for a hellhound. They’re supposed to be a team. I _tried_ to get you to just leave him behind but you wouldn't take the bait.”

“Then...Meredith and Ben were just random victims to get us here? Both of them being born in Lawrence…”

“Just a happy accident.” She threw them both a genuine smile as she once again turned her focus back to the spell, flipping through a grimoire that hadn’t been on the altar before. “I have to say, I _am_ impressed by whatever it is you’re using to hide from my girl, John. Even with me in the same room as you, she still can’t scent you. You’re invisible to her - kind of like the Daeva. It’s almost ironic really. But don’t you worry. I’ll find something to reverse it and then she’ll use you as a chew toy for spoiling all her fun.”

“Oh Dar, darling,” said a deep voice with a British accent. “I’ve asked you repeatedly to call off your bitch.”

The alphas turned together to where Crowley was standing by the door to the room, hands in his pockets as he looked at the other crossroads demon and sighed. If he expected her to be intimidated by his statement he must have been disappointed, since she looked him up and down and sneered openly.

“You’re not my boss, Crowley,” she snapped, moving from the altar to encroach on his personal space. “I know you like to think we’re all your underlings, but John-John here messed with my contracts, and you know as well as I do I can take them out of his hide if I want. That’s how the game is played.”

“You’re the one who came when he called,” Crowley pointed out smoothly, the briefest hint of a smile turning up the corner of his mouth. “I understand it smarts a bit, getting tricked by a hunter everyone else knows to steer clear of, but them’s the breaks kid. Besides, my orders to stop you come from the tippy top.”

“If Lilith wants me to stand down she can tell me herself.”

“Hard to do when you won’t take her calls.” The snarl building in her lower register left much to be desired as far as the top crossroads demon was concerned, and he wandered away from her towards Sam, John, and the altar. The older alpha glowered at him as Crowley threw a wink in his direction. “The way I see it, you’ve got two choices here, Dar darling.”

“Stop calling me that,” she snapped, bristling as he turned back to her, looking bored.

“But it rolls off the tongue so nicely,” he objected, relenting as she continued to snarl. “Fine. You’ve got two choices, _Dar_. You can stop this on your own, or _I_ can stop you.”

“How exactly are you going to do that?” she demanded, and with a smirk and a snap of his fingers he tipped over the altar, the animal parts scattering, mirror with the Daeva symbol smashing, and candles starting a small fire on the floor.

The demon’s eyes went wide at the sound of screeching, like metal on metal, while the shadows in the room sprang to life again. As she backed towards the windows, the shadows closing in on her, Crowley shrugged and said, “Oops.”

Dar ran for the door as Crowley grabbed the Kurdish blade from where it had fallen to free both John and Sam of their bindings. John started for the Colt where the demon had placed it near the demolished altar, but Crowley stayed his hand to keep him from wasting a bullet. Moments later the Daeva grabbed Dar by the legs and pulled, splitting her in half up the middle like a wishbone. Blood sprayed across the walls as Amy’s internal organs spilled to the floor, one leg twitching in the half of her body that contained what was left of her spine. The black smoke that was Dar’s essence flew for the window before writhing and twisting against the clawed hands of the demon of darkness that was not happy to have been restrained, until finally the smoke flashed like lightning and ceased to exist. The Daeva fell on the remaining pieces of Amy, rending her limbs from the remnants of her, tearing them into smaller and smaller pieces at each of the joints as the fire spread. Crowley shoved the hunters towards the elevator gate, urging them to get a move on before the whole place went up, then grabbed the Colt and vanished. Neither alpha needed to be told twice, scrambling down to the first floor and bursting out of the warehouse as the entire upper level became engulfed in flames, the shrieks of the Daeva echoing through the darkness.

“Fuck,” Sam gasped as they sagged against the truck, both struggling to get air in their lungs with the smoke blowing right at them. “I did not see that coming.”

“That’s because you’re a moron,” Crowley informed him from where he stood at the back of the Escalade, causing the hunters to jump. He moved towards John, the Colt outstretched to him, saying, “You’re welcome.”

“What’s the catch?” John asked, his fingers itching to take the gun but his gut holding him back.

“No catch, John,” Crowley assured him. “Merely protecting my investment. Also, Juliet’s been lonely and now she’ll have playmates. Go on, take it.” When John made no move to do so, the demon sighed dramatically and tucked the gun down the front of John’s pants for him. “Really? After everything I’ve done for you so far? Where’s the trust?”

“So I’m guessing you’re the one who gave John the Colt?” Sam said, since Dean didn’t really know how the demon knew his father aside from them being like Eisenhower and MacArthur, whatever that was supposed to mean.

“Guilty as charged.”

“What about the knife?” Sam demanded, earning a smile from the Brit.

“I know I told you to keep it with you, but I'm not sure I can still trust you with it, to be frank. You could hurt someone with that thing Samuel. And anyway, it wasn’t Ruby’s to give. I’d be a hero for returning it to its rightful owner.” He quirked an eyebrow as Sam growled, then huffed a sigh and handed it over. “Fine. But keep the pointy end away from me, if you don’t mind.”

“I’ll do my best,” the alpha snarled.

“I applaud you, by the way, for refraining from using the Force back there,” Crowley continued as if he hadn’t heard Sam’s derisive reply. “Seems some things _do_ sink into that Cro-Magnon skull of yours. I have something else for you as well.” He smiled, drawing a package wrapped in pale blue paper with a big blue bow from inside his coat and extending it to the younger alpha, whose eyes narrowed as he looked at the gift. “I promised Dean some onesies, after all. Thought I’d have a bit more time to deliver them.”

“You’re joking.”

“Oh, I never joke about onesies.” When it became obvious Sam had no intention of taking them, Crowley set them down on top of the truck and headed off down the alley. “If I were you I’d get out of here before the Daeva gets bored and starts looking for something else to gnaw on. And feel free to call if you decide you want some help with Dean’s little predicament. I do have a soft spot for the squirrel.”

He was gone with a snap of his fingers, John and Sam silently agreeing that he had given them some very good advice and clambering into the truck as the windows on the top floor blew out with the heat from the blaze. They heard sirens in the distance and took off for the hotel before a real crowd gathered and someone could take down their plate number and a description of the vehicle, the package of onesies tumbling off the roof as they peeled away. The blackness swirled angrily in Sam’s stomach as he caught sight of it laying abandoned in the alley in the rearview mirror but he did his best to ignore it. He hated the thought of Crowley rescuing them, of Crowley giving Elliott anything, of Crowley’s unusual interest in Dean. This was only the second time he’d seen the demon, and that was two times too many as far as he was concerned.

“So I’m thinking we look up the ritual to summon that thing to us and then gank it back at the hotel,” John said gruffly, running his thumb absently over the barrel of the Colt where it was sitting in his lap. After coming so close to losing the one thing that could take down his white whale he needed the reassurance of the cold steel under his hands.

“You know how to gank it?” Sam asked as they pulled off to the side while a line of fire trucks raced past them on the other side of the street. “Cuz that would’ve come in handy back there.”

“No, but they’re demons that live in the dark,” John growled, at the end of his rope for the night. “It didn’t seem to like the fire, so I’m thinking flares or flashbangs will work.”

Sam glanced over at him while they were still stopped and noticed the way his mouth was set in a hard line, giving a small nod of agreement. He wanted to know everything about John’s relationship with Hell’s top salesman, but the older hunter was sitting stone-faced in the passenger seat, his irritation flooding the cabin of the truck to make it clear he had no plans to discuss anything with Sam tonight. At least it was a comfort knowing John clearly didn’t like being saved by the smooth-talking Brit either. He forced his mind off of Crowley and onto the task of killing a Daeva that was now completely free to wreak havoc. They only had one day left to take care of it before he needed to be in Fort Wayne, and if they didn’t manage it in time...well, Chicago had already burned down once. Sam was willing to let it again if that’s what it took to get back to Dean.


	90. You Can’t Just Look Me in the Face and Tell Me that You’re Fine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam gets to visit Dean.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for trigger-y stuff. Also, this is the start of Dean's Hell arc from the show, reworked to fit this story. The next series of chapters are *rough,* but it ends, just as Dean got out of Hell. Many readers have found this arc difficult to take, so be warned. 
> 
> Also also, this is my last post before the holidays set in. Probably will get one more chapter up before the end of the year but no promises (when you have rheumatism and you get sick, you never get a *little* sick, it's always really, disgustingly sick, so I'm really, disgustingly sick).
> 
> Have a merry merry and happy happy everyone!

Dean was pretty sure he was having a panic attack. He’d been having a lot of those lately, mostly at night when he woke in a cold sweat from some unremembered nightmare, unable to move and feeling like someone was holding him down. After his first night he learned not to scream when he came to, since the good doctor storming into his room to throw water in his face and then calmly slapping him for waking up Lizzie, which had in turn awakened Fox, certainly hadn’t done anything to help him remember how to breathe.

He was getting better at faking his way through whenever he had one at a party or social event so no one would realize he felt like he was having a heart attack, and was surprised at what a relief it was not to have people expecting him to talk to them. The pillows he was forced to sit on were similarly a godsend, as it allowed him to sink to his knees whenever he thought he might pass out with everyone just thinking he was tired, having a nearly six month old infant to care for by himself while he worked on restrengthening his shoulder and healing his back, not to mention the exhaustion of finding time to visit another infant still in the NICU. Also, being made to sit on the floor while Fox hand fed him when they went out, while humiliating for sure, at least kept everyone from seeing how badly his hands shook most of the time. That would have been impossible to hide were he allowed to use silverware, though he still wished desperately for the chance to get his hands on a fork that he could keep in his waistband in case of emergency.

Most the the things that set him off were to be expected, and while he was hoping he’d eventually grow desensitized to them he hadn’t yet. It was difficult enough being among the civilian population when he’d always lived mostly on the outskirts of it. Listening to people chat about their day and how their boss was a micromanaging asshole who gave them impossible deadlines to meet, or how they had to go on _another_ corporate retreat to a nature center where they would have to do team-building exercising and had been warned to check for ticks before bed every night just reminded him how different he was from normal people, and how impossible it was for him to fit in. He could pass for an afternoon or so, of course. He’d needed to learn long ago how to interact with civilians in order to get help from witnesses, or order lunch at a diner, or book a room, but to have to spend _time_ with them without having some sort of case to work to keep his mind off of how mundane everything was, and to pretend that he understood what it was like to live in a world where someone _else_ took care of the monsters and the worst thing he had to worry about was whether his shoes were past season? Where no one knew him or understood what kind of life he led and could provide him with some sense of stability if he started to falter, where no one even _noticed_ because no one was really seeing him when they looked? It was positively suffocating, particularly when he spent every waking moment of his life now suppressing his emotions to keep them out of his scent and his postpartum hormones were all over the map, undermining him half the time.

Then of course there was the problem that when he was so surrounded by whoever he was surrounded by whenever Fox took him somewhere, or had Harry take him somewhere, or had people come over to the house, he could never be sure anyone was going to have his back if someone decided to get handsy, and he was clearly in no legal position to be able to defend himself. Yeah, the doctor had punched that _one_ alpha who cornered Dean in the bathroom and shoved his hand into Dean’s shirt back at that _one_ restaurant they went to, but he hadn’t once asked if Dean was all right afterwards or if he wanted to go home. All he’d done was point out to the man that Dean was clearly a collared omega, which meant he was in a government program, and touching a collared omega without the rehabilitating alpha’s consent was punishable by up to six months in jail and two thousand dollars in fines.

Even as he said it, it was clear that the offense was not in a stranger putting his hands on Dean because of how it made Dean feel, but for essentially insulting Fox by molesting his property. People were constantly brushing up against him, erections “accidentally” pushing into his ass when an alpha slid by him in tight quarters, uninvited hands landing on his biceps or his chest and lingering a little too long, someone leaning in a little too close because they were curious if they could smell the “real” him past the mild scent blockers he was allowed to wear. As much as he wanted to beat the shit out of every single alpha who figured out how to cop a feel without Asa noticing, he knew if he made one wrong move there would be no more PT, no more chiropractors, and no more Elliott.

It wasn’t merely an idle threat, either. The first event they were supposed to go to - some kind of fundraiser for the hospital - Dean had flatly refused to wear the ridiculous outfit Fox laid out for him. The plunging neckline of the red silk shirt with the wide lapels would have left no one wondering if he still had moobs ( _he did at the time_ ), and the tight black leggings left nothing to the imagination when it came to the shape of his ass ( _still on the plump side from the baby weight_ ). Paired with the black, knee high boots standing at the end of the bed, the collar, and the leash, he would have looked like a fucking pirate with the remnants of a baby bump. Dean had been with the doctor a week and a half at that point and had reached the end of his rope with the ridiculous new expectations heaped on him, and he didn’t hold back in letting Fox know exactly how he felt about the man’s taste in clothes. Asa calmly allowed him to list off all the many reasons he wasn’t going to be wearing silk shirts and leggings _ever_ before he even more calmly threw the first punch.

Dean tried to fight back, but having just started physical therapy and with his hormones going nuts he didn't stand a chance. After leaving Dean with a bruised face and split lip, Fox tipped him onto the bed, held him down by the back of his neck, dragged his pants below his knees and beat him with a belt, then made him put on the pirate clothes and go to the event anyway, where he had to literally stand in the corner with his back to everyone all night. It was a week before Dean could force himself to sit on his pillows, even though the welts still weren’t fully healed, as Asa made it clear he had no intention of taking the omega back to the hospital until Dean was able to kneel with proper posture on the floor. Begging to at least go see Elliott only got him slapped and threatened with a spanking, so Dean learned very quickly not to state his opinion on anything, and not to retaliate if Asa didn’t notice a dinner guest palming his dick as they slipped by each other in the bathroom doorway.

Today’s panic attack, as many were, was tied to his wardrobe and trying to figure out what to wear that Fox would find acceptable. Dean had “lounging” outfits and “hospital” outfits and “PT” outfits and “dinner” outfits and “fancy charity event” outfits, and though he’d learned the rules of each of them to make the doctor feel like he was appropriately dressed for any given situation, he didn’t have any, “Sam is coming to see me for the first time in a month” outfits. A year ago he never could have imagined being so consumed with something as ridiculous as picking out clothes, but a year ago all his clothes didn’t leave him flushed with embarrassment whenever he noticed anyone looking at him for more than three seconds. He no longer owned any shirts that didn’t plunge in front at least to the top of his abdomen, and they were all made of ridiculous fabrics - satins and rayons, a couple that were chiffon, some were even fucking lamé - except for the soft, vee neck tees that were _only_ for when he was alone in the house ( _he had to change into something more revealing before the doctor came home_ ), PT, or visits to the NICU, where even Fox admitted Dean should look respectable.

He was allowed no undershirts and no overshirts, so he couldn’t even layer up beyond the foundation garments that he wore every chance he got under the guise of supporting his back. He’d been eating so little that his stomach was flat again, as was his chest, but his shoulder was preventing him from rebuilding his pecs while his back kept him from working on his abs, leaving him with the stereotypical omega softness on display for anyone who glanced in his direction. He didn’t own a single pair of pants that didn’t cling to him, not even his jeans, which he rarely wore anymore because they weren’t comfortable to kneel in when they were so tight, and every pair of boots he owned came with a two inch heel. There wasn’t one thing in his closet that wouldn’t make him feel like a high class escort if Fox didn’t let him wear a tee shirt to see Sam. And he knew Fox wouldn’t let him wear a tee shirt because he’d want to send a signal to Sam about who Dean belonged to at the moment; how Sam better get with the program if he ever wanted Dean to be released from this hell. He was lucky Lizzie was rolling and dragging herself where she wanted to go by her arms now, because it gave him an excuse to collapse to the floor with her when he couldn’t get enough air in his lungs to stay upright while pondering his wardrobe.

He was still on the floor with her when Harry came in without knocking ( _he never knocked - didn’t have to since he was an employee and Dean was just an omega_ ), to collect him for the trip to the hospital, where Sam already was visiting with Elliott before he was slated to get an hour with Dean in Fox’s office. Sam had asked to spend Elliott’s morning and noon feedings with him and Dean but Fox felt that was a bit too much, too soon, so Dean had stayed home hyperventilating over his closet while Sam got some much needed time with their son. Fox only had one hour free to supervise the visit between the alpha and the omega, and Dean tried vainly to suppress the hope that if things went well and he was able to behave himself perfectly the doctor might let him and Sam go up for visiting hours in the NICU from two to four. It would be two extra hours but the nurse could supervise, and as far as Dean understood it was only Asa who was setting a time limit. The court said Sam got “one day” of visitation once a month. In theory Sam should be able to show up at midnight and stay until eleven fifty-nine without violating the order of protection. He’d have to ask Annie about that, if Fox ever let him talk to her again. He’d tried to get some clarification from the social worker, Joyce, but she hadn’t been inclined to help him at all since the incident in the car that first time she took him shopping. That Asa wasn’t actually home to give him some kind of direction on what he thought Dean should wear was petrifying, as it left open the real possibility that he would show up in the wrong thing and Fox would cancel the meeting outright before he ever got a look at Sam.

“Oh come on, Dean,” Harry whined, running a hand through his short dark hair as he sighed in frustration. It seemed like every time Harry spoke to him it was either a whine or a sigh, like Dean had been put on the planet just to make the beta’s life difficult. Though at least the guy talked to him. “You’ve had _hours_ to get dressed and you’re not ready to go yet?”

Dean felt like someone was strangling him while sitting on his chest, but forced himself to look up at the driver. One of the things he’d learned while he was here was that Harry had been with the doctor for a long time, had seen a lot of omegas come and go, and had a good idea of what kept Asa calm. If anyone could help him out of this it was Harry, but in order for Harry to help, Dean had to be able to talk.

“Don’t know what to wear,” he ground out, earning another put-upon sigh from the driver. “Not sure what he’d like.”

“You had a pup with the guy and you don’t know what he’d like?” Harry snapped, storming to the closet to start digging out things to throw on the bed.

“No,” Dean said, pulling Lizzie to him as he leaned heavily against the bed post. “Fox.”

“What are you talking about? You’ve been here a month, man. You’ve learned what he likes.”

“Not…” Dean didn’t even know how to explain it. “Not in the same room as Sam.”

That actually got Harry to stop and look at the man on the floor for a minute. He thought about what Dean just said and seemed to get it. His alpha - well, not _technically_ his alpha, but this Sam guy - probably wasn’t used to seeing him like this. Harry remembered the clothes Dean had been wearing the first time he picked the omega up from the doctor’s office. He’d been in loose fitting jeans, a tunic, a flannel, and a pair of steel toed work boots. It was like he thought he was a beta, or worse yet, an alpha. Harry had seen the doc help rehab a lot of omegas, but he’d never seen one as badly tricked as Dean into thinking he was, well, like _regular people_. Obviously this “Sam” had gone along with the ruse. He may have even encouraged it. Dean had barely shown any skin in his previous clothes; really just his forearms where he’d rolled up the sleeves of his flannel. It was likely Sam was the possessive type who didn’t like the rest of the world seeing how beautiful Dean was. The poor om was probably afraid his alpha was going to up and leave if he didn’t walk in looking all rough and tumble, and the items in his closet definitely weren’t rough and tumble.

Well, that was just too bad. Harry knew the way Fox operated, and Fox definitely wouldn’t want Dean all covered up for this visit. It would be better for both of them if the doc ripped the bandaid off quickly and got Sam used to looking at Dean the way a proper omega should be dressed. He turned back to the items hanging up and grabbed a dark green rayon shirt with black pinstripes and slim fitting black pants in that new style with the snaps all the way down the outside hem. A pair of ankle boots would give him a little more of a casual look than the knee boots Fox had him wear most of the time and the ensemble should hopefully get the point across that this was just how things were now.

“All right, put these on,” Harry ordered as he laid the outfit out on the bed before scooping Lizzie up from the floor. “I’ll get the diaper bag and the kid in her car seat. You’ve got five minutes to get downstairs or I’m leaving your ass here.”

Dean somehow managed to pull himself up as the beta was closing the door, hoping he didn’t puke all over the clothes Harry picked out for him and stripping off his shirt with shaking hands. At least the green top wasn’t a button down, or he never would have made it out of there in five minutes, and the pants weren’t so completely skin tight that he’d have to slip into a thong ( _god how he hated those, evil necessity that they were_ ) in order to avoid the lines of his briefs showing. And wow, was that something he never thought he’d need to worry about in his life, but he’d discovered early on that if he wore boxer briefs with tight pants, or anything other than a thong if he were in leggings, someone invariably would offer to adjust his lines for him to make them less noticeable, and then go right ahead and do it whether he gave them the okay or not. He’d finally given up on boxers all together two weeks into this nightmare, and though he still hated the briefs they were preferable to the alternative.

He made it down to the front door with twenty seconds to spare, sliding into the fitted black suede jacket that was possibly the only thing he owned now that he didn’t absolutely hate, taking the car seat and diaper bag from Harry. It was a small blessing that betas weren't allowed to leash collared omegas, so there was at least a chance Sam wouldn't see him led around like a prized poodle at Westminster. It was also possible, though unlikely, that Asa would let him keep the jacket on for the visit if he acted like he was cold, as long as he didn't try to zip it up. That thought helped calm his nerves some as he climbed into the back of the Town Car and snapped Lizzie's seat into its base. He could do this.

Well, he _thought_ he could do it until Harry escorted him to Fox’s office and Sam was sitting in the waiting room, knee bouncing anxiously and a low growl echoing from his chest as he tried not to glare at the receptionist. It was pretty clear from his expression that he’d arrived sooner than expected and didn’t appreciate being made to wait, taking out his frustrations on the stack of magazines on the coffee table in front of him, a cluster of shopping bags that said “Maxim’s” at his feet. Dean froze in the doorway when he saw him, immediately torn between relief that Sam was actually there and rage at having been left for weeks, the latter of which caught him by surprise. He hadn’t thought he’d be so angry with the alpha when he knew logically that Sam’s presence at the hearing almost certainly wouldn’t have made any difference, not with how screwed up the OPS was, and even if he’d stuck around in Fort Wayne they wouldn’t have seen each other much sooner than this. However, even though he may not have expected it, it didn’t change the fact that he was really, _really_ angry and it took him a moment to clamp down on the warring emotions. By that point his scent had spiked and the two other alphas waiting among half a dozen betas had both turned towards him, Sam leaping to his feet.

“Hey,” the alpha managed, his voice breathy and low as he ducked his head instinctively to show the omega he knew he was in the dog house and would likely be there a very long time.

Dean noticed the butterfly bandages on Sam’s cheek and that he was wearing the purple shirt with the whippet on it that was one of Dean’s favorites before Harry pressed a hand against the small of his back to urge him forward towards the reception desk. He dropped his eyes to the floor, catching sight of the other alphas and the looks they were giving him at how he was blatantly meeting Sam’s gaze, well aware of how much trouble he’d be in if they were still giving him those looks when Asa came out. He knew of course that the doctor would be on his way now - Marsha was already on the phone letting him know Dean had arrived - so he kept his eyes glued to the industrial carpet even as he clenched his jaw and his fists and tried to even out his breathing. Sure enough, not two minutes later the alpha was striding out through the door that led to the interior of the suite, ignoring Dean completely and moving towards Sam with a smile. Dean closed his eyes at the sight of the delicate metal leash in his left hand, trying to imagine he was somewhere else so his heart would stop racing.

“Mr. Campbell,” Fox said, extending his free hand towards the younger alpha and noting with interest how he was focused solely on the omega, even as he took the doctor’s hand in a bone crushing grip. “You look exactly like your picture. Only with slightly longer hair. That must be painful.”

Sam didn’t immediately realize that the twatwaffle who was dressing Dean in whatever the hell Dean was wearing had finished talking until he’d given the hunter a little tug on his hand. The jacket wasn’t bad, but the rest of it was just so outside of Dean’s comfort zone someone would have to be blind not to notice how stressed he was. Sam realized, of course, that the twatwaffle didn’t care at all whether Dean was stressed, or he never would have left him standing by the reception desk holding Lizzie’s car seat without even acknowledging he was there. There was always the possibility the twatwaffle hadn’t learned the obvious signs of Dean’s distress - how still he went, how much taller he stood, how he instinctively puffed himself up to look larger and more intimidating to perceived threats, the way the hair stood up on the back of his neck - but that hardly seemed possible when Dean had been living in the guy’s house for a month. Unless the guy just wasn’t trying to get to know Dean as a person at all.

“I’m sorry, what did you say?” Sam asked, shocked at how he was already practically vibrating with fury at just being in proximity of the man standing in front of him, in a suit and a lab coat with that fucking fake-ass smile still plastered to his face.

“Your cheek.” Fox gestured to his own to indicate the marks left by the Daeva. “Whatever did that must have hurt.”

Sam shrugged, his eyes drifting back to Dean, who was still staring resolutely in front of him, head tipped slightly down.

“Comes with the job,” he snapped, wondering why this guy was nodding as if he understood what the hell Sam was talking about, when obviously he didn’t or Dean wouldn’t be in a pair of boots with fucking _heels_ and a shirt that didn’t even close all the way in front. He needed to get himself under control fast or he was going to kill this fuckface before he even got two minutes with Dean.

“Why don’t we head back to my office and we can talk comfortably, all right?” The way Dr. Fox was so pleasant and easygoing made Sam want to acquaint his fist with the guy’s face. “I don’t want to take up too much of your time with Dean.”

“Sounds good to me,” Sam said, picking up the bags of clothes he’d brought as the doctor walked over to Dean, clipping the leash Sam hadn’t even noticed to the front of the collar that he absolutely had. Fox still didn’t bother to look at Dean, who flinched at the sound of the clasp sliding shut and followed the alpha without question, Sam growling as he stalked across the room to keep up.

Dr. Asshat decided to give a running commentary on his neurology practice and staff all the way back to his office, introducing the beta nurses and physician assistants who passed him as if any of that was actually important. Sam heard maybe a third of it, just enough to grunt and nod at appropriate times as he watched the way Dean moved in front of him. His hip was healed at least, the limp gone, but he tensed a couple of times and moved a hand to the small of his back. Though he was still trying to make himself look like he could fend off anyone he had clearly retreated into himself, and despite the flimsy clothing he was wearing he seemed mentally to be encased in armor. He hadn’t let any other emotions leak into his scent, but the way his free hand trembled slightly told Sam that Dean was probably doing far worse than he looked - and he didn’t look particularly well.

It occurred to Sam as they took the third turn on the office tour that Fox was stalling, and despite his claims to not want to eat into the alpha’s time with Dean that’s exactly what he was doing. Well, two could play the “who does Dean belong to” game. He picked up his pace a bit so he was walking beside Dean instead of behind him, shifting all the bags to one hand to link their fingers together and mouthing a kiss to the omega’s temple, the heels of the boots bringing him closer to Sam’s height. The way Dean flinched as Sam moved into his space was not lost on him, and he was more than a little pleased at the irritation that flashed in the doctor’s eyes when he glanced back and noticed the two walking with their shoulders pressed together. At the brief, pointed glare he tossed Dean’s way the smaller man tried to pull his hand free, but Sam merely tightened his grip and brought Dean’s knuckles up to ghost his lips across them. Fox seemed to get the hint, though, because they were suddenly at the door to his office without further preamble.

“I’m glad you were finally able to find time in your busy schedule to arrange a visit, Sam,” Fox said as he led Dean over by his desk and waited for the omega to arrange himself on the pillow on the floor before the doctor took his own seat. “I understand how much you have to travel for your job. Please, sit down. Dean, take your coat off, we aren’t going anywhere.”

Dean shrugged quickly out of the suede jacket, turning pink all the way down his chest as he studiously avoided looking up at Sam while the alpha took up a position closest to the desk on the couch. It was at least a relief to see the relative ease with which Dean could move his left shoulder compared to the last time Sam was with him, but now that he had the chance to get a good look at Dean he didn’t like how thin his face looked or the dark circles under his eyes. Once out of the jacket, Dean turned his attention fully to Lizzie, who was making it clear that she wanted up and out of the car seat with the frenzied way she was kicking her legs. Fox ignored Dean completely and just kept right on talking to Sam.

“I must say, Dean is one of the most stubborn omegas I’ve ever been involved in rehabilitating, but we’re making good progress,” he told Sam with an approving nod while Dean busied himself getting out a jar of mashed banana and a bib as Lizzie sat on the floor cooing at him and reaching for the food. Sam was enthralled, back to barely hearing anything the doctor was saying. “Though one area I’m struggling with is his scent. He insists on suppressing his emotions, which as I’m sure you know isn’t just unhealthy for an omega, it also makes it difficult for an alpha to determine how they’re feeling. I think the two of us would have a much easier time if I were able…”

“When did she start eating solid food?” Sam asked, moving down to sit cross-legged on the floor behind Lizzie and noting that Dean’s hands were still shaking as he snapped the bib around her neck, as well as how he was extremely careful not to look up at Sam at all.

“I think it’s been about a week,” the doctor replied in obvious annoyance. “Perhaps we could work during these visits on encouraging Dean to be more open…”

“Let’s get something straight, Dr. Fox,” the younger alpha interjected, picking Lizzie up into his lap and taking the jar and spoon from Dean. Dean blanched and froze, barely daring to breathe as Sam stared up at Asa, who Dean was quite positive was not a happy man at the moment. He tried to figure out some way to indicate to Sam that he needed to stop talking before he made things worse, but the alpha just barreled right on. “The only ‘we’ in this arrangement is me and Dean. I get that you’ve signed up for this program and you’ve been screened and Indiana thinks you know what you’re doing. Hell, I’m sure even _you_ think you know what you’re doing, that you’re doing stubborn omegas a favor by teaching them how to be good little housemates, and I know Dean has to do what you tell him to, but I don’t. I get exactly one day with him a month. _One_. So why don’t you just - I don’t know, work on some patient files or something while Dean and I go over by the couch or the bookshelves, or shit, _anywhere_ that is more than two feet away from you, because this is _my_ time with him and you’ve already wasted fifteen minutes of it with your little office tour.” He stood in an easy, fluid motion, Lizzie held firmly in one arm, the jar of baby food and spoon in his free hand, and dared Fox to challenge him as he towered above the seated doctor, his eyes flashing red. “Come on, Dean.”

Dean didn’t know what the fuck he was supposed to do, his limbs going rigid and refusing to move. Fox still held the end of his leash, but Sam was clearly expecting Dean would join him over by the bookshelves across the room. Dean could feel Sam’s eyes on him, eager and confused, at the same time he felt the anger rolling off of Fox. While the industrial grade blockers kept the doctor's ire from leaking into his scent, the way Sam started growling in response to Asa’s expression and was now openly posturing as he looked back at the desk confirmed for Dean just how pissed off the doctor was. Sam might not be happy about this, but he wouldn’t be gearing up for a fight if he didn’t think Dean was being threatened. Dean could feel his chest clench as he began to shake, grateful they were in Fox’s office and the neurologist wouldn’t dare make a scene while he was at work. Once he got home after his shift was an entirely different story; that much was clear by the little tug Fox gave after clipping the other end of the leash to Dean’s collar so it hung down his chest.

“Well, go on,” he said, his tone dangerously even, and Dean wasn’t sure he was going to be able to stand up and walk across the room without collapsing given how hard he was finding it to drag air into his lungs.

He could tell Sam had shifted his gaze from Fox, but still didn’t dare move until he heard the doctor start typing away on his keyboard, the mouse clicking as he opened various files to review them. Even then he held his breath as he got to his feet, grabbed his pillow, coat, and the diaper bag and made his way across the room, shoulders stiff and back ramrod straight. Sam waited until Dean got himself situated on the floor, placing himself between Dean and the desk, then passed Lizzie and the baby food down to him before shrugging out of his hooded Carhartt. Dean still wouldn’t dare look up at him, flinching when the Carhartt was draped over his shoulders and Sam flipped the hood up over his head. Dean’s eyes snapped up to see the alpha gazing at him from where he crouched down at the edge of the pillow.

“Hey,” he said, settling on the floor with his legs spread and bent on either side of Dean, effectively blocking Dr. Fox from view before grabbing the bananas and spoon again to take over feeding the “ooo”ing little girl.

“You said that already,” Dean told him quietly, his eyes dropping down to watch Sam’s huge hand maneuver the tiny baby spoon. “What’s with the boyfriend’s jacket trope?”

“You don’t smell like me anymore,” Sam replied. “It’s kinda making me crazy.”

“Yeah, well, you shouldn’t have left then.”

“I left for a reason, Dean.”

“Doesn’t really make it easier. Gimme the spoon, you’re just making a mess.”

“I’m sorry.” He ran a thumb across the omega’s flushed cheekbones, his fingers sending sparks to light up his nerve endings as he trailed them along Dean's jaw. “I’m _sorry_. I screwed up, Dean. I screwed _everything_ up and I’m _so_ sorry.”

“I know Sam.”

Sam watched silently as the omega turned all his attention to getting Lizzie to eat her bananas. Dean realized he probably should have just made her a bottle for lunch, but he wanted Sam to see she was starting to eat solid foods since so much was happening so fast with her and he was missing it. At least he got to spend the whole morning with Elliott, who was growing like a weed and looked like a full-fledged baby now, even if he was still small and a month away from getting out of the hospital. There was a lot Dean wanted to tell Sam, and he should be taking full advantage of having someone around to really talk to for the first time in, god, a month, but he didn’t know where to start. He couldn’t talk about Asa when they were in his office, and telling Sam about getting groped by random strangers on almost a daily basis would just send him off the deep end and that would be no good when he’d already come in here hot under the collar, and straight up telling Sam off for leaving him to this fate wasn’t something a “proper omega” would ever do, so even that was bound to get him in trouble. He supposed he could talk about the weather and everybody’s health, though honestly the way Sam was looking at him so intensely from under heavily lidded eyes, and the way the alpha’s hands kept gently brushing his thighs just made him want to bury himself in Sam’s neck and silently cling to him until their time was up. He felt like a drowning man being thrown a pool float that was slowly running out of air, so he’d better hold on while he could.

“Still feel like fuckin’ killing me?” he asked after he had airplaned a spoonful of banana into the little girl’s mouth, earning a happy burble from her in return.

“No,” Sam replied softly. “God no, Dean. I _never_ want to hurt you like that. Your dad on the other hand…”

The omega snorted, glancing up from under his long feathery lashes as he nodded.

“Yeah, that’s how most people feel about him after hunting with him for a while.”

“The pediatrician told me Elliott’s doing great,” Sam said when Lizzie had finally refused to eat any more banana, her decision that she’d had enough made evident by how she just started letting the mashed up off-white goop ooze out of her mouth instead of even attempting to swallow it. “I can’t believe how big he is. He’s got all the nurses charmed with his green eyes and long lashes. I told them I could sympathize. I don’t think he likes me, though. He cried almost the whole time I was there.”

“He probably figured out he got your nose instead of mine,” Dean told him, reaching into the diaper bag for a wipe to clean off Lizzie’s face and noticing that his hands had stopped shaking. “That would upset _anyone_.”

“Shut up, jerk,” Sam laughed, brushing Dean’s hair back behind his ear and having to push down a sudden burst of homicidal rage that Fox wasn’t even letting him keep his hair short.

“Okay,” Dean said, deciding that he had his whole life to be pissed at Sam and _needing_ too much right now to give this hour over to anger. “Don’t really feel like talking anyway, Sammy.”

The admission was enough of a surprise given how closed off the omega had been to that point. Sam certainly wasn’t expecting Dean to turn sideways on his pillow and scoot up into the vee of his legs, curling in to make himself small against Sam’s chest like he was trying to hide inside the alpha’s Carhartt. Sam flipped the hood down so he could breathe in Dean’s scent and nuzzle against the crown of his head, wrapping his arms and legs around him like an octopus. Lizzie was playing with the leash that hung from Dean’s neck, tucked in against him, gurgling away and drooling all over his shirt while Sam swept his hands in soothing strokes down Dean’s back and through his hair. Sam could feel Dean trying and failing to relax as he chastely kissed everywhere he could reach - temple, ears, neck, cheek - his hold on the omega steady and sure wherever his hands traveled. After several long minutes of allowing Sam to soothe him, Dean tipped his face up to breathe against the alpha’s neck and ear, and damn, it was just impossible to stick to that new “no crying” rule when the clacking of Fox’s keyboard simply melted away and all he could smell was Sam. Stupid, stupid Sam who left him to this and yet was still the only thing he wanted, because apparently he was just that fucked up. At least he managed to cry silently, so only the alpha and the whippet on the shirt knew that New New Dean was a big clingy baby. It made him feel just a little better and slightly less alone when Sam eventually started crying too.


	91. There’s a Ton of Lore on Unicorns

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As it turns out, seeing something rare changes people sometimes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy new year! You'd be shocked at how hard being hopped up on Nyquil makes it to write a coherent sentence.

Harry didn’t know quite what to think when Dr. Fox came back to the waiting room with Dean and that guy, Sam; the leash in his hand but clearly not in control of the situation. Fox prided himself on how unflappable he was, no matter what was going on, but as that guy - Sam - came out carrying Lizzie in one arm, his other wrapped around Dean so he could run his thumb up and down the omega’s ribs, it was obvious the good doctor was sufficiently flapped. Asa’s only area of dominance between the three of them was the leash, and when they were among the waiting patients he didn’t have much of a choice but to unhook it, unless he wanted to risk looking like an overbearing knothead, as he called Harry over and told him to take Dean home. Dean set the car seat on the coffee table, Sam following closely behind, and they efficiently traded off the baby to get her strapped in so Sam could help Dean with his coat, working like a well oiled machine. Harry had just stepped forward to usher Dean to the door when Dean did something that was frankly unthinkable for a collared omega in public. Once he had his jacket on, he turned, grabbed hold of the ridiculous purple shirt Sam was wearing, and hauled him into a kiss with such force the young alpha almost fell over.

It wasn’t just any kiss, either. Harry was pretty sure he saw honest-to-goodness sparks flying, and the room definitely heated up several degrees as they got a taste of each other after what was clearly a long dry spell. People actually gasped. Fox’s face turned bright red. Harry stopped three feet away and just blinked and stared. The kid in the car seat gave a screech of delight and started babbling and drooling and instead of acknowledging in any way how inappropriate it was for an unmated om in a rehabilitation program to be acting aggressively with an alpha, Sam growled, pulling Dean to him, one arm snaking up the length of his spine to press them firmly chest to chest as the other hand wound up into Dean’s hair and tugged.

A breathless moan escaped from one of their throats, but it was impossible to tell whose since they were sharing the same air. Dean’s hands were trapped between them, both fisted in Sam’s shirt and clinging, and people were starting to _comment_ , little whispers of how disgraceful the display was, but they didn’t stop. It was like they were molding to each other, Sam growling and Dean purring, and gees, the omega was a big guy, Harry was at least four inches shorter than him, yet he looked positively _tiny_ with Sam wrapped protectively around him, breaking away only for a few seconds so they could both breathe before diving back into the kiss, oblivious to anything else. The building could be falling down around them and they'd still be joined at the lips, teeth cracking together and noses bumping as they fought to somehow get even closer, both of Dean's hands winding up in Sam's hair so they would truly be flush up against each other, hearts trying to beat out through their ribs to touch.

Harry couldn’t figure out what was happening. None of the other dozen or so omegas Fox had rehabbed had ever done anything like this, though admittedly most of them were in the program either by parental request or because they’d been arrested for indecency or something, and across the board they’d been a lot younger than Dean. There were laws in numerous states about promiscuity and umated omegas, which was relatively easy to deal with once an omega came to understand how much better life would be if they were mated. Dean was only the second omega who found his way to Fox’s house with a kid in tow, and the first one Harry could remember that had anything close to a steady alpha who wasn’t a parent. Harry came from a family of betas and didn’t know a whole lot about alphas and omegas outside of their weird scent thing and what he’d watched Fox do when training problem oms, but the desperation between the pair making out in the waiting room seemed to be a hell of a lot more than just pheromones. Harry had spent time with the guy every day for the last month and he’d never once seen Dean this serene. It didn’t seem possible he was the same omega who had been having a meltdown a little over an hour ago about picking out something to wear. Harry knew he should probably be stopping them but he didn’t really feel like it was his place when they both seemed so happy, even if he was pretty sure they were crying. As it turned out Harry didn’t have to do anything.

“ _Dean. You’re keeping Harry waiting_.”

At the sound of Fox using his alpha voice, Dean broke the kiss, his eyes closed as he leaned his forehead against Sam’s jaw and struggled to hold onto his hair, lips puffy and pink. It was clear he was trying to fight the command, that separating from Sam was almost physically painful. Sam tightened his grip, forcing Dean to push off from him to disentangle himself as the alpha said in quiet alarm, “Baby?”

“Hormones,” Dean replied so softly Harry would never have heard him if he hadn’t been standing so close, swiping quickly at his cheeks. “I can't.”

Sam’s hands tightened possessively even as he allowed Dean to slowly break free, and Harry took a few steps forward to collect the omega and the car seat before stopping dead in his tracks at the angry red of the alpha’s eyes. Though he’d allowed Dean to begin hastily collecting Lizzie and the diaper bag, Sam continued to hover close, his hand at the small of the other man’s back as he said, “I’ll see you in a month, okay?”

“‘Kay,” Dean replied tersely, his entire body growing tense. Sam dug his fingers into Dean’s arm as Harry came close enough to take the car seat. It seemed the safest thing to do to get the kid out of the way as they had gone from necking passionately to looking like they were bordering on a shouting match. “You should go visit Elliott. You can make the regular hours and his nightly feeding.”

“Don’t do that, Dean. Don’t shut me out.”

“I gotta go, Sammy.”

The omega took the car seat back and hurried out of the doctor’s office with the clear expectation that the beta would be right behind and that there was no reason for him to wait. Dean really was a whole lot taller than Harry, a fact that was driven home as the beta had to practically jog to catch up to him and not lose him in the halls of the office wing. He’d only seen this kind of fire out of Dean once, a little over a week after he moved into the house, when he heard shouting coming from the man’s bedroom before he and the doctor headed out to a fundraiser for the hospital. Harry didn’t know how that turned out, since he went out to warm up the car, but he didn’t need to drive Dean anywhere for about a week after that, and by the time he was going places again Dean had been much quieter and better behaved - a little on the shaky side, but acting more like Harry was used to seeing an omega. He had to wonder if Dean would be quiet again by the time Fox’s guests arrived for his standing Friday dinner party or if he might still be fiery like this. The beta secretly hoped he would. It sure made things much more interesting.

It certainly didn’t seem like there would be any fireworks at dinner, as Dean withdrew into himself almost the minute they got into the car. Lizzie was asleep before they even made it out of the parking garage, and Dean was leaning against the door, staring silently out the window as they battled afternoon traffic to get back to the house. His hands were trembling slightly as he plucked at his pants, something Harry had noticed was an almost constant state for the omega, though he was pretty sure he was the only one paying close enough attention to see it. Dean was very careful to keep his hands pressed to his sides most of the time.

“So,” the beta said when the silence became deafening. “That’s Sam, huh?”

“Yep,” was the only thing that came out of the back seat for a very long time.

Harry tried again.

“He’s really tall.”

“Yep.”

“Guess he liked the outfit I picked out for you, huh?”

“No, he uh...he brought me a bunch of clothes, actually.”

“Oh.” Harry wasn't quite sure what to say. Typically the omegas in Fox's life were thrilled to leave the program with new wardrobes. None of them had ever had someone else willing to buy their clothes. “That was nice of him.”

“Dr. Fox said he'd bring them home after his shift. Could you maybe make sure he does?”

“Sure. Yeah, absolutely.”

“Thanks Harry.”

Harry was pretty sure that was the first time Dean had said his name in a month, and it was weird, like it shifted something between the two of them. Maybe it was because Dean was the first male omega Harry had ever met, and Harry was starting to realize he was different from the female oms he’d driven around over the years. He was almost like...well, almost like just another guy. He didn’t know what to make of that, but the silent car ride home bothered him in a way it hadn’t before, and that surprised him.

It also surprised him when the social worker who was assigned to Dean’s case was in Fox’s office when Harry arrived to drive him home at the end of the day. He only caught the tail end of their conversation ( _not that he meant to eavesdrop_ ), but she was saying something about Baton Rouge, and she was sure a shelter could use the clothes, and when she passed Harry in the hall she was carrying the bags he saw at Sam’s feet when they’d arrived earlier. For a moment the beta strongly considered asking about the clothes, but Dr. Fox had been so irritated earlier that he thought better of it. This was a good job and Dr. Fox was a steady employer, and even though it bothered him for some strange reason that Fox had apparently just given all of Dean’s new clothes away, all he said was, “Ready to go, doctor?”

“Absolutely, Harry,” Fox said, shutting down his desktop and grabbing his coat. “Oh, and you have the night off. I’ve canceled the dinner party so you don’t need to worry about staying to drive any of the guests home.”

“Really?” Harry asked. He’d never known Fox to cancel his Friday plans unless he was sick or on vacation.

“I thought it would be a good idea to spend some one on one time with Dean after today’s antics,” Fox replied with a small smile, a red glint to his eyes for the briefest of moments before he headed out the office door.

Hours later Harry was still troubled by the way Fox looked when he dropped him off at the house, and he ordered another beer from the waitress at Bob & Barb’s, his favorite watering hole. His friend Corbett was supposed to join him for their ongoing competition to determine who was the better pool player, but Corbett was running late, so he was sitting alone in a dark corner near the bar games watching the two young betas currently racking up the balls on the worn felt of the pool table. The girl was pretty hot, long blonde hair and big brown eyes, and looked at least to Harry to be out of the league of the pale blond guy who was nursing a ginger ale. Being the chivalrous guy that he was, he thought of stepping in between them a couple of times, as she was getting pretty hammered and he was stone cold sober, until he figured out that they were friends and the guy had no intentions of making a move on her when she wasn’t all there. She looked familiar, and Harry couldn’t place her until the bartender, Joe, brought her another beer and told her that any time she wanted her job back, Bob said he’d be happy to have her. That’s when Harry remembered she’d worked there for a couple of weeks back in February before she simply vanished.

“I appreciate that,” she said, tipping the bottle towards him in thanks. “But I’m takin’ baby steps at the moment.”

“Well we’re just glad to see you around, Jo,” the bartender told her, giving the guy a nod before he headed back to handle the patrons lining the bar.

“You sure you’re okay with being here?” the guy asked, and Harry felt bad about listening in, he really did, but the guy was Corbett’s type and he kind of wanted to figure out what the deal was between them so he could give his friend a push if necessary. The girl _was_ really cute and the guy wasn’t showing any interest in her so it was possible he wasn’t into girls. “You’re not pounding ‘em back so you can hone your repression skills?”

“A little liquid courage never hurt anyone trying to conquer their fears,” she replied, arching an eyebrow at him. “And may I remind you it’s my twenty-first birthday? This is a rite of passage.”

“You’ve been working in bars since you were sixteen. You want me to believe this is the first time you’ve ever gotten drunk?”

“ _Legally_ drunk, Adam. There’s a difference. Besides, you’re one to talk after you downed half a bottle of Jack on Monday.”

“And it _sucked_ on Tuesday.”

“That’s why you’re my wingman, right? To make me drink water and hold my hair back when I puke?”

“So this is what we’re going to do all night? Play pool while you get drunk?”

“We could probably do some other stuff.”

The guy was leaning against one of the tall tables by the wall, and way she moved into his space left Harry pretty sure that Corbett didn’t have a chance. That suspicion was solidified when the guy looked at her, soft and fond, and pushed a strand of hair behind her ear, saying, “Not if you’re drunk.”

The bar was filling up quickly as happy hour really got underway, and eventually Harry moved from his corner booth to the bar when Corbett finally showed up, ID badge from the local TV station where he worked as a cameraman still clipped to his shirt. He noticed the tall blond beta by the pool table almost immediately and was disheartened when Harry said he was pretty sure he and the tipsy girl with him were a couple. Still, Corbett was trying to get over the crush he had on the weatherman at the station and since it was Friday and drinks were half priced, he figured nothing ventured, nothing gained, and within half an hour the four of them were playing couples darts just in case Harry’s spidey senses were off.

After three games it was clear that they weren’t, but they were having such a good time playing anyway that the cameraman didn’t care about striking out, especially when the girl ( _Jo_ ) was getting drunker by the minute and leaving the guy ( _Adam_ ) to try to win the game by himself. The conversation was light for the most part, though they did learn something had happened to the two of them a couple of months ago at Bob & Barb’s, which was why Jo had stopped working there. She wanted to come back for her birthday to overcome whatever lingering fears she had about the place, and apparently to try to get in Adam’s pants, despite him being convinced she only felt that way because of all the beer and shots she’d done. They were in the middle of their sixth game when Adam raised a hand towards the door and shouted, “Sam!” and suddenly the huge alpha from Dr. Fox’s office was striding across the bar towards them.

“Well, tonight keeps getting better,” Corbett said with a smile, though Harry was already hauling him back towards the corner booth.

“He’s taken,” Harry assured him, sliding back into shadow as he saw how upset Sam still was. He didn’t know if the mountain of a man would remember him, but he didn’t feel like risking it.

“You know him?” Corbett asked, practically turning green with jealousy as the alpha talked to the betas for a bit before gesturing in the direction of the booths.

“Kind of,” Harry said, sinking further into the seat as Sam, Adam, and Jo slid into the adjoining booth. Well, Sam slid into the booth after Adam sort of poured Jo across the bench seat. “Trust me, _no one’s_ got a shot with him.”

“So you got to spend the whole day with him?” Adam asked as Sam ordered three shots of vodka from the waitress that raced to serve them, like she’d been holding her breath from the minute she saw Sam enter the bar. Not that anyone could have blamed her. Sam was not their normal clientele.

“Yeah,” Sam replied softly, his sad smile bleeding into his voice. “I think maybe he figured out I wasn’t just some random stranger by the time I left. So, you know, he’ll be back to crying for the nurses to take him from the big scary man by the next time I’m allowed to visit him.”

“Maybe you should stay then,” Jo slurred snidely, hooking her arm through Adam’s and leaning heavily on him. “Since leaving fucked everything up.”

“I can’t stay,” Sam growled, the waitress returning with the shots, which he promptly began to down.

“Bullshit you can’t.”

“I _can’t_ , Jo. I will fucking _kill_ him. I’m not being hyperbolic. He used his alpha voice on Dean while I was standing right fucking there!”

“So? Dean knows how to ignore that shit.”

“Not right now! Something’s going on with his hormones. We couldn’t really talk, but he’s not okay, and I don’t know what that asshole is doing to him but if I stay in this city I will _literally_ kill him. All afternoon I kept thinking up different scenarios where I could make it look like something not human got him so I could bury it with the FDH. I think we can all agree I know plenty of ways to kill things and it’s not going to help Dean if I end up in jail on a murder charge. Indiana still has the death penalty. It’s _really_ better if I don’t stick around when there’s nothing I can do to fucking fix this and all the things I _want_ to do are just going to make it worse.”

“You could grab him and the kids and just run.”

“Sure. Let me just load up one of those incubators in the back of my truck and we’ll take off with our premature infant.”

“I meant when Elliott gets out of the NICU, asshole.”

“Doesn’t address the problem of me wanting right now to see how much force it would take to turn Fox’s head from forward-facing to rear-facing. That guy so much as catches a cold and the cops are probably going to want to know if I sneezed on him. Annie says the best thing to do is prove to the courts I’m willing to follow their ruling, but all I want to do is bust down that guy’s door and...I need to not be in this state when I can’t see our son or get within five hundred feet of Dean, not even if that jackhole is dressing him like a go-go dancer. No, scratch that. _Especially_ if that jackhole is dressing him like a go-go dancer.”

Harry thought for a moment of speaking up, defending his employer or pointing out that Sam was a lunatic, but Corbett was talking about the weatherman while the conversation at the next table continued and there was just too much going on at once for him to think of an adequate retort. It turned out the guy they’d been playing darts with was Dean’s younger brother, and the girl was a friend of his from way back. They were so worried about what the doctor was doing with the omega that they were even trying to figure out how to get Jo into an event at Fox’s house, just so Dean wouldn’t be completely alone. The kid, Adam, hadn’t even talked to him once since he moved in with the doctor, and Sam loved him deeply. Well, Harry had figured that out already, based on the way he’d stuck his tongue down the omega’s throat back in Fox’s office, but his anger and pain as he told the two betas that all Dean had done was cry during their hour long visit cemented it. The driver was flooded with guilt at it never having occurred to him until this moment that the omegas in the retraining program might go along with it so easily because they were on their own and therefore relatively helpless. He had far too many beers in an attempt to find the guts it would take to say something to Sam, but in the end only made himself sick to his stomach, throwing up in the bathroom while Corbett went out to get his car to drive Harry home.

He had no idea how it had gotten so late, but the bar had thinned out some by the time he staggered out into the parking lot, barely registering that the two betas and the alpha were in the process of getting ready to leave as well as he weaved his way across the bar to the door. The sky was cloudless and cold, with a damp, bitter wind that promised rain in the morning, and Harry was glad for the full moon since the streetlamp over the parking lot was apparently on the fritz, blinking on and off. He looked around for Corbett’s car, spotting it at the far end of the parking lot by the apartment building across the way, but it didn’t look like Corbett was inside it.

“Hey, Corbett!” he called, stumbling across the asphalt and having to stop to lean against a couple of the cars to keep from falling over. The Escalade he bumped into had a particularly obnoxious alarm that went off, and as he hurried away from the noise the best he could he shouted, “Alan J. Corbett! Where’d you go, man?”

He thought he heard what sounded like a scream off behind the apartment building dumpsters, but it was tough to make out with the alarm going off. Still, his drunken synapses were firing well enough to insist he go take a look, just to see what the noise was, fully expecting he’d find a cat or something. Instead he saw a pair of Chuck Taylors and blue jeans sticking out from behind the dumpster and heard what seemed to be some kind of squelching, tearing sound, accompanied by a low growl. If he hadn’t had twice the amount of alcohol he normally would have imbibed on a Friday night he surely would have realized that was the point at which he should run, but a drunk Harry was a stupid Harry, and so he proceeded forward until he saw what was unmistakably Corbett on the ground behind the dumpster with some kind of large, furry animal squatting over him, ripping bits of flesh from his chest and eating them.

No one really could have blamed Harry for the shriek that tore from his throat at the sight of his drinking buddy lying dead on the ground, heart ripped out with a werewolf standing over him, but it still wasn’t the best reaction he could have had. The beast straightened at the sound, hard, sinewy muscle flexing beneath the long silver fur covering every inch of it, blood dripping from its four inch claws as a growl thundered in its chest. Slowly it turned to find the source of the screaming, clearly sentient enough to know what it looked like and taking its time so it could enjoy the smell of fear radiating off its next victim, the mouth pulled back in a terrible snarl that flashed blood stained teeth, sharp as daggers, until it fixed one shining green eye on Harry.

The beta heard a commotion behind him near the bar and could only think that if he made it back across the parking lot maybe it would eat someone else, not even caring how big of a coward that made him. He was only halfway back, shrieking like a little kid who just found something in his closet, when he felt the full weight of the creature at his back and the claws digging into his shoulder blades. If Harry had ever tried to guess how he would die, “eaten by a werewolf” definitely wouldn’t have made the top ten, so it was only natural that he started begging and crying and pissed himself as he felt his left arm being torn open as it tried to flip him onto his back to get at his heart. What he wasn’t expecting was how loud the gunshots were that took the beast down with two silver bullets - one to the chest and the other to the head - or that the two betas he’d been playing darts with would be dragging him towards the bar while Dean’s alpha stood over the werewolf to shoot three more bullets into the carcass, just to be safe.

“God, are you okay?” Jo was asking him as Adam assessed his back and his arm. She was very unsteady on her feet, so it was a good thing he could barely move because then she could just sit down on the ground next to him to try to keep him calm. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

“Jo, hold this,” Adam ordered as Harry felt something soft press down on the worst part of his back. It was pure agony and he screamed again, feeling Jo’s hand running down his face to try to soothe him. “I’m sorry, man, we gotta do something about this bleeding. An ambulance is on its way.”

“Did it bite him?” Sam was asking from across the parking lot where he was keeping watch over the corpse as it slowly changed back to its human form.

“No,” Harry managed to choke out against the pain, squeezing the hand Adam gave him as both he and Jo continued to apply pressure to Harry’s wounds.

“You’re sure?” Sam demanded, but before Harry could answer, Sam muttered, “Oh, shit.”

“What?” Adam asked, sirens blaring in the distance.

“It’s Ed,” Sam replied, and he sounded sad.

“Who’s Ed?”

“He helped us find you. Back in February. He came up with this computer program...fuck.”

“Is he dead?” Harry stammered as he began to shake. Suddenly he felt very cold.

“Yes,” Sam assured him, crossing the parking lot to check Harry’s wounds. “You’re lucky I had some silver rounds in my truck. We’re gonna have to figure out how he got turned.” Harry glanced up at him, noting that Sam looked a little like a puppy when he cocked his head to the side and was working something out in his mind. “Hey, I know you.”

“Yeah…” Harry murmured before everything went black.

The pain meds they gave him were really good, almost good enough to make the vision of Corbett on the ground behind the dumpster with his heart ripped out and half eaten go away but not quite. It was therefore with a half-choked scream that Harry awoke at the hospital the following morning, gasping for breath and looking around in terror for the monster pursuing him across the parking lot. Instead of a werewolf he saw the beta from the night before, the one that was Dean’s brother, half dozing in the visitor chair in his room, and as his heart monitor started to race he snapped awake, his clothes still covered in blood and looking like he regretted sleeping sitting up. That was when Harry realized they had him immobilized on his stomach and really started to panic.

“Hey, calm down,” Adam said, springing forward. “Take a couple of deep breaths, okay?”

“What are you doing here?” Harry demanded, his mind fuzzy and words difficult to form. “Why can’t I move?”

“I told them I was your cousin,” Adam replied, squinting against the morning light. “Wanted to be here when you woke up. They need to keep you off your back while it heals. With you knocked out they couldn’t risk you trying to turn over, so they restrained you.”

“Okay.” Harry could believe that, given how badly his back hurt, but that still didn’t explain why this stranger was in his hospital room. “So, what...are you here to make sure it didn’t bite me? Because I swear to god it didn’t…”

“No.” A look passed over Adam’s face that Harry wasn’t quite sure he liked, though being a captive audience there wasn’t a whole lot he could do besides listen. “No, I just wanted to talk to you about...some stuff you might have overheard.”

Them talking at the bar came back to him in little bits and pieces and he stiffened before realizing what a bad idea that was and forced himself to relax, wincing.

“Like?”

“Like us talking about how to get Jo into your boss’ house.”

He looked at Adam for a moment, realizing the young man looked genuinely scared, and attempted a shrug.

“Yeah, I may have heard something about that,” he acquiesced. “So?”

“So,” Adam started, “if you could _not_ mention that to him we’d owe you one.”

“Why are you guys so worried about Dean? I’ve worked for Dr. Fox for a long time, and he’s not some kind of perv or anything you know.”

Adam dropped his head to stare at his hands as he thought about how much he wanted to say, his jaw working furiously as he shot a glance back at the door in case they were about to be interrupted by a nurse, and finally said, “Dean…Dean doesn’t have the best track record with alphas.”

Harry snorted, which just made his back hurt, but didn’t do anything to alleviate any of the tension in the room.

“Well duh,” he said. “No one ends up in retraining if they know how to obey an alpha.”

“No, see, that’s the problem. The world that he’s lived in...it’s incredibly dangerous for him _not_ to be able to resist and alpha command. He...really bad things have happened to him, more than once. Whatever your boss is used to, he’s never going to get Dean to obey him, not in the long run, not once he can start fighting back. And I just don’t see that ending well for my brother, and probably not for your boss either if he keeps pulling the kind of shit he did yesterday in front of Sam.”

“Dr. Fox isn’t...he’s not like _that_ …”

“I’m not saying he is. I’m just saying…Look, Jo’s a bartender, and we know your boss hires outside staff for some of his parties.”

“How do…”

“Doesn’t matter. _If_ we can get Jo in as event staff, just to check on him, it would help if you could act like you don’t know her. That’s all. We know it’s a long shot, we just...man, it’s killing me and Sam that he doesn’t have anyone backing him up in there. It’s not a lot to ask, and I mean, we did save your life.”

That was true, they had. Harry knew he would be ground hamburger without the three of them stepping in, and while he didn’t really think they had anything to worry about when it came to Dr. Fox, he could understand why it would bother them not being able to at least talk to Dean. Then there was the whole thing that had happened the day before with the clothes that Fox gave away, even though they weren’t his to give, and he remembered enough of what he’d overheard to believe that the omega had truly not been acting like himself when he saw his alpha for the first time, plus he doubted that the beta girl - Jo - would want to hurt the doctor, no matter how Sam felt. After taking a few minutes to mull it over, he didn’t see the harm in playing dumb, and couldn’t even imagine Jo getting access to the house anyway. Finally he gave a little nod of his head and said, “Okay. That sounds fair.”

“Thanks.” Adam was visibly relieved, getting up out of the chair quickly and giving Harry’s hand a little shake. “It means a lot, really. You don’t even know.”

Harry did his best to shrug at the smiling young man retreating from the room, still not sure why this was such a big deal to Dean’s family and friends. If Dr. Fox wasn’t performing his duties correctly in rehabilitating Dean there were safeguards in place, but despite his doubts that Fox’s tried and true methods would actually work on the man, Harry truly believed Fox wouldn’t do anything wrong. He would never have been charged with caring for so many abused omegas if he didn’t have at least _some_ idea of what he was doing. This kid Adam and Sam and Jo were just being paranoid. By the next time Sam had a visit with Dean he’d realize everything was fine.

Except when Harry got out of the hospital a week later and checked in at the house just to let Dr. Fox know he was alive and relatively well, even if he still had a ways to go before he would be back to driving, he found the place almost empty. The housekeeper was there, as she was every day, but there was no Dean and no soon-to-be-crawling Lizzie. That in and of itself wouldn’t have seemed so strange, considering all the appointments the guy needed to make for his back and his shoulder, not to mention his pup still being at the NICU, but when Harry went up to Dean’s room just to say “hello” he was shocked to find the furniture pretty much destroyed as well as most of Dean’s clothes missing, and there was nothing left in his room for an infant. It really wasn’t any of his business, yet he couldn’t help feeling like something had gone wrong while he was laid up, and after cornering the housekeeper finally got her to admit, quite tearfully, that two days ago the doctor had come home in the middle of the day, packed up the omega and the baby, and ridden off with them in an airport shuttle. She didn’t know where he’d been sent, but Fox had been on phone calls with the OPS every day leading up to it, and he’d had to make an emergency court hearing the day Dean left. It had all been very sudden, and from what she overheard she wasn’t even sure Dean’s alpha and family had been notified. Whatever else had happened, she was so upset she was planning to give the doctor her notice and was moving out of the state to live with her daughter. For the second time it seemed to the beta that he may have badly misjudged the man he’d been driving around Fort Wayne for years, and he was really glad he knew where Jo used to work because he needed to figure out how to get in touch with her fast.


	92. But You're Going to Have to Weigh That Choice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things go from bad to worse.

Whatever Dean thought would happen when he decided he was already in a boatload of trouble with Fox and kissing Sam in front of a bunch of onlookers while clearly collared couldn’t possibly make anything worse, it certainly wasn't what came to pass once Asa got home from work. Dean knew there was no way he'd be getting to see Elliott that day, but that was okay because Sam was there and he needed to spend time with their son. He fully expected another beating with the belt, which was also okay since he was stronger now than he was a few weeks ago and he knew it could be a possibility whenever he disobeyed. The first time had been so awful in large part because the assault was completely unexpected, just as in his initial meeting with Fox when he'd been so dumbfounded at being slapped he didn't know how to react. He had a taste for the way the doctor ran things now, and he wasn't going to let his damn hormones get the best of him anymore; not when he’d seen firsthand that no matter how well he behaved, Fox was never going to respect the bond he had with Sam. Dean may not have control over any other aspect of his life, but he sure as hell could make it clear to a roomful of strangers that Sam was his chosen alpha, even if he _was_ going to make Sam buy him a yacht the size of the Titanic before he forgave him for all of this.

Still, Dean never would have guessed that instead of getting beaten when the doctor got home he would be told they were going to have a quiet dinner together, just the two of them, while the housekeeper - Julia - watched Lizzie for the night. He definitely didn’t think he’d be allowed to sit at the table in an actual chair and use actual silverware to eat his meal himself. Had he not been so distracted by this sudden one-eighty from the alpha who enjoyed parading him around half exposed to total strangers he certainly might have suspected his food was going to be drugged before his vision swam and his balance tipped and he ended up unconscious on the dining room floor, the fork he had hastily grabbed sliding free from his grasp and clattering away.

Dean didn’t anticipate – or really understand – Fox’s level of commitment to the idea of omega rehabilitation, or how dead-set he was on the program’s methods being the best way to accomplish the goal of taking willful, free-spirited omegas and molding them into docile, compliant mates perfect for keeping house and bearing pups. Of course, Fox didn’t really anticipate how different a male omega would be in comparison to the many female omegas who had come through his house since he became an approved foster alpha. Then again, had it occurred to him even once that he so easily gained compliance from the females because he was so much larger than they were and most female omegas understood their physical limitations - that without specific self defense training they wouldn’t stand a chance against a six foot tall alpha - he may have foreseen the way his methods of training would eventually backfire once Dean’s shoulder and back were better.

Fox had never dealt with anyone like Dean or Sam before, but the open way they flaunted their unmated relationship for everyone to see made it clear the doctor’s regular methods were never going to work on the omega. After a month in the program Dean didn’t understand that for the next year Sam was not his alpha, or that even if he were it was never Dean’s place to show any kind of dominance in public. While there was always the possibility that given more time under the doctor’s care he might come around, Asa just didn’t see that happening, not realistically. Dean needed a firmer hand willing to dole out harsher punishments for disobedience, and frankly Fox just wasn’t comfortable with the kind of redirection he so clearly needed. Luckily he knew of the perfect alpha for the job and had already been in touch with him to see if he was able to take in a new foster. Fox had never to date returned an omega to the program to be rehomed, yet it was obvious that in the case of Dean Winchester he had no other choice.

He was surprised at how easy it was to drug the omega; a distasteful yet necessary thing after the supervised meeting with Sam. He’d read the entirety of Dean’s case file and been appalled at the clear cut abuse he had suffered at the hands of his father, being forced into a life of monsters and nightmares when he could have easily been mated off right after he presented with his stunning looks. Fox was waiting for the younger man to mention the food tasting funny, his hunter’s instincts tipping him off to something being wrong, though it made sense that sitting at the table and using silverware for the first time in weeks would have thrown him. When Dean finally realized things weren’t as simple as having dinner together and tried to get up from the table, only to stagger and fall to the floor, the doctor wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth, hurrying to get the omega upstairs so he could start working out the details with the OPS. He didn’t even think until after he was chaining Dean to the solid oak four poster bed that he should have checked with Julia to make sure she could stay for the next few days to take care of Lizzie. If there was going to be any hope of ever rehabilitating the omega he needed to be made to understand exactly what was at stake.

It was almost noon the next day when the sunlight pouring into Dean’s room finally woke him to the most spectacular hangover he’d had in a very long time - including Laramie. His head hurt, his mouth was dry, he was way too warm, and he didn’t understand why he was only in his underwear or why he was lying down, since he had no memory of having gone to bed the night before. In fact, he had very little memory of _anything_ that happened the day before, which was more than a little frightening.

He vaguely remembered kissing Sam, but not where or in what context. For a few blissful moments he assumed that he was at home, thinking the alpha might be downstairs ruining breakfast ( _eventually he’d convince Sam to stop trying to cook_ ), but as he slid his hand across the mattress he realized quickly that not only was the space next to him cold, it was clear no one had been sleeping there. That wasn’t right.

The second thing that tipped him off to something not being right was the feel of something weighing his left foot down, then the rattle of what sounded like a chain when he tried moving it. Blinking against the light that was far too bright for how badly his head felt, Dean slowly sat up and pretty immediately discovered the source of the noise. It _was_ a chain, both surprisingly because he wasn’t expecting it and unsurprisingly because it was exactly what it sounded like, and it was attached on one end to one of the heavy finials of the bed where the post met the frame, while the other end was cuffed to his left foot.

This certainly was not the way he was used to waking up after a night of heavy drinking, but as more sections of his brain booted up despite the haze, he finally became aware that he was in his room at Fox’s house. Knowing he was not at home and the cuff would have been enough to warrant the flash of alarm he felt. What really threw him towards hyperventilating was realizing he was alone. Lizzie was not in the room with him.

That in and of itself wasn’t enough to send him into a full-on panic, as he told himself that he probably had too much to drink at dinner the night before ( _dinner…he had dinner with Fox, that’s right_ ), and Julia probably had Lizzie because he wouldn’t have been in any condition to take care of her. Which didn’t explain why he was chained to the bed, but he was going to take one problem at a time, and where Lizzie was definitely mattered more than a stupid ankle cuff he could probably pick his way out of in under a minute. He climbed out of bed, trying to ignore the way the floor tipped traitorously on him, and his near nakedness hit him again with enough force to have him foregoing everything until he got to the closet to grab one of his longer shirts to throw on quickly so he wasn’t walking around in just a pair of briefs. That he was wearing red satin briefs with that stupid red satin pirate shirt that resulted in him getting his ass whipped, literally, was not lost on him, and he was just glad Sam wasn’t _actually_ here to see how much he looked like a male stripper the day after a bachelorette party. Or maybe it would be okay if Sam was here because that was kind of kinky and they hadn’t gotten to do very many kinky things thus far in their relationship with him being pregnant and on bed rest, and crap, he had _at least_ missed Elliott’s morning feeding, and was probably going to miss his noon feeding as well. He tried not to dwell on that as he searched the room for Lizzie’s things, having already noted immediately that her crib had been removed, growing more and more anxious as he discovered that _everything_ belonging to the little girl was gone.

“Julia!” he shouted, or attempted to shout, finding when he tried that his throat was very sore and his voice was hoarse, undoubtedly from whatever had happened last night. He checked to see if he could get to the en suite bathroom to get something to drink, and yes, he could, which was good because the last thing he wanted was to die of dehydration before he figured out how to get out of this goddamned ankle cuff. “ _Julia_!”

He tested the length of the chain to just see how far he could get with it, and while it was long enough to allow him into the bathroom and even all the way to the tub ( _not that he could get into it, but at least he could get close enough for a sponge bath_ ), the bed was much closer to the bathroom than it was to the bedroom door and he could only get within about three feet of it, even completely stretched out. He shouted again for Julia as he searched the bedroom and bathroom for anything he could use to pick the lock, but the space had been gone over thoroughly. The only thing left in the bedroom were his clothes, and the only thing left in the bathroom were a tube of toothpaste, toothbrush, body wash, and shampoo. Were he cuffed on his wrist he would have been able to break his thumb and use the body wash to slick up his hand and slide it out, but there was absolutely no way to get the cuff off over his foot. He continued calling for Julia for another hour, hearing no response from the other side of the door, growing more frantic with each passing minute.

They _couldn’t_ have just chained him to a bed and left him here. Someone _had_ to be in the house. Even if he could get to the bathroom for water he had nothing to eat, and sure, it would take over a month for him to die of starvation, but that was hardly the point. How could starving him to death accomplish anything? Fox was part of a government run program. He had to pass background checks and inspections and who knew what else, there had to be official _stuff_ that they did before they let just _anyone_ be a foster alpha, so he wouldn’t just be able to leave Dean to literally starve or he’d be in trouble with the authorities. Right? It would be time for Sam to visit again before he actually died, and if Fox thought Sam wasn’t going to come back or that he could stall him long enough he had another think coming, which didn’t really matter because that social worker, Joyce, would definitely care if an omega starved to death while in Fox’s care so there really was no reason to panic. Dean just needed to wait for Julia or Harry or someone to come bring him lunch while he tried to see if maybe he could pull up a carpet tack to work on the lock. He thought hysterically for a moment that he was like Princess Leia chained to Jabba the Hutt, and would have laughed except it wasn’t funny. He was almost naked in Fox’s house, chained to a bed, and Lizzie was nowhere to be found. It was very, very not funny.

Dean remembered when he’d first arrived and been given this room how unnecessarily large it seemed to be for just him and a baby, how excessive the 17th century colonial reproduction bed frame looked, with the posts almost as thick as small trees and the attached wooden canopy, and how silly it seemed to give Dean what must be the best room in the house, overlooking the golf course around which the housing complex was built. Three hours into shouting for Julia and trying to kick one of the posts enough to break it and attempting to use the chain to saw through the wood and he was pretty sure he knew why his room and the bed in it were so ridiculously oversized and why it was on the back of the house where no one would see him in early April when the golf course was closed. By the time he gave up shouting and sawing and screaming he was completely exhausted, allowing himself a five minute break before going at the bed post again.

He was sitting on the floor, drenched in sweat, losing his mind when the bedroom door finally opened around six o’clock. Fox was standing there with Lizzie in the crook of his arm, though he made no effort to move past the threshold while Julia came just a few feet into the room to place a plastic tray with food on the floor. Dean launched himself across the bed to try to grab her before she could retreat, but she’d just barely set the tray down within his reach. He was only going to be able to get it with his fingertips if he laid stretched out on his stomach; he never had a chance of getting a hold of her. Even so, the elderly, auburn-haired beta gave a shriek and fled the room, leaving Fox alone with the omega as Dean scrambled back up to his feet and tried to look like he wasn’t falling apart.

“Give me my kid,” he snarled, his voice so wrecked from hours of screaming it came out raspy and barely above a whisper.

“Dean,” Asa sighed, bouncing the little girl on his hip as she reached for the omega and gave a happy shriek. “I had hoped today would serve as more of a learning experience for you.”

“Give me my kid,” Dean repeated, his eyes burning bright gold and his canines flashing in the late afternoon light streaming in through the windows. “You have no right to keep her from me.”

“No, I don’t. Not yet, but that’s the point of all this.” Fox moved to the chair nearest the door, well out of Dean’s reach, to sit and bounce Lizzie on his knee. “I underestimated just how badly you’ve been corrupted by the alphas in your life. After our meeting with Sam it became obvious you need more intensive rehabilitation than I’m prepared to offer you. Of course, that requires some changes be made to your court ruling and that doesn’t happen overnight.”

“What are you talking about?”

The doctor sighed again, looking wearily at the barely clothed man chained to a bed that he’d done a good job of damaging throughout the course of the day, and shook his head. Dean had all the makings of a beautiful omega. It was a shame neither he nor Sam were willing to accept the help Fox was trying to give them.

“I want to see you successful in this program, but I don’t think that will happen unless you’re not only ready to listen to what I’m about to tell you, but truly understand the consequences of your continued non-compliance,” he said gently. “That’s why I took Lizzie from you today. It’s why I’ve confined you here. It’s why you weren’t allowed to go to the hospital to see your pup. You need to know what’s at stake.”

“What exactly is at stake? Are you threatening to take my kids or something?” It was disheartening to see the omega’s eyes still an angry gold and the coiled tension held in his muscles as the realization dawned on him that yes, that’s exactly what Fox was saying. “Give me back my daughter, and take this cuff off of me, or I swear to god…”

No one would ever look at this Dean Winchester and think him anything other than a hardened killer, and that was a damn shame from where Fox was sitting. Dean was the kind of omega he wanted for himself someday, with perfect features and a pouty mouth and those magnificent, feathery lashes. Not yet, of course, not when he was still working his way up the ladder to Head of Neurology, but someday he would be ready to settle down, and in the meantime it seemed a waste of his time and energy to leave so many omegas in need of a strong alpha without the kind of guidance he could offer. It was terribly disheartening to accept he wouldn’t succeed in molding Dean into someone easier for Sam to control.

“When foster alphas are screened we’re required to fill out a questionnaire,” Fox explained, moving around the room with Lizzie and taking great care to stay out of Dean’s reach. “They use it to determine economic stability, social engagement, psychological issues - all the sorts of things they need to know to decide whether an alpha is fit for the program. The last section is what the alpha is willing to do to help an omega acclimate to their proper role in society, which it’s a given they haven’t, or they wouldn’t be in rehab. The questions ask about everything from comfort with public collaring to removing dependent pups into foster care.” He could tell he had Dean’s full attention now by how still and pale the omega had gone, though he still trembled with rage. “There were several questions in that last section I answered ‘no’ to, but there are alphas in the system who have no qualms with doing _whatever_ it takes to gain compliance from an omega. Since I’m returning you to the system and you will undoubtedly be placed with an alpha that answered ‘yes’ to everything, the least I can do for you before you leave my home is give you a taste of what life will be like if you lose your pups - temporarily - so you won’t lose them permanently.”

“The hospital’s gonna wonder where I am if I just stop showing up to see my son. You know that, right?”

Dean did his level best to sound threatening, but Christ, he was chained to a fucking bed in his fucking underwear and the only person besides the doctor who knew he was there was a sixty-something beta housekeeper who clearly wasn’t going to go against her employer, and _maybe_ Harry, if he was lucky. Though usually Harry didn’t work weekends so it would be Monday before he could hope the driver would discover his plight and perhaps at least agree to try convincing Fox to unchain him long enough to put on a pair of pants. He couldn’t even contemplate the possibility of being stuck this way past Monday if he didn’t want to end up incapable of rational thought.

“I’ve already spoken with the NICU,” Fox replied calmly. “I explained to them you were running a low grade fever this morning and I’m afraid you’re coming down with something. They won’t be expecting you for a few days, and by that point your case will likely be back in review. Don’t worry, I told them they could contact your brother so he can visit freely while you’re under the weather. I would never want to leave a premature pup with no contact with his pack. Despite what I’m sure you must think of me, I’m not heartless.” He moved back to the door with Lizzie, nodding to the tray on the floor. “I’m sure you’re going to want to throw that back in my face, but I’d advise you to eat it instead. I’m not trying to starve you, and you’re going to want to keep your strength up if you intend to keep trying to break the bed.”

Lizzie was beginning to wail as he turned and left, still reaching towards Dean, who didn’t dare move from where he’d grown roots to the floor, the reality of the situation truly sinking in. Fox wasn’t kidding; not even a little bit. Though he knew the alpha was right and he shouldn’t waste the first - and likely last - meal he’d gotten today, he grabbed the tray with the sandwich, chips, and milk and flung it at the door, the only possible act of defiance he could carry out at the moment. The paper plate and red solo cup weren’t going to be of any help to him anyway, and he felt far too sick to his stomach at the moment to eat.

It was surprising how easy it was to lose track of time when chained to a bed with the curtains closed. He definitely should have had dinner that first night so he wouldn’t be too exhausted to notice when Julia or Fox or whoever came in to close them, making it much harder for him to try to use the sun to figure out whether it was eleven in the morning or two in the afternoon. It also ensured that he couldn’t find a way to alert any of the groundskeepers on the golf course to his plight. Though the course wasn’t open it would be in two weeks, and the potential was there during the week for someone to be working behind Fox’s house who could overhear screaming if Dean managed to break out a window. The heavy curtains would help protect the glass from whatever he could find to fling at them. After the first night he hadn’t made the mistake of throwing his food away again, having no idea how long he was going to be kept this way and hoping if he started cooperating Fox might change his mind about this whole thing, or at least let him hold Lizzie instead of just talking to her from across the room on the one time each day the doctor brought her in for a few minutes and sat in the chair by the door. He certainly needed to keep his strength up as he continued to try to break through the post on the bed.

How long he was held turned out to be nearly a week, by which point he had done severe damage to much of the furniture in an attempt to fashion something he could use as a hammer on the bed frame and managed to make a pretty big dent in the post he was shackled to with the chain, though he was no closer to being able to break it than he’d been on the first day he woke up there. His efforts to escape had aggravated his back and shoulder, leaving him feeling vulnerable enough not to fight when Fox came in Thursday morning, laid out some clothes for him, and told him to get dressed so they could make it to the hospital in time for Elliott’s morning feeding before unlocking the cuff from Dean’s ankle and setting Lizzie on the floor to demonstrate just how close she was to crawling now. He really tried to hold it together, to keep his wits about him long enough to figure out how to build a rope out of the sheets or his clothes or, god, _anything_ that would reach the ground through the windows if he secured it to the chain still hooked to the bed, because that thing would obviously hold his weight, and then he could figure out how to tie Lizzie to him so he could escape with her while he was supposed to be getting dressed and run to someone’s house for help. Instead he barely lasted long enough to get her into his arms before he was sobbing pathetically against her hair, thinking he probably wouldn’t stop shaking for a solid month at least, and too desperate for a chance to see Elliott to even consider doing something as stupid as shimmying out the window and down a rope made out of sheets, which was bound to be even less well executed than _The Eiger Sanction_ anyway. He would have liked to be able to blame his inability to spring into action on his hormones, but the truth of the matter was he was simply scared shitless after the last few days that he was going to lose his children if he didn’t do exactly what Fox said.

Unfortunately, Fox wasn’t who Dean really had to worry about. The alpha hadn’t lied to him. The doctor was throwing Dean back to the government to deal with, and the government was a completely different kind of monster than he was used to battling; a great leviathan impossible to fight once it decided to consume you. Fox waited until they were in the NICU and Dean was hopelessly clinging to his son before informing him that there had been a hearing the day before regarding his case and they were due back in court today at one o’clock for the judge’s decision. It had been an emergency filing so it all happened very quickly, but as far as Fox knew, Annie Hawkins was being informed that very day of the final proceedings so Dean could be adequately represented.

He wasn’t, of course. They hadn’t bothered to send the notice to Annie’s office until noon, and she’d been in court arguing another case so she never heard about what was happening with Dean. Since the case had already been presented in a last-minute hearing there was no need to argue in a courtroom. Instead they were meeting in Judge Devereaux’s chambers, meaning Dean ended up seated in the back of the room with Lizzie on his lap as Ms. Bevell sat in one of the two chairs in front of Judge Devereaux’s desk while the other, reserved for Annie, remained empty. Dean tried to at least be grateful that Fox had let him wear a white tee shirt under the deeply cut blue button-down and jeans he’d laid out so the omega didn’t look completely like a hooker, but that seemed a small consolation to getting tossed in here last minute with no legal representation.

“I’m very sorry to see you here again, Mr. Winchester,” the judge said once the doors were closed and they were surrounded in warm, dark wood and shelves of leather bound books. Fox had stayed outside in the hallway while awaiting Devereaux’s decision, which should have made Dean feel better but didn’t. “According to the State of Indiana, you aren’t taking the rehabilitation program seriously. What do you say to that?”

He didn’t gesture for Dean to move any closer, and the cold, calculated smile Bevell focused on him left him feeling quite certain there was no way he would be able to answer that question in a way the judge found satisfactory. Instinctively he pulled Lizzie closer to him, standing her up on his thighs so he could keep her flat against his chest while she babbled and tried to shove a fist into her mouth.

“It’s...been an adjustment,” was the best he could offer in response, his voice barely recovered from being so badly abused over the days spent trying to guilt Julia into helping him.

“From what Dr. Fox has said, you and Mr. Campbell put on quite the obscene display in his office during his first visit last Friday. This was after he’s had to reprimand you on more than one occasion for unbecoming behavior, including an assault on your social worker - Ms. Joyce Bicklebee. Is that correct?”

Jesus, how he wished he wasn’t alone in there with this alpha judge and this alpha lawyer and his overwhelming fear that he was about to lose everything good in his life. He’d already been separated from Bobby and his brother for a year ( _being separated from John wasn’t that much different from the norm_ ) and he could only see Sam once a month. If he didn’t manage to convince these two that he wasn’t hopeless when it came to this ridiculous program he might end up separated from his kids as well, and that just wasn’t an acceptable outcome. There wasn’t a single thing he considered off the table in trying to avoid that fate, up to an including dropping all pretense of being the biggest, baddest hunter around in favor of showing the judge he was just a desperate man who would do anything to keep his children.

“She wasn’t...she wouldn’t take me to my _son_.” He was really hoping he could make the judge understand how much that mattered without having to do something completely stereotypical like bursting into tears, not that it would have been difficult to pull off after the way his week had gone. “And with Sam...Dr. Fox only let me see him for an hour and I’m not going to see him for another _month_ and I...I miss him.”

The judge’s expression softened, though Dean wasn’t stupid enough to think that meant Devereaux was going to rule in his favor. After the last time, when Annie was sure they’d won the case and the alpha had looked with sympathetic eyes on the omega, things had turned out very badly.

“I’m sure you do, Mr. Winchester,” he said softly, something in his tone making Dean feel like a boxer who needed to get his hands up to start deflecting the blows that were coming his way. “I do understand how difficult it is to be separated from an alpha with whom you have clearly bonded, even if he’s not your mate. Nevertheless, these reports from Dr. Fox are distressing, to say the least. He is one of the most successful alphas involved in this program nationwide. For him to request you be assigned to a stricter alpha just a month into your rehabilitation indicates to me a much deeper level of brainwashing than I originally suspected you to suffer from. I realize now that Ms. Bevell’s initial request to have the separation between you and Mr. Campbell run consecutively with the restraining order in the South Dakota case was not punitive, but prescient. While it pains me to keep a sire from his pup for a year, it is clear no amount of rehabilitative training will be of benefit to you so long as there is any point of influence in your life to encourage you to rebel against your foster alpha. I am therefore amending my original ruling to have the Indiana and South Dakota orders run consecutively. Mr. Campbell is hereby barred from all contact with you for the remainder of your rehabilitation, after which he will be held to once monthly supervised visits for one year and a supervised probationary period of five years thereafter. Furthermore, I am ordering you be removed from Dr. Fox’s care and placed with a more suitable alpha, whom I understand the State of Indiana has already located in the national database. He is expecting you by evening and will pick you up at the airport in Baton Rouge. Your location will be concealed from your family and Mr. Campbell to prevent their interference with your rehabilitation. I’m very sorry it’s come to this.”

“Wait…” Dean was pretty sure he was going to be sick. “You’re sending me to him _today_?”

“I don’t see how delaying this move would benefit you,” Devereaux replied, Lizzie turning to drool all over the omega’s shirt.

“My son won’t be out of the hospital for another month,” Dean objected. “You can’t expect me to just leave him…”

“It is my understanding that your brother is still in Fort Wayne and purchased your house,” the judge said. “I will be happy to amend the ban against him in regards to your pup so he can visit as freely as he wishes as long as they are both in Indiana. Once the doctors have decided your pup is old enough to travel, an agent with the OPS will bring him to you at your new foster alpha’s residence.”

“Your honor, my lawyer isn’t even here to -”

“I do understand she was notified of this hearing late due to this being an emergency filing by the State. Rest assured, I will make sure Ms. Hawkins is aware of everything that has happened here, and she and Mr. Campbell can appeal this ruling if they so choose. In the meantime, I would encourage you to take this situation much more seriously than you obviously have been. I understand this may be difficult for you, but the State has your best interests at heart. Good luck to you, Mr. Winchester.”

If he’d had his wits about him, Dean surely would have punched Bevell square in the nose when she came over to hold the door open for him, regardless of whether or not she was a woman. The shit eating grin on her face was just begging him to wipe it off with a solid right hook, and he wondered absently if there was any way they could prove she was prejudiced against omegas in the appeal that he was absolutely certain Sam would file - provided anyone ever actually did bother to tell Annie what had just happened. That was a thought for another time, though. Everything was a thought for another time. As Asa came to clip the leash onto his collar and lead him out of the judge’s chambers the only thing Dean’s mind was able to focus on was the location of his new foster alpha: Baton Rouge. It may have been all the way across the state from Shreveport, but he was still getting sent to Louisiana.


	93. It Looks Like You Are Well and Truly On Your Own

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to Louisiana.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is probably triggery stuff in here. Things are not going well for Dean.
> 
> Also, holy crap, 500,000 words. I was not expecting that when I started this.

Anyone who had known Dean for any length of time knew that he and planes just did not get along. Beyond the utter loss of control over where they were going or how they were getting there in one piece, flying took place in what was essentially a big metal can full of recycled air, and it didn’t take long for everyone on board to know there was an omega flying with them. Most omegas felt the same way he did about airplanes, so it wasn’t like he was the only person on the planet to tense up and hyperventilate on take-off, but it sure seemed like everyone and their uncle expected him to be able to hold it together better than the average omega just because he was a guy.

Well, screw them for their presumptions, and screw especially Agent Reidy and his stupid, “Are you humming Metallica?” question as the plane began to taxi down the runway, as if there was something wrong with a person humming _Enter Sandman_ when a three hundred and sixty eight ton hunk of metal was attempting to lift itself into the sky. It wasn’t as if Dean had nothing to be afraid of, either. Sure, the odds of the plane crashing were about twenty thousand to one, but he had not only been forced mere hours ago to leave his premature infant behind in Fort Wayne, he was being taken to live with an alpha in a state where the guy - screened by the government or not - could pretty much legally do whatever the fuck he wanted and not only could no one stop him, telling someone would undoubtedly backfire against Dean. He was also quite sure the Indiana OPS would take their own sweet time catching Annie up on what had happened at the court, and if Annie didn’t know that Dean had been ripped away from Elliott, Sam sure as hell didn’t know either. Getting stuck with Fox had been bad, but at least he was still in the same state as Elliott, Adam, and Jo. Now Dean was going to be almost all the way down on the Gulf of Mexico and Devereaux had been pretty damn clear that his location was going to be kept from anyone who could get him out of this. Dean had plenty of reasons to not want to be on that plane.

It didn’t help that it wasn’t a direct flight, or that they experienced turbulence both on the connecting flight to Dallas/Fort Worth and then again on the way to Baton Rouge. Reidy was grumbling about getting stuck playing delivery boy as Dean staggered off the second flight, Lizzie’s car seat clutched possessively to his chest like his insides would spill out if he let her go, her diaper bag slung over his shoulder. Dean was so numb by that point between the hellish day, the terrifying flights, and his general emotionally overwhelmed state that the only thought he could process as Reidy dragged him down to baggage claim was “Don’t throw up.” They’d shoved him on a four o’clock flight and after five hours between the actual flights and the layover in DFW it was well after dark, Lizzie needed to go to bed ( _she hadn’t handled the flights any better than Dean_ ), they didn’t have anything beyond what had been hastily packed, and Dean still had no idea where he was going. He felt completely justified in how badly he was sweating and shaking by the time his bags came around on the carousel, and Reidy was lucky he was still nauseated or he'd have been swallowing some teeth when he grabbed Dean's elbow to drag him towards the exit to look for the car that was supposed to meet them.

The first thing that struck Dean about being this far south was how hot it was, even after the sun had set more than an hour ago. He was definitely too warm in his jeans, two shirts, and suede jacket, though he was sure his anxiety wasn't helping his temperature any. The second thing he noticed was how many alphas there were in the terminal, and how every last one was keenly aware of his presence. As if he could ever forget what state they were in and that any one of them could just drag him off to a bathroom, rape him, and he was as good as claimed; and no, he didn’t expect Agent Reidy to do anything to help if that happened. Sure, Sheridan had been a douche, but at least he’d seemed to have a general, vague interest in the well being of omegas. Reidy was obviously in this job for the paycheck and the pension, and if someone _had_ assaulted Dean he probably would have been relieved since it would have gotten Dean out of the system and off his hands. He was already trying to decide how large of a knife he could fit into Lizzie’s diaper bag and figuring out how to get it there without anyone noticing.

He couldn’t believe the relief that actually swept over him when they saw the tall blond man with the narrow blue eyes holding up a sign that said “Reidy,” or how exponentially that relief grew when he clipped a heavy black leash to the front of Dean’s collar to lead them to the car. Not that he was going to start believing in any of this regressive crap he was being subjected to, but the guy - even though clearly just a driver by his suit and his cap - was an alpha, and the leash was a clear sign to every other alpha in the place that Dean had someone who would fight for him if anyone got any ideas about claiming him. The collar should have been enough of course, signalling he was essentially a ward of the government, but in a state that gave alphas free reign to do whatever they wanted to any unmated omega who passed by on the street he felt a whole lot safer on a leash.

“I was starting to think you missed the connecting flight,” the driver said as he grabbed some of the bags from the luggage cart Reidy was pulling after them so they wouldn’t have to take the whole thing outside. “Agent Reidy, I presume?”

“We had a long wait at baggage claim,” Reidy replied, pausing to shake hands with the man. “The rest of the clothes and baby things are being shipped down. Should be here by Saturday.”

“That’s fine.” The blond alpha took up the bag he’d dropped and started moving swiftly towards short term parking. “Senator Roman already picked up a few things just to keep the pup comfortable until the rest of their clothes show up. Though I’m sure he’s going to want to take the omega shopping again. It gets hot down here - probably already feels like summer to you - and he has a certain style he likes. There isn’t a seat base in the car, so he’ll have to just hold onto the pup for now and make sure she doesn’t die.”

“I have a room booked right at the SpringHill Suites that you can drop me at on your way to the Senator’s mansion, Mr…?”

“Morningstar.” The driver popped the trunk to the black Mercedes and started lifting the luggage into it. “You can call me Nick, though.” He moved to take the diaper bag from Dean, stopping when the omega took a careful step back. The way he smiled didn’t make Dean feel any more comfortable. “Whoa Nelly. No reason to get all skittish. You drug him or somethin’, Agent?”

“I hate flying,” Dean said, his voice still sore and rough from everything he’d been through up to that point.

Nick’s smile grew wider and he ran his eyes up and down Dean’s body, seeming amused to find they were the same height now that they stood toe to toe. Roman would like that challenge. Most of the omegas that had the pleasure of his hospitality were petite little things. He tipped his hat back and gave an appreciative nod.

“It speaks! Well don’t worry sweetheart, you can keep the bag if it makes you feel better.” He closed the trunk and opened the rear passenger door for Reidy and Dean to slide in. “I mean it, though, you’re in charge of keeping that kid alive ‘til we get home. Got about an hour’s drive out of the city, so buckle up.”

The SpringHill Suites were right next to the airport - truthfully, Reidy could have walked if he were desperate to get there, though he probably would have gotten killed crossing the highway - so in just a matter of minutes Dean was alone in the car with the driver, who sure was a chatty sort. The entire drive through the city was a running commentary of noteworthy sites, tourist traps, and places he could expect the Senator to take him if he behaved himself. It didn’t take long for them to be out of the city headed north on US Highway 61, after which there was a long stretch of nothing but trees that were too dark to see, though it certainly didn’t stop Nick from explaining what they were ( _apparently there were a lot more oaks in Louisiana than most people realized, expecting it was just one giant swamp covered in cypress trees_ ). Dean wasn’t about to tell him that he knew all kinds of things about Louisiana, it being Benny’s home state and his friend having regaled him many times with the antics he got up to before his parents enrolled him in Acteon, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to say how familiar he was with Shreveport. Even though his constant droning was helping to keep Dean from ending up trapped in his own head, eventually it all became too much and the omega said, “Hey, Nick, if you could shut up that would be awesome.”

Nick cast a glance at him in the rearview mirror and laughed, saying, “Roman’s going to have fun with you,” but at least he stopped talking.

They passed through two very small towns that were shut down for the night with the exception of a couple of gas stations before the road wound to the northwest and they found themselves completely alone on the dark highway. Dean might have laughed at the literal depiction of his life at the moment, a passenger in the dark with no real knowledge of or control over where he was going, were he not focusing all of his energy on not falling to pieces in the back seat. He _should_ at least be able to take comfort in having the chance to show Lizzie where her father grew up, even if she was too young to ever remember the trip, but seeing how far they were going from civilization he doubted he’d be going anywhere anytime soon, and he almost certainly wouldn’t have the freedom to go farther than Baton Rouge.

On top of that he was at the end of his rope when it came to burying his heartbreak and panic about leaving Elliott behind; how long it would take the hospital to tell Adam he could come see him whenever he wanted, whether Annie would be able to at least appeal to allow Sam unlimited visits with him now that Dean was hidden almost a thousand miles away. He’d been forcing himself to think of anything other than the possibility that his son was going to be all alone in the NICU with no one besides the nurses to hold him or soothe him or make him feel loved, and as they turned off the highway onto a long drive lined by huge oak trees his mind finally insisted he confront that aspect of his terrible situation. He hadn’t even begun to absorb the reality that he’d been separated from Elliott and wouldn’t see him for weeks - maybe longer, if the doctor didn’t think he’d be ready to travel as soon as he got out of the hospital. That was likely, since Baton Rouge was over half a day’s drive from Fort Wayne, and it was doubtful they would put him on a plane before he was six months old. If he were looking at it realistically, Elliott probably wouldn’t get the all clear to rejoin Dean until he was a month or two past what should have been his birthday. He started doing the math and felt something crack deep within his chest at the recognition that this morning had quite possibly been the last time he would hold his son until June or July, maybe not even until August if they did decide to fly him down instead of driving all that way. He managed to stifle a gasp at the stab of pain that cut from his sternum all the way to his spine, right through the core of him, but failed to control the way his hands shook as it began to split him open like thorny vines curling outward and away from his center. His vision had just started to blur with the tears he couldn’t hold back any longer as the giant antebellum mansion where he was apparently going to be living came into view, and he allowed himself the briefest flash of relief that at least it wasn’t a Beaux-Arts design like Sam’s grandfather’s house. That really would have been way too much.

“Well, here we go, Dean-o,” Nick said as he threw the car into park and killed the engine, looking back in the rearview mirror again in time to see the omega scrubbing at his cheeks as he stared out the window at the massive white columns circling the house all along the wrap-around porch. “Need a hanky?”

“Fuck...you,” Dean choked quietly, squeezing his eyes shut as he clung to the blanket over Lizzie for dear life. It was a stupid thing to say to an alpha, and he was lucky that Nick just snickered at him and exited the car to come around and open his door. He was very rapidly falling apart and just wanted to get up to whichever room was his and find a pillow to cry into. He didn’t even care if it made him a stereotype - no one would be able to put on a happy face under these circumstances.

“You may want to work on the language,” Nick advised as he clipped the heavy leash to the D ring to pull Dean out of the car, the way the weight of it tugged the collar down simply due to gravity drawing a sob out of the omega before he was able to reel himself in somewhat. “Don’t worry, princess. He’s not going to lock you in a tower or have you scrubbing toilets.”

Dean drew in a shuddering breath as he grabbed the diaper bag and car seat handle, not entirely sure his legs were going to support him as he climbed out and headed towards the wide marble steps leading to the porch. Frogs were serenading from the pond he could see off to the right of the driveway as the front door swung open and an alpha about ten years older and just a hair shorter than Dean leaned against the frame with a smile. His eyes flashed red as he took in Dean from head to toe, the same way Nick had at the airport only hungrier. His hair and eyes were brown, forehead wide, jaw angular, and nose pointed. His body was slim, but looked soft, like he’d never needed to exert his dominance physically over anyone, and the scent that wafted off of him was of old parchment, oil, and something Dean couldn’t put a name to other than to think it must be what corruption smelled like. His bright white teeth flashed like the light from the hallway behind him, and something about his expression reminded the omega of a cobra. He wore dark slacks and a white dress shirt, unbuttoned down to his waist and rolled up at the sleeves, the wifebeater underneath damp with sweat from the day’s heat. Nick passed the leash off to him and headed silently back to unload the bags as the alpha scanned Dean a second time, as if looking for imperfections now that he was closer. The way his smile widened was familiar, letting Dean know he hadn’t seen anything he didn’t like.

“You’re Dean, of course,” he said, giving the leash a tug to draw the omega right up to his side so he could slide an arm around his back. “Tall for your designation. I like it. Very much. I think you and I will look quite nice together.” The hand on Dean’s back glided down across his skin until he was cupping Dean’s ass and massaging the muscle. “I’m Richard Roman. Most people call me Dick. You will call me alpha or sir. That’s lesson number one. Lesson number two - do what I say _when_ I say, and you and I will get along just fine. You obey me and you’ll be richly rewarded. You disobey me and you’ll be severely punished. There will be more lessons, of course, but those are the most important ones and it’s late. You must be exhausted so we’ll put the pup to bed and then we’ll follow suit. Come along.”

He gave Dean’s ass a swat before heading off towards the stairs, talking about the house and when it was built and how it used to be a bed and breakfast. This was obviously a lecture and not a conversation, which was fine considering Dean had nothing to say that wasn’t going to lead to him collapsing in the front hall of this clearly powerful alpha’s very nice house. For a moment there was the real possibility he might be sick before Nick even made it back with the luggage, the crystal chandelier overhead, dark hardwoods, and hand painted wallpaper flooding his mind with thoughts of Shreveport and the morning after when Dean had run out the door. It had been a while since he’d needed to tell himself what was different and not the same to stave off a panic attack about a place, and he clung to the silver trees on the green walls that definitely weren’t the same as the cream colored wallpaper with the thick beige stripe, as well as how the railing on the stairwell was delicate and dark, sloping upwards like a treble clef on a sheet of music instead of the heavy white banister with intricately carved newel post and rails. Roman was saying something that sounded kind of like Charlie Brown’s teacher, and he realized too late that he should be paying attention when the alpha yanked on the leash and dragged him down until his knees cracked on the floor.

“I expect you to pay attention whenever I’m talking,” he said, low and threatening as he leaned in to take a small sniff of Dean’s scent.

“I’m sorry,” Dean replied, managing to remember, “sir” just in time to avoid a backhand as he was pulled to his feet. “I’m just very tired.”

“Then it’s a good thing we’re going to bed,” the alpha told him with a grin that made Dean want to run back down the wide, curving staircase. “Lizzie’s room is this way, so let’s get her settled.”

“Lizzie’s room...sir?” Dean stopped, pulling the car seat in tight against him, aware he was probably making a serious mistake. The problem of course was that Richard “most people call me Dick” Roman clearly intended for him to sleep in a different room than the little girl and that, quite frankly, was going to have him bursting into tears in about two and a half seconds. “I was...I was thinking she would sleep with me…”

“Dean.” Roman actually clucked his tongue at him. “She’s six months old. She should have her own room.”

“But…”

And then he was crying, huge drops of saline trailing down his face as he clamped his mouth shut to hold in the whimpers and sobs that were trying to make him look even weaker. Immediately Roman was shushing him, running one hand through his hair and the other down his back as he drew Dean against him again, and it just felt so completely wrong that for a long moment he couldn’t remember how to breathe. The alpha took that to mean his new omega was already becoming compliant, due in no small part to how well Dean was doing at keeping his emotions from flooding the room. It was about the only thing he was doing well right then, but at least it was something.

“Asa told me he had to keep her from you for a few days,” Roman said with a sympathetic nod. “I’m sure it was very upsetting, but it did serve a purpose, just as it does now.” He leaned in as Nick’s footfalls reached the top of the stairs, his grin turning into something much closer to a sneer. “A six month old pup should not be sleeping with its mother. It interferes with normal mating activities. You’ll never have more pups if the one that you have keeps sleeping with you. And of course you want more pups.”

Dean nodded quickly, having already figured out that Roman wasn’t interested in the many reasons Dean hadn’t even considered having another pup yet, or why it wasn’t something he intended to contemplate soon. A dreadful cold settled in the pit of his stomach at the suspicion that Dick would eventually want to tutor him in pup-making, a suspicion that only grew after he’d been led to Lizzie’s room to change her and settle her in, then was pulled down the hall to the master bedroom, which he was told nonchalantly they would share. Dean expected this was par for the course, since Nick had already deposited his bags there while he was settling Lizzie into bed. Roman continued to prattle at him about the house and the furnishings as he stripped down to his underwear and slid into his pajamas, offering Dean the shirt since he typically slept in only the pants with the reasoning that the sooner Dean started to smell like he had an alpha the better it would be for him, especially in a state like Louisiana.

Though he hated the idea of wearing a stranger’s night shirt and sleeping in the same bed with him, Dean understood perfectly well the veiled threat against him and took the pale blue striped shirt when it was offered. He was surprised that Roman allowed him to change in the bathroom, though when he spotted his reflection in the mirror and saw just how terrible he looked he surmised that some part of the alpha’s instincts to protect must have kicked in and decided he’d been pushed far enough today. He stalled in the bathroom as long as he could, trying to force the shirt to hang lower than where it currently cut off halfway down his ass, until Roman called for him to come to bed because it was nearly midnight. He screwed his courage to the sticking place and went out to slide under the sheets, managing somehow not to scream when the older man threw a possessive arm over his stomach and dragged him against his chest. How he was expected to sleep like this he didn’t really know.

Eventually Dean didn’t have a choice but to drift off, his body simply shutting down and forcing him into fitful dreams. He was in a desert, Lizzie strapped to his chest and Elliott clutched in his arms as he ran from something under the blazing noontime sun that threatened to burn the tips of his ears off and melt his skin. He kept calling for Sam but Sam never came. Then the sun was gone and instead of baking he was freezing under a full moon, something black and shapeless pursuing him across the sand, liquid and thick like blood. After running for what felt like days the black thing wound a tendril around Elliott’s tiny foot and pulled him from Dean’s arms, swallowing him whole. It was good he had learned how to wake without screaming while at Fox’s house, since Roman was wrapped completely around him, snoring in his ear despite how wide awake and interested little Dick was in pursuing some of the normal mating activities he had mentioned when they put Lizzie down for the night. Dean was certain he couldn’t possibly get back to sleep, but again his body was there for him, simply deciding after the desert dream that it wouldn’t allow him to breathe until he simply passed out. He stayed that way until morning, when an insistent hand running up and down the front of him to finally stop at his pectorals and squeeze had him wanting to bolt for the bathroom to throw up. Roman’s scent surrounded him, oppressive and suffocating, and though he wanted to fight his way free of the man’s hold he held very still, in no small part because of the sounds of Lizzie on the baby monitor, babbling to herself in her room down the hall.

“There,” Roman breathed against his ear like they’d known each other for years instead of hours. “You see how much nicer it is not to have a pup right in the room distracting you in the morning?”

The alpha squeezed Dean’s chest again, grinding his erection purposefully into the omega’s ass. Dean resolved to find the bag that had his pajamas before he did anything else today. After several agonizing moments where Dean started to think he was going to have to seriously fight Roman off, Lizzie’s babbling turned to crying and the alpha allowed Dean to pull himself free to tend to her. How he managed not to run until he hit the hallway he didn’t really know, nor was he certain how he kept his voice calm while he got her up, changed, and ready for the day, but knowing Roman was almost certainly listening on the baby monitor was a pretty big incentive. By the time he was done with her and ready to get dressed the alpha had mercifully already made his way downstairs.

Over breakfast Dick explained that as a state senator he didn’t normally work on Fridays, but they were working out a budget that had to be passed by the fifteenth, so there was a special session that he had to make while they hammered out the final details. He was genuinely apologetic at having to leave Dean their first day together, but promised they’d get to know each other much better over the weekend. When he noticed Dean had stopped eating, the omega quickly said he used to love bacon until he was carrying and ever since then it turned his stomach, hoping that would be sufficient. He certainly didn’t want the alpha to suspect the mere thought of getting to know each other better made Dean physically ill.

“Of course, your other pup.” Roman dabbed at the corners of his mouth with a napkin, a scowl flashing across his face before he reeled it in. “Your file says he’s premature and you had to leave him back in Fort Wayne. That must have been hard.”

Dean legitimately didn’t know what the alpha expected him to say, since it was one of the stupidest understatements he’d ever heard, so he simply replied, “Yes, it was,” and went back to drinking his coffee.

“I understand Lizzie isn’t actually _yours_ , but did you decide against teat feeding the other one because he was premature, or did you just not produce any milk?”

“What the _hell_?” was what Dean wanted to reply, but of course that was a one way ticket to god knows what, since they hadn’t established the bar for what Roman considered acceptable rehabilitation methods, and the omega suspected it was set quite low. Instead he said, “My son had what they call a traumatic birth, sir.”

“I saw something about that in your file as well.” Dean suspected the alpha was trying to provoke him, not only through bringing up such a personal topic out of the blue, but also the way he was loudly chewing his bacon and slurping his coffee. Dean refused to rise to the bait, though he did casually begin to scan the dining room for something he could stash in the bedroom to be used as a weapon if necessary. “The baby’s sire took a while to show up. Left you bleeding to death in the hospital for a couple of days. What’s his name again? The sire, I mean.”

“Sam.” Dean gave his best imitation of a smile, having forgotten in the last month or so how to actually make his mouth go up at the edges. “Campbell.”

“That’s right.” He took his toast and dragged it through the yolk of his sunny side up eggs, biting off a chunk with a loud crunch. “I’m curious, is he any relation to Samuel Campbell? Owned a mansion up in Shreveport?”

Dean could feel the color draining from his face and turned his attention to making sure Lizzie got every last bit of the baby cereal before she went to work on her bottle.

“That was his grandfather.” He didn’t miss the flash of irritation that passed over Roman’s face at the knowledge that Sam wasn’t some little nobody who had no power to fight the system. “The place is his now.”

“Yeah, I was real sorry to hear when Samuel decided to eat a Glock for breakfast. Some of the parties he used to have up there -” He whistled through his teeth, his eyes gleaming as he raked them over Dean. “Sam ever take you up there?”

“Nope.”

The response was too quick, he could tell that by the way Roman’s smile grew wider, as if he knew that _Dean_ knew exactly what was so great about Samuel’s parties. Unfortunately, Dean needed to focus all of his efforts on breathing evenly and not dropping the baby spoon. He had nothing left in the tank to worry about what Dick Roman would decide about him based on his knowledge of the Shreveport estate when he was so busy fighting the panic working to break free again from the neat little box he kept trying to bury.

“Well, at least I can see why you haven’t been gushing over the house like most of my omegas would be by now,” Roman said easily, pushing himself back from his chair and tossing the napkin down. “Landing yourself a Campbell is no easy task. Damn shame about all the death in that family this past year. Four cousins and grandpa. Must’ve been hard on Sam. Though I understand you killed one of them, didn’t you?”

“That’s right,” Dean replied, still glued to Lizzie. Christ, he didn’t know what he’d do if he didn’t have her right now to focus on. “Self defense.”

“Mm hmm.” Roman was at his ear, sniffing again as he ran a hand down the vee neck of the tee shirt Dean had grabbed to give himself a little more modesty. “You know we don’t have Chastity’s Law in Louisiana, right?”

“I’m aware.”

“So I guess you’d better just keep close to my side, don’t you agree?”

“I do, sir.”

“Good. That’s good. I’ll see you for dinner tonight then and we can talk some more. Nick can keep you company today and help you settle in some.”

The hand continued to travel all the way down to the waistband of Dean’s pants as a pair of lips pressed against his ear, a nose nuzzling his neck before Roman pulled away and Dean felt like he might be able to breathe again at some point, though not likely anytime soon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact - Nick does not have a last name in the show.


	94. This Universe is a Pyramid of Despair

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean gets a little help. But only a little.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings galore.

“The thing you need to know about Dick -”  Nick had appeared as the sound of tires on gravel echoed outside before Dean had really had a chance to pull himself together. “- is that he operates on the belief that the best way to train you to be a proper omega is to treat you like a proper alpha should. Most omegas seem to think he’s a little handsy at first, but as long as you relax and go with it you should be fine.”

Dean was pretty sure Nick meant that to be a comfort, though he was also pretty sure he didn’t run it through his head before saying it out loud to realize how it would sound. It was clear the driver wasn’t exactly sympathetic to Dean’s plight, but did seem able to appreciate that his boss had a tendency to come on a bit strong initially. As he poured himself a cup of coffee and stole the bacon and toast Dean wasn’t eating from his plate, Dean came to see that Nick was used to giving fresh faced omegas the rundown on their new living arrangements, as well as what was probably a well rehearsed biography of his employer.

Apparently, Senator Roman was a rising star in Louisiana politics and came from an old, wealthy family to rival the Campbells. He was eyeing a U.S. Senate run in the next few years and his work with the National Omega Rehabilitation Program was one of the extracurricular activities of which he felt most proud. He’d successfully run his family’s multi-billion dollar company for years before entering the political arena and had powerful connections throughout the country. Dean wasn’t sure if Nick was bragging about his boss to put Dean at ease about how he was a decent, upstanding citizen who just wanted to help or if he was making sure Dean understood exactly how impossible it was going to be to escape Dick Roman before his year was up. Whatever Nick’s intentions, the omega definitely took it as the latter, losing his breakfast as soon as he went to brush his teeth so Nick could take him on a tour of the house and grounds. Though he didn’t want to be a typical omega, needing a big strong alpha to ride to his rescue, he had no idea how he was going to formulate any kind of plan to get himself out of this when he’d already had to fight back about seven panic attacks that morning alone and wasn’t sure how to get through this if no one was coming to help.

In the daylight the beauty of the house and why Dick had seemed so shocked at Dean’s lack of reaction to it became apparent. It was, quite simply, stunning - certainly the sort of place the omega could have appreciated at least aesthetically under different circumstances. Each of the rooms downstairs had their own fireplace, whether it be the music room, the den, the sitting room, the dining room, or the massive eat-in kitchen and pantry that took up most of the back of the house with its black and white checkered floor. Many of the rooms had crystal chandeliers that matched the one in the foyer and each was tastefully decorated in muted tones with period furniture.

There were eight bedrooms upstairs, only two of which didn’t have a private bath, though those two shared one with doors on either side to the adjoining suites, and the third floor, previously attic space, had been converted into a ballroom, the staircase continuing its wide sweep up from the second to the third floor with the same glorious curve of the banister. Apparently when the house was a bed and breakfast they would rent out the space for weddings and receptions, making use of the dumbwaiter to take food from the kitchen to the third floor. The lack of handicapped access to the third floor was one of the things that forced the house to close down as a bed and breakfast and give up the reception business, which was how it ended up with Senator Roman. From what Nick said the basement was fully furnished as well, but Dean refused to go downstairs to take a look, and though Nick regarded him curiously at how adamant he was, he didn’t press the point and instead they headed outside to see the rest of Dean’s new home.

There were a number of outbuildings dotting the rear of the property that had been turned either into guest houses or meeting rooms, nestled in amongst the ancient oaks covered in Spanish moss that spread out behind the house like a well manicured garden of trees. The front lawn was wide and expansive, with the pond down and off to the side that had a dock at the far end from the house. A single oak grew near the pond with a large swing hanging down, big enough for three or four people. Likewise on the east and west lawns there was a single, huge oak that had been allowed to grow in the middle of the green, a permanent croquet court and a gazebo to the west, grass tennis courts to the east.

A cobblestone driveway swept up to the front of the house and then back again to the road in a circle around a large marble fountain, an offshoot continuing around alongside the house to the west and then to one of the outbuildings that had been converted into a three car garage. The porch completely encompassing the manor had a hedge row of neatly trimmed arborvitae growing along the foundation to the elevated porch. It was probably the most magnificent prison Dean could have ever imagined, and all he could think was how far they seemed to be from civilization and how badly things might go if Lizzie did something like throwing up on the period furniture and carpets.

“I know it looks pretty amazing, but I wouldn’t get too comfortable here if I were you,” Nick said as he walked them back to stand on the porch looking out across the croquet court. “Once Roman feels like you’re behaving yourself he’ll be taking you into the city with him to stay in his apartment when the legislature is in session, so you’re probably only going to be here on weekends and when they’re on vacation. Though, to be honest, the government around here is on vacation _a lot_. Gets real hot down here come the middle of June and it’s just about impossible to get any work done. Hope you like lemonade and sweet tea. You’ll be drinking a lot of it in a couple of months.”

He clapped Dean on the shoulder, which shifted into a slight caress down his arm before turning and heading off to wash the two cars still in the garage. Lizzie was screeching away happily but obviously wanted down to practice her crawling skills, so Dean set her on the porch to let her get some exercise and give himself a chance to stop shaking. He needed to pull it together enough to check out the outbuildings to see if there was anything helpful in any of them, since he hadn’t seen a single unlocked cabinet in the house that would give him access to so much as a butter knife. He’d have to give it a couple of days before he went searching the house for anything to pick locks with, painfully aware that his ability to keep Lizzie and Elliott were entirely dependent on whether he was seen as complying with the program but unable to imagine functioning with Roman as an alpha, or, Christ, trying to navigate Baton Rouge unless he had some method of self defense available to him.

He was so wound up in making sure Lizzie didn’t crawl off the porch while trying to wrap his mind around his new living situation that he didn’t pick up the smell of generic dish soap from the beta who had come up behind him to lay a warm hand on his shoulder. Without a second thought he spun, grabbing the arm to twist it behind the woman to whom it belonged, and pinned her against the wall of the house as she screamed. One of her large silver earrings went flying across the porch, her tight, dark curls with the faint auburn tint obscuring her face, though Dean was fairly certain her expression was one of terror.

His brain insisted he let her go, but his body didn’t think that was a very good idea, holding her there even as she shouted for Nick. Sure, she looked pretty harmless, about half a foot shorter than him, pleasantly plump, like someone’s grandmother, which didn’t mean a damn thing when you got right down to it. Joyce had seemed pleasant and harmless as well and she hadn’t even attempted to see things from Dean’s perspective after the incident in the car, deciding instead to withdraw the support she was bound by law to provide for him. He tried to pull back when he heard Nick’s footsteps on the steps behind him and still wasn’t able to get his fighting instinct under control, finding himself hauled off of her by strong hands and flung across the porch, taking out three rocking chairs before he landed on his elbows and knees.

“ _Stay, Dean_ ,” he ordered like Dean was a dog, the omega’s joints locking up where he was so he couldn’t so much as look up to see what was happening or where Lizzie was getting herself to. With his luck she was going to crawl right off of the porch and end up in a bush while Nick was doing whatever he was doing with whomever this beta woman was. “Are you okay Missouri?”

“I’d be better if Mr. Roman had mentioned his latest pet project hadn’t been domesticated,” the woman replied, her breathy soprano voice underlain with steel. “So this is him, huh?”

“Yeah, he just came in last night.”

“Mr. Roman always gets such pretty omegas,” she sighed. “Must be one of the perks of bein’ in government. You can let him up, I think you made your point.”

“ _Get up, Dean_ ,” Nick said, Dean blinking away tears of humiliation and anger as he felt control of his body returning to him. He straightened, clamping down the desire to attack again, as he turned to take in the deep brown eyes of the woman in black pants, a white shirt, and dark vest standing next to the house. “Missouri, this is Dean. Dean, this is Missouri, the Senator’s butler.”

“I’d shake your hand but I don’t want it to get bitten off,” she snapped, irritation evident on her face as she looked him up and down. “Mr. Roman was all right with him wearin’ that raggedy tee shirt and those skin tight jeans?”

“I think Mr. Roman was going to leave it up to you to take him shopping today. Since you run the household his appearance does kind of fall in your purview.”

"That the reason I didn’t get the weekend off like everyone else, huh?” She clicked her tongue, taking Dean in from his disheveled hair to his bare feet and looking thoroughly unimpressed. “That’s your pup over there Dean?”

“That’s my daughter,” Dean replied, moving away from both of them to pick up Lizzie from where she was trying to crawl under one of the chairs.

“Uh huh. How do you think she’s gonna feel growin’ up knowin’ her daddy didn’t care enough about her momma to claim him before she was born?”

Dean decided instantly that he liked Nick much more than he liked Missouri, which didn’t feel like something that should be possible given his current situation but it was fast becoming a reality.

“This one’s not really his,” Nick explained, and they were suddenly neck and neck in the race to the bottom of Dean’s estimation as Missouri whistled through her teeth.

“An unmated omega with _two_ pups? He’d better hope his alpha doesn’t find someone younger and prettier while he’s waitin’ for Mr. Roman to finish trainin’ him. Though I doubt findin’ someone prettier is possible, even if he does look like somethin’ the cat drug in.” She snapped her fingers at Dean and motioned towards the door. “Well, come on. I don’t have all day. Nick’ll bring one of the cars around. You got a car seat for that pup?”

“Mr. Roman needs to pick up a base,” Nick said, earning a head shake from her.

“I don’t know what _any_ of you knotheads would do without me,” she scoffed. “Guess he’s just gonna have to make sure she doesn’t die on the way into Baton Rouge. And _you_ -” she pointed a sepia toned finger at Nick, “- better make sure we don’t get pulled over.”

“Yes ma’am,” Nick told her with a smile. “Come on Dean. You need to change into something more appropriate if we’re taking you shopping.”

The absolute last thing Dean wanted was to go on another shopping trip, especially when “more appropriate” turned out to be his pale blue chiffon shirt that wrapped around and tied at the waist with a pair of navy pants that zipped up the side from ankle to hip. Dean supposed he should have at least been happy they weren’t like the pants with the snaps that opened completely to the waist - the ones he was praying would get lost in transit from Indiana. He played with the shirt as long as he could get away with it, trying to figure out how to tug it and tie it to cover as much of his chest as possible, but it just wasn’t cut to provide him any modesty. He decided he needed to start doing push-ups and sit-ups again if he were going to be plagued by these kinds of clothes for any length of time, even if he was quite certain Roman would presume he was getting into shape to look better for his temporary alpha rather than trying to rebuild his core strength so he could snap the man’s neck if it came down to it.

Changing his clothes and fixing his hair had Missouri deciding he might clean up decently enough that there was hope for him to become a proper omega, though she obviously thought Roman had his work cut out for him. With a lecture about behaving himself they pulled out of the driveway and onto the highway, which was almost deserted even in the middle of the day. Mercifully Missouri sat up front, leaving him and Lizzie alone in the back seat while she and Nick discussed when the rest of the staff were coming back, what the Senator’s schedule was going to be like in the coming weeks, and an Independence Day gala that apparently was going to have half of the political class driving up from the Capitol to his mansion in July.

The shopping trip was surreal, like the tour of the house had been, and something Dean might have enjoyed tremendously had it been Sam showing him around in a state where the omega hadn’t been raped two and a half years before. He’d always thought it seemed silly when Louise refused to drive through Texas when they needed to get from Oklahoma to Mexico, that Thelma just should have forced her instead of trying to go all the way around such a huge state, but now he got it. Damn, he got it in spades, particularly when they decided to park the car at the Capitol building since it had a parking pass on it and were taking the trolley around the city. It was instinctive to huddle in next to Nick, who was holding his leash while Dean held Lizzie, as the eyes of various alphas roamed over him, and he didn’t even have the emotional reserves to be embarrassed about it when Nick snickered, calling him a princess again. Fortunately it seemed that acting like a typical omega got the driver to soften to him a bit, and when they split up in front of the omega clothing shop on Third Street - Belle - he actually asked if there was anything Dean wanted for the pup besides a car seat. When Dean asked for a Moby wrap, Nick agreed to try to find one before heading off down the street and leaving Dean and Missouri to the capable hands of the sales associates in the shop.

The two twenty-something betas working the floor didn’t seem to share Missouri’s skepticism that Dean could be made to look like a proper, demure omega, cooing and fawning over him and Lizzie before proceeding to play dress-up with him like he was a Ken doll. It reminded Dean quite painfully of the shopping trip in Chicago, except that instead of the girls putting clothes on him so he could figure out what _he_ liked, the entire experience was about what _they_ liked. He had no actual say at all in what he went home with, the day growing exponentially worse when Missouri decided “Dress Up Dean” was indeed a pretty fun game and he should have a new collar. Belle had a whole fetish section down in the basement with collars and pillows, though even the threat that Missouri was just going to pick out what she wanted if he wouldn’t go downstairs with her wasn’t enough to make him agree to go.

This resulted, of course, in her returning with the ugliest, heaviest black leather collar she could find, one with giant silver rivets, that would cover two inches of his throat, as well as too of the fluffiest, most feminine pillows on the planet - one in carnation pink silk and the other in lilac purple satin. She tried for a few minutes to use it to taunt him into going down and picking out a collar and pillows himself, but when his only response was to stare at her, ashen, trembling, with sweat breaking out on his upper lip as he said nothing she finally gave up. The idea of fitting Dean for a collar made the sales associates even _more_ excited, like it was going to be the best thing that ever happened to the omega.

“You are _so_ lucky, cher,” the one cutting off his silver collar twittered while the other was practically squealing with anticipation as she held the riveted collar to fit around his neck. It looked like something that belonged in a BDSM club. “To have an alpha who wants to protect you and make sure the world knows how valued you are? Makes me wish I was an om sometimes.”

Dean choked at the stupidity of the statement, the sales associate apologizing for having to tug so tightly on the collar to get underneath it to cut it off and assuring him that the one the butler had selected for him would be a much better fit. Truthfully they did end up closing it a little more loosely than the silver collar had been, but even with the moderately increased level of physical comfort the only thing Dean could focus on was how easy it would be now for Roman to slide a finger under the collar, through a rivet, and tug. Everyone thought it was just about the most adorable thing ever when Lizzie reached up to play with the ring at the front of his new collar, and it took everything he had not to scream. About the only good thing that happened the entire morning was Nick meeting them out on the sidewalk with the new car seat and the Moby wrap, even if he did look at Dean like it was the stupidest thing the omega could have asked for.

“It’s like one big piece of fabric,” the driver complained as Dean shoved Lizzie into his arms, tore the packaging open, and after consulting the instructions began to wrap it around himself right there on the sidewalk. “I mean, what’s the point? We could have stopped at Walmart and gotten something off the discount section in the Crafts department.”

“You really think the Senator’s going to want his brand new omega spotted shopping at Walmart?” Dean asked, trying to wrap as quickly as he could to keep his two chaperones from noticing how terribly his hands shook.

“Good point.” Nick gave him a nod and a laugh. “You really _do_ know how rich people think. Roman mentioned the guy the OPS needed to keep you away from is one of the Campbells from up in Shreveport but I figured you just lied on your pup’s birth certificate.”

Dean nodded in response ( _to what he wasn’t sure_ ), somehow managing to breathe despite the anxiety squeezing his lungs like a pair of sponges needing to be wrung dry. He was pleased when he only had to unwrap the thing and check the directions again once before successfully being able to put Lizzie in facing his chest. She gave a delighted shriek as he pressed his lips to the top of her head and his hands to her back, thanking Benny wherever he was for giving him something he could concentrate on so he wouldn’t either collapse to the ground catatonic or be flung into outer space with the rotation of the earth.

“Your pup’s sire.” Missouri’s tone was very different than it had been to that point, measured and cautious as she looked at him with veiled eyes. “He take you up to Shreveport?”

“No.” Again he responded too quickly, though the butler’s response was about as opposite from her employer’s as one could be, and she sucked in a breath and held it. “No, Sam wouldn’t...Sam would never...no, I’ve never been.”

“Is Shreveport some kind of euphemism?” Nick was grinning at them both, completely out of the loop. “I feel like it’s some kind of euphemism.”

“Shreveport is a historic estate, not a euphemism,” Missouri told him with a playful swat to his hand and a smile that wasn’t reflected in her eyes as she glanced back at Dean, who was basically glued to Lizzie again as he tried to tune them out. “I’m surprised Mr. Roman never mentioned it to you. Though it’s been a while since he last got an invitation and he was rarely one to partake in the festivities. He always had an eye for politics and I don’t think he wanted photos of him in the pool all over the society pages. Old Man Campbell was closer with his father anyway. You about ready for some lunch, Dean?”

The idea of putting anything in his stomach had him turning just about as green as his eyes, but he nodded anyway, flinching only slightly when Nick clicked the leash back to his collar to lead them back towards the trolley, the car seat making the walk more than a little awkward. Since they were basically done for the day they went back towards the Capitol to drop the car seat, clothes, and pillows at the car, ending up at a nice little cafe right on the lake where they were seated at the back in the section for omegas in training. They supplied Dean with a pillow and Nick with a finger bowl and Wet Ones so he could decide how he preferred to keep his hands clean between feeding himself and feeding the omega who would be kneeling by his chair. There were three other couples in the section, the omegas young and pretty with downcast eyes, one of them carrying, though Dean was the only one wearing a collar. They each dared to glance at him in sympathy only for a second before looking at the floor again, and thankfully their alphas were too busy with their lunches to notice.

The change in Missouri’s attitude on the way back to the manor was palpable, sitting in the back with Dean and sharing quiet small talk with Nick about a variety of subjects, none of them related to the Senator. In fact, every time Nick began to wind the conversation back around to their employer she effortlessly deflected, smiling easily and laughing off his questioning looks when he started to suspect what she was doing. He didn’t bother to push, though, being the kind of alpha who enjoyed the perks of the job and seeing no reason to look too deeply into anything. Nick even went along easily when Missouri suggested they let Dean and Lizzie take a nap, as they certainly must be exhausted from walking around the city all day. After she got Dean settled on the daybed in Lizzie’s nursery with a pillow and a sheet in case he wanted to cover up, she paused at the door and said, “It’s always been my understandin’ that those parties were consensual.”

He snorted bitterly and pulled the sheet up to his chin, suddenly feeling chilled before replying, “That may be some peoples’ experience, but it wasn’t mine.”

She gave a soft hum and small nod before wishing him pleasant dreams and shutting the door behind her. By the time he drifted off, the butler was miles ahead of the driver on Dean’s “you’re okay” list, and short of sticking him on a plane back to Indiana there was no way Nick was catching up to her.

Roman was obviously pleased with the purchases when he made it back to the mansion around seven o’clock for dinner, calling ahead to let his butler know he expected the omega to cook for him. After all, he had to see where Dean’s cooking skills were in case he needed to enroll him in classes to bring them up to snuff. Dean had been able to sleep most of the afternoon, which gave him some energy to keep his anxiety better in check, and was relieved to find a couple of steaks and some fresh vegetables in the refrigerator. He was more than confident in his skills with a good sirloin, and the vegetables were basic enough that it wasn’t likely he could go wrong with them, though he feared Dick was expecting something more elaborate.

Missouri had laid out a cream colored short sleeved shirt that, like all omega shirts he’d encountered to this point, plunged to his waist, and a pair of beige shorts that cut him mid-thigh. At least it wasn’t one of the chiffon shirts and would actually provide him a little nipple coverage. He was forbidden from wearing shoes in the house, as the Senator liked the literal “barefoot in the kitchen” look. Missouri wished him luck before she headed off for the night, the Senator just coming in the front door as she gave Dean what almost appeared to be a sympathetic look, and then quickly turned away from him when Roman dropped his briefcase onto the island before pressing himself up against Dean where he stood at the sink peeling carrots, his arms sliding up underneath the omega’s shirt and around to his stomach.

By the time Dean was done at the sink he knew a couple of very valuable things. First, catching the skin of his thumb with a vegetable peeler hurt even more than he would have imagined. Second, Missouri knew exactly what happened to omegas up in Shreveport, was now aware she'd been misled about the goings on there, and he could probably use that to his advantage. Third, Nick had been serious about Dick’s methods of rehabilitation being focused around copping as many feels as he could. Fourth, Dick’s obsession with earlobes bordered on unhealthy.

Dinner was uneventful, Dean’s steaks and sauteed vegetables being adequate enough in the alpha’s estimation, though Dean was quite certain all of Roman’s comments about his mouth watering had nothing to do with the meal. After only two evenings with his new foster alpha Dean was pretty damned sure he wasn’t the only one who would be counting down the days until he came into heat, though they were obviously both anticipating it for entirely different reasons. He hadn’t focused on it much up in Indiana, thinking surely Sam would be allowed to see him through it, but now in Dick’s presence it consumed his thoughts. He remembered his first and only heat distinctly and was terrified of when the next one was going to hit, leaving him a writhing, begging mess so out of his mind with pain and need he’d jump on the first available knot. The worst thing he could think of right now, in a long line of worst things, was ending up as some senator’s well kept house omega, Sam and his family unaware of where he was, and his kids shipped off to be raised by nannies at the first available opportunity while Dean pumped out little Roman pups.

The only thing Dean was able to take solace in was that Dick Roman was a creature of habit, and at least at the moment his obligations to the State made him somewhat predictable. Dean was still in a probationary period with the alpha, so Monday through Thursday he was at his apartment in the city, while Friday through Sunday he was at the manor house. The servants were there only on weekends, but Nick and Missouri were there to supervise him during the week, the two of them giving him a decent amount of leeway so long as he didn’t try to do anything obvious or stupid, like try to get at the steak knives when no one was supervising. Nick laughed when he worked on the physical therapy exercises for his shoulder and back that he’d learned up in Indiana, but it was easy to drone him out when _Renegade_ was playing on repeat in his head. On those nights when he had the bedroom to himself he would stay up in the dark until midnight or later doing the push-ups and sit-ups he’d sworn he would start doing as soon as he was healthy enough. Not that he was healthy enough, but he wasn’t in a position to let his lingering injuries hold him back, not when whenever Dick was out of session and at the manor house Dean could be sure he’d spend the entire day being randomly groped. Whether he was on the porch encouraging Lizzie to crawl, on the swing with her out in the east lawn, playing with her in the fountain, or cooking dinner, wherever he was it was guaranteed the Senator would slide up behind him and grab a handful of his chest, stomach, groin, or ass before nuzzling against his ear.

The servants were apparently so accustomed to this behavior that it didn’t even phase them to see Roman pulling Dean down onto his lap as he sat on the porch, or watch him lazily suck a hickey on his shoulder while the omega was trying to eat breakfast. The first few weekends were the worst, Dean having to choke back bile whenever he heard the Senator’s car pull up the drive. Eventually as he started traveling back and forth into the city with Roman to stay in his apartment Dean found he could detach himself from it completely, drawing deep within himself until he wasn’t even really there.

Still, even as he grew to be an expert at disconnecting from reality whenever he was in the same room as Dick, he prayed to anything that would listen to send someone to help, trying not to grow discouraged as one month passed, and then two, and no one came - not even Crowley, to whom he would have sold his soul in a heartbeat. At least with Fox he had just been subjected to humiliating behavioral training, like being at a finishing school where he could be stripped and beaten for using the wrong fork. Roman, on the other hand, seemed obsessed with touching him and caressing him, sliding his hands under Dean’s clothes whether they were home alone or out grocery shopping, all in the name of making sure Dean smelled like he had an alpha.

Having to share a bed with him grew exponentially worse from the first night, with Roman’s hands taking on a mind of their own once the lights were off, the way his fingers slipped below the waistband of Dean’s pajama bottoms or how he ground against Dean’s back until a prominent wet spot was pressed into Dean’s ass; a constant reminder that the omega was somewhere he could again be raped with impunity at any moment. It occurred to him that Roman probably had some kind of deal cut with someone downstairs to have risen so quickly through the power structures of Baton Rouge despite being so openly slimey, and maybe that’s why he couldn’t even get a low level demon hoping to climb the ranks to take his call. Though perhaps they were all distracted by whatever Azazel wanted with Sam, he thought bitterly. It would be just his luck if the guy who said he would never leave was the reason the only thing he could think of to help him get out of this mess wasn’t answering. He knew his dad would be pissed to no end if he had any idea Dean was willing to sell his soul for freedom, but it’s not like his dad cared enough to return his phone calls back when they could still talk. One little soul for not being forced to plead with Dick Roman for his knot during his rapidly approaching heat or to ever have to call him “sir” again seemed an awfully small price to pay, particularly when no one seemed to care anymore whether Dean lived or died.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah...I know Missouri Mosley is a fan favorite, but I will forever dislike her in season 1. She was a dick to Dean for literally no reason, considering the last time she saw him he was an almost five year old boy who wouldn't speak because his mother had burned to death on the ceiling of their house. Her treatment of him in "Home" was completely uncalled for. If she could sense that Sam was broken up about losing Jess, she should have been able to sense how upset Dean was at having to come back to the house where his mother died and his world fell apart. Some psychic.


	95. I Get the Feeling a Lot Must Have Happened While I Was Gone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Meanwhile, back in Fort Wayne...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the hardest chapter I've had to write, because I was hopped up on decongestants for a week. I have revised this more than any other chapter in the work, so hopefully it makes sense...

Sam was pretty sure this must be what hell was like. Nearly two months had passed since he and John dispatched the small werewolf pack that turned poor, helpful Ed who then ate poor, unsuspecting Corbett, and he was still working with that kid, Kevin, at the FDH to see if he’d been able to hack the OPS database to locate Dean and not really getting anywhere. If they’d stayed just two days longer in Fort Wayne he would have been at the house when Joe with an “e” from Bob & Barb’s called Jo to tell her that the guy who got his back shredded the week before insisted he needed to talk to her. It seemed all kinds of weird and creepy, but the guy _did_ get his back shredded in their parking lot so Joe figured they owed it to him to call her.

Annie hadn’t yet gotten a hold of anyone to tell them that Dean had been shipped out of the state, since she’d just received all the paperwork that same morning for the change in ruling and conditions for contact between her clients and was trying to determine from the information the best route for appeal. She was also trying to untangle what the fuck happened and why the fuck Indiana thought they could get away with this bullshit before she contacted anyone involved in the case, thinking it best that she get at least some answers to her own questions in order to be able to answer theirs, so it was an utter shock to the two betas still living at Sunset Trail to talk to Fox’s driver and find out Dean was simply gone. By then John was pulling Sam out of the Grand River on Ohio, where a Melusine had become lost and very confused and inadvertently drowned a number of men.

Sam’s phone was a total loss and it took a week and a half before he convinced John that they couldn’t just rely on the calls that came through to his number ( _especially when John rarely answered and almost never checked his voicemails and his outgoing message still said to contact Sam in an emergency_ ) and they needed to stop somewhere long enough for Sam to pick up a new phone. John was lucky Sam didn’t kill him when they finally walked into a Verizon store in Duluth and he got access to his backed up messages. Adam had called him twenty three times. Annie had called him fifteen. Both were pissed off beyond belief that he wasn’t calling them back and were just about to write him off completely. He cracked a couple of John’s teeth when the older alpha tried to point out that even if they’d stayed in Fort Wayne there was nothing they could have done for Dean; once you ended up on the radar of an organization like the OPS it was almost impossible to get yourself off of it. It may have been true, but it didn’t make it better, and he’d lost a whole week when he could have been trying to fight back against what was obviously a biased legal system in addition to straight-up losing Dean. At the end of it, Sam hitched a ride to the airport, ordering John to answer his goddamned phone the next time Sam called or to call Sam if he got a solid lead on Azazel to keep him in the loop, and caught the first available flight back to Fort Wayne.

It really was astounding that the Winchester style of communication tended to be through fists, but Sam wasn’t completely surprised when Adam greeted him with a punch square to the jaw when he got to the house. He suspected he’d been spared that after the first court date Sam missed, the one that just had Adam screaming at him over the phone, and the way things were going now he definitely felt like the beta’s outrage was more than warranted. Even so, he was on edge and the darkness within him thrummed just beneath the surface of his skin, begging to be tapped and requiring every ounce of self control he had not to respond in kind and shatter Adam’s cheek with a counter punch. Jo looked like she was more than ready to pick up where Adam left off, but she had a new job and needed to head off to work so he was momentarily spared her wrath. He was lucky Ellen left before Dean disappeared, having butted heads so frequently with her daughter that it was either head back to Sioux Falls or kill each other, otherwise he was sure he’d have been reamed a new asshole by her for all the clearly incorrect choices he’d made that got Dean into this since he returned from Michigan. At least he was able to take comfort in the fact that Hannah was glad to see him.

He was able to meet with Annie the next day. She was still getting the runaround from the OPS, who had full jurisdiction over the case since the judge had thrice ruled in their favor. All she’d been able to drag out of anyone was that the grounds for the emergency filing had been Dean’s difficulty acclimating to the program and they had moved him to another alpha - that alpha’s name and location confidential - who was better equipped to deal with someone of his nature. Outside of that they were completely stonewalling her. That was the bad news.

The good news was that after Dean hadn’t been to see Elliott for a full week the hospital contacted Pup & Child Protective Services. It was the second time since he was placed in Dr. Fox’s custody that a whole week had passed without him once coming to visit his son, to whom he was clearly devoted, and that raised all kinds of warning bells for the nurses. They may be bound by law not to allow any of Elliott’s extended family in the NICU when Dean was there, but as had now been drummed into Sam’s head the hospital had tremendous leeway when it came to the health and safety of omegas and pups. Though Adam had practically camped out by Elliott’s incubator the minute he knew Dean was gone, the OPS ruling had initially kept the pup’s sire from seeing him more than once a month and now had banned him from contact for a full year. That, as far as everyone on staff was concerned, was absolutely not in the best interest of a premature pup. They might not be able to do anything to force the State to bring his mother back, but they sure as hell knew who to reach out to in order to get his father access to him.

PCPS was not happy learning that there was a premie at St. Mary’s who was being kept from both of his parents with only a very young beta uncle to pick up the slack. PCPS and OPS didn’t always see eye to eye, and even though PCPS tended to favor alphas, ultimately they wanted to see any pup placed with either the bitch or the sire whenever possible, while OPS didn’t seem to give a damn half the time what happened to an omega’s children when they went into the system. The hospital shared all of the information they had on the case, since it didn’t qualify as medical information, and a PCPS agent had already been in touch with Annie about Sam filing a claim for Elliott, which they insisted was in the baby’s best interest since there was a real danger the OPS would remove Elliott from Dean’s custody if he continued to prove difficult to rehabilitate.

Given the nature of their case, if OPS got a hold of the baby he would almost certainly end up in a foster program until Sam could prove he was able to provide a stable home. With three rulings against him at this point things might get quite sticky and there was a real possibility they could end up losing their son for years. PCPS hoped that by contacting Sam’s lawyer he’d be able to get out in front of the issue. Annie advised him to move quickly with the filing to protect his rights to Elliott, as it would keep the baby from ending up screwed over by the system just a couple of months into his life, plus the courts would have to notify Dean’s foster alpha, which was their best shot at finding out where he’d been taken, provided whatever alpha he’d been sent to decided he should know about it. That, unfortunately, wasn’t a given.

The problem with claiming Elliott was that it felt like a major betrayal to Dean, whom Sam felt like he’d betrayed enough recently. Filing the paperwork to take full custody of their son was the same as taking out an ad in the paper saying he thought Dean was either a terrible parent or incompetent by his nature as an omega. It also twisted Sam’s stomach because it was like admitting Samuel had been right and even posthumously he would be winning. Annie tried to talk him out of that spiral, but Sam’s capacity for rational thought was severely compromised. He hadn’t really slept or eaten since checking his voicemail, just stormed around the house pulling his hair out, yelling and flipping the furniture when he stubbed his toe, punching holes in the drywall at random intervals, and trying to tear doors off hinges, too much of a mess to go out among other people without ending up on the wrong end of an assault case. He couldn’t focus on anything other than getting Dean out of the OPS’ clutches and his alpha hindbrain was completely unable to grasp the concept that his child could be taken. No alpha’s child was ever _taken_. It was simply unthinkable.

Fortunately Adam was right there, threatening to kick his ass if Sam didn’t put in the fucking claim, because Sam wouldn’t be the only one in danger of murdering someone if Elliott ended up at the OPS’ mercy because of the alpha’s ridiculous moral quandary. Truth be told, as much as it got his hackles up, Sam was grateful he was in a house with two betas who were more than happy to point out when he was being completely unreasonable, not to mention growly, and who had no problem reminding the idiot that he wasn’t the only person on the planet who was worried about Dean. He badly needed Adam and Jo to anchor him in the reality that an organization that had essentially kidnapped the omega could obviously do whatever the hell they wanted, and there needed to be no way for them to dig their claws into Elliott. Whether Sam was able to accept the OPS taking their son as a possibility or not, it was, and he needed to get with the program. By the following morning sanity had returned to him somewhat and he called Annie and told her to start the paperwork, hoping they could push it through before they filed the appeal. The last thing anyone wanted at that point was the OPS taking retaliatory measures against them for beating them to the punch in securing Sam’s rights to Elliott.

He dreamed that night of Dean in the kitchen in the gauzy green shirt and linen pants, heavy black collar around his neck as Lizzie sat in a high chair behind him. The alpha was there again, but there was no baby in Dean’s arm. This time his scowl was reserved for Lizzie, and when he came to stand beside Dean his hand didn’t stop on Dean’s back but continued under his waistband to cup his flesh, nipping first at the omega’s neck and then his ear. Dean tried to lean away this time as the man pressed obscenely and insistently into his side, yanking him back by a handful of hair and licking from his neck up to his temple. Dean went still again after that, his breathing labored and shoulders tense as the alpha snapped Dean’s pant leg open then undid his own fly and quickly jerked himself off against Dean’s thigh.

“Don’t worry Dean,” the alpha murmured against his cheek as he gathered up a healthy handful of cum and spread it up under Dean’s shirt and across his stomach. “You’ll be begging for me when your heat hits, and I can wait.”

Sam thought he wanted to kill Fox when they were back in his office, but when he woke from the dream drenched in sweat and needed to run to the bathroom to vomit, he understood what the urge to murder another alpha _truly_ felt like.

After that the dreams grew worse, each night showing Sam some new humiliation Dean might be suffering. At first he couldn’t tell what was happening and what simply _might_ happen, but once the kitchen dream changed after he filed for custody of Elliott he started paying closer attention to the details - the length of Dean’s hair, how old Lizzie looked, whether she had any teeth yet, the definition in Dean’s chest and stomach, since he was always wearing something revealing. It helped to divide the present from the future, which allowed Sam to retain a shaky grip on sanity when the dreams became relentless. It was a relief when Elliott was finally released from the hospital and couldn’t adjust to sleeping through the night, because at least it meant Sam was sometimes awakened before he had to see the worst of the repeating visions.

Whoever this alpha was, he definitely made Dean sleep in his bed every night. Dean’s hair was the same length when he’d seen him in Fox’s office, and he still had the dark circles and sunken cheeks of a badly stressed omega. The circles only grew worse, undoubtedly because Sam never once saw Dean actually fall asleep when the man’s arm was slung heavily over him.

He also made Dean sit in his lap on a wide porch with white columns after dusk, wearing nothing but a pair of cutoffs, so he could run a hand up and down Dean’s bare back and over his thighs. That was something he would continue to do, Dean’s skin in other dreams showing the start of a golden tan that brought out the freckles splayed across his shoulders. Occasionally the man rubbed sunblock across his shoulder blades while sipping lemonade. At least, that’s what Sam chose to believe the white liquid was.

He may already have switched out the thin silver collar for the heavy, riveted black one, since there were very few indicators of time as he led Dean around through various shops and to different restaurants, Lizzie wrapped in a carrier against his chest. The diaper bag was different, so it was possible he hadn’t started parading him around yet or hand feeding him, but the diaper bag may have already worn out and needed to be replaced. Lizzie was usually sleeping and it was difficult to gauge how big she was.

He didn’t think Dean had been pinned to the bed by his throat, the man ordering him to stay still while he stripped his cock hard and fast until thick white ropes of semen shot out over Dean’s bare stomach and chest. Dean was visibly struggling against the use of his alpha voice, and though he couldn’t break it as beautifully manicured hands massaged the spunk into his skin, he was much closer to being able to than in Fox’s waiting room. He was probably closer to his heat, his hormones beginning to right themselves and however they were undermining him beginning to wear off.

The alpha hadn’t yet bent Dean over a couch, drenched in sweat, his eyes gleaming the unfocused gold of an omega so consumed by their heat they couldn’t think straight, much less consent to anything, while he thrust his really quite unimpressive cock into Dean’s slick hole. Dean’s pants and whines were a clear sign that the demands of his heat were not being met, his skin flushed an angry red, which gave Sam a perverse kind of joy whenever that particular vision decided to haunt him in his sleep. The baby book said in one of the later chapters that Dean wouldn’t come into heat again for five or six months after whelping, so while that dream always left Sam throwing furniture in the middle of the night, he could at least be sure he had time to stop it from happening.

The man obviously hadn’t taken the omega to whatever fancy Thanksgiving meal they would eventually attend, where a clearly pregnant Dean would grab the carving fork and slam it into the side of the alpha’s neck while the other guests screamed and armed security rushed forward to stop him. The claim mark on his neck was new in that one, and while he woke screaming at watching Dean getting tasered until his eyes rolled back in his head and he began to foam at the mouth, Sam felt tremendous pride knowing his omega was a badass who would take that fucker down if it came to that. Which it wouldn’t, because Sam wouldn't let it.

Except that now it had been months since Dean vanished and the OPS was still stalling them with all the power of a massive bureaucracy at their fingertips. They hadn’t even been able to file the appeal because the case with the PCPS was being challenged by the OPS and Sam’s straightforward claim on Elliott was being slow-walked, even after the little boy was already living with Sam, Jo, and Adam. There weren’t any grounds to deny it, just a bunch of technicalities wrapping the whole thing up in red tape that had Sam back in court every couple of days needing to provide new copies of everything from his grade school immunizations to banking records for the last seven years, even though he’d only had control over his accounts for five years since he turned eighteen. It was like some kind of ridiculous Sesame Street episode with the letters all fighting each other, and Annie didn’t dare jeopardize Sam getting Elliott to try to get an idea of what had happened to Dean. It was the worst kind of government abuse she’d encountered in a very long time, and once it was cleared up she assured Sam she knew a great advocacy lawyer who could sue the pants off the agency, get the rulings against them at least lessened if not outright reversed, and probably get laws changed somewhere down the line. However, the promise of justice years away wasn’t a whole lot of comfort when it was now June and they were running out of time before that dream with the couch became a reality. Sam was growing increasingly angry, the demon blood that had driven him from Fort Wayne in the first place constantly twisting his thoughts with the need to kill _something_ , and without hunting he had no outlet for any of it, leaving him in a perpetual struggle to bury his darkest urges.

It didn’t help matters at all that Elliott was not an easy baby. Not that anyone in the house blamed the poor little boy one bit, but his rocky start from birth resulted in a sort of old man crankiness that made him dislike everything. He didn’t like being held, but he didn’t like being put down either. He didn’t like silence, but he didn’t like noise. He hated being sung to, but not more than he hated being talked to. He hated wearing diapers and clothes but he hated being naked too. He wouldn’t finish a bottle or sleep through the night or settle against his father’s chest and relax. Despite all of the baby articles that insisted pups his size had limited awareness of their surroundings and their eyes weren’t developed enough to recognize specific faces, Sam was positive his son knew that Dean wasn’t there and it was tipping his little world off its axis. The only thing Elliott actually seemed to like was riding around in the back seat of the Impala ( _he liked the Ford, but not as much_ ) and when Hannah would sniff him. Between the sleep deprivation, anxiety of the court cases, and stress from missing Dean, Sam was starting to legitimately scare himself. It was becoming more and more frequent that when Elliott was really screaming his head off, Sam would have to hand him to Adam, strap the harness on the dog, and go for a very long walk until he could calm down. The longer the PCPS-OPS bullshit wound on, eating up Sam’s time and delaying them from finding Dean, the more the alpha began to genuinely fear a day was going to come when he wouldn’t be able to shove back the darkness trying to give him an ulcer and would end up flinging his son to the floor just to stop him from crying. Despite Adam and Jo being with him through it all and also wanting to find Dean, when it came right down to it they were betas and just didn’t understand the turmoil Sam was in on a primal level.

Kevin got it though. He really did. He was a super smart kid - if possibly too sassy for his own good - and just as Adam had said was willing to bend over backwards to help another omega in a bad situation. Sam did have to endure a very, _very_ long and angry lecture from him the first time they spoke on the phone, since Kevin couldn’t believe Sam had been enough of an idiot to leave Dean facing Omega Protective Services alone, but he was willing to hold his tongue when the kid was their best shot at navigating the OPS.

“ _Any_ _government agency that has ‘protective services’ in the title is set up to protect exactly one thing; itself_ ,” Kevin had snapped over the phone when detailing for about the fifth time just why Sam had been a stupid, knotheaded alpha to assume that everything would just be fine if he missed the hearing back in March. It was also why Kevin was having such a hard time digging up Dean’s location. The entirety of his file had been scrubbed after he left Dr. Fox’s house. Even the copy uploaded to the NORP server had been redacted. They’d waited to contact him until after Annie had assured him that the PCPS claim couldn’t possibly be denied and the OPS was in its final efforts to stall things, and the best Kevin could find after weeks of clandestinely poking around both the OPS and NORP so as not to get them caught was that Dean had been sent somewhere in the South.

With so little to go on and Sam facing another court date soon, they thought it couldn’t possibly hurt to get in touch with Fox’s driver, Harry, to see if he knew anything he either purposely withheld from them or didn’t think was important enough to mention. That was how they found out the snippet of a conversation he overheard about Baton Rouge, which, as they suspected, he didn’t think had anything to do with the omega but made sense when they said they thought Dean had been taken below the Mason-Dixon line. Back they went to Kevin with Baton Rouge as a possible location, and he was able to pick up exactly one approved alpha in the foster program in the city. State Senator Richard Roman had been enrolled with the NORP as a foster for close to a decade and went through the same government information and education session as Dr. Asa Fox. Only five alphas were approved that session. Obviously they would know each other.

From there it was an Internet search of the Louisiana State Legislature, which listed the representatives and senators but didn’t have any pictures or much information beyond the districts they represented. A quick follow-up search on images brought back a newspaper article with a photo of State Senator Richard Roman at a ribbon cutting ceremony two weeks prior for the opening of a remodeled Piggly Wiggly in Zachary, Louisiana. Sam recognized him instantly, his blood boiling as a growl began to thunder in his chest. Behind and off to the side, standing with the owner and store manager, was a tall, dark blond omega with a heavy black riveted collar holding a dark-haired baby girl just about eight months old in a death grip. His face was expressionless, eyes focused down to ever so carefully ensure he wasn’t looking at anyone or anything as the little girl clutched at the collar. Sam punched yet another hole in the living room wall before getting Annie on the phone, telling her to touch base with the OPS and let them know he’d forego any avenues of appeal if they’d stop fighting him on Elliott’s claim, while Adam was trying to figure out how breathing worked.

“She says it will probably take a day or so before they can hammer out the details,” Sam said as he paced the living room while Adam read the newspaper article. Hannah’s tail thumped the floor expectantly every time he passed by where she was sprawled out at the base of the Rock ‘N Play that had been passed from Lizzie to Elliott, who for once was sleeping and not crying. His gut was roiling in fury and he couldn’t think straight. “How the _fuck_ are we going to get him away from a goddamned state senator?”

“Call Kevin,” Adam told him, still feeling slightly dizzy at the sight of his brother. His face was gaunt, hair long and hanging in his eyes, full, dark eyelashes standing out against his pale skin and hinting at the beauty that had faded some in the last two months due undoubtedly to stress. “Have him dig up whatever he can on this guy. There has to be more to him than we can find on the Internet. He’s a politician. There have got to be skeletons he wants to stay hidden in his closet.”

“What, you think we can blackmail him into letting Dean go?”

“It’s worth a shot.”

“You still don’t get alphas,” Sam growled, holding up a hand at the glare Adam cast his way. “I don’t mean it like that. _I_ wouldn’t let someone like Dean go if I were this guy. He’s not the sort of omega you allow to leave if you’ve got him where you want him. Unless we can find pictures of him fucking a goat or a five year old nothing’s going to be a good enough threat. _And_ they’re in Louisiana. I think we both know that limits our options.”

“We can’t just _leave_ him there,” Adam objected, and Sam assured him, “We aren’t leaving him anywhere,” seconds before Henry stormed in from the kitchen, muttering an incantation under his breath and flinging what could only be described as a glowing white orb of fire at the alpha. It tossed Sam back into the far wall of the living room hard enough to leave a six and a half foot crack when he crumpled to the floor.

“Why has _no one_ contacted me about Dean?” Henry demanded, eyes glowing a violent red and canines on full display as he glared at both Sam and Adam, a roar like a tornado echoing under his words. It was a very confusing image to see the prim and proper Man of Letters in full alpha mode, and a black snake tried to wind its way up Sam’s spine to drive him to retaliate with deadly force but Sam was too winded to do anything.

“Henry…” Sam started, his senses coming back to him.

Before he could do anything, Henry threw an arm up, palm extended outward to pin Sam to the wall like a butterfly in a display. Hannah placed herself between Elliott and his great grandfather, barking viciously as Adam rushed over to grab her collar and his nephew, who of course was awakened by all the commotion and began to cry. Sam struggled to break free of Henry’s hold, but the magic the alpha was using was old and powerful. It became readily apparent that even with the demon blood he was completely at the mercy of the Winchester patriarch.

“I stopped by to see him, thinking he must certainly have had the baby by now and settled into motherhood, curious as to whether you had a son or a daughter,” Henry hissed, moving a few steps towards Sam, his face full of fury. “Imagine my utter shock when I zeroed in and found him not in this house, but somewhere down in the deep South, so terrified that he wouldn’t let me touch him in case he picked up any of my scent. As you might expect I was somewhat confused by this turn of events. I realize I don’t have the warmest relationship with my son or my grandsons, but I would have thought, surely, he would appreciate a visit from me and words of congratulations. Except the only child with him is Lizzie, and the alpha with him is definitely not you, and where he is, is definitely not this house. So, I asked him what exactly was going on. Had things ended badly between the two of you? Were you off on a hunt and needed a friend to guard him and your children? If that were the case, why was he all the way on the other side of the country? You understand how horrified I was to learn that he is in some kind of _rehabilitation_ program that is subjecting him to endless indignities not even someone of _my_ generation would think to impose upon an omega! But I wasn’t the only one confused. You see, he thought that John sent me. It seems that right after whatever court shipped him off to whatever monster is apparently taking advantage of him - because he _reeks_ of an unwanted alpha – he called John, wanting to know how to contact me.”

“Why would he contact you?” Adam asked, flinching at the growl his grandfather turned on him.

“Because of the elixir that will stop his heats,” he snarled.

“What are you talking about?” Sam gasped, thinking at least two of his ribs must be broken under the pressure Henry was exerting upon him.

“The elixir that would allow you to claim him without mating,” Henry snapped. “When I was here last, he and I discussed the side effects and I told him it would stop his heats. He realized if he were going to be stuck in a government program for a year with limited access to you that he would be at a serious threat for one of these ‘foster’ alphas to take advantage of him. He doubted you’d be able to mate properly when your visits would be supervised, but you should at least have time to mark him with your claim. But apparently John never called him back; something I take is a bad habit of my son’s. So, I ask again, _why_ has no one contacted me about my grandson’s predicament?”

“Well, no offense Henry, but uh…” Sam coughed and wheezed, the demon blood completely subdued by the incredible pain he was feeling in his chest as well as the fear that the eldest Winchester really might kill him. “You haven’t taken much of an interest in Dean, him being an omega and all.”

He wasn’t expecting the statement to cause such a huge reaction, but Henry’s eyes flicked back to blue and he immediately released the hold on Sam, allowing him to topple to the floor again. Sam dragged as much air into his lungs as he could handle, making himself lightheaded, and looked up at the older man who was now staring at him with what could only be taken as a pained expression. The Man of Letters took a step back as Hannah gradually calmed to simple wufs and growls and Adam somehow managed to get Elliott to settle again and go to sleep.

“Do you honestly believe…” A swell of emotion clogged his throat, and to Sam’s continued surprise it looked like Henry was on the verge of tears. “I know we have our differences in the way we view omegas, Sam, and that yours is more…enlightened than mine, but do you really believe as an alpha that I would allow _any_ omega to endure what Dean is being put through? Let alone an omega who is my grandson? I may come from a different time, but to see Dean _collared_ , and to smell the filth that some random alpha is rubbing into his skin…Would _you_ leave an omega facing that all alone? I may be a terrible, negligent father, and a terrible, absentee grandfather, but I am _not_ a terrible man. You should have called me as soon as you suspected he was being mistreated. I have avenues to reach him that you simply don’t.”

Feeling sufficiently cowed, Sam said, “I’m sorry Henry. You’re always saying that you can’t do anything for Dean, or you have to rush off and can’t stay very long. _John_ wouldn’t even stop hunting when we found out he was gone. I figured...you know, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. I really didn’t think you’d be able or willing to help him.”

“Well you were wrong,” Henry snapped, moving to the couch to sit with his head in his hands and collect himself for a moment. Once he had regained his composure and smoothed his ruffled hair, he said, “The alpha who has him is a very powerful politician in Louisiana.”

“We know,” Adam told him, arranging Elliott in the Rock ‘N Play. “We just found out who he is a few minutes before you got here.”

“The travel spell you showed me - can’t you just bring him and Lizzie back here?” Sam asked, but Henry shook his head.

“It's fatal for pups,” he replied. “It’s not apparent just by observation, but there’s tremendous pressure during the trip. Small children can't withstand it. You'll have to go get them, and the alpha is going to be difficult to hide from with the government on his side.”

“You can't help with that?”

“There are some cloaking spells I can provide you with if you’re able to get him away from this man, but they’re temporary. Prolonged use would result in permanent damage to your soul.”

“Well that doesn’t sound good,” Sam groused, and Henry ran a hand across his mouth as he shook his head.

“It’s not. Unless there is absolutely no other choice, I always avoid magic that involves the soul. There’s no telling what will happen once you start tinkering at the edges of your spiritual essence.”

“We’ll ask Kevin,” Adam suggested. “See if he can scrub your case from the system now that he’s hacked in. It may take a while but it’s better than messing with your soul. Then you just have to lay low somewhere until Kevin says you’re in the clear.”

“I know I’ve come on a bit heavy handed about this in the past, but I would strongly recommend you take him and your children to the bunker,” Henry told Sam earnestly. “It’s fully warded, hidden in the middle of nowhere, and nearly impenetrable. I can give you the key to unlock it so you can come and go as you please.”

“I…I would need to discuss that with Dean,” Sam said quietly. “After everything that’s happened…I can’t just decide we’re going to live underground. I can’t take that choice away from him. It’s too much like forcing him to live in a basement.”

He shared a look with Adam, who nodded in agreement. Neither had fully absorbed the reality of Dean being in Louisiana again. Moving him to a subterranean bunker without asking if he would be all right with it, even one that had a twenty-car garage and an armory, was too much to expect.

“I understand,” Henry agreed. “But whatever you decide, he told me he wants to be claimed whether you can get him away or not. He’s terrified that alpha plans to...take advantage of his heat. And from the brief time I was there, I’m afraid his fears are well founded.”

Sam knew they were, of course. He’d had two months of dreams telling him the Winchesters’ concerns weren’t simple paranoia.

“I need to have custody of Elliott before we can do anything,” he said instead of saying anything about Dean bent over a couch. “Annie thinks the OPS will cave pretty quickly, since we’re giving them what they want.”

“And we need to know more about Richard Roman,” Adam agreed. “Can betas stay in the bunker? You said omegas can’t but…”

“The spells to keep betas out would be much simpler to lower than the ones affecting omegas,” Henry replied. “I take it you’d like to stay with Dean?”

“Pretty sure after this he’ll need as much of his family with him as possible.”

Henry nodded in agreement, standing and brushing off his slacks.

“I’ll tell Dean you’re coming and check back with you in a few days to see if you have a plan in place,” he said calmly, blushing as he caught sight of the cracked wall peripherally. “I’m sorry to have stormed in like a common knothead…”

“It’s okay, Henry,” Sam assured him, palms up in a small show of submission. “You’re right, we should have contacted you. Thank you for this.”

Henry gave a small nod and headed into the kitchen as Adam pulled up Kevin in his phone to ask him to look into Dick Roman and see if he could delete Dean’s file entirely. The small flash that burst from the kitchen as Henry returned to wherever it was that he lived had Sam releasing a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. Or maybe he was going directly to see Dean. _Jesus_ Sam hoped he was going directly to see Dean. Not that Dean would necessarily believe Sam was coming, not after all the shit decisions Sam had made to get them here, but at least he still wanted Sam to claim him. That had to mean he still trusted Sam, right?

Right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone who thinks the OPS couldn't possibly have tied Sam and Annie up for a couple of months, the company I work for has had our WBE application stalled for six years because the owners of the company were personal friends with a politician not in favor with the powers that be at the State capitol. You get up against a government organization and they can pretty much do whatever they want.


	96. Well, You Look Like Hell Warmed Over

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Rescuers! Starring Sam as Bernard, Jo as Bianca, and Adam as the albatross whose name I can't recall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have taken some liberties and made some changes with the bunker's design.

When Henry returned a second time, it was with news that Dean had been moved. He’d found his grandson at an antebellum estate in the country. Now he was in a penthouse in the city, one that had a doorman and cameras and would be impossible to get into and out of without being spotted and stopped when they couldn’t use the travel spell because of Lizzie. Henry had barely managed to let Dean know Sam would come for him before he’d been seen by two of the Senator’s staff and almost caught by the building’s security guards. He couldn’t risk another visit until he was ready with the elixir, which only had a twenty-four hour window. They needed to have a clear path to Dean before they attempted to save him, because they were only likely to have one shot.

As Annie suspected, within forty-eight hours of Sam waiving his right to appeal the OPS had dropped their challenge of the PCPS claim, so to Roman it would look like Sam had finally given up on Dean and would now simply walk away. It was the first step in formulating a plan to get Sam close enough to claim Dean without the Senator suspecting he was coming. Lulling Roman into a false sense of security was a start, but didn’t solve the problem of breaking into a high rise in Baton Rouge, making it all the way to the penthouse, and then making it back out again with a collared omega _and_ a baby. They’d either need to stake out the building until someone brought Dean outside ( _he would obviously never be allowed to go anywhere on his own_ ) or wait for them to go back to the estate, which according to Henry had a bunch of servants manning the place but no real security to speak of; or at least nothing like they’d be facing with the penthouse. Dean had also mentioned the butler - who only worked at the estate - was sympathetic to his situation and might provide them with some cover.

The Internet came to their rescue. They were incredibly lucky that it was an election year, and as such Senator Roman was all about touching base with the Little People, allowing the unwashed public far greater access to him than they would ever have when he wasn’t trying to build up his resume for a run at the U.S. Senate in a few years, and then likely the presidency. To give him as much of a chance to shake hands and kiss babies as possible, Roman would be riding in an Independence Day parade on Saturday, the First of July, while his mansion in St. Francisville was open to tours. The house was a historical landmark that he only opened to the public twice a year and a tour was the perfect chance to do recon. At night there would be a ball at the mansion - apparently an annual event - and the number of attendees would be doubled to allow as many donors as possible access to him. Guests would be able to meet and mingle with the Senator and his latest “retraining project” with the National Omega Rehabilitation Program for a small donation of five thousand dollars a plate. It was like Roman was flashing a big neon sign saying, “Grab Dean here.”

Apparently Dick even saw the omega as a campaign tool to win over the hearts and minds of voters. After poking around the campaign website they came across an entire page devoted to the Senator’s charitable works with Omega Protective Services and the National Omega Rehabilitation Program, and how the current omega in his care had been removed from an abusive family after bearing a pup outside of matehood. Dean’s entire life was laid bare in such a way that he could only have looked worse if the site said he was thrown into the program after selling his pup for hard core drugs. It even had an update about “the sire” claiming the pup after realizing Dean was unfit. The page boasted the fact that attendees of the Independence Day gala and select upcoming events could see the omega and the pup still in his care, like they were special exhibits on a museum tour. It was a good thing they were separated from the Senator by a thousand miles and the event was several weeks away, because both Sam and Adam needed time to calm the fuck down.

Jo was pretty pissed that the two men started making plans without her while she was at work as if she wouldn’t be interested in joining them on the trip down to Louisiana, or she was still too fragile after the whole Michigan experience to be up for it, or whatever stupid reason they came up with in their stupid boy brains that told them not to expect her to come. She hadn’t even hesitated to commit to whatever crazy plan the two of them came up with that was probably going to get them all thrown in jail for a couple of decades for crossing a powerful government agency. It was for Dean, and Dean was worth it. Plus, Elliott liked her better than either his father or uncle at the moment so obviously she was going to have to go with them if they had any hope of keeping him calm on that long of a journey.

A little hacking on Kevin’s part and they had the caterer’s schedule, including the seating arrangements, showing the event would be confined to the top floor of the Senator’s mansion and exactly where Dean would be kneeling down to dinner. A few clicks on the website and the kid had a seat reserved for “John McClaine,” thinking it was unlikely the event staff would know what Sam looked like even if Roman did, or that anyone in the Senator’s circle would be _Die Hard_ fans. The Senator’s annual ball had a guest list of over one hundred people so it shouldn’t be difficult for the alpha to blend in and go unnoticed.

It was a good thing they had Jo in on the plan now, because she was the only one level headed enough to point out that it needed to be “John McClaine plus one,” or there’d be no way for her to sneak in and grab Lizzie while Sam was getting Dean. Adam could pose as their driver, and while they were inside he could be handling any issues at the perimeter, like staff or security. Sam was finally starting to see why Dean and Adam liked her so much, even more so when she called her mom to tag along to babysit Elliott and Hannah while everyone else was pretending to be Navy SEALS, since an infant and a dog didn’t exactly fit in a rescue mission.

Ellen provided a second cool head to offset the two furious men, and between her and Bobby in Sioux Falls the logistics fell quickly into place. They reserved a car for the First with a rental agency through one of the cards Sam kept under a pseudonym and would caravan to the estate, leaving the Impala and the truck south of the property along Highway 61. They’d ditch the rental, double back, and cross over into Mississippi where Ellen would be waiting for them in Natchez. The two betas in South Dakota knew a roadhouse on the outskirts of the city where no one would ask questions, and the estate was less than half an hour from the Mississippi border. Though Mississippi was not exactly their first choice for an escape route once they managed to grab Dean and Lizzie, beggars couldn’t be choosers. They needed to get to Kansas to the bunker and wouldn’t be able to go through Louisiana once they were on the the OPS’ radar.

Kevin was pretty sure he was going to be able to wipe any record of Sam and Dean’s case, including all family or friends named in the suit, from the OPS database once everything was said and done, though it might take a while and he’d need to wait until any final charges came in from whatever it was Sam and Adam planned to do ( _he didn’t want to know beyond getting Sam into the party, preferring to live under a veil of plausible deniability_ ). In the meantime he was setting up completely new identities for them to live under - Mr. Sam Wesson and Mr. Dean Smith - while carefully routing Sam’s finances into untraceable offshore accounts under his new alias. The identities would hold up under moderate scrutiny until the case of Sam Campbell and Dean Winchester went “poof” and they could get back to their regularly scheduled lives without fear of the OPS looming over them. Since they would be mated soon it would provide Dean with a whole new set of legal protections and society at large would probably even start recognizing him as a person again just because he had a scar on his neck instead of a collar. They wouldn’t be able to sue the OPS as Annie wanted to without a case to base it on of course, but they could worry about whether or not they felt like taking on an oppressive government agency and how to go about it once they knew Dean was safe. Sam was already trying to decide which tropical island he was going to buy the kid as a thank you present when this was all over.

Henry spent the week leading up to the exodus from Fort Wayne making sure Sam practiced the spell to travel to the bunker and could complete it from memory in case something went sideways and the two of them had to split off from Ellen, Jo, Adam, and the kids, and Sam made several trips there with Henry to map the place out and try to make it homier. It reeked of stale alpha scent, the building having run on reserve power for decades, merely recirculating the air since being abandoned instead of drawing fresh air in from outside. Henry redid the spell work meant to keep betas out, so soon it would have all new scents, even if it was mostly just generic dish soap. Some Febreeze and a few days of running the air pumps at full force should hopefully have it nice and fresh for the young family to inhabit by the time they got there.

Sam wished he had more time to go through the building and clean it thoroughly, considering the fine layer of dust that had naturally built up on all the surfaces, but it was just too large of a space. He hoped the vintage 1930s furniture would make up for the fact that they’d need to clean. The massive staircase from the entrance wound down into a grand war room with conference room sized tables, the walls lined with books. Off of one end was a huge library filled with literally thousands of books on lore that had its own catalogue system. Off the other end was a hallway that led in one direction to an industrial sized kitchen, and in the other direction to the bedrooms, which were arranged in a hallway that was essentially a square, with communal showers in the center. Each bedroom had a powder room attached, with a toilet and sink, and all had simple beds, desks, and dressers. Stairs from the kitchen led down to the armory, weapons range, storage units, smaller meeting rooms, and holding cell. One level lower was an actual dungeon. That was just what Sam had bothered to explore during his practice time. There were countless other doors he had yet to open and he’d completely ignored the garage, but he wanted to save some surprises for when ( _if_ ) Dean got there.

They all kept repeating to themselves that unless they ran into something like a flat tire or a police checkpoint for expired registrations their plan was solid and there was no reason to think they wouldn’t get away with it. Pulling something off among that many people was risky, since it left a lot of witnesses, but it would provide them cover as well. Roman could hardly make a scene in front of a hundred donors during an election year, not when they were in a state where Sam’s claim on Dean couldn’t be challenged, even if there was an order of protection against him. He would have to take Dean away from the party once he realized Sam was there before he did anything punitive, and then they’d make their move. Sam and Adam had trained to take down some of the most evil creatures on the planet, and Jo had managed to survive a group of inbred cannibals ( _albeit with some help_ ). They could handle a pompous state senator as long as they kept their wits about them, and while Sam didn’t want to say anything, afraid he might jinx them, as soon as they left Fort Wayne the dreams that had plagued him stopped.

It didn’t mean the situation wasn’t still scary as hell. Sam had no clue how both Adam and Jo were staying so calm when he was a complete and utter mess. They checked in at the roadhouse Friday night, Sam driving down with Hannah, who must have shed enough fur on the three day, fourteen hour drive to make a whole other Pyr, while Elliott rode down in the truck with Adam and Jo. He hadn’t even fought to have Elliott ride with him. Not that Sam wouldn’t give his life for his son, but he was already tense enough as it was about their plan to get to Dean. He didn’t need another distraction in the car with him besides the oppressive heat and the massively shedding dog, who was currently making him praise the Impala’s leather seats ( _though he hoped she didn’t rip the upholstery with her claws_ ) even as he melted to them.

Ellen arrived before daybreak on the First to keep track of the dog and gather supplies for their trip north through Mississippi while Sam and Jo headed for Baton Rouge with Elliott, and Adam went to the estate to tour the house and see what they were dealing with. Jo wanted to get a seat on Main Street right at the front of the crowd, where she’d have the best chance of seeing Dean were he in the parade, and even if he weren’t she could get a read on Roman. The beta had seemed far too gung-ho to get this show on the road as she slapped on her sunglasses and huge, floppy hat, but given how long she’d talked about wanting to be a hunter, Sam supposed this was her way to get back on the horse. She’d been hunted by human monsters back in February and now she was helping with the hunt of one. As long as she reined in the ferocity by the time they got to the party at the thought of sticking it to an asshole who assumed he was untouchable, she’d be fine.

Not that Sam was one to talk when he was spending every waking second in Baton Rouge suppressing the need to track Dick Roman down and crush his skull with his bare hands. The desire to use his powers to locate him and strangle him from the safety of the roadhouse in Natchez while he sat with Hannah on the couch, Elliott sleeping on his chest, had been very hard to resist the night before, like an itch promising not to go away until he scratched it. It had been months since he’d tapped that reserve to order John not to kill him and to hunt with him though, and the longer he went without using it for anything else the less control the deep, black anger seemed to have over whether he tapped into it or it just sprang to life on its own. The homicidal urges he felt towards Roman needed no enhancement and were difficult enough to control as it was without opening the door to the additional demonic rage. Plus, if he just skinned the Senator alive with his mind from a distance, Dean would probably get shipped off to another alpha and this whole thing would start all over again.

Adam and Jo had vetoed the idea of Sam going to the parade, thinking he might throw himself in front of the car to stop it if Roman had his arm around Dean’s shoulder or something, so instead he got Elliott into his stroller and decided to take a trip on the trolley down to Third Street to hit up what was supposed to be a high end omega boutique called Belle in the hope they’d have something to remove a collar without a key. A little voice inside his head told him he’d be better off driving to one of the city’s three Walmarts, but he thought Belle might also have something nice he could buy his omega for the trip to the bunker. He knew the last thing Dean would want was more omega clothing, however Maxim’s had carried some sturdier clothes in softer fabrics that he hadn’t bought up in Chicago, being certain they wouldn’t qualify as “typical omega fashion,” and he hoped Belle offered some of the same things. Just because Dean preferred tee shirts and jeans didn’t mean Sam couldn’t get him some _nice_ tee shirts and jeans. He just hoped Elliott would be up for a little shopping spree and the heat didn’t turn out to be too much for him, as he hadn’t wanted to be away from him for the whole day and night. Fortunately since they’d arrived the evening before it was apparent all the stores and restaurants in the region were in full-on air conditioner season so he figured that should help.

Belle wasn’t at all like Maxim’s; that was apparent the minute he walked through the door. It was all frills and chiffons and things designed for delicate waifs not meant to lift more than a nail file. Maybe it was just because this was the deep South and denims and flannels weren’t practical clothing, but it definitely seemed to Sam that Belle had a very particular idea of what an omega should be, and any om who disagreed was not welcome. Before he could back out the door one of the sales associates had spotted him and seconds later he found both himself and Elliott being fawned all over by the three betas in the shop who apparently had nothing better to do.

He was in the process of trying to disengage from the cooing women when he scented the pulse of omega distress from the direction of the dressing rooms - roses and cloves corrupted by anxiety - and froze, gripping the stroller handle until his knuckles went white and he was fairly certain he was bending it. The scent died away quickly and was followed by a wave of irritated alpha pheromones as a man beyond the dressing room curtains snapped, “Oh, come _on_ Dean!”

It took several seconds for Sam to realize that the reason he was lightheaded was because he was holding his breath as the strange blond alpha a few inches shorter than him strode out of the dressing area with a pair of scissors in his hand. He clamped down on his emotions and the immediate instinct to let his alpha out completely ( _red eyes, fangs and all_ ), merely tightening his grip further when the man approached, focused in on the sales associates. The sleeves of his white dress shirt were rolled up as he lifted the scissors in the face of the middle aged beta turning to look up from Elliott, exasperation in his eyes. The beta gave a small shriek, which of course upset Elliott and brought the alpha’s attention to Sam.

“Oh, hey man, sorry, I didn’t mean to wake your kid,” he said casually of the now-wailing baby before returning to the beta. “Which one of you gave him scissors?”

“Oh…” The youngest of the women, a tiny little slip of a thing with purple hair on the other side of the stroller, raised her hand sheepishly. “He said the tag in his shirt was itchy. He just wanted something to cut it out.”

“Does _that_ look like he was cutting a tag out of a shirt?” Nick demanded lowly, pointing to the curtains where Dean now stood, eyes locked on Sam and the stroller, the uneven lengths of his hair looking like a four year old decided to give him a haircut while he slept.

Sam quickly stifled the laugh of pure joy that burst from him, relieved when Nick assumed he was laughing _at_ Dean as opposed to it being his only other option besides crying. He looked ridiculous in a salmon chiffon shirt hanging open to his navel and khaki shorts, the thick black riveted collar contrasting starkly against his pale neck. The idea of being in the same room as Dean after so long with no clue where or how he was outside of the visions that hounded him at night had been thrilling. The reality of it was turning out to be anything but.

The circles under Dean’s eyes were dark as bruises, his face thin and ashy, and he was about as calm as a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. Sam could see he was practically panting, apparently trying to take in enough air for both of them since Sam had once again forgotten how to breathe. For a crazy moment Sam thought things might be as simple as knocking out whoever this guy was and snatching Dean from this stupid shop, except he didn’t see Lizzie anywhere. Dean wouldn’t have just left her in the dressing room, so she must not be with him. The omega was staring at him with huge, glassy eyes, and Sam thought surely they’d been glued to their spots for ten minutes at least, but it must only have been a second or so, since the betas were still apologizing to the random alpha and no one seemed to have noticed they were looking at each other. Before anyone could realize something was off, Sam turned away to tend to Elliott, who was really starting to cry.

Dean was fairly certain he was having an out-of-body experience as he stared at Sam and their son on the other side of the stupid omega shop that he hadn’t wanted to come to today, but had to because Roman insisted he needed to have something new for the Independence Day party. The paranoid part of Dean’s brain - which was _most_ of Dean’s brain these days - screamed at him that the Senator finally figured out Sam was coming for him. That he’d sent Dean to this shop knowing Sam would be there, and had insisted on taking Lizzie with him to ride in the parade not because it was good for his image, but because Dean wouldn’t be able to run the first chance he got.

Logically Dean knew that was ridiculous. They weren’t dealing with a psychic or a witch or a demon - just a man with an ego so large he couldn’t imagine anyone being brave ( _or foolish_ ) enough to make a move against him. Unfortunately there was very little room in Dean’s universe for logic these days, as having to endure Roman's rehabilitative efforts was making him slide ever closer to madness. After all, he’d just conned one of the sales associates into bringing him a pair of scissors to butcher his hair with so Nick would _have_ to take him to a barber to get a haircut. Dean wasn’t exactly living in a sane world at the moment. Operating under the suspicion that this was part of a long con, he dragged his eyes away from his alpha and focused on Nick and controlling his breathing, before walking over while the driver was asking the sales associates if they at least knew of a good salon.

“La Maison over on First Street can fix just about _anything_ ,” insisted the one with the purple hair. “You’ll probably need an appointment, though.”

“If he needs it fixed right now there’s a coupla places in the Mall of Louisiana,” suggested the middle aged one. “Or there’s always the Walmart salons if you don’t want anyone seein’ him.”

“He’ll probably blend in best in one of the Walmarts,” said the last sales associate, snapping her gum. “He’s not gonna look worse than anyone else in there.”

“Well Dean-o, looks like you’ve earned yourself a trip to Wally World,” Nick grumbled. “The shirt and pants he was trying on, we want those if you can wrap them up. Do you have any hats so he doesn’t have to walk around looking like someone took a weed whacker to his hair?”

“Sure,” purple hair replied. “Downstairs. I can show you where.”

“Can I trust you up here by yourself for a few minutes?” Nick asked, and Dean barely suppressed a flinch. It didn’t seem possible the alpha couldn’t hear how violently his heart was pounding; not when it was echoing so loudly in the omega’s ears he had a hard time making out anything else. “I’m not gonna come back up and find you’ve cut up your clothes or something?”

“I won’t do anything,” Dean told him, looking anywhere that wasn’t at Elliott and Sam, who he knew was looking anywhere but at him. Under different circumstances he definitely would have laughed at having turned into a Bronte heroine. At the moment he wasn’t getting enough air into his lungs to laugh.

“We’ll keep an eye on him,” the middle aged associate promised, and with a nod Nick headed to the stairs leading to the accessories section in the basement.

Sam thought surely the store would eventually begin to vibrate, given how badly he was shaking as he forced himself not to grab Dean and run. The smell of another alpha on his skin strong enough to fill the store was turning Sam’s stomach, making it hard to contain the fury that wanted him to find the source of the foreign mark and tear his flesh from his bones. He was thankful the sales associates couldn’t scent him, and hoped the longing he wasn’t able to suppress had dissipated before the blond guy came back up from downstairs, doggedly keeping his focus on Elliott - who was still crying on his shoulder - so as not to fall completely apart. The answering wave of relief and anguish that flooded off of Dean certainly didn’t help him any.

“You’re holding him wrong,” Dean said softly, the middle aged beta bustling between them to straighten up clothing racks and refold shirts somehow oblivious to the tension hanging over the shop. There was so much more he wanted to say, grand declarations of love that he’d deny later when he remembered how angry he was at Sam for getting him into this situation in the first place, but that would undoubtedly strike the oblivious sales associates as suspicious and they might start paying attention.

“Yeah?” Sam asked, taken completely by surprise at the ability to find his voice.

“Yeah, he uh…” Being ripped apart by hellhounds couldn’t have hurt much more than holding himself back from taking Elliott into his arms, but Dean didn’t want to risk Roman scenting the baby on his clothes. He also didn’t know how long Nick would be downstairs, plus he still suspected this was some kind of trap and he was being surveilled, ridiculous as he knew that fear was. He crossed his arms over his chest, gripping the sides of his shirt to keep from reaching out for his son, and focused on the wall past Sam’s shoulder. “You’re...uh...tryin’ to let him scent you but he’s too young. It’ll soothe him more if he can hear your heartbeat.”

“Oh,” Sam murmured, shifting the baby down as Dean suggested and finding he immediately began to settle. “Do you want to hold him?”

“No,” Dean answered instantly, swiping at the moisture on his lashes. The betas moved to another section of the store, one of them going to get the clothes Dean left in the dressing room and unintentionally giving them a bit more privacy, and Dean drew in a shuddering breath to ask, “Are you real?”

“What?” Sam said, fighting every instinct he had to show Dean just how real he was.

“Things have been...fuzzy for a while,” Dean explained quietly, running a shaking hand over his face. “There were some, uh...white pills without a prescription in the medicine cabinet that were there one day and gone the next, but the fuzziness hasn’t gone away. I don’t know what’s real anymore.”

Sam couldn’t hold back when his omega looked so desperate and uncertain. Though he didn’t fold Dean in his arms and kiss him into breathlessness like he wanted, he moved in close enough for his scent to overwhelm the smaller man, grabbing Dean’s wrist to stop him from taking the step back that he wanted. Instead of allowing him to move out of the soothing cloud of leather and books Sam pulled him forward and brought Dean’s hand up to Elliott’s hair, giving him the chance to see how soft it still was.

“I’m _real_ , Dean,” he whispered, running a thumb along the omega’s wrist to still his trembling. “I’m real and I’m coming for you. Henry’s just waiting for Roman to bring you back to the house so he can give you the elixir. I’ll be at the party tonight. Just drink it before the party, don’t overreact when you see me, and let me take care of the rest.”

Dean’s lungs began to work again at the feel of his son’s skin, warm and smooth and perfect, and with a nod he said, “Okay.”

“Hey, hey, hey!” Nick snapped as he reappeared in the stairwell, moving quickly to stand between the two. It was a terrible decision, Sam’s hackles rising as a low rumble of thunder grew in his chest. Nick’s eyes flashed in response and he shoved Dean behind him, a hand on Sam’s chest; another mistake. “You see that collar, pal? That means he’s government property, so back the fuck off.”

“Get your hand off me,” the younger alpha warned, canines descending when Nick ignored the order.

“He wasn’t doing anything, Nick,” Dean interjected, grabbing Nick’s other arm and pulling to get his attention off of Sam as the purple haired beta hurried to the store’s phone in case they needed to call the police to break up a fight, which seemed increasingly likely. “His pup was fussing, I was just giving him some advice.”

“Is that right?” Nick asked, his eyes never straying from Sam even as he spoke to Dean.

“ _Yes_ ,” Dean insisted. “What, you think he’s gonna pull something with me while holding a newborn? Come on, man.”

Nick considered that for a long moment, looking from Sam to Elliott and then back before finally stepping back and giving the taller man a small smile. Sam managed to force his alpha to stand down as well so he could half grimace in return, jostling the baby slightly against his chest. Dean was greatly relieved that the driver hadn’t really looked at him yet, as he was about three breaths away from crying - something he hadn’t done since Nick picked him up from the airport.

“Yeah, okay,” Nick said at last, and then threw Sam a genuine smile, his entire body relaxing as he decided it was stupid to think a guy with a tiny pup was going to put the moves on Dean in the middle of a clothing store. “Sorry about that. He’s my boss’ ward so it’s my job to keep him safe when we’re out, and a lot of alphas don’t respect the collar. You understand.”

The idea of this guy guarding Dean from random alphas on the street made Sam more than a little sick, but he supposed he should be thankful someone was doing it. He shifted his focus to his son, which gave him a chance to relax a little more, and turned away from them to get Elliott back into his stroller as he replied, “I can definitely understand that. He’s probably really pretty when his hair’s not a disaster.”

That drew a laugh out of the driver, who agreed, “Yeah, I mean, not my type, but he’s certainly a looker when he’s not a hot mess.”

“Better go get him that haircut,” Sam said as Nick tore a tag off the baseball cap in his hand and shoved it down on Dean’s head.

“No kidding. My boss is going to have a fit if he sees him like this. A _worse_ fit, anyway. He likes long hair on an om.”

“Well, good luck with that.”

Sam gave him a nod and hurried out of the store, trying to ignore the way Dean trembled when the stroller brushed against him. The wave of heat that hit him as he headed up the street to where the trolley stopped did very little to squelch the swell of possessiveness demanding he return to Belle and decapitate the Senator’s driver, whether he had been protecting Dean or not. The text Jo sent letting him know Roman’s car had just passed her and Dean wasn’t with him but Lizzie was helped distract him from his murderous impulses, and as he got himself situated on the trolley between an old beta with a terrible cough and a young omega trying to wrangle triplets he shot back a message saying he was on his way to meet her so they could get something appropriate to wear before heading back to Natchez to dress for the party. He’d tell both her and Adam about seeing Dean in person after he’d had a chance to calm down a bit - presuming he was able to calm down. At the moment he needed to focus on anything that wasn’t the way his omega had looked and smelled and sounded, or the minute they got into the party he’d go for Dick Roman’s throat. Though the more he thought about Dean taking a pair of scissors to his hair just so he could get taken to a Walmart salon, the less that seemed like a bad idea.


	97. I Got Somebody Coming For Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Independence Day takes on a whole new meaning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My laptop screen has died on me and not sure I'll have it fixed by Sunday, so have an early treat! It was either post it now or make everyone wait, and I understand the correct way to build suspense. :)

Summer on the Mississippi three hours from the Gulf of Mexico had to have been considered at some point to be in the running for one of the circles of Hell, conducive as it was to fever dreams and hallucinations. At least, Dean certainly thought it must be a hallucination when his grandfather showed up by the garage one afternoon in early June, managing only by some miracle not to have arrived in view of where Dick Roman was standing with Missouri on the porch to go over the day’s activities for Dean before he headed into the city for the day. How Roman didn’t scent Henry the omega couldn’t be sure, but he thought it might have something to do with how quickly Missouri turned the Senator to walk him down the opposite side of the house when she saw Dean’s full body flinch.

Missouri’s reaction was the one thing that made him think his grandfather might not just be a conjuring of his frantic imagination to help him cope with his current situation. Though it was possible the butler would run interference for Dean if he were just experiencing some kind of seizure or psychotic break ( _he was definitely overdue for one_ ), it was more likely that she saw something in his reaction that told her he needed to be alone, and he was grateful for it. Since realizing she may not know her employer as well as she thought on the day they met, she’d hovered as close to Dean as she could to provide a buffer between him and the rest of the staff, but when it came to keeping him away from Roman there was only so much she could do. Thankfully, one of the few things she managed was to give Dean enough time to explain to his grandfather that day exactly where he was and why.

It hardly seemed possible that any of it was real - his grandfather’s miraculous arrival, his promise to tell Sam where Dean was, the assurance that he would bring Dean the claiming elixir that would stop his heats, the guarantee that Sam would come for him. He certainly thought he must have imagined the encounter when just a few days later Roman moved Dean with him to his apartment after Dean found one of the proofs for the map of the house and its location that would be given out on the tours of the estate that were planned for the First of July. Dean had no idea they were that near the Mississippi border, and Roman clearly wanted to keep it that way. Henry returning in the middle of the high rise’s elevator to tell him he’d spoken with Sam while Dean was on his way downstairs to meet Roman for dinner had definitely struck him as a fantasy of his overwrought brain, though it did occur to him that if Henry _were_ all in his head the building’s security wouldn’t have chased him off when they got to the lobby. He really couldn’t be sure of anything now, though - not when Roman had been giving him something extra in his breakfast for the past few weeks.

It hadn’t taken Dean long to figure out he was being drugged with his morning meal, though after he tried skipping various parts of the meal and what he was experiencing didn’t stop, he quickly realized the alpha was dosing something different every day. He should have suspected Roman was into mind games given his other sadistic interests. Dean was dizzy and tired all the time, his vision often blurred, and while the Senator insisted he was just suffering from stress and needed to relax, Dean wasn’t an idiot. A general sense of paranoia gripped him whenever Roman was in the apartment as Dean waited for the man to demand he tell him who the dark haired alpha was that could pop in and out of moving elevators, which in itself was ridiculous enough for Dean to doubt his senses. If anyone had told him back at school that he would be relying on magic and his grandfather of all people to save him from an overzealous alpha he’d have suggested they talk to the nice young men in their nice white coats. Now he was feeling like the one who should probably book an extended vacation at the funny farm. He would have welcomed such a vacation, actually, if only to get away from Dick’s wandering hands and mouth and cock.

Dean accepted pretty immediately that expecting Dick Roman to keep his body parts to himself was about as pointless as expecting the sun not to rise in the east. It had been a long time since the alpha fostered an omega who was a genuine challenge, and he was thoroughly enjoying the time it was taking to break Dean. Granted, when the omega first arrived and began to successfully withdraw into himself in response to the Senator’s affections it had been annoying. No one liked a still body beneath them when they were jerking off. Once he started dosing Dean with Valium in the morning, however, things became much more fun, with Dean soft next to him if not necessarily willing. Though the omega still hadn’t given into any of his advances, the amount of semen he was rubbing into Dean’s skin on a daily basis was rapidly reducing the time to his next heat. He was already starting to smell like sugar underneath the possessive scent of Roman’s cum. Another week of Dick’s special alpha treatments and Dean would be begging the Senator for his knot.

Of course, he wasn’t able to give Dean his daily helper or a handful of spunk for the holiday weekend when they were going to be around so many of his constituents. It wouldn’t do at all for people to think Roman had an addict on his hands, nor would it be appropriate for Dean to smell like the Senator had just jacked off on him on the way to the party, so of course after three days with no morning pick-me-up or afternoon skin treatment the omega was back to being stiff and distant on Saturday. While it was a small price to pay to keep his Senate seat this term, it certainly was irritating, particularly when Dean was clearly on edge. Roman wasn’t sure if it was just because of the pressure of so many public appearances or the hormonal shifts he was undergoing, but he’d already had to send him off shopping with Nick instead of riding in the parade after the tantrum he’d thrown about his hair at breakfast, and when they’d come back afterwards Dean might as well have been bald. The short, spikey cut that had been necessary after something happened with a pair of scissors ( _Dick didn’t really understand the whole thing and he didn’t really care - he was too furious at the state of Dean’s hair_ ) was definitely unbecoming of the omega who was to be by his side at his annual ball. Dick knew omegas had delicate constitutions, yet the way Dean was falling apart without the calming effects of the Valium was a little ridiculous.

Dean was pretty damn sure he had every right to fall apart. He was doing a fine job when he first arrived at the estate of keeping his mind separated from what was happening to his body, but after a month and a half of swimming through a daily fog that gave him the true ability to just not care about anything, being plunged back into his senses cold turkey was a lot to take. This was especially true when he was suddenly expected to deal with _people_ after being sequestered at the apartment with primarily just Nick and Lizzie for company. Seeing Sam while out shopping and learning that not only was Henry coming back, but Sam was getting him out that night didn’t help matters any. It was quite a shock to realize those meetings with Henry actually happened and there was an real chance ( _not that he thought it was a good one_ ) he’d spent his last night with Roman’s dick pressed up against his back while he slept. That was enough to make anyone anxious.

The afternoon passed for the omega in a blur of highways, campaign appearances, meetings with lobbyists who couldn’t attend the gala, and a very unhappy baby who didn’t enjoy the heat or crowds any more than Dean did. He somehow managed to nod, smile, and not speak unless spoken to from the minute they left the apartment until the minute they returned. He very seriously considered nicking a bottle of the good stuff before they headed out to the estate to dress and begin greeting the guests, but didn’t trust what would happen on the car ride if Nick decided to put the divider up. They arrived at the mansion amid a whirlwind of caterers and staff putting the final touches on the third floor ballroom and testing the dumbwaiter one last time to ensure there would be no problems coordinating with the kitchen. The Senator was too busy reviewing the guest list with Missouri and the party planner to spend much time focusing on the omega, making it easy for Henry to pop in around five o’clock with Dean’s ticket to freedom in the form of a small vial of red liquid and the rough explanation Sam had already given him at Belle, at which point the omega snagged one of the bottles of Merlot to wash down the elixir and didn’t bother with a glass.

It was a really bad idea to start drinking before the party even started. He knew that, but he just needed to relax a little bit. The guests wouldn’t begin arriving until seven thirty, and two and a half hours of waiting for something to go wrong was two and a half hours too many to handle without a nice buzz. He had no idea what Roman expected of him at the event, whether he’d be on the leash or sitting on the pillow with donors paying for the opportunity to hand feed him appetizers, so a little pre-gaming, while ill-advised, definitely seemed his best chance for making it through the evening until ( _if_ ) Sam arrived and did whatever it was he was planning to do.

As it drew closer to when the guests would begin to arrive Dean kept waiting for the other shoe to drop; the jump scare around the corner; the host to pop out and say, “Smile, you’re on Candid Camera!” Things never went this well for him. Not that he should say things were going well - he was trapped between Dick Roman’s penthouse and country estate being dosed with something that lowered his awareness of his surroundings and subjected to daily molestation - but as the minutes ticked by and Roman betrayed no knowledge whatsoever that plans that had been laid to save Dean from this torture, he started to think the Senator either had the best poker face on the planet or he really had no idea Sam was coming. So he started with the one bottle of Merlot, which turned into two, and by the time he really needed to get into the black tuxedo pants and white silk shirt they’d picked up at Belle he was actually glad the damn thing was a wrap-around, because he never could have worked buttons.

The house was at least so beautifully decorated that most of the guests weren’t likely to notice one slightly tipsy omega, even in the moments the Senator was attached to him at the hip. It may have been a long time since Dean had been able to drink, but two bottles of wine to pre-game weren’t enough to make him sloppy - at least he hoped not. He might have been wrong about that, however, based on the looks Missouri was giving him while Roman worked the crowd. Nick was downstairs coordinating the parking, and though there was an actual security detail the butler was Dean’s official babysitter whenever Dick decided to wander away.

Dean never thought he would have cared about politics, but the amount of time Dick spent having to deal with donors while he and Missouri hung out near the bar definitely had him appreciating the way campaigns were run. That was until Roman sent one of the security guards to go bring Lizzie upstairs so some of the guests could “ooo” and “ahh” over her, at which point Dean got a little growly and grabbed for a glass of champagne as one of the waiters sauntered past. Upon seeing Missouri’s eyebrow arched in his direction, he grabbed a couple of the hors d’oeurves from the next tray that passed and popped them inelegantly into his mouth.

“What?” he asked around the food when her expression didn’t change.

“Far be it from me to tell a grown man what he can and cannot do…” she began, and he laughed, having to cover his mouth quickly to keep the food in.

“You see the collar, right?” he said. “Means pretty much anyone in here can tell me what to do.”

“You sure you need another glass of champagne?” she scolded as he picked up some mini quiches and nodded at the server.

“Need? No. Want? Absolutely.”

“Is somethin’ wrong, Dean?” It was his turn to arch an eyebrow, and she gave a short nod in agreement of how stupid the question was. “I mean more than the usual.”

“Well…” He snagged some bacon covered scallops and stuffed mushrooms to set on the bar behind him so he could pick at them while they talked. “My life story is apparently on Dick’s campaign page, everyone here thinks it’s ‘just tragic’ what my family did to me, six separate people have told me I’d have been able to keep my son if I hadn’t been such a slut - sorry, _tramp_ \- and waited until I was mated before taking a knot, and your boss has my daughter up at nine o’clock when the band’s about to start, which is two fucking hours past her bedtime, so she’s never going to settle back down for me now. Oh, and I’m pretty sure my heat’s gonna hit sometime next week, because this place feels like a furnace beyond the regular uncomfortable swamp humidity. But other than that, things are perfect.”

“Goodness, I wish _I_ could eat and drink like that and not worry about my girlish figure.”

Dean nearly jumped out of his skin at the comment from the petite blonde beta standing at his elbow with a champagne flute in her hand. He’d never seen Jo so cleaned up, and wondered absently how hard it was for her to sit still for however long it took to give her that updo and do that makeup. The shimmering gold dress skirted her figure like liquid metal, pulling out the highlights in her hair and her eyes. It was an excellent disguise. Dean wouldn’t have recognized her from a distance, and the likelihood that any pictures or descriptions from this evening would lead anyone to her when she was in her standard jeans and tee shirts seemed pretty low. She winked at him, her eyes fierce despite the smile on her face, before looking past him to Missouri.

“His diet is pretty strict most days,” the butler said, moving around in front of Dean, who was working furiously at calming himself and purposely staring at the floor to keep from scanning the room frantically for Sam. “Omegas do have higher metabolisms, though. At the risk of appearing rude to one of the Senator’s guests, you _are_ aware that it’s improper to speak to a collared omega, aren’t you?”

“What?” Jo asked, her face the perfect picture of shocked embarrassment. “My stars, I had no idea! I’m afraid I don’t know much about the Omega Rehabilitation thingy.” She sure had the Southern accent down pat, her bartender’s charm on in full force. “I only know one or two omegas myself. My brother knows much more about them.”

“Is that right?” Dean could feel Missouri sizing Jo up without even looking at the women, and found himself deeply regretting those two bottles of wine and four glasses of champagne. “And do we have the pleasure of your brother’s presence this evening, or just yours?”

“Oh he’s over there talkin’ to the band,” Jo replied, casually leaning against the bar to brush Dean’s arm. “Well he was. Now he’s headin’ this way. The freakishly tall fella in the tux. He got all the height, I got all the looks.”

“I got both, actually,” Sam said as he slid up next to Jo and slung an arm playfully around her shoulders. Dean decided clinging to the bar for dear life was probably his best course of action; otherwise his inhibitions were low enough that he was likely to tackle the alpha to the floor and that was certain to ruin whatever the two of them were up to. “Who are our new friends?”

“Well, this is the Senator’s latest omega project,” Jo told him casually, then gave a small laugh as she turned to Missouri. “I’m afraid I don’t know who this is. Aren’t I awful? I never even asked.”

“Missouri Mosley.” The full body flush coloring Dean’s skin didn’t escape the beta’s attention as she took in the ridiculously tall alpha who looked surprisingly comfortable in a penguin suit for someone so young. Whereas the young woman was coming on just a tad too strong, he was clearly at home rubbing elbows with Louisiana’s richest and most well connected. “I’m Senator Roman’s butler.”

“An actual butler!” The giant alpha seemed genuinely delighted. “I haven’t known anyone who needed someone to buttle in years. Not since Tim Curry in _Clue_.”

“He did set a high bar,” the butler said with a smile. “I like you, Mr…?”

“McClaine. John McClaine.” Years later if anyone claimed Dean’s heart did a little twittery flip at that moment he would have threatened to pull out their fingernails, but his heart definitely did a little twittery flip at the reference to the movie they watched the first Christmas Adam and Dean spent with Sam at Actaeon. “This is my sister Holly.”

“A pleasure,” Jo said as violins started delicately from the far end of the dance floor, groaning after only a few moments. “You didn’t, John.”

“Oh, I did,” he laughed.

“Air Supply? _Really_?” She gave an affronted huff and an eye roll just like a picture perfect little sister would, though there was a smirk on her face as she shook her head. “If you’ll both excuse me, I’d like to go see that beautiful little girl the Senator’s showin’ off.”

With that Jo sashayed away across the ballroom to where Roman was still completely engrossed near the doors with half a dozen donors all cooing over Lizzie. She was holding up surprisingly well under all the attention at such a late hour, benefiting no doubt from the two hours of sleep she’d gotten before Dick decided his political aspirations were more important than a growing child’s need for rest. Sam moved easily into the spot vacated by Jo, turning his back to the bar to lean against it on his elbows and surveying the dance floor that was starting to fill. Dean wasn’t sure where Sam was getting the willpower to just casually stand there, but then he doubted the alpha had decided it was a good night to get hammered. The omega focused on the appetizers he’d grabbed and breathing in the all the calming pheromones Sam was sending towards him in waves.

“I’m surprised you’d request Air Supply,” Missouri told him, stepping back around to the other side of Dean to recline easily against the bar as well. “They’re such a typical omega band.”

“True, but they sound great covered by a string quartet,” Sam said. “Though this is a little more than a string quartet, but you get the idea.”

“I did always like this one,” Missouri purred appreciatively, crooning some of the first verse of _I’m All Out of Love_.

“You should hear _Making Love Out of Nothing at All_ on a harp,” Sam replied, and Dean made a sound that could have been a laugh, a sob, or a choke. Sam turned to him and nudged his shoulder. “Would you like to dance?”

Dean actually spilled his drink at the suggestion, the champagne flute skittering across the bar and smashing on the floor at the feet of the bartender when he tried to grab it to down the contents. He was very close to baring his neck right in the middle of the party but was sure that wasn’t part of whatever it was Sam had planned. He thought there was probably a very good reason that the alpha was just standing around shooting the shit with Missouri. He just wished he knew what it was because his nerves couldn't take much more of this.

“Well go on, Dean,” Missouri said when he hadn’t moved. The omega stared at her, practically slack-jawed, and she gave him a small shove towards Sam. “It’s a nice song. Besides, he's much better looking in person than his picture in the OPS file.” She laid a hand on Sam's arm and said, “Whatever you're gonna do, do it fast.”

While Dean may not have known how he should respond to that, Sam had no such problem. He threw Missouri his best smile, the one that showed every dimple, grabbed hold of the omega’s hand, and swept him out onto the dance floor, ignoring the way Dean suddenly developed two left feet. Within a few bars of the song they were in the middle of the other couples, some of whom were casting them scandalized glances as Sam nuzzled against Dean’s temple and moved the hand he was using to lead the smaller man around the floor between them to place against his chest.

Dean expected Roman to be on them within seconds, but when that didn’t happen he started to think these encounters with Sam were probably delusions and decided to just enjoy them. If it all turned out to be a dream it wouldn’t be the worst one he’d ever had. It actually would have made more sense if it _was_ a dream, since the idea that Sam was going to be able to get him out of a building full of people without anyone intercepting them would undoubtedly require an awful lot of things to go exactly right, and Dean couldn’t remember the last time anything had gone exactly right in his life.

“Way to mind-whammy the butler, Obi-wan,” he said, curling his fingertips into the front of the alpha’s shirt.

“I didn’t mind-whammy her,” Sam laughed, pulling him in just a little closer as a beta couple next to them actually “tsk”ed aloud. “That’s called charm.”

“Is that right?” Dean asked. “Why does she get all the charm and I get yanked around like a sack of flour?”

“You stink,” Sam told him, brushing his lips across the omega’s eyelids. “When we get out of here I’m thinking we can soak you in tomato juice, like when someone gets sprayed by a skunk.”

“Yeah, about that.” Dean knew he absolutely shouldn’t snuggle in and slot his face up against Sam’s neck when he was still really buzzed and the last time they did this it got him chained to a bed, but he was feeling very warm and his stomach was tying itself in knots and the alpha just smelled so damn good. “My keeper’s gonna kick you out of here on your ass as soon as he spots us.”

“I’m counting on him to try.”

As if he’d been summoned, Roman was there with event security, tapping on Sam’s shoulder and flooding the immediate area with furious alpha stench. The dancers in their vicinity parted quite a bit like the Red Sea, leaving the Senator smoothing down the front of his tuxedo coat as he tried not to spark a series of brawls among the increasingly edgy alphas nearby. The smell coming from Dick mixed with the growls rumbling low in his chest drove Dean instinctively into Sam’s side, his face pressed firmly behind the alpha’s ear. He felt a painful twinge deep in his abdomen as a pulse of fire burst beneath his skin and then rapidly dissipated, leaving him panting and sweating against Sam’s arm.

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist that you leave,” Roman snarled as Sam quickly scanned the room to confirm that neither Lizzie nor Jo were there anymore. “That is clearly a collared omega and your actions are in violation of the National Omega Rehabilitation Program.”

“How was I supposed to know he’s in a government program?” Sam asked calmly. “There are oms who wear collars because they like to. Even more because their asshole alphas make them.”

“Well, I’m telling you now, and I’m telling you to leave.” The Senator snapped his fingers, like some kind of Bond villain, and two of the security guards moved forward to take Sam by the arms to guide him from the dance floor. “It should go without saying that I don’t expect to see you at any future campaign events.”

Sam was halfway through an easygoing nod of agreement when the smell of honey on a summer breeze wafted up from behind him and effectively broke his brain. The aroma was unmistakable and so much more powerful than the last time he'd scented it when he was eleven and three quarters and had no idea what it meant. A surge of possessive rage swept over him at the sight of Roman’s eyes turning crimson and the nearest alphas openly sniffing the air. The slumbering demon blood woke like it had merely been taking a cat nap instead of laying dormant for months, coursing through his veins with every pulse of his heart until he felt coated in a thin black film that under different circumstances he would have felt the need to scrub off but at the moment welcomed.

Dean still had no idea what Sam’s original plan was, but he was pretty damn sure it didn’t involve him going into heat in the middle of a large crowd of people. He knew his cycle was getting screwed up from Roman marking him daily. He still hadn’t thought three whole minutes dancing with Sam was going to push him over the cliff, and it was quite clear that the S.S. Great Escape had just been scuttled. He felt overheated and empty, his head swimming with much more than just the wine as he clung to Sam’s back, biting his coat to hold back a moan when a wave of Sam’s aggression hit him and sent a trail of slick trickling down his leg. He remembered when Dr. Milton told him his first heat after being on suppressants for so long was going to be bad and he would probably need two or three alphas to help him. At the moment he definitely believed her, and was lucky he had the presence of mind to blurt out, “I drank it already,” as the enormous alpha beside him started to really snarl.

“ _Get back_!” Sam ordered, his voice rolling thunder across a spring meadow, and an instant later everyone on the dance floor was flung away from him like he was the center of a nuclear blast. The security guards went in opposite directions into the pile of screaming guests, as did Dean and Roman. The omega was thrown behind Sam almost to the bar, while the Senator nearly landed on the cellist. A third guard near Dean drew his weapon, but before he could use it Sam was there, driving the heel of his hand into the base of the man's nose, snapping his head back and dropping him like a stone.

Dean barely had time to register what happened, flushed and feverish as he was, before he heard the shoulder of his shirt tearing as he was hauled to his feet. He had about two seconds to scent the green tea and gunpowder, then a set of teeth with four long canines pierced his neck where it met his shoulder. The pain was exquisite - deep and fiery initially, spreading through him like a thousand knives, but after the initial shock it turned immeasurably delicate; a cool cloth against overheated skin. As soon as the pain had been washed away he felt bathed in a warm kind of electricity that hummed and pulsed from his fingertips to his toes, filling that empty spot in his belly that had been aching so terribly a moment ago. He wondered distantly if he might be glowing and was relieved to realize Sam had them pressed chest to chest, since half the guests already thought he was a whore and he didn’t need them seeing the massive hard-on he was sporting. A loud voice at the back of his head was demanding he break into song, and he very well might have if he hadn’t been so short of breath that by the time he felt Sam lapping at the wound to speed the healing process he passed right out.

Sam hadn’t expected the change he felt after claiming Dean to be so instantaneous. He’d always been possessive of the omega, and now that Dean was _his_ Sam couldn’t stand the thought of anyone else even looking at him. He was keenly aware that the need to literally hide Dean away from all the people staring at the two of them was being magnified by the smell of foreign semen on his mate’s skin, but at the moment all he cared about was getting Dean to the bunker and keeping him there away from the rest of humanity and all its evils _forever_. It was a lucky thing when the smaller man fainted, since Sam was about to launch himself across the room to bash Roman’s face in with his fists until the only thing left to look at was blood and bone and brain matter. As it was, the instinct to kill for his omega ran a distant second to the need to protect his omega, and though he willed the security guard’s gun from the floor to his hand to aim at the Senator he didn’t immediately open fire, because landing them in jail with roughly a hundred witnesses to him murdering Dick Roman would definitely not fall under the umbrella of protecting his omega.

The ballroom was in chaos. Couples were running and screaming, the waitstaff was cowering under tables, and the band was trying to pack up their instruments as quickly as possible to flee. Sam had gotten an arm firmly under Dean to drag him along and was halfway to the door when Roman said calmly, “ _Everyone just stop_ ,” and everyone did.

They didn’t simply stop, however. They froze in place like mannequins, as if time itself had ground to a halt. The only people not impacted by the Senator’s words were Sam, Dean, and the alpha himself. The rest of the room may as well have been a wax museum.

“Sam Campbell,” Roman said, straightening his jacket as he stepped around the guests as still as statues to approach the pair nearing the door. “That was impressive. You know, my gut told me I should pass your photo out to the staff in case you tried something, but I thought I was just being paranoid with such a gorgeous omega so close to his heat in my house. Then I saw you dancing with Dean and decided it might be fun to see how you planned to get yourself out of this one. You must be awfully strong to dodge my dreams so well.”

“What?” Sam asked, his alpha at war with the demon blood demanding they hear what the man had to say even as Sam wanted to empty the clip into his center mass.

“I always wondered if Samuel made a deal like my dad did to make sure none of his _many_ indiscretions saw the light of day,” Dick replied, and with a flick of his wrist he had the gun from another one of the guards and they were in a standoff. “Turns out I was right. Still, I’d have expected Azazel to give me a head’s up you were coming. Maybe you’re higher on his list of favorites than I am.”

“How do you know about Azazel?” Sam demanded, Dean groaning against his neck and reigniting the desire to forget about Roman and just run with his mate.

“You knew you weren’t the only one, didn’t you? We’re everywhere, Sam. Do you really believe Devereaux gave the OPS everything they wanted because they had such a strong case? That Dean ended up with me by chance when Fox couldn’t handle him?”

“You’re both…”

“We’re _all_ part of his little experiment. You, me, Devereaux - about twenty U.S. Senators and a third of the House of Representatives. More of us still in the states. Governors, judges, legislators. Though I have to say, you’re the first one I’ve met who can hide from me. I wonder if that means you’re the one he’s been waiting for.”

“Waiting for?”

“To open the Gate! To start Armageddon! Shit, if you _are_ the one you’re not very bright.”

“What about Fox?”

Roman laughed, twirling the gun like it was a toy as he moved a few steps closer to where Sam was sweating and trying not to shake too violently. The guests were still frozen in place, but Sam could see them looking around. They were awake and hearing everything the Senator was saying. He doubted Roman intended to let any of them leave.

“Fox is just a zealot,” Dick assured him. “He really believes in the rehabilitation program. Most foster alphas take the government guidelines with a grain of salt, but Asa is a true believer. Devereaux knew he couldn’t handle Dean and eventually he’d be able to send him my way, just like Azazel wanted. If you hadn’t skipped the court appearance he would have known about you and could have given me a head’s up. Guess that was your lucky day.”

Sam sensed the trigger pull in just enough time to throw his hands up and stop the three bullets Roman fired before they struck him in the chest, his gun thudding to the floor and Dean sliding into a heap by his feet. A stab of pain burst behind his eyes sharp enough to have him pressing one hand to his forehead as the bullets dropped to the ground with three loud clinks. The Senator laughed again, his eyes wide and pleased, as Sam swiped at the blood running from his nose.

“Damn! You are indeed something extra special, aren’t you Sam?” Roman asked, cocking the gun again as the younger alpha coughed and found his teeth stained with blood. “Too bad we’ll never find out if you were our demon daddy’s special boy.”

Sam flinched at the sound of the gunshot, too spent to try stopping more bullets, and quickly became confused when he was still standing even though eight more shots followed the initial one in rapid succession. The agony splitting his skull had him slightly disoriented, but at the sound of the guests beginning to scream again as a group of nine bloody holes blossomed in Dick Roman’s chest, Sam came to enough to hear the extra clicks from the empty gun Dean was holding where he knelt on the floor. His eyes burned gold as he glared at the startled Senator who was just processing that he’d been shot nine times and most certainly wouldn’t survive, and when Sam realized how many people were staring at his mate he shouted, “ _Forget what you saw_!”

The room fell silent as Sam grabbed the gun and dragged Dean to his feet, his head pounding so violently he wasn’t sure he’d make it out of the room without throwing up. Murmurs were just starting among the guests as they burst out of the ballroom doors and raced for the stairs, making it halfway down before the screams started again. Jo was coming out of Lizzie’s room with the little girl in her car seat as the two men rounded the corner of the stairs, demanding, “What the hell was that?”

“Stuff,” Dean gasped as Sam’s knees buckled and he hauled the alpha up against his side. “Things. I don’t really know. How the fuck are we getting out of here?”

“Adam,” Jo said as Dean grabbed the car seat from her so she could throw Sam’s other arm over her shoulders to get him down the main stairs. The omega had no idea how his brother was going to get them out of this, but he hoped like hell it went closer to whatever plan had just spun out of control and ended with him assassinating a Louisiana State Senator in front of a hundred witnesses. He didn’t want his first trip as a newly mated omega to be to the electric chair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realized as I was writing this chapter that I'd made a HUGE error earlier in the book and made it sound like Sam was the only alpha with demon blood PERIOD. This is not the case and was never my intent. He's the only alpha with demon blood in his generation, and his is the generation where Azazel got the mix just right. I've gone back and fixed the spots that referenced this, and it comes up again, but just for anyone who read this chapter and went, "Wait...you said all the others were betas..." I did, but I didn't mean it the way it sounded.


	98. So You Really Think This'll Work?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Life on the lam begins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Laptop is shot. Still working on my dinky little HP Notebook and occasionally my phone. Updates will be slower until we have a new laptop which is not a priority in the dead of winter in the Northeast when you need to heat a house. But updates will still be coming!!!
> 
> Also, a reminder that I've taken liberties with the bunker. Please don't come at me with the schematics people have drawn up online to show me I have the layout wrong. I've looked them up and changed the layout to suit the story. :)

Sam’s legs were just starting to work again when Jo flung open the front door and they stumbled onto the porch, a handful of guests screaming and scattering down the driveway as they raced for their cars. Jo headed for the rental where it was parked near the fountain, pulling both Sam and Dean behind her as Lizzie started to wail in all the confusion. She dropped Sam’s arm from her shoulder, grabbed the car seat from Dean, and yanked open the back door to plunk the kid down on the floor.

“Where’s Adam?” Sam gasped, leaning against the roof of the car for a moment before darting away to vomit on the cobblestones.

“Dean!”

The omega turned at the sound of his brother shouting to him as the beta barrelled down the driveway from around the side of the house and threw himself at Dean. Adam knew they didn’t really have time for a tearful reunion, but he honestly was on the brink of bawling like the day Dean got kicked out of school, and after months of not laying eyes on him he just needed a few moments to hold his big brother to steady himself. Dean clearly felt the same, since he was gripping Adam so tightly the beta could barely breathe.

“I hate to break this up, guys, but we need to move,” Jo said, pulling Adam away and shoving him around the car to the driver’s side before going to help Dean retrieve Sam from where he was still throwing up. “And you have the keys, Andretti.”

“Sorry.” Adam dug the keys out of his pocket as he scrubbed a hand over his face, flinging the driver’s cap he was wearing into the fountain. “That knothead who was all ‘hey, what a coincidence, the guy from the store’ when he saw Sam freaked when the gunshots started going off so I had to knock him out and lock him in the trunk of one of the cars. By the way, I was pretty sure gunfire was _not_ on the list of do’s for this run. What happened in there?”

“Dean went into heat before I could piss Roman off enough to take him away from the party,” Sam slurred as Dean heaved him into the back seat in front of him and slammed the door, swinging the alpha’s overly long legs so he wouldn’t kick Lizzie on the floor. “I had to improvise.”

“Good thing the cars are close,” Adam told him as he gunned it down the driveway. “Hang onto something and don’t let Lizard die.”

“Lizard?” Dean asked, tearing away the rest of the right side of his shirt to start cleaning Sam’s face. “You’re nicknaming my kids?”

“That’s what your mate said,” his brother replied, checking the rearview mirror to make sure no other cars were behind them before flooring it the whole five miles south to where they left the Impala and the truck. “Consider it your payback for sticking me with Runt.”

They were extremely lucky the estate was twenty minutes from the nearest town, as they abandoned the rental, switched Lizzie into the truck, _and_ had enough time for Dean to throw a fit nearly complete with kicking and screaming about being the one to drive the Impala since Sam’s head was still bad enough to have him barely functional and no one else was driving Dean’s fucking car when Dean was right fucking there. Sam tried to use their new mating bond to help calm him, but that just made Dean more upset, accusing the alpha of trying to manipulate him, and it quickly became apparent to Sam and the betas that despite all outward appearances of Dean being in badass mode he was a complete mess. Common sense prevailed when Adam demanded to know how much Dean had to drink, since he smelled like a winery, and at the end of it Adam was behind the wheel of the Impala with Dean riding shotgun while Sam tried to sleep off his migraine in the back, Jo with Lizzie in the truck declaring it a “boy-free zone.” Sam’s alpha instincts were so much harder now to control, yet he managed not to kiss and hold and soothe the omega, who very clearly did not want to be kissed or held or soothed, and quickly stripped off his blood stained dress shirt to switch it with the ruined silk shirt Dean was half wearing so they could get on the road. 

They had crossed into Mississippi before the first news reports came over the radio of Louisiana State Senator Richard Roman being gunned down by an unknown assailant at his annual Independence Day ball. As it was a breaking story there would be future updates, but at the moment very little was known and everyone in St. Francisville was being ordered to shelter in place. Fifteen minutes outside of Natchez when the station they’d been listening to had all but given way to static, a second report came out that the omega in the Senator’s care had either been kidnapped or escaped with his pup, and an Amber Alert had been issued for Lizzie since it was feared she was in immediate danger. The signal died before they got to the roadhouse, though Ellen had the TV on in the background and tuned to the eleven o’clock news on the local affiliate when she met them at the door as the two vehicles pulled in.

“Your son’s a handful, young man,” Ellen told Dean as she pulled him into a crushing hug and held on as long as he would allow. “Glad to hear you got that bastard.”

“How do you know he was a bastard?” he asked softly, and she snorted before letting him go.

“Men like that always are,” she said, moving on to hug Jo despite her daughter’s protests that she was fine.

The room they had was entirely too small for five adults, two babies, and a dog, with a pair of twin beds, a couch, and an attached bath with a tiny corner shower. Still, Dean thought it was the best place he’d ever stayed, including the Peninsula, because Ellen had pulled out a dresser drawer for Elliott to sleep in and within five steps from the door he was holding his son. The sleeping little boy stirred at the sound of Dean’s rabbiting heartbeat but quickly grew restless and irritated with all the kisses the omega was brushing over his hair. Hannah was at his feet, whining and “wooWOO”ing mournfully, swiping at his waist with her paw until he shifted Elliott to one arm and reached down to stroke from her nose to the base of her skull. Sam stumbled to the nearest twin bed, still feeling drained even though his head was much improved, reaching for Elliott’s fingers and forcing himself to ignore how badly Dean was trembling.

“Turn around and sit down so I can get that off of you,” he said, gesturing to the collar still circling the omega’s neck. He shifted back on the bed, and after a moment’s hesitation Dean turned his back to sit between Sam’s knees and let him work on the lock with a paperclip. “You should know, we have the most disagreeable baby on the planet.”

The Pyr switched her paw to Sam’s knee as the lock popped open and the alpha pulled it away from Dean’s neck. The omega recoiled from it, standing and turning back so he could face his mate. Elliott was fussing even more, nothing Dean did to quiet him having any effect.

“He doesn’t like the way I smell.”

Dean’s voice trembled as well, and though he tried to hold back a flinch as Sam stood to trail his fingertips over the omega’s forearms he didn’t quite manage it. He could feel Sam trying to pacify him through the bond again, bristling against it but not stepping away when the alpha moved gently into his space, reaching up to touch the new pink mark on his neck. The bite was high up enough to be clearly visible even in tee shirts once it fully scarred over, and the feel of Sam’s skin against it sent a wave of relaxation through Dean strong enough to make him shiver and his breath catch.

“You said he’s too young to scent,” Sam murmured, ghosting his hands over his mate’s face to encourage the calm he sensed settling across him.

“Yeah, but he can tell the difference between someone who smells right and someone who smells wrong. I smell wrong.”

A pain heavy and thick that wasn’t his washed over Sam suddenly enough to have tears prickling the back of his eyes as Dean quickly transferred Elliott over to him and pulled away. Immediately following it was a burst of fear and then a deep sense of shame, by which time Dean was halfway across the room to where Adam and Jo were watching the news while Ellen tried to get Lizzie back to sleep. The alpha couldn’t help but chase him all the way to the bathroom door, his pulse racing from an anxiety that also wasn’t his. Their bond was far more intense than he could have imagined and it left him floundering with how he should react to Dean’s fluctuating emotions when half of what he was feeling cried out for Sam to soothe him and the other half radiated fear of anyone coming too close.

“Dean…”

“I need a shower,” the omega said hastily, and slammed the door in Sam’s face.

Dean somehow managed to get the door closed before tearing at his clothes, which he needed as far away from him as possible until they were either thrown away or - preferably - burned. His hands wouldn’t stop shaking and his breath was starting to come in gasps as he fought against the oncoming panic attack, counting the seconds it took to get the water turned on and step in under the spray. He was trying so hard to lock down all the emotions that wanted to spill out of him at once but it was like a “on” switch had been flipped that was trying to force him to deal with the last four months in one go. He knew it was because of the bond, could feel it pulling at him, demanding an openness between him and his alpha that he couldn’t regulate and didn’t want. The bond wanted him to share so his alpha could “fix it” and all he longed to do was build little boxes around all the ugly things inside him and pack them away to either be dealt with at a later date or eventually drowned in alcohol.

There was a new _need_ for Sam as well that was terribly disconcerting. Needing Sam before, _wanting_ him, had felt like a choice; and maybe Dean was fooling himself to think that, but it had been comforting believing he had a say in who he shared his life with and could walk away at any time. Now he was being compelled to seek out his alpha, to curl into his side and bury himself in his scent, even to beg Sam to finish claiming him properly, and it was just too much. Here he was, standing under water nearly hot enough to scald, scrubbing at his skin until it was red and raw to try to scrape off Roman’s contamination, and his omega was insisting his mate replace the scent with his own. That Dean’s higher functioning brain couldn’t envision ever wanting someone to touch him that way again didn’t matter to the scar on his neck that had decided it was running the show now.

Sam wanted more than anything to not be in a rented room with two babies, three betas, and a dog while his mate was in the bathroom trying to break their bond. He knew it wasn’t something omegas were capable of, but feeling Dean struggle against it - essentially against Sam himself - cut him to the quick. Rationally he knew he shouldn’t take what he was feeling personally; that his mate had just been through something horrific, something that had nearly driven Sam out of his mind having to watch every time he closed his eyes to sleep. Unfortunately his alpha hindbrain had little to no use for rationality and processed it solely as rejection, insisting he do whatever it took to prove himself worthy, while simultaneously dismissing the idea that what he needed to do was give his omega time and space. Complicating matters was the freshly awakened darkness tainting his soul, which whispered to him to break down the bathroom door and take what was his.

Dean didn’t know how long he stood letting the shower spray mask his tears, but it wasn’t long enough by half for him to fool himself into thinking he had regained any of the control he wanted over the warring factions of his brain. The hot water was running out though, and despite being in Mississippi in July he didn’t have much of a desire to stand under a cold shower so he twisted the handles and wiped his eyes until he’d willed them to stop leaking. He slung a towel around his waist and stepped out onto the tuxedo pants to avoid the spotty bath mat of questionable cleanliness, swiping away the fog on the mirror over the sink to assess his current state. He supposed he’d looked worse in his life, though he couldn’t remember when, and jumped as the doorknob turned and Hannah pushed her way in through the crack Sam opened in the door.

“Clothes,” the alpha mumbled, holding out underwear, shorts, and a tee shirt for his mate to put on. Dean took them with a nod, smiling slightly at the sight of the whippet shirt. “We’ll get you some things of your own on the way.”

“This is fine,” Dean replied quietly, pulling on the underwear and the tee shirt before towel drying his hair. “We should get going.”

“Yeah,” Sam agreed, hovering in the doorway as he felt some of the omega’s tension melting away in his presence.

“Where are we going, anyway?”

“I was thinking...the bunker. If that’s okay with you. It’s underground so I didn’t want to assume…”

“Yeah, no, an underground bunker sounds fucking fantastic right now.”

“Okay.”

Sam thought their days of embarrassed silence were well behind them, but as Hannah pawed at her master again and Dean crushed the shorts in his fist it quickly became apparent to the alpha that he was very wrong. His mate was clearly uncomfortable, yet wasn’t giving any indication that he wanted Sam to leave. Quite the opposite, the rejection Sam felt while the door was closed between them was replaced by a surge of _want_. After several agonizing moments of waiting for Dean to decide what he was going to do, the omega grabbed the front of Sam’s sweat-stained undershirt, which he clutched like a lifeline, neither pulling the alpha closer nor pushing him away. It was terribly confusing, and it would just have to be enough for the time being.

“Guys,” Adam called from the interior of the room, turning up the volume on the TV a little to draw their attention to the special report that was discussing the Senator’s murder and showing pictures of Lizzie and Dean. A multi-state manhunt would soon be underway, starting in Mississippi, Texas, and Arkansas and branching out from there to the rest of the South as well as the Plains. A witness placed a tall, dark-haired alpha at the scene who had encountered the omega earlier in the day at a clothing store in Baton Rouge, and though he wasn’t a suspect the police needed to speak with him. Kevin was definitely going to be earning his tropical island with all the files he would need to find and erase.

“You should’ve killed that driver,” Jo griped as she bumped Adam’s arm, and Ellen snapped, “Joanna Beth!”

“It’s just him right now,” Adam said, stroking Hannah’s back as she wandered over for some attention. “I don’t know how you pulled that off, but it’s a hell of a lot better than hearing ‘multiple witnesses’ on the news.”

“How exactly are we planning to get from here to Kansas?” Dean asked, yanking on Sam’s shorts and jamming his feet back into his dress shoes.

“Well, we were going to drive up through Mississippi and then across Arkansas,” Jo replied, scowling as she dug clothes out of her duffel. “You better have left me some hot water.”

“Obviously we’re not doing that anymore,” Dean said as the beta disappeared into the bathroom and yelped a few minutes later when she was hit by the cold water spray. “Was there a plan B?”

“Henry’s travel spell,” Sam told him. “He taught me how to cast it. I’ve been practicing for weeks in case something went wrong with plan A.”

“I’d say something has gone wrong with plan A,” Adam said flatly, deciding Jo had the right idea and getting out of his driver’s uniform and into regular clothes was probably the way to go.

“But Elliott and Lizzie can’t go that way,” Sam objected. “Someone would still have to drive them.”

“So someone drives them,” Dean said, clamping down the panic that tried to well up at the thought of what he was saying. “They’re looking for me, Lizzie, and Sam. So Sam and I go to the bunker, Adam and Jo split up in Baby and the truck, and Ellen drives the kids. No one’s going to be looking for a beta and her grandkids on a cross-country trip.”

“Grandkids?” Ellen asked with a finely arched brow raised in his direction.

“Dean…” The alpha in Sam flatly rejected the thought of leaving their children anywhere after having been separated from them for so long. It was just about as antithetical to being an alpha as anything could be, and now that he and the omega had mated it seemed impossible to consider doing ever again. “That’s a fourteen hour drive…”

“Then we should get out of here so they can go to bed and get an early start in the morning.” Dean was already digging into Sam’s bag and staunchly ignoring everyone in the room, as well as everything he was feeling. “How do you cast this spell?”

“Dean...”

The instant Sam touched Dean’s arm to stop him the omega jerked away, stumbling back into the side table between the twin beds and knocking over the table lamp. Seconds later Dean had the lamp by the harp, drawn back by his shoulder to hold Sam off from coming closer. The alpha held his hands up between them in an attempt to stop his mate from unraveling any farther by showing Dean he wasn’t a threat. The problem of course was that Sam wasn’t the one the omega was afraid of.

“I heard what Roman said, Sam!” he shouted, the lamp shaking in his grasp. “Governors, judges, legislators...My face is all over the TV! I’m probably going to be on fucking flyers in the post office! A couple thousand other kids at least are gonna match Lizzie’s description, but how many male omegas do you think there are between here and Kansas that look like me?”

“Baby...Kevin’s going to make all of this go away,” Sam said as he slowly reached for the lamp. Dean didn’t relax, but he didn’t try to stop Sam from taking it from him either, which the alpha was going to take as progress. “We already have new identities, he just needs to wait a little while so he can make sure he wipes every record of us there is, all the way back to the OPS case.”

“And how long is that going to take? It’s not just the OPS anymore! It’s multiple PDs, probably the fucking FBI, and yeah, those guys are morons but we’re not talking about this getting fixed overnight! You think they’re going to let us keep Elliott and Lizzie if someone spots me between here and fucking Kansas? They’ll ship them off to some foster family - probably different ones - and then how the fuck are we gonna get them back?!”

“Dean…”

“Yeah, I know Sam, you think I’m being paranoid, but just because they’d never do somethin’ like that to an alpha doesn’t mean it wouldn’t fucking _happen_!”

Dean had no idea when he’d started crying and he didn’t particularly care, because he was so close to hyperventilating that he needed to focus everything he had on getting his breathing under control. Sam was trying to use their bond again to help bring him back from the brink of hysteria and Dean just wanted to scream at him to stop but couldn’t find his voice. Sam was quickly figuring out that the way mates typically supported each other through the bonding link was not going to work for them - at least not right now - and went for the tried and true method of crushing the omega to his chest and caving completely to his demands.

“Okay,” he agreed softly, carding his fingers through Dean’s spiked hair and gently turning the omega’s face into his neck until his scent had Dean pushing in close to him and clutching at his shirt. “If you can calm down for me I’ll get the spell ready and we’ll go right now, I promise. Can you calm down baby?”

“My kids are never goin’ in a government system, Sammy,” Dean choked, breathing deeply against Sam’s skin and letting the aroma of his alpha surround him and give him a few moments of feeling safe. Sure, the idea of them being safe was pure fiction, but he needed it if he had any hope of not losing his mind before they got to the bunker.

Sam took his mate’s face in his hands, wiping away the tear stains from his cheekbones as he made Dean look at him when he said, “I swear to god, Dean, I will kill anyone that tries to take any of you away from me again. I will _kill_ them.”

Sam was relieved to feel the anger Dean was pushing back at him drain away as Dean closed his eyes and leaned forward to breathe against Sam’s neck again. It was strange the way Sam now distinctly smelled like _his_ , and the subtle shift in the alpha’s scent made him feel hazier and happier the longer he soaked it in, like a positive reinforcement feedback loop. Part of him raged against the idea of relying on an alpha for anything after what he’d been through, even if all he was getting were a few minutes of peace. Dean told that part of him to shut the hell up. He just wanted to go back to being _pretty_ fucked up, because now he was _completely_ fucked up and he didn’t know how to stop feeling Roman’s breath on his neck. If Sam’s scent let him disconnect for a bit he wasn’t going to fight it. He figured he should probably tell Sam how he was feeling, since his job as an alpha was to scare away the bogeyman, but aside from how tight his shot grouping was when he killed the Senator, Dean didn’t want to talk about _anything_ that happened in Baton Rouge.

It still took Dean a solid fifteen minutes to get himself under control, which Sam decided was damn good time considering everything he’d been through. Having something specific to focus on gave the alpha a chance to get a handle on his very conflicting feelings about the way Dean had been reacting ever since they left the estate. He was still hurt and dejected that every time he tried to use their new connection as mates Dean rebuffed him, but the reawakened darkness in him was pushing him towards the indignation and anger he’d lived with for two years after Shreveport. The sense that the omega had no right to reject him now that they were mated and that he should finish mating Dean properly as soon as they got to the bunker was shockingly strong and deeply disturbing, and he needed to get a handle on it before they were alone. The emotions battling within him were the same ones that had him running from Dean after Elliott was born, and running was no longer an option.

Though he wasn’t sure he’d have a choice after what Dick Roman said. Sam had completely forgotten when Ruby told him Azazel had been tinkering around with infecting humans with demon blood for a long time, and that he’d quietly been placing his “special children” in positions of power. It seemed like a lifetime ago that they’d talked about it, and in a way it had been. He hadn’t known Dean was carrying, Benny and Lisa had still been alive, they didn’t even know the OPS existed, and his grandfather - while an asshole - hadn’t yet been a psychotic assohole. Hell, if he really thought about when they had that conversation, Lizzie may not have born yet. At the time finding the others poisoned by Azazel’s blood was a responsibility he’d happily shirked, and now Dean had ended up at the mercy of two of them: Devereaux and Roman. They might have to spend their entire lives literally underground if he didn’t do something about old Yellow Eyes.

He still didn’t like the idea of taking out some kind of whole demon blood army though, especially when it involved a significant percentage of the federal government if Roman were to be believed. Then again, Sam was expecting when he killed Azazel for the blood inside him to go dormant. If that held true, wouldn’t it be the case for all of his special children? Maybe all he’d have to do is cut off the head of the snake, freeing himself and anyone else currently under Azazel’s control. Surely that was doable.

He was dragged back from wondering if this was how Frodo Baggins felt by the realities of coordinating with Ellen, Adam, and Jo to get them to the bunker. Adam and Jo both had the location, but they’d planned to stay close enough together that no one would need to worry about money or supplies. Now he had to make sure they knew how to access his bank account to get cash on the drive since leaving a paper trail with credit cards wasn’t safe, plus there was the whole coming to grips with leaving their babies behind thing that he was doggedly avoiding thinking about until he absolutely had to. Dean had already gone through the process of memorizing every hair on Elliott and Lizzie’s heads and was impatiently waiting for Sam to get on with it before his resolve failed him and he decided to risk driving across three states dodging a manhunt focused specifically on him. At least they’d agreed it would be safe to take Hannah with them since she was fully grown so they’d have a distraction in the bunker while they waited for Ellen to show up in three days.

“If anyone tries to stop you, shoot them,” Dean told her as the alpha prepared the herbs, incense, bird bones, and lamb’s blood necessary for the travel spell.

“No one’s going to try to stop a nice lady and her grandkids,” Ellen replied, pulling the omega into another tight hug. “But if anyone tries, I’ll shoot them.”

“We need to go,” Sam said, the spell already alight and tearing a hole in space and time, swinging his duffels over his shoulder and shooing Hannah through into the darkness on the other side.

Her claws clicked away as she ran off barking, which had Dean darting after her, his breath stuttering at the crushing force that surrounded his ribs and seemed to last for days. He could hear Hannah somewhere in front of him and Sam somewhere behind him but it sounded like he was listening through ears stuffed with cotton. Just as he was really starting to worry he was either going to suffocate or his heart was going to burst the pressure was gone and he could breathe again. He might have appreciated that more had his first inhale not brought with it the smell of at least a dozen alphas; something that would have been alarming enough on its own but was infinitely more so when he was standing alone in a pitch black room trying to figure out where his dog went. Dean couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that they were underground, his breath beginning to stutter again for an entirely different reason. He hadn’t decided whether to stay where he was or run when he felt a hand on his shoulder and he may or may not have screamed, depending on who told the story later.

“It’s just me,” Sam said quickly, extinguishing the flame in the bowl he carried as Dean turned to him, the glowing tear behind them in the air sealing so the slip he could see of Adam, Jo, and Ellen vanished. Dean grabbed a handful of the alpha’s shirt, letting the taller man lead him a few steps to the left, where Sam reached over and flipped a switch, nearly blinding them both as the overhead lights flooded on. “Welcome home.”

The alpha smell was still there, but at least with the lights on it felt far less like they were in a basement, especially with how warmly lit the space was. It also helped that from where they were standing - on some kind of balcony inside a heavily etched metal door - they had a view of the entire floor below them, so Dean could see there weren’t in fact, any other alphas there. The room below was lined with books and had two long tables in the center, the whole room warm with wood and honey colored furniture. There were matching Tiffany lamps on the long tables, heavy leather armchairs in the corners with matching tea tables, and a large wooden globe at the bottom of the winding staircase with the black art deco wrought iron railing. The sunny color palette offset the grey of the cinder block walls and made Dean wonder if the Men of Letters had always banned omegas or if that was a development sometime in the twentieth century, because he couldn’t imagine a pack of alphas decorating a space this large this well.

“What do you think?”

The omega was so engrossed in looking over the room he hadn’t noticed Sam had not only moved in behind him but had his hands bracketed against the railing on either side of where Dean was standing. The smaller man jumped, nearly smacking Sam in the jaw, then quickly recovered as Hannah came trotting down the hallway to “wooWOO” at them before taking off again to explore another part of the building.

“I think I shouldn’t be so surprised you moved us into a library,” Dean said, finding it easier to inhale as Sam stepped back from him and gently took hold of his hand to lead him towards the stairs. “You big dork.”

“Oh, this isn’t the library,” Sam said with a fully dimpled smile. “The library’s over that way. Henry said this is the war room.”

“Ah.”

“We can take a tour tomorrow. Right now we should get to bed.”

Sam stopped in the middle of the war room when Dean did, the omega’s brain again getting stuck between fight and flight modes as he tried not to obviously be calculating the nearest escape route. Hannah reappeared a second time to sit down and wuf at them happily, panting and yawning before dancing back the way she came. The alpha ran his hands along his mate’s arms; his mate who was clearly terrified of the idea of sleeping, though whether it was sleeping in general or sleeping with Sam specifically he couldn’t tell.

“Yeah.” Dean swallowed and nodded, clenching his jaw and his hands as he steeled himself against the fear of properly mating with his, well, mate. “Yeah, we should.”

He couldn’t help but stiffen as Sam moved into his space and pressed a light kiss to his jaw, murmuring, “You know we’re _just_ going to sleep, right?”

“Oh.”

Dean was willing to admit he might have been a little too quick to breathe a sigh of relief, based on how hurt Sam looked for a moment before the alpha managed to smooth over his features. Sam’s reaction left the omega feeling a flood of guilt, and he followed up the sigh of relief by burying himself against his mate’s chest, still uncomfortable to the point of nausea with the idea of anyone touching him yet not wanting to punish Sam for something he didn’t do. He loved Sam, he truly did, even now. He just needed at least five hundred more showers before he felt anywhere near clean enough to be touched by Sam, and he was still trying to figure out how to explain that to his mate without having to actually _talk_ about it. He was glad his alpha had such a big, smart brain, because it meant there was a chance Sam would figure it out on his own, and it looked like that might be the case as Dean found himself wrapped up in octopus arms that made him feel tiny and safe.

“Bedrooms are this way. I thought I’d let you pick ours out.”

Dean allowed Sam to lead him down the hallway towards the basically identical sleeping quarters, deciding on one halfway between the showers and the kitchen where Hannah had already taken up residence on the ancient full sized bed. The room was slightly larger than most of the others and would fit a queen mattress, as well as two cribs if they took out the desk and moved the dresser into the closet. It seemed the best way to set the room up to fit the important things. It wasn’t like they didn’t have a bunch of other closets for their clothes, and as far as Dean was concerned the babies were going to be sleeping with them until they went to college - presuming he’d agree to let them out of his sight long enough to go to college. Thinking about Elliott and Lizzie was going to have him spiraling, however, so instead he focused on getting ready for bed and trying to ignore the fact that Sam was behind him, watching carefully as he decided what exactly he wanted to sleep in.

Sam wanted to drive back to Baton Rouge and pump another nine or ninety bullets into Dick Roman’s corpse as he watched his mate panicking over what should be a simple bedtime routine and not knowing how to make it better. Things would be so much easier if the omega would tell him what was going on in his head, but if Dean had been careful with letting out his emotions before he was now working on locking Sam out with barriers to rival Fort Knox. He realized he shouldn’t have expected much when he just got Dean back and they were still separated from their children. Still, he hadn’t thought going to sleep would be driving his mate towards having a stroke.

“What can I do so you’ll be comfortable?” he asked when Dean hadn’t done anything more than toe out of his shoes and stare at the bed for three full minutes. “Do you need me to sleep in another room?”

“No.” The response was at least immediate and made Sam feel happier than he had since he got Dean out on the dance floor. “I just...can we keep our clothes on?”

“Of course.”

Sam moved over to lovingly shove Hannah down to the floor, kicking his shoes off and pulling back the covers as Dean continued to stare.

“And can I be the big spoon?”

Had the omega not appeared to be on the verge of tears at the thought the answer might be “No,” Sam probably would have laughed. Instead he smiled and turned away, staying very still as he heard Dean shut the door before turning out the light. He was starting to wonder if he’d have to go get the omega when he felt the bed dip and Dean slid up against his back, slotting his nose behind Sam’s ear. He didn’t reach around to lay a hand on Sam’s stomach the way the alpha hoped he would, but he did tangle his hands into the back of Sam’s shirt to pull himself in tight. It wasn’t the honeymoon Sam had imagined when they finally mated, but it was a start.


	99. You're Looking Good for a Guy Pushing Ninety

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Life begins in the bunker...with a bit of a rocky start.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have maxed out a second Google doc, which is the main problem with working on my little Notebook, so I'm trying to get the remaining chapters from Google doc #2 out of the way so I can focus on Google doc #3.

Dean was the little spoon by morning - or rather, early afternoon - when they finally woke. Sometime in the night ( _impossible to tell when, now that they lived underground and there was no exterior light to give them a sense of time_ ) Sam had awakened to the sound of Dean whimpering behind him, sweating buckets and thrashing against the sheets. The alpha had turned over quickly to pull his mate to his chest and shush him, his lips pressed to Dean’s forehead as the omega instinctively sought out Sam’s ear to scent him in his sleep. Once Dean was back to sleep Sam allowed himself to drift off, and the next time he woke it was to the happy fog of Dean’s coffee and cherry pie against his nose, the nearness of his scent gland blocking out all trace of Roman. Dean had turned again in his sleep and was snoring slightly, one of Sam’s long legs slung over both of Dean’s and his arm around the omega’s ribs to cage him in, his back to the alpha’s chest. Despite the lumpy mattress and stale smell clinging to the bedding, Sam snuggled in deeper, deciding they might as well sleep the day away, since Dean certainly looked like he needed it.

Unfortunately as Sam shifted he brushed against the smaller man with his not inconsiderable morning wood, quite unintentionally, and the omega snapped awake. He felt Dean’s panic flood him a few seconds before Dean flailed free of him and fell out of bed. The alpha tried to grab him to help break his fall, but in his drowsy state Dean didn’t register that he was with Sam and yanked his arm away, slamming his elbow into the nightstand and sending Hannah into a flurry of barking. Sam was across the mattress in moments, trying to make sure Dean hadn’t hurt himself, except Dean muttered something about a shower and ran from the room before Sam could get a good look at him and the alpha was left with a dog doing the potty dance.

It wasn’t the way Sam hoped to spend the first morning in their new home, with Dean off hiding in the shower and him taking the dog outside to pee. Though it could have gone worse. They easily could have awakened to a puddle and a very smelly pile on top of Dean’s near panic attack at waking up next to his mate, given how late they slept in and how large their dog was. Sam didn’t even really know what it was he expected, other than for Dean not to flee his presence, and yeah, maybe that was unrealistic but he wasn’t sure how they were going to navigate the issues Dean was having if Dean was constantly bolting.

Logistically speaking it wasn’t entirely a bad thing that the omega clearly wanted space, since there was no cell reception inside the bunker and Sam needed to check in with Adam, Jo, and Ellen to find out how far they’d gotten in the morning. He also wanted to give Bobby a call to see if they’d made the national news or it was just a regional thing, and if it was still regional to let him know Dean was safe. He should probably see if he could track down John as well, since the new information from Roman was important for the hunter to know so he could stay even farther under the radar. If there really were special children all over the country, then they were dealing with a human threat as well as a demonic one. Good thing John Winchester wasn’t particularly outgoing and tended to avoid people as it was.

Hannah enjoyed the walk in the woods outside the bunker enough that Sam found himself relaxing as she stopped and sniffed and squatted to pee every ten feet or so just to make sure all the forest creatures knew she was there. The location was remote enough that they weren’t going to be coming across random hikers, being down an old dirt driveway off one of the lesser traveled roads out of Lebanon that didn’t look like a driveway at all so much as a spot where the barriers on the shoulder had been knocked over and never replaced. Lebanon itself was a tiny town with less than three hundred residents, and frankly it surprised Sam that it was Dean’s hometown, given how few people in the country could make that statement.

On the one hand he was thankful they were really in the middle of nowhere with almost no chance anyone was ever going to stumble on the metal door in the concrete casing in a side of a hill. On the other hand they were well over an hour in any direction from retail establishments that offered things they were going to need, like a new bed and cleaning supplies and diapers. The drive wasn’t as big of an issue given how used to driving they both were; it was more the idea of leaving Dean alone in the bunker by himself for hours while Sam made supply runs, or Dean being out of the bunker for hours while Sam waited back home. The obvious solution would be to go shopping together of course, but with two children under a year old - one of them very small - that wouldn’t be a realistic solution for a while. He’d have to figure out how soon they could get the Internet set up ( ** _if_ ** _they could get the Internet set up_ ) so he could maybe get a P.O. Box and order some things online and through catalogs the way some of the old school hunters did. He realized he should have planned better before moving them to the middle of nowhere, though it wasn’t exactly like he had nothing else on his mind for the last few months.

Sam didn’t know how much he needed space from Dean until he and Hannah were turning around to head back and he noticed how much calmer he was. The constant pulse of the omega’s emotions through their bond was going to take a while to get used to. He hadn’t even noticed how much it was throwing him to be so open to what Dean was feeling until they weren’t in the same space, and he wondered if that was part of his mate’s problem. He’d certainly responded better when Sam fell back on words and actions than when he tried direct emotional support. Sam figured they’d get there eventually, but for now he’d work harder on keeping his desire to spring into action at the slightest sign of Dean’s distress in check while his mate regained some sense of safety and control over his own life.

About two seconds after deciding he would rely less on their new bond he was flooded with a sense of terror that knocked the air right out of his lungs, and he raced for the door to the bunker. He dug the key Henry had given him out of his pocket, his hands shaking so badly he dropped it twice before he managed to get the outer door open. He didn’t hear anything in the entry hallway but Hannah very clearly did by how she shot for the door that led to the stairwell, barking and growling. After only a couple of steps he figured out that what she was hearing sounded distinctly like Dean screaming for him.

“Dean!” Sam shouted, throwing open the door and tearing down the stairs with the dog out in front.

“ _SAM_!”

The omega’s voice came from the direction of the barracks and showers and Hannah was off like a bullet, sliding through the doorway from the war room to the hall and needing a moment to regain her footing. Sam grabbed one of the lamps from the long tables to use as a weapon and made a mental note to spend some time in the armory.

“Dean!”

He could hear Hannah’s claws stop not very far down the hall and came around the corner to find an alpha with shiny black hair, side parted and plastered to his head with far too much Brylcreem, a three piece dark grey suit, and ridiculous bow tie standing just past the showers, his hands raised as the Pyr worked on driving him farther back from the shower door. He reminded Sam of Henry, but with a sharper face and colder eyes, and even though he couldn’t have come up much higher than Sam’s shoulder he smiled widely at the sight of the crimson-eyed alpha closing in on him.

“Well, this is awkward,” he said good naturedly, before raising one of his hands to indicate the lamp. “Would you mind putting that down? They’re a matching set and I doubt you could replace it.”

“Who the fuck are you?” Sam yelled, catching sight of his omega in the corner of the communal showers, slumped down on the tile with a towel pulled over him. “Dean!”

“ _This_ is the best and brightest of the current generation?” the alpha sighed as Sam dropped the lamp and rushed over to where Dean and his towel were getting soaked under the water that was still running.

Hannah backed into the room after them, standing in the doorway to keep the strange alpha out as Sam assessed his mate, who was violently shaking and leaned over to throw up bile as soon as Sam’s arms were around him. There was a thin line of blood running down the back of his neck and trailing down his shoulder, and Sam quickly found a gash at the back of his head that didn’t look too deep but was bleeding pretty badly. Dean grabbed Sam’s arm with both of his and hung on like it was his job, turning into Sam’s rapidly soaking shirt as the alpha did his best to envelope the smaller man.

“What happened?” Sam demanded, rage building in his core as Dean leaned against him and shivered.

“He just walked in while I was rinsing off,” Dean slurred, pulling free to crawl away and throw up again, barely managing to hold onto the towel as he went.

“This is why there are such strict rules about letting omegas in here,” said the alpha from the doorway, sounding exasperated.

Sam was on him in an instant, hand around his throat as he slammed him into the wall of the hallway and lifted him off the ground. The man in the bow tie looked genuinely shocked that this would be the response of a clearly enraged alpha defending his mate, and Sam strongly considered ripping the offender’s throat out with his teeth.

“If you touched him…” Sam growled, a ring of black growing around the edge of the red in his eyes.

“What on earth is going on?”

Henry was suddenly at the end of the hall where it turned to go to the war room, which at least had the effect of calming Hannah down some. While she was still fully prepared to take down the alpha Sam had pinned to the wall, her tail wagged in full force as she spotted Mr. Bacon. The eldest Winchester looked from Sam to the man in the bow tie and seemed almost as angry as the day he’d stormed into the house in Fort Wayne.

“We seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot,” choked the man, who seemed peeved but not frightened by being strangled.

“Sinclair, I told you to let me welcome them,” Henry snapped, moving to Sam and placing a hand on his arm. “Sam, this is my mentor, Cuthbert Sinclair. As you have undoubtedly noticed, his people skills leave something to be desired.”

“A pleasure,” Sinclair gurgled before Sam let him drop to the ground and he crumpled to his knees.

“Maybe your mentor can tell me why the hell he walked in on my mate in the shower,” Sam snarled, looming over the man on the floor, his eyes still glowing crimson.

“The alarm on the front door went off back at our abode,” Sinclair wheezed as he got to his feet and straightened his jacket. “I merely came to investigate. He was the only one here.”

“So you thought you’d just accost a naked, solitary omega in his new home?” Henry demanded, the genuine anger that was rolling off of him causing Sam to recall how offended the older alpha had been at the thought of someone mistreating Dean.

“He’s mated, Henry,” Sinclair groused, with a deep eye roll. “You know I follow very strict etiquette with mated omegas.”

“And how do you expect him to know that?”

“I wouldn’t have touched him regardless. You know I couldn’t care less about omegas. I’m sorry to have startled him, but he screamed, slipped on the soap, and hit his head all on his own. I’ve told you, omegas have far too delicate constitutions for this kind of work.”

“My grandson has been through a terrible ordeal and has every right to be frightened of a strange man walking in on him when he’s bathing. His designation has nothing to do with it.”

Sam had gone to check on Dean as soon as it became clear this guy Sinclair wasn’t a threat, just a complete asshole. There was a pile of towels on the sink nearest the showers as well as a grey terry cloth robe that had seen better days. Clearly Dean found them somewhere, along with the bar of soap that was indeed on the tiled floor not far from his feet, and Sam grabbed a couple of the towels before turning off the shower. Dean was still shivering, though he didn’t look like he was in danger of throwing up again, and Sam blocked the omega from view of the two bickering alphas in the hallway, ignoring Sinclair’s dated views on omegas in the bunker as he gently dried Dean’s hair and cleaned up the blood at the back of his head.

“Are you going to be all right?” he asked, taking another towel to wipe slowly across Dean’s shoulders and chest after moving the omega’s hand to have him keep pressure on the wound.

“I want my gun back,” Dean whispered. “And my clothes.”

“I was already thinking we can spend the day in the armory after we have something to eat,” Sam told him, pleased that Dean wasn’t trying to wall himself off, even if it was just because he had a head wound and was too stressed to do so.

“Where are we gonna get food without a car?”

“This place has an enchanted pantry. Still stocked from the last time anyone lived here and everything’s still fresh.”

“An enchanted pantry, huh?” Dean managed to force a weak smile as the alpha draped one of the towels over his shoulders and left it there to give him a little more modesty. “I was wrong about you moving us into a library. We’re clearly living in Hogwarts.”

“It doesn’t have everything,” Sam allowed with a sigh. “I haven’t been able to find a single throw pillow.”

Dean appreciated the attempt at humor, as well as the way Sam’s white tee shirt was clinging to him. There was something deeply reassuring about having an alpha who was basically a giant wall of muscle ghosting kisses over his forehead as he was gently towel drying him. He knew he should be bristling at the idea of having a big, strong alpha to take care of him when he was a seasoned hunter who could kill someone with his thumb, but right now he really just wanted to hide behind his mate and let Sam pamper the hell out of him until the guy with the greasy hair was gone.

He'd been so enjoying the solace of the shower ten minutes ago. The water pressure was some of the best he’d ever experienced, the water was still hot even though he’d been standing under it since Sam took Hannah out half an hour before, and the quiet of the bunker was helping to calm his frayed nerves. While he knew there was the danger that with too much time with no noise to distract him that he would get caught up in his thoughts, just knowing for the moment that he was _alone_ , that there wouldn’t be anyone banging on the bathroom door telling him to hurry up and then rubbing against him while commenting on how gorgeous he looked soaking wet, the innuendo barely veiled, was a little slice of heaven.

Then as his head was tipped back, eyes closed to enjoy the spray running over his face, he heard a strange voice say, “There _is_ someone here,” and all sense of security was gone. He screamed, grabbed a towel to cover up, tried to find something to defend himself with but came up empty outside of the other towels ( _and yes, he could use them in a pinch, but he didn’t want the guy getting close enough for a towel to be an effective weapon_ ), yelled for Sam, and slipped on the bar of soap that he’d dropped, just as this Sinclair guy said. He certainly wasn’t the ideal candidate for arguing omegas were strong and independent when his head was swimming and he couldn’t regain his balance and the only thing he could think to do was keep shouting for Sam. He might as well embrace his role for the day of helpless damsel, particularly when he could tell by the way the room was still spinning that the odds were good he’d be laid up after this for at least a couple of hours with a concussion.

“Anyway Sam, I thought we could discuss your role with the organization now that you’ve finally agreed to join.”

At some point Sinclair had started talking to them, but neither man had any idea what he’d been saying until he stepped into the showers and set Hannah back to barking. Sam was on his feet in an instant, Dean still on the floor behind him, baring his teeth and snarling until Sinclair moved into the hallway with his hands raised. A deep scowl creased the Man of Letters’ mouth at the display of aggression, and Dean was pretty sure whoever this guy was he must have been dropped on his head a lot as a kid.

“Some other time,” Sam growled. “Maybe after our children are here and my mate is dressed and not bleeding from a head wound.”

“I told you,” Sinclair sighed, exasperated, “he did that himself!”

“Cuthbert,” Henry warned, grabbing his arm to steer him away. He threw the couple in the shower a look of deep apology. “Now that we know the alarm was just you and that you’ve arrived safely, we’ll give you some time to get settled. I’m very relieved you’re here, Dean.”

“Thanks Henry,” Dean said, and his grandfather finally succeeded in dragging Sinclair down the hall.

As soon as they were gone, Sam got Dean onto his feet, slowly reaching to run fingers through his hair so as not to startle him and then carefully pulling the omega against his chest to breathe in his scent. He still stank of Dick Roman, but his roses were coming back underneath the stench and in time he wound smell like only Dean again. Sam loosened his hold the second Dean’s shoulders began to tense, yet even though he was clearly allowing his mate to pull away if he wanted to, Dean didn’t. Instead he moved in closer, grabbing the hem of Sam’s shirt and curling in to make himself small against the alpha’s chest. Coupled with their conversation before bed the previous night, it was becoming clear to Sam that Dean needed to be the one leading every contact for the time being, even when it came to something as commonplace as scenting. While that might run counter to all of his instincts as an alpha to _chase, catch, hold_ , as well as the ever increasing demands of the demon blood to _mate_ , he’d do whatever it took to keep himself in check. After all, he had ready access to cold showers now.

Sam knew Dean wanted his own clothes again, but it didn’t appear to be a terrible thing that for the moment while they were stuck in the bunker he would simply have to wear Sam’s. The alpha would have suggested it anyway, even if they had an entire room full of things for Dean, and it was something of a relief to be able to avoid that particular fight. Though it was possible the omega would have caved quickly and crawled into a pair of Sam’s boxers and a tee shirt with only some minor grumbling about not being a girl, not having any other option allowed him to save face since he just didn’t have a choice. The younger man carefully ignored the burst of happiness that briefly filled the air when Dean pulled on Sam’s socks and pretended not to see the way his mate ducked his chin to have an easier time smelling the collar of the shirt. He dug some aspirin out of his duffel and tucked Dean back into bed before heading off to the kitchen to try to figure out what he could make for lunch and if there was anything even to make it in.

He found a cupboard full of cookware and some ancient, unopened Joy dish washing liquid in an actual glass bottle so he could scrub the years of dust from what he would need to make some condensed soup and crackers. Despite having been through the pantry with Henry on their first trip and being assured that all the food was completely edible, Sam was still surprised when he opened the first can of chicken noodle and saw actual condensed soup inside instead of a science experiment. The crackers were likewise not covered in mold, though after reviewing their supplies Sam was feeling brave enough to try using the oven to make toast ( _the cord on the ancient toaster looked questionable_ ).

Dean took a nap after eating the soup and crackers Sam brought him ( _the alpha didn’t mention the burnt toast_ ) so he’d hopefully feel up to making dinner, since he wasn’t having them live on condensed soup from the 1950s. While Dean was slicing carrots Sam made the mistake of coming up behind him in the kitchen and almost took a knife to the stomach in a horrifying replay of their last day at Benny’s. Sam ended up with another bowl of soup while the omega stormed off with Hannah at his heels and disappeared into the depths of the bunker until well after midnight.

Sam easily could have followed his scent, the alpha in him howling at allowing his mate to run off alone after everything he’d been through, which left Sam thinking about all the things he’d seen in his dreams. It wasn’t the happiest trip down memory lane, especially after he found the liquor stash in the library, and the more he thought about it the more he felt responsible for the whole thing. If he’d worked harder at finding Azazel, if he’d listened to Ruby and kept after the demon instead of playing house with Dean, Devereaux and Roman never would have gotten their hands on him. Sure, they probably wouldn’t be mated now, but that seemed a small price to pay for sparing the omega the torment of the last four months. Besides, it wasn’t as if he _really_ had a mate now anyway. Not that he’d expected they would fall immediately into mated bliss, he just definitely didn’t expect Dean would throw himself out of bed or start lashing out with a knife while cutting up vegetables.

And that was stupid. The drunker he got, the stupider he realized he was. He should have called Jody when he had the chance, told her what he feared Dean was going through, gotten some advice on how to handle this before they ended up on the lam and he couldn’t reach out in case the authorities had contacted her to help find the omega and they’d be compromising her. He was completely unprepared to deal with this level of trauma, and everything his instincts were telling him to do was so very clearly wrong. Even the simplest gestures, like brushing a hand over his elbow without announcing his presence was enough to send Dean running. What if being with Sam ended up doing more harm than good?

It was a real possibility he was starting to fear. With the evil thing inside him reawakened, he was finding himself pointedly ignoring a little voice that whispered “ _Yes_ ” every time he thought it might be better if he just went back out on the road once Adam was there with Elliott and Lizzie, but maybe it was right. His alpha was growling that they were both overthinking this, and if Sam just finished claiming Dean properly most of these issues would probably go away. The idea of pinning his mate down to a bed to taste every inch of his skin until the omega came to his senses and realized that all running did was deprive them both of happiness buzzed in the recesses of his mind, growing stronger every time Dick Roman’s smell on Dean caught him unawares. He worried that the longer Dean pushed him away the more insistent his alpha would become on taking control of the situation and marking Dean as unequivocally _his_. Surely it would be better for him to leave if the situation didn’t improve before things got that far.

By the time Hannah came trotting into the library, Sam was half asleep in one of the leather arm chairs, his hand still curled around the glass of whiskey on the side table next to him. Her pawing at his lap definitely got his attention and had him jerking up in his chair and spilling the rest of the amber liquid on the leather tabletop, which led to him cursing and trying to clean it up with the hem of his shirt. When it became apparent the hem of his shirt wasn’t going to be enough to deal with the spill he stripped his tee shirt off, stumbling and almost falling as he staggered to his feet to move the table lamp. Hannah sat and pawed at him the entire time, dancing away and then back to give him a little “wuf.”

“What, you gotta pee?” he slurred, earning a happy tail wag and some more “wuf”s of encouragement, and he heaved a deep sigh as he checked his pockets for the key to the door. “Great.”

“She’s lying,” Dean said from the doorway where he was standing in a pair of Sam’s sweats and one of his hoodies. “I already had her outside, she just wants to go bark at leaves.”

“You took her out?” Sam asked, his alpha having heart failure at the thought of his omega on his own in the dark, regardless of whether or not they were in the middle of nowhere. The amount of alcohol in his system definitely reduced his ability to control what leaked into his scent and what didn’t, and the panic and irritation that flooded the room had Dean’s hackles up immediately. “By _yourself_? Without me being _with you_?”

“I _am_ an adult, Sam,” Dean snapped, stuffing his balled fists into the pockets of the hoodie. He was quite proud of his ability to step three whole feet into the dark outdoors so Hannah could do her business and would be damned if his stupid mate was going to ruin it. He’d long ago learned the importance of small victories. “She needed to take a shit, I put a leash on her and opened a couple of doors. It wasn’t rocket science.”

“You shouldn’t be going anywhere alone, Dean,” Sam snapped back, officially giving up on the whiskey and just dropping his alcohol soaked shirt to the floor. This was their house now, after all. If he wanted to leave his clothes on the floor he damn well could.

Except he was a newly mated alpha, and Dean wasn’t about to put up with clothes on the floor.

“Jesus, Sam, we aren’t cavemen, even if we do live underground,” the omega grunted as he stormed over to pick up the shirt. “Are you coming to bed or what?”

“What?”

“Is that a question or your choice?”

“I...what?”

“Fine.” Dean was off and away across the library floor before Sam knew what was happening. “Just don’t puke on the floor.”

“Dean...wait…” He hurried to catch up to the omega before he had a chance to fill the entire bunker with irritated omega funk. “I’m coming to bed, I’m just kind of…”

“Drunk?”

He laughed until he realized Dean wasn’t and quickly pulled himself together as best he could.

“That, too, yeah, but uh...confused, I guess?”

“Bein’ drunk will do that to you. Trust me on that one.”

“Yeah…” He moved a few hesitant feet towards the smaller, still highly irritated man, and did his damndest to walk in a straight line. “I don’t know what you need me to do.”

Dean felt a stab of pain in his chest and blinked away the moisture that sprang to his eyes. He felt like a gigantic failure as a person in general and an omega in particular. He was supposed to be _good_ at this emotional honesty crap.

“I don’t either, Sammy.” He ran a hand through his hair and flinched when he hit the lump at the back of his head. That Sinclair douche had really fucked up the day, and now all Dean could think about was when another well preserved geriatric friend of his grandfather’s was going to pop in while he was taking a piss or brushing his teeth. It was not exactly how he’d hoped to spend his first day of freedom, and he was sure his little mini freak-outs were wearing on Sam, but it’s not like he could just stop _feeling_. He knew because he’d tried. Instead he changed the subject. “Did you talk to Ellen or Adam today?”

“Uh...yeah, I got to talk to Adam.” Sam was grateful for the new topic of discussion, since his stomach was starting to do somersaults and he found he suddenly needed the wall to hold himself up. “They split off from Jo at Little Rock. She still had that...uh...that Babies R Us thingy I got for you...the card with the five grand on it. She was gonna get a bunch of stuff for the kids and then keep coming.”

“Couldn’t handle traveling with her mom, huh?”

“I guess there was some kinda big argument when they all stopped for lunch about...uh...if Jo was taking care of her feet.”

“I’m surprised they made it all the way to lunch.”

“Talked to Bobby, too. Let him know we made it and that you’re in one piece.”

Dean snorted, burying himself in the hoodie, and muttered, “That’s debatable.”

Sam’s alpha screamed at him to fold Dean in against his chest and brush his hands through his hair and down his neck until his omega melted into him. Of course he was aware now, even drunk, that he should be doing the opposite of what his instincts wanted, so he shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans and said, “I just want you to be okay, Dean.”

Dean nodded, studying the pattern of the floor as he ran a hand absently behind Hannah’s ear while she pushed against his leg and tried to convince him to take her back outside again. He understood that impulse; he wanted him to be okay, too. But he’d been on this ride before, and really not that long ago. In fact, he kind of felt like he never actually got off of it, so he simply shrugged and said, “It’s late and I’m not gonna sleep worth shit if you’re out here polishing off a fifth, so just come to bed already.”

He waited patiently for Sam to weave his way down the hall before catching hold of the alpha’s fingers and trailing along behind him. He went willingly when Sam gave a little tug, sliding up against his side to throw an arm around Sam’s waist and help keep him steady on the way to the bedroom. Hannah stayed back, barking down the hallway until Dean called her to come and she trotted along after them.

Cuthbert watched them go through his favorite scrying mirror, a nice glass of scotch sitting on the table beside his favorite armchair as he pondered his next move. His visit that morning had been a spur of the moment decision to assess Sam’s devotion to his omega, and the results were disappointing to say the least - not only because the young alpha seemed unusually attached, but because Henry had apparently rediscovered something of the familial allegiance Sinclair had worked so hard to stamp out of him over the decades. He was going to have to be very careful in how he proceeded from here on out, though one thing was absolutely clear: allowing an omega into the bunker was turning out to be an even worse idea than he anticipated.


	100. Sammy, I Think We Found the Batcave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day two of freedom goes a little better than day one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still trying to get through my broken Google doc before it stops opening for me and I lose a bunch of chapters (THE HORROR!!!).
> 
> Also, Dean has a bit of a panic attack, so be warned.

Dean didn’t end up as the little spoon, though he did fling himself out of bed again the next morning when he woke up curled into Sam’s naked chest with a heavy arm and leg trapping him against the mattress. He was glad Sam was too hungover to really know what was going on, since it gave Dean a chance to stammer something about walking the dog and making breakfast to mask his humiliation. What the hell kind of hunter was he that he couldn’t keep it together for five seconds in Sam’s presence? In his _mate’s_ presence? Sam wasn’t just some random alpha, and this morning especially he’d been hit with the _warm love safe home_ Sam smell before he even fully awoke, yet he’d still needed to escape from him like he was being burned. Maybe they _should_ start sleeping in separate rooms, just until he could get a fucking grip, though honestly the thought of not having Sam next to him when he went to bed was much scarier than those few seconds in the morning when he woke up and didn’t know who was lying beside him.

Although, getting Sam good and drunk at night might be the way to go, at least until the betas arrived with their children. Dean had time to walk Hannah ( _which still only consisted of opening the outside door and moving three feet into the great wide open with her on a leash_ ), organize the pantry, and clean the kitchen before starting on breakfast. He hadn’t really looked at their food stash the night before, just wanting to get something on the table that wasn’t chicken noodle soup, and was frankly shocked at how much was there and how it really was all still fresh. Even the ice in the honest-to-god icebox hadn’t thawed, and the milk, eggs, orange juice, and butter weren’t spoiled. After a couple of failed attempts at getting the quantities correct he had coffee brewing in the percolator while he whipped up some eggs, toast, and corned beef hash as Hannah sat patiently by his side, making sure he knew just what a good girl she was so she could eventually be rewarded with whatever wonderful smelling things he had on top of the stove.

The best part about getting to make breakfast by himself was keeping one of the carving knives tucked in the checkered apron he’d found to tie around his waist. He knew any normal person would think he was a psychopath for being so completely thrilled at having a nine inch blade strapped to his waist, but if the last four months had taught him anything it was that “normal people” were sick, twisted sadists, or at the very least a flock of unthinking sheep who saw a collar instead of the human being wearing it. If there was one area where the retraining had succeeded, it was in convincing him that his life had been wasted to this point. He’d spent over a decade killing monsters preying on innocent victims, and when the tables had been turned the very people he gave up his childhood and adulthood for - training to protect them, breaking his body and his psyche and his soul to protect them - had looked the monsters holding him hostage square in the face and decided he must have done something to deserve whatever he got. Just because he was an omega and someone somewhere told them omegas weren’t really people like everyone else.

Well, fuck them. He _was_ a person like everyone else. He had a mate. He had kids. He had a Great Pyrenees begging him to let her show him how well she could clean the breakfast dishes. He had a house in Indiana that he’d had to sell to his kid brother for a dollar, for Christ’s sake. Why did he have to be some kind of hero? Why did he have to sacrifice everything for total strangers who wouldn’t stand up and say “Stop” when he was being treated in a way they wouldn’t have found acceptable for a dog? He knew what his dad would say. His happiness for all those people’s lives was no contest, but what had given John the right to decide that it was Dean’s job to save everyone when he was so young that he didn’t think another way of life for him could even exist? What about Elliott and Lizzie? Didn’t they fucking deserve a mom who wasn’t a fucking basket case? Who didn’t fucking run from their father every time he moved too fast or turned his head the wrong way or made the mistake of entering a room unannounced when Dean’s back was turned? And why the fuck was he crying? He was Dean Motherfucking Winchester, and he was _not_ going to spend his life crying, goddammit!

“Dean?”

The omega startled and pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes to wipe away the moisture before pulling the toast out of the oven ( _all the other appliances might work but he didn’t trust the toaster_ ), getting everything onto plates to take to the table as Sam watched him from the doorway, hair disheveled and head in desperate need of aspirin. Dean managed to set the plates and silverware down without too much clinking, using the apron to clean off his face as he went back to pour the coffee. He already had a cup for himself and paused to take a sip to calm his nerves, wishing he'd made it Irish and well aware thoughts like that were usually a one-way trip to alcoholism.

“There's milk in the icebox,” he said as he busied himself with turning off the stove top and buttering the toast. “I know you like the fancy creamer but back in the ‘50s they drank coffee like real men.”

“Milk will be fine,” Sam told him, heading gingerly for the pantry where he'd spotted the sugar the day before. “Do me a favor and shoot me if I try to drink that much again.”

“Will do, once I clean and inspect all the guns around here.”

“That could take a while. I've seen the armory.”

“Is that so?”

“Hey.” Dean had stopped by the table, waiting for Sam to come back from the pantry before starting to eat, and when the alpha returned he slowly folded his arms around the omega's waist, pressing his lips chastely to Dean's cheek. Dean held back the urge to start crying again as Sam leaned his forehead against his mate's temple, saying, “When I go looking for an abandoned 1950s era underground bunker with no cable, phone, or Internet _and_ questionable wiring, the place better have a kickass armory for my omega, or I'm firing my realtor.”

That earned a snort and a smile from the smaller man, who plucked at the hem of the soft grey tee shirt Sam had pulled on. It was well worn and had been washed into submission, the fabric still sturdy but broken in enough to feel almost silky against his skin. He let himself fall for a few minutes into the hazy-happy “myalpha mySam _mine_ ” feedback loop of Sam’s scent before ordering his mate to sit down and eat his breakfast while he went to get the aspirin from their room.

The armory was magnificent, housing a ridiculous number of weapons considering the organization was devoted primarily to the scholarly study of all things supernatural. Not that it was difficult for Dean to believe a group of nerds had set the place up. Weapons were divided by type and then subtype – bladed weapons broken down by type and region of origin, guns organized by type and action, bows divided into longbows and crossbows, specialty weapons like the 1930s era machine guns and the World War I grenade launcher ( _he nearly wet himself at the sight of the grenade launcher_ ) in their own section. Of course, there was an extensive cataloguing system as well, detailing what each piece was, where it was acquired, and what it could be used to kill. Most of the weapons were either enchanted or had been modified to fend off specific threats if necessary, though they would work on anything that could be killed by silver, brass, or copper in a pinch. Dean cracked the first real smile Sam had seen as he tried to figure out where to start, grabbing a silver kukri that was listed in the catalogue as ideal for dispatching Whispers ( _whatever they were – Sam made a mental note to look them up in the library_ ), a brass sgian-dubh for killing Rakshasa ( _he wanted to grab the dirk but Sam said no_ ), a Walter P38 that looked to be in excellent condition, and a .38 Special he could strap to his ankle. It seemed a little like overkill to the alpha, but he certainly wasn’t going to say anything when Dean was already eagerly fishing gun oil and rags and whetstones out of the maintenance cupboard so he could take his new toys to the war room to go over them and get them into perfect killing condition.

Hannah needed to go out again by the time Dean was set up properly, so Sam clipped on her leash and headed out into the woods while the omega busied himself with the guns, the knives, and affirming that he wasn’t helpless anymore. The fresh air helped with the pounding in his head and the rolling in his stomach, even if Hannah did pull a little more at the leash and threw him off balance ( _he needed to remember to use the Halti_ ). He gave Adam and Ellen a call to check on their progress and how the kids were holding up as he listened to the birds tweeting overhead and a lone car pass by on the highway. They hadn’t met up with Jo, but they’d talked to her and she was planning to drive straight through to the bunker and should arrive sometime in the early evening. She’d gotten quite a haul at Babies ‘R Us, which Dean was just going to have to live with if he didn’t like the colors or furniture, though apparently she’d picked up a bunch of throw pillows while she was there as a way of a peace offering if he were really displeased. It was strange to think of cocky, petite, tough little Jo Harvelle the bartender marching into a store for babies and apparently walking out with five cart loads of stuff, completely unphased. Maybe he’d buy her a tropical island, too.

By the time the Pyr decided it was too hot for her outside and she wanted to return to the climate controlled comfort of the bunker, Dean had moved the record player and a box of records from the library into the war room and was listening to something that sounded suspiciously to Sam like _La vie en rose_ as he sharpened the kukri. Dean froze at the sound of the bunker door opening, his knuckles going white as he gripped the blade in one hand and reached for the Special with the other, forcing himself to calm down and smile when he saw Sam, though the smile was a bit too close to a grimace to be genuine. The alpha suppressed a swell of hurt at the less than enthusiastic greeting. Six months ago he wouldn’t have thought twice about laughing at the incongruity of the great Dean Winchester listening to Edith Piaf, then swept him into his arms and danced him around the hotel room back in Chicago, kissing away the adorable pout that would have darkened his face.

Except that he wouldn’t have, he realized. Six months ago in Chicago he could barely stand to have Dean touch him because of what happened in the bathroom at Marge’s. He’d gotten them separate suites so they didn’t have to share a bed, wouldn’t hold his hand if they weren’t wearing gloves, and kept him at arm’s length in general under the guise of not wanting to hurt Dean’s ribs while they healed. How different was it, really, that he needed to make sure he stayed in Dean’s line of sight when he approached or that if he wanted to touch the omega he moved slowly and gave his mate plenty of time to back away? It was ridiculous of him to feel so affronted at his omega needing space after only having Dean back for two days when it was amazing the smaller man hadn’t spent the last forty-eight hours locked in their room.

Only he _did_ feel affronted, and he couldn’t stop, especially not when the smell of a foreign alpha filled their home wherever Dean went. Having to claim Dean so hastily to stop him going into heat may have been necessary, but it had clearly complicated their relationship in ways that weren’t helping either of them. The bond was making Sam _need_ things from Dean he simply wasn’t in a position to give, and it was starting to leak out of him, no matter how much he tried to hold it in. That was evident by the way Dean’s expression faltered as Sam watched him petting Hannah from the balcony before scenting the air and hastily gathering up the weapons and various cleaning and sharpening tools into the cloth he’d laid down to protect the table.

“I should start lunch,” he said, not really to Sam, as he tried to hide the way his hands were shaking. “Sandwiches should be fine. We have stuff to make sandwiches. I’ll just grab a shower and make sandwiches. I haven’t showered yet. I’ll go shower. Then I’ll make sandwiches. Unless you want soup?”

“Sandwiches are perfect,” Sam replied, staying completely still at the top of the stairs as Dean babbled and stumbled and trembled in response to the desire rolling off of the alpha. “Jo should be here by dinner.”

“Good!” Dean was too busy trying to moderate his tone to notice he was holding the kukri in front of him in such a way as to be a clear warning that his mate shouldn’t come any closer. “Maybe we can have her pick up some groceries or somethin’ so we aren’t eating sixty year old Spam.”

“Maybe,” Sam agreed. “I’ll go give her a call, and then I think I’ll do some reading.”

“Okay. You want me to bring you lunch?”

“No, just leave it in the kitchen and I’ll go get it when I’m hungry.”

“Okay.”

Hannah trailed after him as he backed his way into the hallway and then disappeared towards the showers at a near run, and Sam took back every second he’d spent thinking they should have gotten a different dog. He nearly laughed at the irony when the record switched to _Hymne a l’amour_. Jess had minored in French so he knew Piaf’s catalogue and headed down to turn off the player before he completely lost his mind. The parasitic blood coursing through him murmured that he should make sure Dean was safe in the shower and see if he needed help washing his back, and though he ignored it and turned towards the library it took a great deal of effort to do so.  

The book he found on what exactly Whispers were ( _a type of demon that had originally been thought to be in the bloodline of werewolves - who knew?_ ) was actually quite fascinating, and two hours had gone by before he remembered that Dean was going to make him a sandwich. He felt a flood of panic at not seeing Dean in the kitchen or the war room or the showers, but managed to squelch it by the time he located the omega in the garage under the hood of a gorgeous candy apple red convertible with curving fenders like crashing waves and a chrome bird on the hood with swooping wings to mimic the overall lines of the car. There were numerous other vehicles in the garage plus a couple of motorcycles - one with a sidecar - though Dean had definitely zeroed in on the prettiest of the bunch.

The omega looked up at the sound of Sam’s footsteps on the polished concrete floor, a stripe of grease from his cheekbone up to his hairline highlighting his bone structure and making the alpha’s heart do a backflip. A huge smile lit his face, making him look ten years old again, as he exclaimed, “It’s a fucking _Triumph 1800 Roadster_ , Sammy! Four speed manual transmission, hydraulic brakes - god, look at this thing!”

“She’s a beauty,” Sam said, which was the truth. He might not know anything about cars, but this one was awfully nice to look at.

“Yeah, I mean, I’m sure she doesn’t run anymore when she’s been sitting for so long but I’ll fix her up.” His eyes raked hungrily over the sloping lines and shining chrome, before he added quickly, “We _are_ going to get to drive these eventually, right?”

“I doubt Henry or his mentor need all these cars,” Sam assured him, which managed to make him even happier. “And if they did I doubt they know how to get them up and running.”

“Good, because...Christ, Sam, this place is _awesome_. That, over there -” He pointed to a white truck with a wooden bed with sides that looked like a back yard fence. “That’s a Model 68 Stakebed. And _this_ -” He moved from the car to the sky blue motorcycle with the sidecar. “This is an Indian Chief, late ‘40s by the looks of it. See Chitty Chitty Bang Bang over there?” He waved a finger at a cream colored two seat convertible at the far end of the garage with tires that looked like they belonged on a bicycle with red spoke-like rims and matching red bucket seats. “That’s a a 1937 Jaguar SS 100. I mean...holy shit!” He laughed, disappearing back underneath the hood of the Roadster, before looking to his mate. “You been readin’ this whole time?”

“Yes, actually.” The alpha risked moving to stand by the Roadster, which he was pretty sure Dean would have named before the end of the day. “I found a book on those things that your kukri takes down.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah. They’re kind of like a demon that’s a cross between a werewolf and a vampire…”

“A _werepire_!” Dean said gleefully, and Sam rolled his eyes. “Come on Sam, say it with me.”

“They’re actually called Whispers,” Sam told him, and he shrugged.

“Werepire is better.”

“Anyway, they uh, they got their nickname from how quiet their attacks are. They feed on hearts and blood during the solar eclipse. Because of their stealthiness, they've lived on the fringes for centuries. Although there were several that were hunted and killed during the Salem Witch Trials.”

“When no actual witches were killed.” He smirked at Sam’s pleased expression and said, “I _did_ go to Actaeon, remember?”

“I remember.” Sam leaned gingerly against the Roadster, afraid if he wasn’t careful he’d get chased out of the garage by an overprotective car enthusiast. “Where’s Hannah?”

“Sleepin’ on the bed,” Dean replied as he finally closed the hood and wiped his hands on the towel tucked into the waistband of Sam’s sweatpants. “I didn’t want her in here gettin’ fur all over everything or jumping up on one of the cars and scratching the paint.”

“Speaking of the cars…” Sam took a good long look inside the Roadster. It was as beautiful on the inside as it was on the outside. “These don’t really seem appropriate for car seats and trips to Walmart for diapers.”

His mate looked positively scandalized that Sam would even suggest their children would be allowed in any of the vehicles in the garage any time in the near future.

“Sam, these are date night cars,” he said firmly and finally.

Sam had to laugh.

“Date night cars?”

“Yes, Sam, we will eventually have date nights.” He blushed a deep crimson at the soft smile on the alpha’s face, and headed back towards the bunker’s interior. “Did you eat that sandwich? I slaved over that thing for three whole minutes, so…”

“I did not eat the sandwich yet,” Sam confessed, hurrying to catch up while he could still get around to walk with Dean before they were cramped in the hallway and he needed to hang back to avoid spooking him. “I came out of the library and didn’t see you so I...kinda had a heart attack, but then I found you so it’s fine. I was thinking...” He cleared his throat, reaching out to grab onto Dean’s pinky and hoping it didn’t make him run. It didn’t, but he flinched before he could relax again. “After I finish eating we could raid some of the other bedrooms. A couple have twin beds and if we pushed two of them together we’d have a lot more room than the full bed we’re sleeping on now.”

Dean stopped, a blush rising to his cheeks again. He’d been wondering how long Sam would been able to take scenting Roman’s mark on him, and apparently the answer was just about two days.

“I smell that bad, huh?” he asked after clearing his throat, confused by how shocked Sam looked at the question.

“No!” the alpha said immediately, giving up Dean’s fingers in favor of his entire hand. “Well...it does make me want to kill something...lots of somethings...but no, I just thought you’d be more comfortable with some space. So I’m not all over you in the morning.”

It was said so innocently that Dean was suddenly very glad he’d spent the last two and a half months perfecting the “How Is This Different” game, because he had a burning need to kiss Sam despite the thought of kissing anyone leaving him queasy. He was well aware he was expecting far too much of himself when there had been moments today as he walked around the bunker all alone that he genuinely thought he must be dreaming and couldn’t possibly have escaped the Senator, but he wanted to do something _normal_ , something that he wouldn’t have hesitated to do a few months ago. Hell, something that he’d gotten up the courage to do after Sam came to see him at Fox’s office, even though he’d known it wouldn’t end well for him. He just never could have imagined how badly it would go, and now he was stuck in the hallway with his biologically and legally binding alpha just trying to get up the courage to press their lips together. It was ridiculous and mortifying and he finally just sucked in a breath and moved up against Sam’s chest, hoping that if he tipped his head up a little and stared at Sam’s mouth from under his eyelashes his mate would be able to figure it out and he’d be spared from having to close the rest of the distance himself.

Sam got it, and quite quickly. He did get into Stanford, after all - he wasn’t exactly an idiot. Dean was giving him the same look as the morning after Adam’s party, which set off all kinds of conflicting feelings for him, none of them strong enough to make him step back and run this time. The circles under Dean’s eyes were less dark and prominent than they’d been the day before, his freckles begging to be counted to see if Sam still knew how many there were, pools of mossy green peeking up at him from under thick lashes that looked like something out of a Maybelline commercial. Sam wasn’t the kind of guy who had a ton of fetishes and he certainly didn’t need Dean to look feminine to admire his mate’s beauty, but the thought of Dean with just a hint of mascara to bring out those gorgeous eyes even more was definitely doing things to him. Very slowly he trailed his hands up over Dean’s arms, his shoulders, his neck, pausing to ghost his fingertips over their bond so his mate shivered, eyes fluttering closed, and settled his hands on either side of the smaller man’s face to trace his cheekbones with his thumbs. Sam could feel Dean’s hands trembling where he’d placed them lightly against his chest, and asked softly, “Is this okay?”

Dean nodded, biting his lower lip, as he concentrated on the differences between Sam and the Senator, afraid that if he opened his eyes he’d lose his nerve and flee. The scent was obviously different, despite the remains of Dick’s mark on him still wafting up between them. The longer Dean had been in Louisiana the more Roman smelled of something that lived in the deepest bowels of a sewer. Sam’s scent was crisp and comforting, with underlying tones of love and devotion. His body was different, too, of course - the smooth, firm planes of muscle under Dean’s hands a promise that Sam would fight for him, unlike the Senator’s softness from years of having yes men do his dirty work. The way his face was being brushed by slightly calloused thumbs, like the alpha was carefully memorizing every line, was the polar opposite of how Roman had grabbed him with hands soft from desk work, trying to leave fingerprints on the omega’s skin. Having to tip his head back when Sam nudged their noses together because Dean had mated a skyscraper made his chest clench, though not in a bad way. Still, a few seconds of terror gripped him when he felt Sam’s slow exhale of warm breath against his mouth before the alpha’s lips followed.

That was different, too. The few times Roman had forced their mouths together he had never tasted so sweet or been so gentle, and there had always been an insistent tongue forcing its way in to lick at Dean’s teeth and the roof of his mouth. Sam’s kiss was delicate, caressing Dean’s lips, sucking and nipping but not demanding anything further of him. The huge, warm hands cupping his jaw tipped his face whichever way Sam wanted to angle their mouths together, gently steering without taking control away, his touch so light Dean could easily break free if he wanted. Not that he did, not in the middle of a cloud of Sam’s scent and his heat and the positive reinforcement Dean’s inner omega was getting from being so close to his alpha. He felt the urge to purr but it caught in his throat, his subconscious wary of giving too much encouragement even as he relaxed further into the kiss.

The haze of the gunpowder and leather, the strength underlying it to remind him of the protection Sam offered to Dean and their children, that he’d die for them if he had to, was making Dean feel lightheaded, his breath coming in shallow gasps as Sam kissed along his lips to the corner of his mouth. Sam’s left hand drifted down to the mating mark, his fingertips lazily tracing the scar and sending bursts of electricity firing under Dean’s skin. He could get used to this feeling, how it made him all tingly and warm. It was distracting enough that the omega couldn’t really focus as his mate nibbled up the line of his jaw until he’d reached Dean’s ear.

The hallway came back into focus and began to collapse in on him as Sam’s mouth closed around his earlobe. Dean felt himself being pinned down, Roman straddling him and sucking on his ear as he marked the omega for the day before heading off to the Capitol. He shoved Sam off of him, grateful for the wall at his back since it was the only thing holding him up as his heart began to race and he broke out in a cold sweat. He reached for the kukri on instinct but didn’t draw it, too preoccupied with forcing himself to breathe as he swallowed back the vomit rising in his throat. Sam was saying something to him, but he couldn’t make it out past the roaring of his pulse in his ears, moisture springing to his eyes as he squeezed them tightly shut and tried to remember where he was. Someone grabbed his hand and he felt a thumb massaging the webbing between his fingers, and though he had no idea who it was he held on for dear life, reaching out blindly to try to find more of whoever was standing there. He came up with a fistful of shirt and seconds later two giant hands were on his biceps, gently kneading his muscles as the voice became clearer.

“Just breathe, Dean,” it was saying over and over while a wave of “ _myalpha mySam_ ” washed over him and he tightened his grip on the shirt.

“Sammy,” he choked, and the hands on his arms squeezed in response.

“I’m sorry, baby, I should have asked…”

Dean shook his head, torn between continuing to cling to Sam’s shirt and running back to lock himself in one of the cars in the garage. Either that or he’d go stand in the shower for a couple of hours until he stopped feeling Roman’s cum all over his chest. After what felt like forever of just standing there he managed to get his breathing under control and was able to open his eyes without any tears trickling out. Sam was at arms’ length, clearly struggling to hold himself back from touching Dean everywhere to confirm he was okay, confining his hands to the skin between his elbows and shoulders, and trying not to look as frantic as his scent betrayed.

“It’s okay, Sam,” he finally said when he was pretty sure he could trust his voice. “I just need to take a walk or somethin’.”

“Okay.” Sam squashed the desire to ask if he was going to go outside or just walk around the bunker and finally let Dean go, shoving his hands into his pockets. “I’ll go eat my lunch and then start on switching out the bed. It’d be good to have that done before Jo gets here with cribs and stuff to put together.”

“Yeah. Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. Did you talk to Ellen? How are the kids?”

Dean had folded his arms tightly across his chest as soon as Sam released his hold, and the alpha didn’t quite succeed in ignoring how desperately Dean was trying to vanish into the wall behind him. He wasn’t going to fight the subject change, hoping it would help his mate relax after what had been a very nice, easy kissing session had taken such a terrible turn.

“I did. They’re fine. Elliott’s a little cranky, but honestly, he’s never _not_ cranky. I swear he’s gonna be five years old shouting at people to get off the lawn.” That got a snicker out of Dean, even as a sense of emptiness flooded Sam through the bond. He understood it immediately. He was also purposefully not thinking about their children and the fact that they weren’t in the bunker yet. “Should be here around lunchtime tomorrow, she thinks.”

“That’s great!” A weak, watery smile pulled at the corners of the omega’s mouth, and he shivered like someone had just walked over his grave. “It’ll give us time to do some more cleaning and make the place presentable. Maybe I can get some of the stink off me so it doesn’t set Elliott off. Lizzie’s used to the smell by now.”

“Baby…”

“I’m gonna go grab Hannah.”

He headed off swiftly down the hall towards their room, arms still squeezed across his chest until he reached the corner and dropped them to his side before turning and vanishing. Sam sighed in frustration, digging his hands into his hair as he hung back to give Dean enough lead time to get out of the bunker before they ran into each other again. Even though he’d dreamed so often of what Dean was subjected to, he was desperate to hear from his mate what had and had not actually happened so he knew what he was dealing with - besides what was obviously an issue having his earlobes sucked on. For the first time he thought maybe he understood why Adam hadn’t been able to resist watching the tape from the basement. If this is what Dean was like once he remembered Shreveport, Sam probably would have pressed harder on the omega to tell him what he went through. True, Dean had still been a pretty big mess when the two of them met months later, but he wasn’t like _this_. Suddenly his mind was consumed with the need to know how much in the dreams he’d seen of the things that had happened to his mate - the ones from the basement and the ones after he was sent to Baton Rouge - was real, and how much was just panicked fantasy. It most of it was real...well, Sam hoped once Jo got there she could give them an update on the police search for Dean and Lizzie, because he badly needed to know if it was safe for him to call Jody Mills.


	101. You Have to Trust Someone Again, Eventually

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The population of the bunker grows by one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to go on record as voting for Steve Yockey and Davy Perez to take over as co-show runners. No spoilers for people who haven't seen 14x10, but Nihilism gave me life.

If they ever had another daughter, Sam was going to try his darndest to persuade Dean they needed to name her after Joanna Elizabeth Harvelle, because her presence sliced through the tension in the bunker and put a buffer between them when they badly needed one if things weren’t going to spin out of control. After the kiss, Dean was gone with Hannah for over two hours and the alpha and demon blood in Sam were both pushing for him to hold the omega down and mate him the second he got back so he’d stop doing things like wandering off in the middle of nowhere. That he had two guns, a long blade, a dagger, and a big ass dog when he left was completely irrelevant to Sam’s hindbrain, and the blackness inside him was more than willing to capitalize on his more animalistic instincts in an attempt to turn him into something feral.

Sam remembered enough of his conversations with Jody to know he wasn’t _supposed_ to tell Dean how he should be processing what he’d been through unless his behaviors turned harmful, but dammit, it had only been _two days_ since Sam got him back! Dean should be leaning on him more, letting him do things for him, telling him what he needed, not just _walking out_ and leaving Sam to panic about whether he was off somewhere with a gun in his mouth. He should be resting and recovering and letting Sam spoil and soothe him. He was the alpha. That was his _job_.

Instead his mate was pushing himself too hard, shutting Sam out and pretending things were just going to magically be fine as long as they didn’t talk about anything, saying someday they’d have date nights and then seeming to be okay with kissing way before Sam expected him to be ready for kissing and then suddenly not being okay with kissing – which was fine, Dean needed to set the pace and it was _fine_ , but how long were they going to go on like this? Two weeks? Two months? Two years? He knew rationally that he was almost certainly overreacting, that the way he was feeling was in no way warranted after such a short amount of time, but his alpha didn’t care that it had _only_ been two days, because it had still been _two days_ of not being able to comfort his brand new mate and it was excruciating. How long was he expected to wait before he started asking Dean to open up to him? How was he supposed to _fix_ anything if he just kept stumbling blindly onto landmines, trying to shuffle through his mental Rolodex of things he’d dreamed that might set Dean off but not knowing what would and what wouldn’t because Dean was blocking his emotions from his scent and cutting off the connection through their bond? How the hell was he supposed to help Dean if Dean wouldn’t let him?

The scent of Sam’s anger and frustration at not knowing where Dean was or when he’d come back hit the omega as soon as he walked in the door and had him growling. He didn’t need Sam reminding him with his stupid alpha stink that he was a helpless omega who shouldn’t be walking around a secluded forest by himself. He fucking _knew_ that. If he didn’t know anything else after the last few months, he definitely knew _that_ ; how easily someone could violate him if they wanted, how sure he could be that the law was stacked against him, how simple it would be for someone to make him disappear for months before Sam could find him. But he couldn’t just hide in this goddamned bunker, much as he would like to, not when he had two babies to take care of who were going to be there needing him _tomorrow_. It was completely impractical to think he could stay tucked away forever, and it didn’t help his attempts to remember what it was like to be Dean Winchester, the best hunter around, if Sam was going to have a kitten every time he went somewhere alone.

It also didn’t help that having a few hours to himself with only trees and birds and squirrels to contend with gave him plenty of time to think about just how angry he was with Sam for this whole mess. Which probably wasn’t fair; not after what he’d heard about how Sam being at the hearing wouldn’t have helped the case since Devereaux was tainted, and would probably have made it harder for Sam to get to Dean than it was, but Dean wasn’t particularly interested in being fair at the moment. He’d spent his whole life quietly sucking up the fact that things weren’t fair. He felt in this instance that he might be entitled to be the one doling out an unfair judgment against someone else - especially if that someone else was going to stink up the place with his stupid alpha arrogance about his mate daring to take a walk without him. Well screw him. Dean wasn’t his property just because he had a scar on his neck now. He could go wherever he pleased, whenever he pleased, and Sam was just going to have to accept it.

The omega in him tried to temper the anger, murmuring that Dean may have been taken, but Sam was who he was taken _from_. That Sam wasn’t angry he’d been gone for two hours because he wanted to control him - he was terrified Dean wouldn’t come back. That he should try to see things from the alpha’s perspective, except Dean couldn’t give a damn about _any_ alpha’s perspective, not even one that loved him.

Yeah, it was a good thing when Jo showed up.

Jo may have gone a little crazy at Babies ‘R Us, having been held back in her shopping spree only due to the truck having a finite amount of space. It was obvious, however, that given the option she absolutely would have bought out half the store because she was so _excited_ to show them all the things she bought. She didn’t even notice that she had arrived while they were in the middle of a shouting match and they were still fuming at each other after pulling it together to answer the pounding on the outer door. It didn’t line up at all with the Jo Harvelle either of them knew, but apparently spending Sam’s money on his and Dean’s kids was something she could really get behind as a fun pastime.

She’d coordinated the kids’ bedding, not knowing how much room there would be in the bunker, so everything for Lizzie was monkey-themed while all of Elliott’s things were covered in lions. The color schemes matched and were both relatively neutral, so sheets and blankets would be interchangeable in case it was a while before the couple could get out to a baby store. She got two convertible cribs with mattresses and a matching changing table to go between them, a jungle themed table lamp ( _“It has a monkey_ **_and_ ** _a lion on it!”_ ), a jungle themed mobile for over Elliott’s crib, a bassinet in case they wanted to put him to sleep in another room, a baby monitor, a diaper genie, about a six month’s supply of formula for both kids ( _as a beta she didn’t need a script_ ), a boatload of bottles, and a baby food maker since she didn’t know how close they’d be to a good grocery store.

She’d picked up a Rock ‘N Play for Elliott because she knew he loved it, a bouncer like the one Lizzie had when she was smaller for when he started exercising his legs, a harness one of them could use to carry Elliott since she knew Dean had another for Lizzie, and a walker for the little girl, who would be up be up on her feet soon. They’d packed a lot of Elliott’s toys since he was so picky and she wasn’t about to try to figure out what he liked on her own, though she bought a playpen to keep Lizzie contained and a bunch of sensory toys and pacifiers for her to have while cooped up. She looked like she’d grabbed an entire aisle of burp cloths, bibs, and receiving blankets, plus a ton of baby shampoo, lotion, wipes, and diapers. Both kids had new wardrobes, Lizzie’s much more fun because apparently boy clothes were boring and that really didn’t seem right, but the way he peed he was likely going to stain everything yellow anyway so it was probably just as well that his clothes weren’t all cute.

Besides that, she’d gotten about a dozen throw pillows in as many colors and fabrics as she could without them looking like they were obviously for a baby’s room so Dean could properly nest. She wasn’t stupid enough to say they were for nesting, of course, but it was understood among everyone who’d come to free him from Dick Roman that one of the first things he was going to need was to build himself a den that felt safe. The bunker might be awesome, but it was built for alphas and outside of the records and the lone checkered apron there wasn’t a whole lot that would be pleasing to a newly mated omega, never mind one with two infants. It was almost overwhelming to suddenly have so much stuff for very small children to get into an underground bunker where earlier in the day the two men had separately been drooling over weapons, cars, and books, Edith Piaf echoing through the halls. Jo certainly felt stupid at worrying about whether they’d have room for both kids and thinking she should coordinate bedding to save space once she got inside with a couple of the bags of pillows, but recovered quickly once Hannah jumped up to give her a hug, complete with happy “wooWOO”ing and violent tail wagging.

The news of the outside world hadn’t changed much. They were still looking for Dean and Lizzie and had a sketch of Sam circulating but it didn’t look particularly like him, so either Nick just hadn’t paid close enough attention to what he looked like or the artist sucked. The picture they were using of Dean was from one of the recent events with the Senator where his hair was quite long and had been bleached some by the sun so he at least wouldn’t be instantly recognizable if he kept his hair short and wore sunglasses to cover up the dark circles under his eyes. The authorities still had no idea who shot the Senator, as no one in the ballroom got a good look at the assailant. Jo said in another couple of days Bobby planned to call in an anonymous tip about having spotted Dean in Mexico, and from there they should be able to survive with their aliases until the case dropped from the news and Kevin could start deleting files.

Aware now that there wasn’t much to connect Sam to Roman’s house, Dean all but bodily threw him out of the bunker after they’d finished unloading the Ford and told him to make a run into town to see what they were looking at in terms of grocery stores available to them while he and Jo started putting cribs together. Sam was told he should go ahead and grab himself something to eat if he wanted anything fancy, since Dean was going to make more sandwiches for him and Jo. Really, Dean just wanted a chance to get into the liquor cabinet Sam had raided the night before and was pretty sure if his mate was there he’d get all kinds of nasty glances shot his way, even though Sam had been the one hungover that morning. Sure, just a couple of days ago he’d gotten pretty tipsy at the party, so he couldn’t say he wanted to break out the alcohol because he hadn’t been able to drink in a while, but then again he wasn’t really sure he needed a specific reason to get drunk at this point. It seemed like the freak show that was recently his life should suffice.

Jo was confused by the pair of twin beds tied together with leather straps and Dean had forgotten while out on his walk that they’d agreed to replace the full bed, so for a moment he felt deeply hurt that Sam didn’t want to sleep so close to him anymore. He was glad Jo couldn’t scent his embarrassment when he remembered the conversation from the hall and hoped he wasn’t blushing and that it was normal after being held captive for months that his brain just didn’t want to work as he stammered something about the two of them being big guys who needed more room. They ate their sandwiches and got the desk and nightstand out of the room and into the hall for Sam to move wherever he got the twin beds from and shoved the dresser into the closet like Dean wanted before moving the beds farther from the door to give them room to put the cribs side by side and the changing table next to Dean’s side of the bed, then took a break to open the scotch they brought from the library, no tumblers required.

They got both cribs together around the same time they had about three quarters of the bottle gone and were both feeling pretty good about life as they sat together on one of the twins and took in their handiwork. Jo picked his brain on how to get Adam to understand that she genuinely liked him, and wasn’t just wrapped up in some kind of intensity of their shared traumatic experience thing, like in _Speed_ ( _which - she didn’t even know where he’d gotten such a stupid idea_ ), and he eventually goaded her into showing him how messed up her feet were, and - okay, they were _bad_ , but he’d seen worse, and she’d never really liked sandals anyway, which was beside the point because it still sucked that she wouldn’t be able to wear them anymore. Dean pointed out that it could be worse. She could have a bite mark on her neck that gave some alpha the idea that he owned her. He wasn’t expecting the slap he got upside the back of the head.

“Ow!” he yelped, rubbing the bump from the day before to make sure she hadn’t torn it open again. “Watch it! I got a cut back there.”

“Don’t be an ass and I won’t have to slap you,” she snapped, reaching for the scotch to take a swig.

“How am I bein’ an ass?” he demanded, swinging to his feet to rip the plastic off of one of the mattresses.

“We just drove fuckin’ a thousand miles to save you, idiot,” she said as she helped him get the mattress into the crib. “An’ you know I’m not Sam’s biggest fan, but he didn’t do that cuz he thinks he _owns_ you.”

“All due respect, Jo, but you don’t know what the hell you’re talkin’ about,” Dean told her, tossing back a long pull from the bottle.

“No.” She watched him for a while as he made up the bed, struggling to get the package with the waterproof mattress cover undone with uncoordinated fingers before it sprung free. “None of us know what that prick did to you, so I don’t know what I’m talkin’ about with that. But Sam’s not Dick Roman. We came as soon as we could, as soon as we knew where you were gonna be that we could get to you, and we didn’t do that cuz Sam thought he owned you. If you wanna be upset that he left in the first place, I’ll back that play all day. That was straight up stupid an’ he shoulda known it would land you in a pile of shit. _I’m_ still pissed at him for that. But when we couldn’t find you, after looking for _weeks_ \- I thought we were gonna have to neuter him or somethin’ to get him to calm down. He loves you Dean. We all love you. So, be mad or get drunk or do whatever you gotta do to get through whatever crap you’re dealin’ with right now, just try to remember that, okay?” She punched him in the shoulder when he stared pensively at the crib and didn’t respond. “I mean, he’s still a knothead, but he’s _your_ knothead now. For, like, _life_. And he did get you guys a kickass starter home.”

Dean snorted, swigging from the bottle again.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah he did. Don’t listen to me anyway, it’s the booze talkin’. Hey, I gotta show you the garage!”

Jo was just tipsy enough not to fight the subject change and staggered off down the hall behind him to take a look at the pretty cars, which is where they still were when Sam finally got home from the grocery store. The tiny one in town had already closed before he got there, so he drove to the store in Smith Center, but _that_ had closed as well while he was driving over, so he had to head back over to Mankato, where he found the refrigeration system was broken. Accepting that they just weren’t going to have fresh meat until they could make a run to the Food Mart Thriftway an hour away in Belleville, he grabbed as many frozen meats as he thought would fit in the icebox and headed back. He was just at the edge of how long he could stand to be away from Dean, so trying to go to the Food Mart was going to be an interesting challenge when it would undoubtedly take at least as long to get there and back as bouncing back and forth from one side of Lebanon to the other. Knowing Dean wasn’t alone and that he was well armed helped Sam keep himself in check a little, but he still felt a flood of alarm when he got into the bunker with his arms full of groceries and didn’t immediately know where anyone was.

Hannah came out to meet him after just a few seconds of him calling out, but it was ten minutes before he got all the groceries in and made his way to the garage, where Dean and Jo had climbed into the back of the Stakebed and passed out. He couldn’t help the jealousy that swept over him as he looked at their legs hanging off the end of the truck bed so close together before he heard the snores and smelled the alcohol. The empty bottle had tipped over and rolled away on the floor and he bent to retrieve it before looking back to the beta and his mate, who were both so out of it they were drooling in sync. Deciding it best to get Jo out of the way first he gave her leg a shake until she jolted upright, which woke Dean, who started to sit up as well as he tried to get the sgian-dubh up between them.

“It’s just me,” he said softly as he grabbed Dean’s wrist to keep from getting a three inch blade shoved in his throat. “I was thinking you guys didn’t want to sleep here all night.”

“Hmm?” Dean looked over at Jo, who looked a little green and was blearily trying to figure out where the hell she was. He nodded, slurring, “Oh. Yeah. Was jus’ tellin’ Jo - I wanna put those little glowy star sticker things on the ceiling so we can pretend we’re outside without havin’ to go outside ‘til the truck is running for date nights.”

“I gotta stick to beer,” Jo declared, swinging her feet down to the floor and swaying dangerously as she headed towards the interior of the bunker.

“Putting together cribs was that stressful, huh?” Sam asked as Dean took a hold of his hand and allowed the alpha to pull him up to his feet.

“Nah, we just started talkin’,” the omega replied, keeping hold of Sam’s hand as he wove his way across the garage floor.

“Is that so?”

“Well...she talked, I listened. Mostly. I gotta pee.”

He pulled gently free and wandered away towards their room, leaning on the wall for support with Hannah starting after him. Sam called her back, thinking she probably had to pee, too, and headed out into the dark forest with her, passing the room Jo had picked near the front of the sleeping quarters where she was now splayed out on her stomach on the bed, unconscious again. The Pyr felt compelled to check on her, trotting into the room to nuzzle her hand, which got a sleepy, “Uhhhn,” out of the beta before Sam could convince the dog to keep following. Much as he wanted to see Elliott and Lizzie, he hoped they didn’t get there too early the next day or both Jo and his mate were going to be very unhappy with life.

Dean had managed to get out of his shirt and one sock and somehow pulled the covers up over a leg, turned to face the wall on Sam’s side of the bed by the time the alpha was done with the dog and putting the groceries away. He was half on his stomach, one arm bent behind him, breathing through his mouth as a puddle of saliva grew beneath his face on the pillow. The throw pillows Jo bought were still in the shopping bags at the foot of the bed, along with one of the crib mattresses, the second set of sheets, the blankets, and the mobile for over Elliott’s crib. Sam was glad he didn’t need to get to the dresser that he could see shoved in the closet, because there was simply no getting to it without climbing over everything, and Dean was dead to the world so there was certainly no way to climb over _him_ either. He did try to get the omega away from the wall and over onto his side of the two beds that was closer to the door, even if Sam liked being the first obstacle to anyone trying to break into the bedroom, but after several failed attempts at explaining to Dean he was going to wake up trapped and receiving mumbled responses that didn’t in any way qualify as English he gave up.

It was only about ten o’clock so Sam moved the desk and nightstand into one of the two rooms that was now half-empty without the twin, stopping when he heard whimpering coming from Jo’s room. He glanced in at Dean to make sure he was still out cold before heading down to where the beta was twitching on the bed, muttering, “No,” over and over in her sleep as she grew increasingly irritated. He laid a hand on her shoulder and shook her until she stilled, telling her she was home and safe, and eventually she rolled onto her side and started to snore. He considered taking her shoes off but knew how self-conscious she was and decided the last thing he needed in the morning with the kids arriving was a freaked out Dean and a pissed off Jo. Hannah had been trailing after him and was stretched out in the hall outside the door half-asleep, which he took as his cue to give it up for the night. Dean was snoring louder and had shifted a little closer to the wall, so Sam stuffed some of the throw pillows in the crack between the beds before brushing his teeth and turning off the light.

The omega made it about halfway through the night before the nightmares started, the feeling of being pinned down making him gasp for breath and twist his hands in the sheets. It took a minute or so for Sam to wake up, not feeling the movement on the other mattress, though eventually Dean’s twin creaking against Sam’s jolted the alpha out of his slumber. Dean rammed an elbow into the wall behind him as his mate was reaching to him across all the throw pillows, and that had him waking up as well, trying to scramble away but ending up stuck between Sam and the wall.

“Baby…” Sam shushed as Dean clutched one of the pillows to his chest, on the verge of hyperventilating. “Do you want to switch sides so you’re not against the wall?”

There was enough light bleeding in from under the door for Sam to see the smaller man nodding, even as he was unable to slow his breathing enough to speak. He moved back and gave Dean a chance to scramble onto the twin closer to the door, knocking a few of the pillows to the floor, then stumbled through the bedding and bags at the end of the bed to crawl onto the mattress by the wall. They were definitely going to have to figure out a better arrangement than this if they intended to have the kids in the room with them - something he was sure would be difficult to talk Dean out of for some time, though at least the diaper genie hadn’t found its way in yet.

“Fuckin’ dreams,” Dean slurred as he grabbed a second pillow to go with the first, forcing himself to stay still as Sam swept a hand up and down his back, confining himself to his side of the throw pillow wall.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Sam asked, Dean’s response a simple, furious shake of his head.

“Just wanna sleep,” Dean told him, so Sam helped get him under the sheets on the other twin, leaving him the pillows to clutch, and turned to face the wall in case he wanted to be the big spoon again.

He didn’t, but he didn’t catapult himself out of bed in the morning either, though Sam wasn’t sure if that was because he was still too drunk to react to Sam’s presence or because the twin beds and pillows made him feel more secure. Sam himself slept better without having to scent Dick Roman all night, yet at the same time he missed Dean’s warmth. Still, it was an easier morning than the previous two, so despite waking with a sense that something vital was missing he headed down the hall to bathe before Jo got up and things had a chance to get awkward with only the main communal shower and a woman in the bunker.

Sam was showered and out before Dean was up, returning to get Hannah for their morning walk to find the omega had moved back to Sam’s side of the bed and was burying himself in Sam’s blanket and pillow, breathing deeply in his sleep. Jo was up in her room - a state that became apparent when Sam heard her throwing up the night’s overindulgence of scotch - and he bade her, “Good morning,” earning a grimace in return. She at least had the presence of mind to be grateful when he mentioned the shower was free and Dean would probably be asleep for a while, giving him a thumb’s up as he and Hannah headed down the hall.

The calm of the morning was broken as he turned the corner into the war room and saw Sinclair reclining at one of the tables, leaned back in a chair with his feet up, a book in his hands. Sam suppressed his growl, though Hannah didn’t, and at the sight of them the alpha broke into a grin and tossed the book down by his feet.

“Good morning Sam!” he exclaimed, far too cheery for someone who had a second time shown up in the alpha’s new home uninvited and unannounced. “I trust you’ve had a chance to get your bearings. And how’s your mate?”

“Sleeping,” Sam hissed. “And I have a dog I need to walk. Is there something I can do for you, Mr. Sinclair?”

“Please, call me Magnus.”

“I thought your name was Cuthbert.”

“It is. Magnus is more of an...honorarium.”

Sam had a very hard time refraining from telling the man what he could do with his honorarium, and Hannah was still clearly unimpressed by him as he stood and moved in closer to assess the young alpha. She broke into angry barking, pressing herself against Sam’s legs to form a very effective blockade between Sinclair and the hallway to the sleeping quarters. Sinclair rolled his eyes and heaved a deep sigh before stepping back.

“And what is it honoring you for?” Sam asked when the intruder had given him back some of his physical space.

“My knowledge of the magical arts, of course,” Sinclair replied with one of his easy smiles. “Surely Henry mentioned the fact that I was the most talented with spellwork among the Men of Letters back in our heyday.”

“Actually, he never mentioned you at all.”

“Oh.” Finally something cracked his cheery facade, and he straightened his hounds tooth sport coat with a scowl. “Well, I was, and I’d very much like to take you under my wing. Henry tells me you attended Stanford for a time, so you clearly have the acumen for spellwork.”

“I thought you wanted me recruiting new members,” Sam said as Hannah plopped herself down on his foot.

“That, too, but not until you’re more familiar with how we do things around here. So what do you say, Sam?”

“When exactly would you want to take me under your wing?”

“Oh, as soon as possible! We’ve lost decades of research with the Federal Department of Hunters poaching so many of our candidates.” Sinclair seemed to be waiting for Sam to show his appreciation of the play on words, and scowled again when the younger alpha merely stared at him. “When do you think your omega’s nerves will be calm enough for you to take some time away from him?”

“ _Away_ from him?” Despite the way this man smelled, Sam was beginning to doubt he was truly an alpha. He seemed to have no protective instincts whatsoever nor understanding of the way matehood worked. Though he supposed it was possible Sinclair had been disconnected from society for so long he’d forgotten how it functioned. “Our children will be here today. Our _very small_ children.”

“Well good! Then he’ll have something with which to occupy his time!”

Sam had to wonder if he was speaking English, or if Sinclair was just deliberately missing the point. Hannah was back up on her feet and starting to dance though, so it really wasn’t the time to figure out just what the hell was wrong with this guy. He definitely needed to talk to Henry and get him to tell his mentor to back the fuck off before Sam no longer saw a reason to control his temper.

“Are you high?” he demanded, earning a confused blink from Sinclair.

“Excuse me?”

“Are you _high_? On LSD? ‘Shrooms? Cocaine? Because that’s the only reason I can think you’d expect me to just up and leave my mate to...what...take classes with you? On the same day I finally get my family back in one place?”

Something dark flashed through Sinclair’s eyes and his scent spiked with rage for a moment before he got himself under control. It set Hannah back to growling and barking, but before the older alpha could respond, Jo wandered out from the bedrooms.

“Jesus, why is Hannah...holy shit!” She looked for something to grab at the sight of a strange man in the bunker and came up with a lamp on one of the corner tables. “Who the fuck are you?” She turned to Sam, her eyes wide and her balance not entirely steady. “Who the fuck is that?”

“Cuthbert Sinclair,” Sam told her as Sinclair glowered at the petite beta in a crop top, shorts, and canvas sneakers. “He’s Henry’s mentor and he was just leaving.”

“You don’t seem to appreciate what we’ve offered you here, Sam,” Sinclair growled, his eyes sliding from Jo to the tall young man in front of him.

“No, I do, and I’m looking forward to studying with you and Henry when Dean has had a chance to recover,” Sam snapped. “But he’s been gone for _months_. He hasn’t seen our son, I haven’t seen our daughter, we haven’t seen each other - I’m not just going to leave him taking care of two babies by himself.”

“And you expect us to just let you take advantage of our hospitality indefinitely?”

“Kick us out then.” Sam shrugged even as he sensed Jo stiffening behind him. After getting dragged around by John with the end result being Dean vanishing, Sam was done letting older alphas call the shots, and he was fairly certain Sinclair needed him more than they needed the bunker. They wouldn’t end up on the street. He had access to his bank accounts and they could always dye Dean’s hair blue or something. “We’ll go somewhere else. You can keep your canned soup and crackers and we’ll find somewhere to hole up that’s near a goddamned grocery store open past eight o’clock.”

Though he suspected he had the upper hand, Sam was still a bit surprised at how quickly Sinclair folded, nodding with a smile and saying, “My apologies, clearly this is not the right time to discuss your obligations to the Men of Letters. I’ll wait for you to contact Henry when things are a bit calmer. How does that sound?”

“That’s perfect,” Sam said coolly, his eyes trained on the retreating alpha until he gave a small wave of goodbye and headed out through the door at the back of the balcony.

Sinclair was reminded at once of why he had avoided the company of others and withdrawn from society before the need truly arose by how obstinate the young alpha was being as he laid his palm flush against the wall of the outer hallway and pressed, the brick sliding back and to the side to reveal the hidden passage that led to his fortress. He still had to pride himself on the genius of building his invisible mansion adjacent to the bunker when all his former colleagues had turned against him. If only they’d known they could have sheltered there when Ramiel came to slaughter them all on his quest to retrieve the Lance of Michael from among the cursed and magical items in storage.

He’d have to devise some way to bring Sam back here for training without revealing he was so nearby. It was likely he’d find himself with a knife to his throat if Sam had any idea Sinclair and Henry were that close to his mate, and, well, then things would get complicated. He had been so short sighted to make the lock on the box require a voluntary sacrifice of blood, or he could compel the alpha to give him what he needed. Now he’d have to practice patience, and he’d been patient long enough.


	102. Oh, Thank God, the Angels are Here

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things start to look up.

Henry had always found Cuthbert’s obsession with collecting things disquieting, especially when it came to the creatures that he kept. While the rooms filled with cursed weaponry on proud display were a daily reminder that Sinclair had many methods by which he could end Henry’s existence if he so chose, the glass cages in the level below the basement really made his skin crawl. The sterile white walls and harsh overhead lighting, making the place look clinical, almost like a lab, always left his blood running cold. He supposed it was good that Sinclair had captured the alpha of many breeds of monster out there ( _though the alpha vampire had eluded him_ ), as it weakened the breed overall. That didn’t mean he had to like it.

At any rate, that was before they’d acquired the angel, something that literally fell into their lap - or rather, their invisible mansion outside of time and space. They still didn’t know why it had crashed down to earth and likely never would, since it refused to talk - not that Henry blamed it when they were holding the thing captive. Since the angel’s arrival Henry had found himself drawn to the zoo, where he would stand in observation of the thing for hours on some days.

Containing it had been a feat in and of itself, a true test of Sinclair’s mastery of Enochian to perfect the warding to keep it contained. The holy oil hadn’t been easy to procure either. Henry knew that Sinclair worried he would put out the fire and the angel would find a way to break free, and maybe before the arrival of his grandson and the impending arrival of his great grandchild he might have considered it. Now, however, it was simply too great a risk. There was an obscene amount of angel lore to be found, but until this one dropped down and knocked itself unconscious in the space occupied by the parlor when they materialized on the terrestrial plane it was thought they were a myth; like unicorns. It had always seemed logical that if there were actual angels someone would have _seen_ one at some point, at least once in the last two thousand years. That no one had was an obvious indicator that they simply didn’t exist.

Sinclair had been reviewing all manner of spells to compel the thing to speak to them, but to date they’d learned nothing about it beyond its name and rank. It was called Castiel and was a seraph, and though its current vessel was a woman who had offered herself up in service, Castiel was apparently male. Though in the grand scheme of things gender meant nothing to angels, as they were, according to one of the more reliable books, multidimensional wavelengths of celestial intent and, unlike demons who were all human at one point, existed on a completely separate plane from humanity. The same book also claimed the average seraph was roughly one thousand feet tall in its true form, so releasing it at this point would undoubtedly lead to everyone in the mansion and the bunker being smote quite quickly.

The angel tilted its head as it watched the man on the other side of the glass, its face expressionless where it sat cross-legged on the floor in a simple beige gown. Henry didn’t know what it was about the angel, but it made him feel calm. He’d never been a religious man and yet the creature filled him with a profound sense of peace. When not in its presence he was conflicted. After all, an angel was proof of the existence of God, but if God existed, where was He? Why hadn’t He intervened as Henry’s grandson was brutalized? Why did He allow a society to flourish where such clear mistreatment of omegas was possible? So much had changed since he had a mate, and perhaps then omegas were limited to domestic roles and deferred to their alphas for important decisions, but at least his generation and those before him had cherished their omegas. How could any benevolent God see what was happening to omegas like Dean and ignore it?

Sinclair seemed to find his crisis of faith - or whatever it was he was experiencing - amusing, as he laughed as he approached, using his reflection in the glass wall of the cage to straighten his tie.

“That was quite a short lesson with Sam,” Henry said as Sinclair perfected the bow tie's angle.

“Sam is still somewhat reluctant to take time away from Dean,” Sinclair replied, frowning as Henry smirked. “You’re enjoying being right about him a bit too much, Henry.”

“Will you take my advice now and wait until he contacts me?”

“I suppose. You do seem better at reading these two than I am.” He regarded the figure in the glass cage for a several moments, taking in the piercing blue eyes and long dark hair. “Tell me Henry, what do you hope to gain by visiting this one so often? Do you think it will help you find God?”

“I’ll believe in God again when he starts believing in us,” Henry said.

“You always were pragmatic. Your grandson’s pup is arriving today. I thought you might like to stop in and see them.”

“You thought it would be wise for me to stop in and smooth over whatever awkwardness you just introduced to the situation.”

“Touché.” Sinclair smiled at his protege and gave the angel a last glance before moving to inspect some of the other specimens. “The alpha Djinn is looking weak. We may need to dial back how much lamb’s blood we’re giving it to keep it subdued. We don’t want to put the thing into a coma.”

“You’re the expert,” Henry sighed, reluctantly turning away from the angel. Its curiosity in their conversation had seemed to grow when Sinclair mentioned Henry’s grandson, but it wasn’t a topic he wished to expound on when his mentor was in the room.

“Take the day with your family, if you like. We want them to feel at ease here, after all.” He headed at a quick clip out of the hallway of cages, tossing back over his shoulder, “I’ll be in my study,” before vanishing.

Henry regarded the angel for some time after Sinclair had gone, trying to parse out what the look of interest on its face might mean, and eventually said, “I wish we’d met under better circumstances, Castiel. This world could use some divine intervention.”

Castiel’s eyes glowed bright blue in response, but the angel did not speak, and after a few more moments Henry decided it had probably been long enough since Sinclair popped into the bunker to visit himself.

Dean was in the kitchen in a worn grey bathrobe that Henry recognized as having been left among the linens when the bunker was abandoned. He was scrambling eggs and making toast, the percolator bubbling away with his morning coffee as he pressed his index finger and his thumb to the bridge of his nose, trying to will his hangover into submission while he waited for the caffeine that would dull the pounding in his head. He just about jumped out of his skin at the sound of his grandfather knocking against the kitchen door to get his attention, dropping the spatula to whip out the .38 at his hip as he swung around, grimacing when he saw who it was.

“ _Jesus_ ,” he snapped, retrieving the utensil and quickly washing it in the sink so his eggs didn’t have a chance to stick to the pan. “I’m making all of you fucking wear bells around here, I swear to god…”

“I just wanted to check in and see how you’re doing,” Henry told him gently, staying where he was. “You got off to a bit of a rough start here with my mentor being…well…”

“An invasive jackass who as no respect for personal boundaries?” Dean suggested, earning him a snort out of the elder Winchester.

“That is one way to describe him,” Henry allowed as he moved to the table and took a seat to watch Dean at the stove. “How are you doing?”

“Peachy,” the omega groused, his jaw clenched hard enough to crack a few molars.

“I see you’ve found the armory. That’s good. There are some books in the library of simple self defense spells if you’re interested.”

A blush was coloring his grandson’s cheekbones pink as he turned to glance over his shoulder, saying quietly, “Yeah?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not gonna have to start carrying around sage and frankincense or something, am I?”

“No.” Henry smiled as the line of tension in Dean’s shoulders ebbed. “They’re simple incantations. A few lines of text to memorize will be effective should you find yourself in a situation where someone is overeager or you’re up against more than one opponent.”

Dean appreciated Henry’s use of the word “opponent” instead of “alpha,” since they both knew that’s what he was really talking about anyway. He understood that with his mating scar he _should_ be afforded considerably more respect once he was able to venture out among people again, but he wasn’t exactly in a position to test that theory with the authorities still actively looking for him and Lizzie. Even if his face weren’t all over the television he would have been just fine staying in the bunker for the foreseeable future, despite knowing that wasn’t a realistic way to live his life, and that the longer he hid himself away the harder it was going to be to head back out among other people. Right now, though, he was happy to pretend the outside world didn’t exist.

“That sounds good,” he said with a small nod. “Thanks. You…uh, you want to hang around for breakfast? I was just making some eggs for me and Jo. I don’t know if you met her…?”

“The beta Adam’s pining for while thinking her interest is only a passing fancy?” Henry asked, and Dean chuckled. “I’ve had the pleasure.”

“He’ll be here in a couple of hours if you felt like waiting to say hello and watching them be all awkward,” Dean offered.

“I’d like that. Let me get those books for you first.”

“Thanks.” As Henry got up from the table Dean cleared his throat, focusing on the food on the stovetop and hoping his grandfather ignored the way his hands shook. “And thanks for helping me. I was pretty screwed, tryin’ to figure out what I was gonna do that wasn’t going to get Lizzie taken or…Anyway thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” Henry said quietly before heading out of the room.

It was strange, being in this kitchen in this bunker essentially given to him by a grandfather he had never known just under a year ago. Dean didn’t really know what to make of this sudden turn of good luck. He tended not to trust sudden turns of good luck, but in spite of their rocky beginning where Henry could have seemed to be less interested in him because of his designation, the Winchester patriarch was turning out to be exactly what Sam and Dean needed, right when they needed it. It had his stomach churning uncomfortably with something he couldn’t put his finger on, though it was always possible that was just the result of all the scotch he’d had the night before. He supposed he should be happy someone in his family was taking an interest in him, since John still hadn’t bothered to call Sam or Adam as far as he knew to find out what was going on with his eldest son. It shouldn’t have surprised him, really. Dean could be dying and John probably wouldn’t care.

He had finished the eggs and was trying to decide if he should take breakfast to Jo or wait for her to come back when Sam returned with Hannah. The beta had still been pretty green around the gills when he offered to make her something and had staggered back to her room to look for some aspirin so she had some hope of being lucid when Adam and her mother arrived. She’d mentioned something about Sam getting into an argument with Henry’s mentor, which probably explained why his grandfather had popped in to see him to assess the damage Sinclair might have done, and Dean hoped whatever mood Sam was in when he left for the walk was better by the time he got back. Things were awkward enough between them as it was without extra tension from Sinclair or Henry popping in unexpectedly, making the adjustment to mated life in an underground bunker while on the run from the police any more difficult.

“You survived,” the alpha said with a dimpled grin as he unhooked the dog, who immediately went to sit beside Dean and paw at his leg. “No bacon this morning?”

“Contrary to popular belief, grease is not that helpful for a hangover,” his mate replied, holding very still as Sam moved in next to him slowly to press a soft kiss to his cheek before going to grab a coffee mug.

“I passed Henry on his way to the library. Was he here to apologize for his jackass of a mentor?”

“Not directly, but I figured that was part of it. Jo said you almost got us kicked out of here this morning.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Jo replied as she shuffled in behind him and headed for the counter. “Is that coffee? I need coffee. I am never drinking with you again Dean.”

The omega laughed as all this was declared to the countertop while she shielded her eyes from the overhead lights, and he muttered, “Lightweight,” as he got the toast out of the oven.

“Yeah, well, Sinclair showed up and demanded I start working with him today,” Sam explained, snagging one of the lighter brown pieces to load up with butter and jam. “I told him that wasn’t going to happen.”

“Actually, you told him you hadn’t seen Dean in months and you weren’t just going to up and leave him,” Jo corrected, wandering to the table to sit and lay her head down on her arms. “It was real old school chivalry type stuff. I was impressed.”

“Sarcasm is not attractive in a houseguest,” Sam said, bringing her a plate of eggs and buttered toast.

“Who said I was being sarcastic?” Jo countered, lifting her head enough to raise an eyebrow at him. “After all the running away you’ve done recently, you finally put Dean first. Makes me think there might be hope for you not to be a total moron after all.”

“Gee, thanks,” the alpha sneered as he went back for his own plate. “I talked to Adam while I was out walking Hannah. They should be here in a couple of hours.”

“What _is_ this place, anyway?” Jo asked around her bite of toast. “Besides _awesome_?”

“This is the main outpost for the Men of Letters,” Henry replied as he wandered back into the kitchen with the books he’d gone to find and making Dean jump again.

“Bells, seriously,” the omega snapped, picking up the piece of toast he’d dropped on the floor and pointing it accusingly at each of them in turn before giving it to Hannah. “All of you are gonna be wearing them! Or tap shoes. One of the two.”

Sam couldn’t suppress a snort at his irritated mate, even as he understood Dean was only half joking. He wasn’t a big fan of Henry and Sinclair, especially, being able to come and go as they pleased either. It wouldn’t hurt to have some kind of warning system in place for when one of them decided to pop in to say hello.

“I get that it’s a bunker, but what exactly are the Men of Letters?” Jo said, finding the strength and balance to sit upright without vomiting. “Sam and Adam haven’t been very forthcoming.”

“We're preceptors,” Henry said simply. “Beholders, chroniclers of all that which man does not understand. In our heyday we worked closely with the most elite hunters to exterminate the most dangerous of supernatural creatures. But once the government started to become involved...well. The hunters wanted to play the game. We didn’t. And it cost us dearly.” He gave her a sad smile and turned to Dean, holding out the books. “I’ve turned down the pages of the spells that will be most helpful to you. I trust you know Latin?”

“It’s not my favorite language, but I do,” Dean replied.

“Then you should be fine. If you have any problems I’ll be happy to help. And I appreciate the invitation to stay, but on second thought I really should be going. You’ll want some time to prepare for the children’s arrival.”

“Yeah. I gotta shower. I kinda stink.”

“We’ve got all those cans of condensed tomato soup,” Sam teased, trailing fingers through the back of Dean’s hair as he snagged a piece of toast and headed back to his plate at the table.

“His mark will fade,” Henry said softly, and Dean murmured, “I know.”

The Man of Letters appreciated his grandson’s attempt to smile before he went to sit next to his mate, who immediately noticed that Dean had withdrawn into himself and reached out to squeeze his hand. The guilt that swept through him at going along with Sinclair’s machinations when they would end up tearing his grandson’s alpha away was difficult to keep from seeping into his scent, and he was about to hurry back to the mansion before it overwhelmed him when Hannah perked up and then took off down the hall, barking. Dean was on his feet in seconds, his .38 out as he reached into the back of his waistband to pass the Walter to Sam.

“Keep behind us,” he said to Jo and Henry as they followed the dog, eventually hearing the pounding and honking that had drawn her attention to the war room. Sam had left the inner door open when he got back from the walk and Dean turned to him to ask, “Ellen and Adam?”

“Too early,” Sam told him, moving around in front of the omega to head up the stairs first. “You should stay down here.”

“And you should stop saying stupid things, but neither are gonna happen today,” Dean snapped, trailing after his mate.

Sam snarled, but it was out of aggravation not aggression as he grabbed Hannah’s collar and pulled her back from the door for Dean to wrangle. Jo was right behind them with the leash, reaching forward to take her and drag her farther away down the hallway. Henry stayed back inside the inner door in case they needed to retreat quickly and seal the bunker as Sam reached for the outer door handle.

“Ready?” Sam asked, and at the quick nod from Dean yanked the door open, leveling their guns in tandem at John, who was standing outside looking irritated.

“You need to install a doorbell,” he grumbled as he moved inside with a duffel over his shoulder. He stopped as Sam closed the door to regard his son for a moment, his expression soft. “Hey Dean.”

“Dad,” the young man said curtly, and Sam moved a step in between them, drawing Dean back behind him slightly.

“What are you doing here, John?” the alpha demanded, fighting against the swell of emotions coming from Dean through their bond; the hurt, the sense of betrayal, the feeling of abandonment, and still the relief that John was alive.  

“I haven’t been able to get you on the phone since we talked a couple of days ago.” John moved past them down the hall, pausing as he spotted his father by the inner door. “Henry. I didn’t expect to see you here.”

“Yes, well.” The elder Winchester drew himself up stiffly, his eyes flashing momentarily as he regarded his son. “I thought someone should be checking in on Dean to ensure he was recovering considering all he’s been through recently.”

“Dean’s tough, Henry,” John growled, irritated by the anger rolling off in his father’s scent. “He doesn’t need us babysitting him.”

“Showing concern isn’t the same as babysitting,” Henry hissed, and John really growled in response.

“Oh, forgive me. I guess it’s been so long since I’ve seen you show concern I forgot what it looked like.”

“Okay, well Dean’s gonna go take a shower while you boys whip ‘em out and start measuring,” the omega snapped as he headed past his father and grandfather and into the bunker. “Jo, I’d suggest you go eat your breakfast before the Winchester alphas really go at it. No one needs to see that. Sam, finish getting the stuff ready for the kids. They should be pulling in soon. Dad, you can stay or not, but Adam’s going to be here and he might be pissed so I don’t know what you want to do about that.”

He didn’t wait for anyone else to decide what they wanted to do, vanishing through the war room and down the hall to the showers as he grumbled about alphas stinking up his home the third day there. Jo ignored the remaining Winchesters, dragging Hannah back to the kitchen with her to take Dean’s advice and finish eating in peace. Sam closed the inner door loudly enough to break the staring contest Henry and John were locked in, trying not to let his alpha rise with two other posturing males in the room.

“You didn’t answer my question as to why you’re here,” he said pointedly to his father-in-law, wanting to make it clear who was in charge in the bunker in case John was planning to stay for any length of time.

“I needed to drop off the Colt,” John told him while moving to set his duffel down on one of the long tables. “It’s not safe to carry it anymore. The last couple of jobs I’ve done it felt like somethin’ was followin’ me.”

Sam saw red at the thought that John had come to their doorstep with something on his trail, not even considering his mate or their children, and had to work very hard to squelch the fury that started to rise within him. John caught the change in his scent, bristling as he unpacked the Colt and its case from his duffel but not wanting to press his luck and end up in a replay of the hospital fight. He was well aware after the last few months that Sam wouldn’t stop this time.                      

“So you thought you’d just lead it _here_?” Sam demanded when he was fairly certain the answer wasn’t going to immediately drive him to homicide.

“Isn’t this place fully warded?” John said, rearranging his belongings and swinging the duffel back up over his shoulder. “I’d think you’d want to know if a place was _really_ safe before settling in.” He gave Henry a pointed look that had the young alpha wondering what exactly was going on between the two Winchesters, then turned back to Sam. “Don’t worry. I’m not plannin’ on staying anyway. One of us needs to keep tracking Yellow Eyes. And _you_ need to get a phone in here so you can bring me that thing when I need it. Anywhere in here I can grab a shower and a nap?”

“The showers are locker room style,” Sam replied. “You’ll need to wait until Dean’s done. I can show you to the barracks.”

“I’ll leave you to the rest of your day,” Henry said as he headed back into the hall, adding, “You should call your sons more, John,” before disappearing into the corridor.

Sinclair was in the lounge listening to Glenn Miller as Henry made his way past to head back down to the zoo to try to find some sense of calm in the angel’s company. He ignored his mentor’s question about how things went with Sam and Dean, fairly certain if he really cared he’d simply pull out his scrying mirror. Lately Sinclair seemed to be using it more frequently, his paranoia growing that Henry would betray him and they would both be dragged to Hell. One of the few mercies of being trapped for eternity in an invisible mansion, his soul bound to Sinclair’s, were the spells in place to keep them from spying on each other while they were both within the magical building’s walls. It had been the only way they could develop any kind of trust once Henry learned what he’d really agreed to by taking Sinclair on as a mentor, and without it they would have spent decades growling at each other, likely reverting to their baser selves. He settled himself across from the angel and withdrew from his pocket the compact mirror he used for scrying that had belonged to his mate, so he could watch his eldest grandson putting together a baby bouncer and walker with his very attentive alpha, who was fawning over the omega as much as he would allow.

“Your conscience is cloudy with guilt.”

Henry jumped at the sound of the angel’s voice, staggering to his feet and back as he looked up to see it had come to the edge of the holy fire and had glowing blue eyes fixed on him. It was only the second time Castiel had spoken, the first that he had initiated conversation. Henry knew he shouldn’t be so thrown by a male angel speaking to him using a woman’s voice, particularly when he had barely wrapped his mind around having an angel in their zoo, but something about the lilting mezzo soprano voice seemed so contradictory when he knew the angel was the size of the Chrysler building that he couldn’t stifle a laugh.

“I’m sorry,” he said when nothing better sprang to his mind. “Am I disturbing you?”

“Yes,” the angel replied. “But it is not unpleasant. Humanity’s prayers always disrupt our thoughts. Why are you troubled? Is it because of the man who built this cage?” Henry’s cheeks flushed at how casually the creature spoke of the fact they were keeping it prisoner, and Castiel cocked its head to the side as it watched, bemused. “The guilt you feel is admirable, but unnecessary. I am exactly where I want to be. You should go be with your grandson when his pups arrive. He is fragile and yet surprisingly resilient.”

With that the angel turned away and sat back down in the center of the holy fire with its back to Henry, who closed the compact and left to gather some of the lore books on angels. The idea that Castiel was there on purpose was troubling, even as it filled him with a sense of glee that Sinclair might not know as much about what he was doing as he thought. Even so, the pronouncement made Henry feel he should know much more about the thing they held captive, as they may have missed a few things.

He did not go back to the bunker, so he wasn’t there when Adam and Ellen arrived about two hours later. Dean had unloaded some of the weapons from the back of the Escalade, having wanted to check out the firing range but not trusting any of the rifles in the armory not to blow up in his face. John’s arrival had intensified his need to shoot something, as he wanted to demand his father tell him why he had never called back, never gotten in touch with Henry, whether he even cared what Dean had been through, except that might lead to a discussion of _what he had been through_ and that was not an option.

Sam gave him a wide berth, having enough to do with cleaning the rooms the children were most likely to be in and figuring out what was going to need to be baby-proofed with Lizzie in possession of a walker. He’d never found a kitchen quite so daunting as when he started imaging the kids big enough to reach a knife block or a stovetop in a few years, not that he was sure Dean would be inclined to stay longer than they needed to. It seemed awfully soon to talk about putting down any kind of roots here, especially when they weren’t really talking about anything these days.

Jo was out walking Hannah when Adam, Ellen, and the kids arrived so there was no need for the pounding and honking she and John had fallen back on to alert someone to their presence, which was good as they were in a rush to get inside. Adam had gotten pulled over by a county sheriff for having a broken tail light ( _which he begged them not to tell Dean about_ ) and when the officer decided he wanted to take a look in the trunk Adam had knocked him out and left him by the side of the road, since they’d transferred all the weapons from the truck over to the Impala before they left the Roadhouse and Adam didn’t want to get brought up on gun charges. He was pretty sure there was a warrant out for him and the car, or at the very least a BOLO, though he had been smart enough to give one of his fake IDs with matching registration. It was going to be one more thing for Kevin to take care of, and until he could get the description of the car and license plate changed, minimum, Adam wasn’t leaving the bunker. Sam was thinking he should just incorporate and put the kid up in Chicago on a payroll with all the messes he was going to have to clean up.

The betas were polite enough to find other things to do, like get their things into the barracks and wandering around the library, so Sam and Dean would have some privacy to turn into little blubbery puddles over having Elliott and Lizzie back. It was decidedly unmanly and neither of them gave a shit. Lizzie had teeth and was independently mobile and was well on the way to acquiring language if the amount she was babbling was anything to go by, and regardless of what Dean had been through he’d managed somehow to keep her the same happy, squealing little girl who was still working on tummy time when Sam was home with her last. The major changes in her size, cognitive skills, and what she was capable of doing now drove home for him in a whole new way just how long he’d been gone.

Dean wasn’t faring any better in terms of dealing with crushing guilt. Elliott was living in an incubator in the hospital when Dean was shipped off to Louisiana and now he was just a little smaller than Lizzie had been when she came to them, looking like an actual baby who wore onesies and shorts and tee shirts and was developing likes and dislikes at a rapid pace. One thing he clearly disliked was how his mother still smelled like someone else, fussing and crying and refusing to settle, which was going to be interesting to navigate since it didn’t look like Dean planned to put his son down until he was ready for preschool.

The happy family reunion was destroyed when John woke up from his nap. Ever the one to read the room wrong, he honestly thought it was a good time to discuss what Roman told Sam about Azazel’s special children, thinking both men would want to get Yellow Eyes off the playing field as quickly as possible so they could get on with their lives and Dean would know the next time Sam went out hunting it wasn’t for anything big and bad. That they both intended to retire from hunting had never even occurred to him.

Adam, Jo, and Ellen came rushing to the war room as soon as they heard the shouting match with the accompanying throwing of chairs. Dean had already taken both kids back to their room, hating that he was behaving like a typical omega but too overwhelmed between dealing with John’s obliviousness and having both of his children safe in his arms after months of being threatened with losing them to keep it together. Sam was having trouble keeping it together in entirely different ways, and it was lucky Adam was there to get them both to back down before they lost the rest of the Tiffany lamps.

Tension still hung in the air even after Ellen headed out for Sioux Falls and John got his desired consult with Sam and left as well. Neither Winchester brother felt particularly pacified by their father’s apology for having been “less than sensitive,” and Adam was angrily making dinner while Dean had sequestered himself in the bedroom with Lizzie and Elliott. Sam gave Adam a slightly more formal tour after they’d eaten, the omega stress bleeding from under his bedroom door a clear indicator that Dean was not up for company. Even after leaving Dean to his own devices most of the night, Sam was still surprised when he turned in close to one in the morning after finishing the book on Whispers that his mate was still not in bed.

It wasn’t that Dean hadn’t been trying to go to bed, or wasn’t tired enough to fall asleep on his feet. There was just this little voice at the back of his head that wouldn’t stop insisting he keep his eyes open, lest his babies vanish into the night while he slept. He wanted to believe it couldn’t happen and he was just being ridiculous and paranoid, yet there were times when he sat still for too long that he could feel the weight of the cuff on his ankle and had the impulse to check his skin for splinters. The last two days had been surprisingly easier to deal with while they waited for the children to arrive, as he’d been able to convince himself this was likely all a dream anyway and it wasn’t that unbearable that they weren’t with him yet, because none of this was real. Now that Lizzie and Elliott were there it was obviously real, and if they were real they could be taken from him, even if Sam didn’t believe that was possible.

Gently prodding his mate to come to bed didn’t get Sam anything other than a gruff declaration from the omega that he only needed a couple of hours of sleep, and around three in the morning Sam finally heard the other twin creak as Dean climbed under the covers and slid up as close to Sam’s chest as he could get with the pillows in the way. A couple of the coveted items were shockingly tossed to the floor so Dean could tip his face up to scent the alpha and tangle a hand in his tee shirt, the world eventually slipping away on him as he fell into his first truly restful sleep since Valentine’s Day.

When he woke in the morning there was no jolting out of bed, since he knew where he was, and though Sam had beaten him in getting up to see why Elliott was crying he didn’t think either of them had vanished despite them not being in the room. Lizzie was still there and Sam’s side of the bed was still warm, so at least for the moment he had nothing to fear. It had taken three full days of being stashed away in a hidden bunker, but for one brief second Dean thought everything had the potential to be okay someday.


	103. What the Hell Happened to You?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bunker life falls into a rhythm, until it doesn't.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy 40th birthday Dean Winchester!!!!!! Don't disappoint me, Davy Perez...

Once the kids arrived things fell into something of a routine. Henry would stop by for breakfast on occasion to see how they were settling in, Dean would spend some time in either the garage or the armory while Sam watched the kids, then Sam would spend some time in the library or archives or go for supplies while Dean watched the kids. Adam would spend time plotting out a garden behind the bunker to get the kids out into the fresh air ( _even though he knew very little about gardening_ ), and Jo went and got a job near the college in Franklin, Nebraska, reasoning that someone needed to keep up with what was going on in the world and as far as they knew she was the only one not wanted by the police.

Adam planned to get a job as well just as soon as he could be relatively sure Kevin got all the descriptions of him and the Impala scrubbed from the various police systems in the state, but for the time being it was fine that he was around the bunker in case Dean had a panic attack and Sam wasn’t nearby. Senator Roman’s assassination was slowly slipping out of the news cycle, and while the hunt for Dean and Lizzie was undoubtedly still on, their faces hadn’t been shown on the nightly news in a while. They didn’t even appear to be extending the hunt past Mississippi, Texas, and Arkansas as they’d planned, which may have had something to do with Bobby finally phoning in that tip about seeing someone matching Dean’s description down in Juarez. Sam was feeling more confident with each passing day that they’d be able to venture out as Mr. Wesson and Mr. Smith before the end of the month, as long as Dean felt up to it.

The omega was doing quite well, considering he still wouldn’t discuss anything about Baton Rouge and wanted to act like the place just didn’t exist, and was finding any excuse he could to stay down in the bunker and not venture outside. He hadn’t even wanted to go shopping in a baseball cap and sunglasses to the nearest Walmart to get some new clothes, content to wear Sam’s slightly-too-big tee shirts and shorts. Even as Roman’s scent finally faded and was taken over by the scent of his alpha, Dean clearly remained self-conscious about anyone seeing him, and not just because he was worried about being spotted by the police.

Sam was starting to talk about Dean developing a Vitamin K deficiency, so it was actually a relief when the beginning of their third week in Kansas, Jo came home and said she thought she found a case. Three separate people associated with Franklin University had fallen into comas and just never woke up, the most recent being a college professor in the psych department. She’d checked with Kevin and it wasn’t up on the FDH site, but it seemed fishy to her so she thought maybe she should ask around.

The men were all for the idea, telling her they’d look into whatever she managed to dig up since she was a friendly face in the area by now, and she excitedly headed off for work with a plan to pick the brains of some of the summer semester students who were regulars in the bar where she worked. It seemed like a milk run to everyone involved, since these incidents appeared to be recent and there was no known supernatural activity in the area. That all changed when Jo didn’t come home on Tuesday night and the next morning the Franklin Community Hospital called Ellen to let her know her daughter had been found unconscious and they couldn’t wake her up.

The fire and brimstone Ellen promised to rain down on them via Bobby’s arrival at the bunker if they didn’t figure out just what the hell had happened to her daughter and fix it was terrifying. Bobby had been offering to come out and help watch the kids since they got really settled but Dean had insisted that they were fine. Now he was there whether they wanted him or not, demanding to hear everything about the current mess and exactly why they thought it was a good idea to send a kid with no practical skillset out into the field on a hunt by herself. That she was just going to ask a couple of questions and they intended to take over was wholly inadequate as far as the old hunter was concerned, and he barely managed to bite back a jibe about Dean losing a few steps while he was gone before it flew past his lips and did serious damage to the omega’s self esteem, not to mention their relationship.

To be fair, Sam, Dean, and Adam didn’t even know what had happened to Jo until Bobby got there. She hadn’t come home from work, which had them worried, but they weren’t exactly in a position to call up her boss and ask if she’d seen her without risking coming across like three crazy stalkers. Bobby’s explanation that someone had found her lying on the lawn of one of the fraternity houses with a nasty bump on the back of her head hadn’t exactly been comforting. Fortunately, there were no signs she’d been assaulted beyond the bump, which was a superficial injury that shouldn’t in any way have put her in a coma. The frat brothers weren’t the kinds of boys to take summer courses so the house was closed down, and the police had already determined it was a dead end. No one had been seen going into or out of the residence in months. It was obviously nothing more than a dump site.

Adam wanted to make tracks for the hospital as soon as Bobby got there and laid out everything that happened, not caring in the slightest that Kevin was still working at getting all the notices of him and the Impala changed across the state. Kansas didn’t have the most up-to-date system available, so he had to find the files manually, unlike the virus he was working on to embed in the OPS system that would wipe out Dean’s case and quietly spread to any linked case files in any other databases nationwide. Dean had gotten the Indian up and running so Adam had a way to get to the hospital without basically waving an “Arrest me!” flag, but no one thought it would be smart for him to go poking around asking questions in case someone got suspicious and called the actual police. Adam might be able to go to the hospital, but someone else was going to have to go up to Nebraska to determine what had happened to Jo and how to fix it. Sam was halfway to packing up Bobby’s car and taking off with him and their police badges without further preamble, which went over with his mate about as well as a lead balloon.

Despite his reticence to leave the bunker, Dean was just about fit to be tied at the idea that Sam was going to trip off merrily to Nebraska with Bobby and leave him sitting behind with two kids, a dog, and no practical way to get in touch with his mate that didn’t involve going outside and wandering around until his cell phone picked up a signal. It hardly seemed the best way to make sure they didn’t get split up again if their plan to help Jo was to split up. Granted, Kevin hadn’t had a chance to finish his virus and upload it to the OPS, but eventually they were going to have to test out whether or not those fake IDs worked and it seemed like a job less than an hour away was as good of a place as any to start in case they needed to make a run for it back to the bunker.

Sam was more than a little taken aback at his mate’s tightly controlled fury and his curt request that Bobby and Adam give them a moment to talk, Elliott in the middle of downing a bottle in the crook of his arm. Being a bewildered alpha, he asked the least self-aware question he possibly could, which in this instance was, “Is there a problem with me heading to Nebraska?”

“Just a small one,” the omega snapped as he stormed across the war room past Lizzie’s playpen. “Like just what the fuck you think I’m supposed to do while you’re gone. Sit around and knit booties?”

“Uh…” Sam hadn’t expected this level of pushback, given how hesitant Dean had been to leave the bunker, especially when he was literally holding a baby as he fumed. “If I’m heading out you would obviously stay here and take care of the kids…”

“How about no,” Dean shot back, jostling their son slightly as he started to drift off and continued to sleep-eat.

“You really think it’s a good idea for us both to leave? One of us should stay here with them.”

“Fine. You stay with them.”

“Dean, after everything you’ve been through…”

“What, you think you can leave me _again_ after ‘everything I’ve been through’ and I’ll just be fucking _fine_? Like when you went to Michigan or when you left to find Azazel with my dad or when you left _again_ to find Azazel with my dad, which was _so_ productive since the two of you found jack squat? Like those times, Sam?”

“This is different.”

“How? _How_ is this different? Because someone’s going with you this time? If I remember correctly, Ellen went with you to Michigan and Dad went with you both times outta Fort Wayne, so you’re gonna have to come up with something better than that. Please explain it to me, college boy. I’ll wait.”

“Dean…”

“Don’t you fucking ‘ _Dean_ ’ me, Sam. You know, for a guy who promised he was never gonna leave, you’re awfully fucking good at it. I’m not growing a kid, I haven’t just almost bled to fucking death, my shoulder is fine, my back is a little twingy but that’s just because we’ve got those stupid sixty year old mattresses, and I’ve spent more time in the firing range than you have recently so you even thinking of taking Bobby instead of me is nuts. I’m younger, I’m faster, and I’m stronger than him, _and_ I have half a clue already of what Jo was looking into.”

“Dean…”

“You wanted to be mated, so here you go. You have a mate. That you don’t get to just up and _leave_ whenever you want to go play Lone Ranger, or think you’re the only one strong enough to handle a fucking problem. Get used to it.” He slammed the bottle onto the table, Elliott dead asleep on him now, and grabbed Lizzie with his other arm to hold her against his hip before leveling a glare at the alpha. “I suggest you figure out where I can get a suit around here while I’m putting the kids down for a nap. We can flip a coin after we do some digging to decide who stays home and babysits.”

Sam was left speechless at the outburst. He knew Dean had been hurt when he left after Elliott was born, yet he hadn’t expected him to lay it out flat like that. Dean didn’t do emotional openness very often, particularly these days, and now that he had, Sam could be certain he’d be twice as closed off for at least the rest of the afternoon, a prospect that seemed frankly intolerable to the alpha given the way Dean made it sound like Sam was the only one of them who wanted to be mates.

While he was fairly certain the omega hadn’t meant it to sound like that, it inflamed the insecurity from the first time he read the baby book back in Sioux Falls, the one that insisted Dean only wanted him because of hormones and once the baby was born that would fade. Yes, Dean had insisted they’d bonded back in Shreveport, but if anything could break a bond between an alpha and an omega, he would expect the things Dean had been through with Dick Roman would do it. They’d made very little progress in their physical relationship, Dean still barely tolerating Sam’s touch even when it was telegraphed well in advance. Sam tried to take comfort in the fact that Dean hadn’t bolted out of bed more than twice since that first week, but that was little consolation when a simple kiss to the cheek brought a reflexive flinch. His inner alpha was growing increasing restless, spurned on by the demon blood, wanting to know exactly when - if ever - his mate’s frigid treatment of him would end.

He was lucky not to have time to wallow in such thoughts and allow the darkness within him to get wound up, as Adam returned shortly after Dean left with all the newspaper clippings Jo had collected on the three victims, as well as the potential connections she’d been able to scrounge up before she started chatting up college kids. The beta’s concern for her was palpable, and Sam wondered if something between them had shifted that he’d missed while he was wrapped up in dealing with Dean and the kids. They were still sharing a room, after all. Sam was pretty sure that was the main reason Jo had been so quick to shuffle her mother back off to Sioux Falls after they got here. He thought about asking Dean about it, thinking it might be a good neutral topic to get them talking again, but when the omega came back out from having hastily packed up their Smith and Wesson IDs, a bunch of guns, and the basics for creature detection ( _silver, holy water, salt_ ) a growl was still vibrating in his throat, leaving the alpha helpless to do anything other than going to kiss their kids goodbye and meeting his mate out by the car.

It was a fight to get Dean to accept that they couldn’t take the Impala either, even if they switched the plates out with Bobby’s late model Caddy, as he was past the point of giving a damn. He finally caved when Sam pointed out that the whole reason Adam was taking a vintage motorcycle and giving Dean heart palpitations about it was because of the BOLO, and if Adam wasn’t taking the car they sure as hell couldn’t either. Even then Sam had to let Dean drive, fighting back his alpha’s indignance at not being the one to chauffeur his mate from point A to point B. That his mate wouldn’t see it as chauffeuring hardly mattered to his instincts, and he only hoped he had himself under control by the time they got to the Men’s Wearhouse up in Grand Island. They’d have to go an hour out of their way to get there, and then back an hour to Franklin, and as good at stewing as Dean was, Sam hoped two hours broken up by a small shopping spree would be enough to get them talking again.

Of course it didn’t, though the experience in the shopping center thawed the glacier between them more than a little. Dean’s anger over the situation, at the idea that Sam would walk out _again_ without thinking twice about it, had carried him all the way to the parking lot, only now they were among _people_ casually milling about, and he hadn’t been out among people without a collar on his neck since early March. Sam was out of the car before Dean had the engine off, and was about ten feet across the lot before he turned back to spot his mate sitting behind the steering wheel, keys in hand as he stared at the store without blinking. If they were trying on clothes they wouldn’t be able to take their guns in. He hadn’t thought to strap on a knife, angry as he was with Sam before he left, and he didn’t know if Sam had. While he was trying to do the calculations of how many people might see him if they got into the trunk to grab one of the Bowies he knew Bobby carried Sam appeared at the car window, leaning down and making him almost leap into the passenger seat.

“You know we can’t actually get you a suit if you stay in the car,” the alpha said casually, earning a glare from his mate that had no real heat behind it. “I’m going to be right with you.”

“Yeah, I know,” Dean replied quietly as Sam swung his door open and held out a hand to help him out of the car.

Sam smiled gently at him as Dean took a second to remove the handgun in his waistband and stow it far back under the seat. He checked himself in the rearview mirror quickly to make sure he looked relatively normal now that the dark circles and gaunt lines of his face were starting to fade completely, and though his hair was a little longer than he was comfortable with already he thought he looked like a person who could pass for a normal guy and not someone rejoining society for the first time in weeks. He even allowed Sam to thread their fingers together and pull him in against his side as they headed towards the plaza, telling himself as they drew closer to the door that people were turning their heads because they were such a great looking couple and not because they were wondering why Sam had Dean outside off of a collar and leash. Sam could feel a thrum of anxiety pulsing through their bond and move a hand to the small of his mate’s back to guide him inside, nodding at the middle-aged sales associate who approached with a quick look up and down at them in their tee shirts and shorts and sniffed, “May I help you?”

“We need suits,” Sam replied easily, sliding a hand around Dean’s waist to rest gently against his hip.

“Obviously. Why else would you be here?” The sales associate sniffed again. “I feel obligated to tell you that our buy one get one half off Independence Day special ended last week.”

“I’ll give you an Independence Day special…” Dean growled, relaxing instantly into Sam’s side as the alpha trailed his fingertips across the scar on his neck, sending little fluttering pulses racing under his skin.

“Honey, please,” Sam said as the omega practically melted into him, pressing a kiss to Dean’s forehead as the smaller man instinctively scented him. “You’ll excuse my mate. We’ve flown in from Vegas to see my parents but the airline lost our luggage and he’s very upset. We need something nice for dinner.”

“Oh!” The beta’s demeanor changed instantly now that he thought he was dealing with actual people and not college students or other similarly poorly funded individuals, smiling at the couple now that Dean was purring and Sam was petting his hair. “Newly mated, how sweet. Follow me and we’ll get you measured and into something that will impress the mother and father-in-law.”

“You can stop with the Vulcan mind meld any time, Sam,” Dean muttered as they trailed after the beta, unable to find the willpower to be pissed when all the alpha did was flash his dimples in response, his fingers still tracing lazy circles against Dean’s neck.

“Are you freaked out about being in the store anymore?” Sam asked softly while the beta was discussing suit color and cut.

“No,” Dean replied. “But it’s turning me on and that’s not actually going to make trying on suits easier.”

Sam chuckled and pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth, certain Dean’s irritation was going to flare the second he stopped massaging their bond. Though it turned out that Dean did move to shake Sam off some, feeling more than a little manipulated, his legs were taking on a slightly jelly-like quality and he was enjoying Sam’s warmth and scent more than he would have thought possible given how pissed he was before they left the bunker. That he seemed content to let Sam hover near his elbow while he was being measured and didn’t say anything about not needing to be glued together at the hip was something the alpha was willing to take as a win, even as he realized he would need to use the trick with the scar sparingly if he wanted to stay on his mate’s good side.

Half an hour later they had brand new dark blue suits with dress shirts and ties and were on their way to Franklin to check in with Ellen and Adam at the hospital before hitting up the college. Sam was going over Jo’s notes, which showed that the two people who had died before the professor were in some kind of sleep study program with him. She hadn’t gotten any farther than that, but it seemed the obvious place to start looking.

Both men were a little surprised that Ellen greeted them with hugs instead of slaps, though it definitely wasn’t more surprising than seeing her with tissues pressed to her nose and eyes puffy and red from crying. They had Jo in a private room in case she was contagious, which at least meant the four of them could talk freely. Ellen said the doctors had run all the tests they could think of but had no idea why her daughter wouldn’t wake up. Since it was so similar to the three other cases they were starting to think it was viral, which didn’t help when whatever the virus was clearly must be unknown to man. The bump on her head definitely hadn’t done more than knock her out, as there was no edema or brain injury on any of the scans. Like the other victims it looked as if she’d gone to sleep and just not awakened. If they were looking at the same thing they had about four days before she would begin to decline and her heart would stop.

It was edging close to three o’clock, and with the school in summer session the hunters thought it best to get to the college as soon as possible to try to catch someone in the psych department before the building was closed for the day – presuming it was open to begin with. They changed into their suits in the bathroom, leaving Ellen and the younger Winchester brother with the promise they’d be back with information before heading to the bunker, and high tailed it down to the parking lot to make the cross-town trip to the brick buildings of Franklin University. Franklin U was a small, private college with an enrollment of less than five thousand, which made sense given the size of the Franklin itself, and they hoped that meant it was the kind of place where everybody knew everybody. It certainly seemed that whomever Jo had talked to definitely knew somebody that didn’t want her asking any more questions.

They definitely lucked out that the psych department had office hours in the summer on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and that they were able to get in to speak to the professor’s lab assistant; a tight-lipped alpha named Maya who seemed highly skeptical that the police department would hire an omega and allow him to rise to the rank of detective, even one who was mated. She backed down at Sam’s warning growl about respecting his partner, though it didn’t seem to get them anywhere with her and she tried to put off talking to them until later. She’d been shocked when he died, but he’d gone in his sleep so at least it was peaceful, and she wasn’t even sure why the police were looking into it. Yes, two of the patients in his study had died, but they were both being treated for severe obstructive sleep apnea. While it was extremely rare for someone to die from the condition, the patients weren’t students, were older, and were both morbidly obese. It was tragic, but not completely unheard of for chronic OSA to cause cardiac problems or a stroke.

Neither hunter bought the story, not when the doctor’s desk was littered with books on sleeping disorders associated with dreams and a quick search of the classes he’d been teaching over the summer quarter all revolved around dream analysis and behavioral impairments associated with loss of REM sleep. She openly faltered when they suggested she come down to the station and tell her everything she knew about the classes he was teaching, and when Dean mentioned new evidence had come to light surrounding the professor’s death she looked like she might throw up.

“Look, I didn’t know about any of Dr. Gregg’s experiments,” she blurted out finally under the heat of their stares. “I found those files after he died when I was cleaning out his office. No one knew what he was doing, okay? Not the university, not anybody – I’m not even sure his patients knew everything. My lawyer already told me I can’t be held liable for anything so it’s not like you can arrest me.”

“Maybe not initially, but that was before the new evidence came to light,” Sam told her smoothly, and somehow even more blood drained from her face.

“What kind of new evidence?” she demanded, sweat springing to her forehead as she looked between them, no longer confident in her belief that an omega couldn’t be an effective police officer based on the way Dean was taking down notes on a small Steno pad.

“We’re not at liberty to say,” Sam replied, which just made her sweat more as she exclaimed, “Look, I’m just a grad student! I only took this job to cover my tuition! You can’t lock me up for this!”

“Maybe we can, maybe we can’t,” Dean said, flipping the pad closed and tucking it into his inner pocket. “But either way it’s definitely going on your…permanent record.” The alpha grad student visibly deflated at the threat, appearing to be on the verge of tears. “We might be able to cut a deal with you though, if you hand over all of the doctor’s research.”

“Oh, absolutely,” she said without hesitation, hurrying to a couch stacked high with boxes to find the ones pertaining to the patients who had died and anyone else who had been in the study with them. There were only four patients total, so each hunter got two boxes piled up on his arms by the suddenly very helpful grad student who just wanted them to go away. “So, if this helps it won’t go on my record?”

“We’ll see what we can do,” Sam replied noncommittally, and they headed down to the car to load up the boxes for a trip back to the hospital.

Ellen and Adam were happy to pour through the boxes looking for any other potential connections between the study participants outside of the study while the couple went off to interview the two remaining patients in the program after scanning their files for the basic information. Callie Garrison lived with her father, a prominent surgeon in town, while Jeremy Frost was an RA who was working the lone dorm open for the summer students. Sam was reluctant to split up, but with the clock ticking on figuring out what had happened to Jo and Callie being an omega he didn’t have a very good argument as to why they needed to stick together beyond the ever present desire to have his mate by his side so any threats could be quickly and efficiently dispatched. That simply wasn’t going to hold water when Dean had a gun. He did get a placating peck on the lips out of his mate before the omega took off to walk the couple of blocks to Callie’s house from the hospital, so that was at least something.

Jeremy struck Sam as a little too twitchy, though he supposed he would be too if he had a marijuana plant growing in full view of the door when a detective came knocking. He relaxed considerably when Sam said he was there about the professor’s sleep study, offering the alpha a cup of coffee and sitting down across from him on the futon that was really too low for someone Sam’s height. Once the beta got talking, Sam wasn’t sure he’d be able to get him to shut up. He was more than willing to talk about everything the professor had done in the experiment, concerned as he was that something had gone wrong with it, since both Dr. Gregg and two of the other patients had died. He explained that he had Charcot-Wilbrand syndrome and hadn’t been able to dream since he suffered a brain injury as a kid in a bike accident. He hadn’t had a dream since until the study. The professor gave him some kind of nasty yellow tea that he could barely manage to swallow without throwing back up, but it knocked him out and gave him the most vivid, super-intense dreams he’d ever had. He’d dropped from the study immediately, since it was like some kind of bad acid trip and the whole experience scared the hell out of him. He wasn’t participating anymore when the two other patients died.

Dean’s interview was largely the same. Callie was seeing the doctor for chronic insomnia, and she hadn’t been able to find any medication that would help her without leading to total dependency. When she was a child she suffered from a mysterious illness that put her into a coma for some time, and after she woke she was never really able to get to sleep again. The gross yellow tea had definitely put her to sleep, but the dreams she had under its influence had been too much to take. The other patients were in them, which was unnerving, and they always bordered on nightmares. She’d rather subsist on only a few hours of sleep a night than ever suffer through such terrible dreams.

On meeting back up at the hospital to compile information, they found the two betas had been through all the files and come up with very little of any use. The professor kept all his notes in shorthand and without having some kind of key there was no way to tell what any of it said. The only thing that kept being repeated from file to file were the words _Sil. cape._ with what appeared to be different dosages in milliliters. What exactly it was or what it did was anybody’s guess, though after talking to Callie and Jeremy it seemed likely it was what he had used in the vomitous tea. It seemed the best next course of action was to check with their human encyclopedia back at the bunker and see if he had any idea what they were looking for.

Not being able to get Bobby on his cell and having to drive all the way back to Lebanon definitely had Sam and Dean thinking how to go about getting a landline installed forthwith, though in the end it turned out to be a windfall. Bobby only knew of one thing that could be turned into a tea to induce the kind of dreams the two test subjects described - _Silene capensis_ , also known as African Dream Root. It had been used by shaman for centuries to dream walk, and with enough practice would allow a skilled user to wander into and out of someone else’s dreams and even to control them. Bad dreams could be turned good, good dreams could be turned bad. A dreamer could be trapped inside a nightmare, and even potentially scared to death. The odds seemed good that it was either Jeremy, Callie, or the grad student Maya, since they were the three people associated with the study still left alive, though why any of them would kill the other two patients and the professor remained a mystery. There also didn’t seem to be strong evidence in favor of any of them to narrow it down to who they were looking for, which was when Adam declared that they should just ask Jo who it was she talked to.

“What, you think we should go poking around in her head?” Bobby asked, his tone making it clear how bad of an idea he thought that might be.

Dean clearly understood exactly where his mind was going.

“I’m with Bobby,” he said. “She’s a woman and there was no telling what she’s dreaming about. She might not want us in there. We should go get Ellen.”

“I’ll go in,” Adam told him firmly. “There’s not a whole lot about her I don’t know at this point.” He blushed a furious red at the three sets of raised eyebrows that were turned on him. “Shut up! We’ve been through some shit together is all! How do we do this?”

“Well, first we gotta find the stuff,” Bobby replied. “This place got a pantry where you keep spell ingredients? Henry said it was pretty well stocked when he was helping us with the witches across the street.”

“In the basement,” Sam said. “I haven’t had a chance to go through everything but I know where the room is.”

“All right, we’ll go look. Adam, you and Dean see if you can find some of Jo’s hair. She’s gotta have a brush around here.”

“Why do we need her hair?” Dean asked, not entirely sure he wanted the answer.

“You have to drink some of the...uh...body of the person whose dream you want to walk in,” the old hunter said, heading out of the room with Sam close behind.

“You’re not going in by yourself,” Sam told Adam before he left. “You don’t know who you’re looking for. One of us is coming in with you.”

Dean opened his mouth to speak and found his jaw caught between long, slender fingers and whatever he’d planned to say was swallowed up by Sam’s lips. He was too startled at how normal it felt for Sam to randomly kiss him to succumb to his usual flash of panic for once, and was in the happy _mySam_ loop when Bobby cleared his throat and Sam finally pulled away.

“Uh…” was all he managed before getting another short, firm kiss, after which Sam insisted, “Someone _not_ named Dean. You have enough nightmares as it is.”

Under different circumstances Dean might have argued, but his toes were tingly and Adam looked equal parts worried and irritated and they needed to go get a strand of Jo’s hair. There would be time to argue with Sam about who was going into the dream with Adam anyway if they did have the root they needed in the potion room. Omega or not, it was going to take more than a single toe curling kiss for Dean to agree to sit something like this out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I am aware there is no college in Franklin, NE. There is no college anywhere near Lebanon, KS where Jo could reasonably drive to get a job in a bar, so I made one up. The joy of AUs...


	104. You Gotta Stop Poking Around in My Dreams

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time to save Jo.

It took three kisses. Dean was honestly surprised that he’d apparently forgotten how good of a kisser Sam was, and how much he genuinely enjoyed being kissed when it wasn’t automatically a precursor to having someone ejaculate all over his leg like a dog peeing on a fire hydrant. He was in no way ready to go out on the diamond, but by the time Bobby had the Dream Root tea ready for Adam and Sam, he was definitely getting more comfortable about stepping into the batter’s cage, and had breathlessly agreed to staying behind while his mate went into Jo’s dream with his brother.

There was actually a book in the library on the properties of African Dream Root, because of course there was, so Sam and Adam had a little better of an understanding of what to expect once they got inside Jo’s head than Bobby was able to pull from his memory banks without his own library back in Sioux Falls. Whoever was controlling the dreams would have needed to learn how to bend reality in order to actually kill, and if they came face to face the best way to survive was to run until they could get Jo to wake up. Since it was her dream, they’d be trapped as long as she was asleep unless the dream released them. It was definitely not the milk run the men thought they were sending her on.

Adam and Sam set up in one of the empty bedrooms, legs hanging off the bed as they clinked glasses before downing the mixture to start the dream walking process. The tea tasted like ass, and trying to swallow Jo’s hair wasn’t the most pleasant experience on the planet, and none of the information they found said how they would know when the root started to take effect. Bobby had long ago gone off to the town’s tiny library to look into the background of their three suspects in a place that had an actual Internet connection and both of the kids had started crying for dinner, so neither the beta nor Dean were around to gauge whether anything about the bunker had changed.

“So, should we lay down, or…” Sam started, but the temperature dipped so drastically in the room that he and the beta shivered at the same time.

“What the hell?” Adam got up and grabbed the hoodie he’d been wearing earlier from where he’d tossed it on the desk chair. “Did you guys move into a haunted underground lair?”

“Something must be going on with the air conditioning unit,” Sam said, heading for the door. “It _is_ a couple of decades old.”

He stopped dead as he opened the door to the hallway and found they were looking out into a dark, snow-covered field surrounded by woods, the sound of screaming echoing from somewhere in front of them. Adam was darting through the door in seconds, Sam right behind him as their bodies tried to adjust to the sudden freezing temperatures. The light from the door behind them vanished and when they turned back together they saw the house and the barn in Michigan, lights on inside and the sounds of the Victrola dancing on the wind.

“Fuck,” Adam breathed, glancing around where they were to try to find a weapon as the scream sounded again from the woods across the field. “Figures this would be her dream.”

“We’re going to have a hard time not freezing to death in here,” Sam said, his breath ghosting white in front of him as he took in their surroundings. It was strange and slightly fuzzy around the edges, like an impressionist painting instead of the actual farm. He hoped it looked the same way to Jo, as that would help them get her to understand she was dreaming.

“She still wakes up saying she’s cold.” Adam spotted a shovel sticking up out of the ground near a dilapidated tractor and grabbed it as he headed for the woods. “Come on!”

“You go,” Sam said. “I’m going to check the house.”

“What? No!” Adam was already losing feeling in his feet, having to tell himself over and over that this was just a dream as he headed back to the alpha. “Jo’s told me about this dream. She’s lost in the woods trying to find me!”

“That doesn’t mean who we’re looking for is with her,” Sam told him. “You find Jo and wake her up, I’m going to see if there’s anything at the house.”

“Sam, we should _not_ split up in here.”

“Just go. The sooner you find Jo, the sooner we get out of this.”

Adam wanted to punch his friend right in his stupid face, not quite sure how his brother put up with Sam’s stubborn ass, and maybe he would have if he could have been reasonably sure Sam would wake up with a nice split lip. Instead he headed off on a run across the field, repeating that it was just a dream any time his toes started going numb, and hoping there was a better weapon somewhere in Jo’s memory banks than just a shovel. Sam was on his way to the house just as quickly, anxious to see if there was anything there that could help them pin down their target, and looking himself for anything he could use to fend off whatever might be waiting for him inside.

There was nothing waiting for him inside; not even the Victrola playing the music that still filled the air as he wandered through the empty space inside the house. He supposed he should have expected this. Jo hadn’t actually gone in the house from everything she and Adam said later, so the interior was just one big, dark, empty room. Dust drifted down from the rafters and the floor creaked as he walked across it, but there wasn’t so much as a toothpick. This meant of course that there was nothing he could use as a weapon, as there was nothing there but four walls and a roof. This also meant that he was wholly unprepared for the voice behind him to say, “Hey Sam.”

He whipped around, reaching for the gun at his back through habit, though clearly it wasn’t there since this was just a dream. He never thought he’d see the dark haired man from Champions leaning against the door he’d come in, his eyes flicked over black as he struck a match to light a cigarette and smiled.

“Tom, right?” the alpha asked, thinking he might be able to conjure up the demon killing knife Ruby had given him if he could only remember what the carvings looked like. “How’d you get in here with us?”

“Impressive, isn’t it?” Tom smoothed his leather jacket and looked around the space, nodding at the moonlight seeping in through the tattered curtains. “I mean, were I in charge of the dream this place would be decked out, but highjacking one of these psychedelic landscapes, even for a demon - trust me, that takes some skill.”

“So, what? You’re here to try to talk me over to the dark side again?” Sam asked. “Because honestly, I feel like we’ve explored all the options in your hiring package and I’ve firmly rejected your offer.”

“That’s why we’ve decided to add some extra perks! Approved by my dad, just to get you on board.”

“I think I’ll pass.”

“But Sammy! You haven’t even heard the new benefits! And I haven’t been able to get in your head to talk to you now that you’re in that stupid warded bunker. This is the first opening I’ve had to get on your calendar.” He looked around the room, scowling and blowing smoke rings. “Would it kill someone to have a desk and a chair in here? It’s going to make my Don Corleone moment very underwhelming if we don’t have anywhere to sit.”

“You’re a demon,” Sam snarled, sure he had some of the carvings right in his mind but fuzzy on others. At least Tom only seemed interested in talking at the moment and not forcing him to fuck some random girl in a bar. “Why don’t you just snap your fingers?”

“Weren’t you listening? I literally just said it takes some skill to break into an enhanced dreamscape. You want to try to materialize a chair be my guest. It’ll be fun watching you snap your brain in two.”

“That wouldn’t make Azazel very happy though, would it?”

“Since when are you interested in Dad’s happiness?” Tom concentrated for a while, twirling his fingers, and managed to conjure up a stump of wood with his mind. It was rough hewn and uneven, but he seemed pleased with the effort and sat down to regard Sam and blow more smoke rings. “So you want to hear the offer?”

“Does it matter what I want?”

The demon chuckled, stubbing out the bogey on the side of the stump.

“Fair enough,” he allowed, crushing the butt beneath his shoe for good measure. “Dad has finally come to accept that you just aren’t going to let pretty little Dean go. I mean, I tried to tell him after the whole thing that happened with Astaroth at the neighbor’s house when Dean wouldn’t turn tail and run…”

Sam felt his alpha rising and a black whirlpool building in his stomach as he demanded, “What are you talking about?”

“Oh, right.” The demon smiled. “You didn’t really say much to Dean after he popped out your kid, just went ‘bye honey’ and bounced. Yeah, see, I had a little tête-a-tête with him while he was bleeding out on the floor, tried to convince him you were going to tear his head off when you got home and saw he’d had the kid, but the silly boy is _so_ in love and just wouldn’t buy it. And then of course you took it out on John anyway, so I’m pretty sure my word ain’t worth shit with him anymore. No point in mining that vein.” Genuine glee flashed across his face at Sam’s glowing red eyes rimmed in black and descended fangs, and he leaned forward on the stump expectantly. “Ooo, that makes you _really_ angry, doesn’t it Sammy boy? The idea of me going near your schmoopy pie?” Sam’s only answer was a deep warning growl, which made Tom chuckle. “ _Anyway_ , that and the little display you put on with Dick Roman has convinced Azazel that there’s just no getting between the two of you, so he’s willing to bend the rules a bit and let you bring Dean with you as your consort.”

“Bring him _where_?” Sam demanded, hoping Adam was still looking for Jo and he would have time to finish this conversation with Tom. It was the most information he’d gotten so far on exactly what it was Azazel wanted from him.

“To Hell, of course.” Tom lit up another cigarette as the information landed with Sam and made him take a step back. In all the discussion of the Devil’s Gate, Sam had never expected Azazel wanted him in Hell. “See, Dad’s working on rising to replace Lucifer – that’s what he needs you to open the Gate for, to let all of us out to wreak havoc and prove his strength to any naysayers still hesitant to back him – but Luci never really ran the show _himself_ before he got locked in the Cage. That’s what he had his Princes for. Except Ramiel bugged out a while ago, Dagon’s not the toughest jerky in the bag, and Asmodeus…well, frankly he’s just an embarrassment. Daddy intends to install an actual King of Hell to keep them all in line and playing nicely together, who can translate his orders to the minions without him actually having to deal with the rabble or the paperwork. That’s where you come in.”

Sam was unable to suppress the full body shiver that overcame him, one that had nothing to do with the temperature in Jo’s dream. How much demon blood did he have in him exactly if Azazel thought he could sit on the throne of Hell and rule over demons? Obviously Yellow Eyes had been able to influence Devereaux and Roman. Was he just biding his time before he forced Sam to play along, regardless of whether he was willing? He suddenly felt like he couldn’t get any air into his lungs, his head spinning.

“So Azazel wants to stick a crown on my head and have me directing traffic?” he asked when he could speak again.

“Pretty much. And every king needs a consort, so…”

“Dean would never agree to that.”

“You’re mated now, Sammy. It’s not really like he has a choice, is it?”

Tom’s oily smile hit Sam like a jab to the solar plexus and he wondered if it were possible to suffocate and throw up at the same time. It hadn’t even crossed his mind that by mating with Dean he would be tying their fates together. Technically the omega probably wouldn’t _have_ to come with him if Azazel managed to drag him down to Hell, but alone without his mate Dean would slowly wither away. He might even die if it broke their bond completely. He really wasn’t going to be in a position to refuse now that they were mated to each other, and if Azazel could compel Sam to do his bidding, Sam might force Dean to sit at his side.

“I wouldn’t…”

“You sure about that, Sam?” Tom raised an eyebrow at him and blew a double smoke ring before crushing out the second cigarette. “You know what, I’ve given you a lot to think about. Why don’t you go discuss it with Pookie and let me know what you decide, okay?”

He snapped his fingers and Sam sat up with a gasp, looking down at Adam where he was still asleep and drooling slightly at his side. He immediately grabbed for the glasses of tea to see if there was enough left for him to take another dose, not wanting to leave Adam alone in there even as his instincts told him to find Dean and let him know they could never leave the bunker again. He hadn’t even seen Jo, preoccupied as he was with the conversation with Tom and for all he knew Adam was hopelessly trapped now as well. He couldn’t just leave him there.

On the contrary, Adam was doing quite well in the dream, having lived it, even if he was still shouting for Jo in the woods. He’d managed to get his brain to latch onto nothing being real so the cold wasn’t affecting him anymore, and the shovel, though still not a great weapon, was sharp. The moon provided enough light that he could easily follow the tracks in the deep snow, and while he could see there were two sets he knew the odds were good that whoever else was out here with them only had a spear if they were following Jo’s nightmare. He just needed to figure out how to get to the stream that she always said she was lost by and get her to realize they weren’t actually in Michigan.

Being in someone else’s dream was definitely one of the stranger experiences of the beta’s life. There was nothing realistic about the passage of time or moving through space, as he’d go from feeling like it had taken hours to cross a fairly small patch of forest to being across a gorge in the blink of an eye. Why there was even a gorge in Jo’s dream he couldn’t imagine, but he also wasn’t sure how much of it was her dream and how much of it was whoever had her trapped. Everything around him had a soft focus to it, like a blurred photograph, and more than once he was sure he heard footsteps behind him. He was just starting to wonder if the dream walker knew he was in there and was purposely hiding Jo when he found her huddled under a fallen tree by a brook that was silent until he literally stumbled upon it, and then echoed so loudly in his ears he could barely hear anything else.

“Jo!” he shouted, rushing through the water and not even feeling it soak through his shoes and up his legs. She was barely lucid, her fingers and nose black with frostbite, her hair having gotten sopping wet and frozen to her head. She was wearing the far too thin coat with no scarf and had difficulty focusing on him as he dropped the shovel and tipped her face up in his hands. “Hey kiddo, I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

“Adam…” she slurred, her mouth dry and lips purple. “I lost my axe…”

“It’s okay, I’m here. Listen…” She leaned forward into him, trying to huddle into his hoodie as her eyes slipped closed. “This is a dream, Jo, and I need you to wake up, okay?”

“Wha…?” she mumbled as he lifted her face up again.

“It’s a _dream_ , Jo!” he insisted, shaking her. “None of this is real!”

“Wha…no.” She shook her head, struggling to her feet and screaming when she stumbled and touched his stomach with her blackened fingers. “No…he’s coming back…”

“Who are you?”

Adam whipped around to the beta with the dark hair and beard standing behind him. He was dressed in the same clothes as the men from the farm and holding a spear, but was much shorter. He looked more like a college kid than a cannibal.

“Who are _you_?” Adam demanded back, grabbing his shovel to place himself between the stranger and Jo.

“You don’t belong here,” the guy snarled, lunging forward with the spear. Adam parried it easily with the shovel, which just made the man angry. “Just get out of my way. This is self defense! She was asking questions!”

“Maybe because you’ve killed three people!” Adam snapped, grabbing Jo by the collar and dragging her back to her feet.

“They wanted to stop the study!” he roared, not expecting Adam to swing the shovel and land a hit upside his head. He laughed as Adam shoved Jo down the creek bed, shouting after them as they rounded a bend, “You should be nicer to me! I’m a _god_ in here and right now I’m just playing around!”

“You’ve got to wake up, Jo,” Adam insisted as he half carried her downstream, finding it difficult to balance her and the shovel even though he knew it was a dream.

“Wake up?” she said. “I don’t…”

“This is a _dream_!” he repeated, caging her against the bank and crushing his mouth onto hers. He could hear the man laughing behind them and when he pulled away her lips were pink and her nose wasn’t black anymore. “You gotta believe me. You gotta snap out of this _now_!”

“I’m dreaming?” she asked after a second, the splashing in the stream getting closer.

“ _Yes_!” he exclaimed. “Now take control of it!”

“Yeah,” she said, looking at her hands and seeing her fingers were no longer black. “I got this.”

Sam was halfway out the door to make more tea when Adam sat bolt upright on the bed, gasping for breath and flailing for a second. He grabbed the beta’s arm to help stop him from tumbling off the bed as the younger man shook off the dream and struggled to his feet.

“You found her?” Sam said, and Adam nodded, still trying to catch his breath. “Did you see who’s using the Dream Root?”

“Some guy with a beard,” Adam replied, heading for the hallway. “He looked familiar, maybe I saw his picture in one of the files.”

“A beard? Dark hair, kinda twitchy, maybe five foot ten?”

“Yeah. You know who it is?”

“That’s my guy, Jeremy Frost.” The smell of cooking food drew them both towards the kitchen, where Bobby was working on dinner while Dean had Lizzie in a high chair feeding her some strained carrots and balancing a bottle in Elliott’s mouth with his chin. “Hey, we know who it is.”

“Christ on a cracker…” Bobby snapped as he dropped the spatula. “This place is too big for me, people popping outta nowhere. First Dean nearly gives me heart failure and now it’s you two. Quit sneakin’ around!”

“Bells,” Dean said. “I’m making everyone wear bells. That was quick. I left you guys ten minutes ago. Bobby just got back.”

“What can we say?” Adam asked. “We’re efficient.”

“So who are we after?”

“The RA,” Sam told him, taking over feeding Elliott. “Adam ran into him.”

“I gotta head out to the hospital,” Adam said, digging the motorcycle keys out of his pocket. “Make sure Jo’s okay.”

“Don’t wreck my bike, Romeo,” Dean ordered as his brother retreated down the hall. “It figures. Bobby found out some stuff about him that doesn’t quite line up with the story he gave you.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah.” Bobby flipped the burgers and reached for the cheese slices to add. “That yarn about fallin’ off his bicycle was a crock. The kid’s dad took a baseball bat to his head when he was eight.” He pulled a folded piece of paper out of his back pocket and handed it to Sam, showing a picture of the news story of the attack with a picture of Jeremy’s father. “Kid’s a bona fide genius, too. Hundred and sixty IQ. The injury gave him that Charcot-Wilbrand syndrome he mentioned. His dad got himself shanked not long after waiting for the trial.”

“Hang on.” Sam set the bottle down and got a burp cloth over his shoulder to get any gas out of Elliott’s stomach. “You mean to tell me he hasn’t dreamt since he was _eight_?”

“’Till he started Gregg’s experiment,” Dean murmured. “It must’ve driven him crazy. Let’s give Adam a chance to get to the hospital and then give him a call. See what Jo has to say and have him run over to the dorm, stake the place out.”

Jo had to say that she felt like a complete moron. She’d seen the RA numerous times in the bar since he was one of the few students on campus who was of legal age to drink and there wasn’t a whole lot else to do in Franklin during the summer session besides the bars or the movie theater. She figured he must know most of the students taking summer classes since his was the only dorm that was open, and didn’t think twice when he offered to buy her a shot in the middle of her shift. Normally she didn’t drink at work but she was getting a lot of good information out of him and thought it would help keep the conversation flowing. She realized now that he must have pocketed the glass and waited for her to get out of work. It would have been easy enough to waylay her; the cameras at the back of the building weren’t connected to the security system anymore, which any regular would probably know.

Sam blanched at the mention of the shot glass, which caught Dean’s attention and had him demanding to know what the problem was. Sheepishly the alpha admitted he’d accepted a cup of coffee from Jeremy and earned an angry growl from his mate, though Dean bit his tongue about stupid alphas taking drinks from strangers because they’d never been roofied. Ellen headed off immediately to check the dorm, thinking it best if she go look for him since he’d seen Adam in Jo’s dream and might rabbit or worse if he saw him coming. In the end it didn’t matter. The guy’s dorm was empty and no one in the building had seen him since before dinner. The college might be small, but tracking him down wasn’t going to be easy, especially when he had Sam’s DNA and could go poking around in the alpha’s head the minute he laid down to sleep.

For some reason that Dean and Bobby didn’t understand, Sam thought that was actually a lucky turn of events. He didn’t seem the least bit concerned about the fact that Jeremy could basically come after him at any point, deciding it would save them a lot of time looking if he just went to sleep and let the hunt come to him. Dean knew Sam was used to having some freaky dreams, but wanting to just march into an arena with an opponent who was basically invincible seemed to him to be just about the stupidest plan they could come up with. The alpha, however, was adamant that there was no point wasting time trying to find him when they already had a way to get him where they wanted him, and the pair ended up in a serious shouting match in the garage while Bobby stayed with the kids in the kitchen. This time Sam knew better than to try kissing his mate into submission, giving in himself and agreeing to let Dean come with him as back-up, even though he wasn’t entirely comfortable with the idea of the omega poking around in his head after his encounter with Tom.

Dean knew something was up with Sam but couldn’t get him to budge on what the issue was. He said he hadn’t found Jo at all and split up from Adam early on and wouldn’t say what he _had_ seen, promising to talk about it later once he had a chance to think about it. Whatever it was seemed to have his mate thinking it was a good idea to dive right back into _The Dead Zone_ , which simply led to an exasperating conversation about how _The Dead Zone_ actually had nothing to do with dreams but was about a psychic, despite the title on its face being an accurate description of the sort of situation Sam wanted to willingly throw himself into.

They decided to wait until after both the kids were asleep and Adam was back from the hospital before giving themselves over to whatever Jeremy had in mind, thinking it best to get as much information on what Adam saw as they could before heading in to face him. Adam saying Jeremy called himself a “god” didn’t exactly fill Dean with confidence that they were going to be able to handle him once they got in there, or that Jeremy would even let them stick together. It was true Adam and Sam had voluntarily split up, but once Adam found Jo he’d gotten her to wake up so quickly they really didn’t know if Jeremy might have pulled them apart and sent Adam off somewhere else while he kept tracking Jo. Finding out the only reason she woke up was because Adam kissed her wasn’t exactly helpful either, though it did give Dean a chance to get in some good digs about his kid brother being a sly dog and going all Disney on a girl before reminding him that in the original _Sleeping Beauty_ the princess was raped, so he shouldn’t get carried away with that whole somnophilia thing because not everybody was into that and he should be sure to get her okay beforehand next time.

It was a good thing they lived in a bunker with about twenty bedrooms, since neither Sam nor Dean really wanted to carry out their hunt for Jeremy in the same room as their kids. Adam agreed to stay with Lizzie and Elliott until they fell asleep while their parents went off and did something incredibly boneheaded ( _his words_ ), making them promise they weren’t going to get themselves killed because two kids under the age of one was simply too much for him to take care of and besides, at _some_ point he really was going to go back to college and finish his nursing degree, once there were no longer warrants out for his arrest in Kansas. Bobby got the tea ready while Dean yanked off one of Sam’s hairs to throw in it and wait for him to go to sleep, the old hunter telling them he was heading off to the library to find a good book to read with a nice glass of scotch while the two of them behaved like the biggest idjits he’d ever known. Dean couldn’t say as he disagreed with the assessment.

The funny thing was that once Sam had decided he would just go to sleep so they could catch Jeremy he couldn’t actually fall asleep. Tom’s words about Azazel wanting him to be some kind of King of Hell sat heavy in his gut, and though he wanted to tell Dean everything he thought he should do some research first, to see if there had ever been a King of Hell before and what they might be up against. Obviously he wasn’t accepting the title or dragging Dean down with him to be his consort, not when they had children and a dog and a whole life together to look forward to. No sense in worrying his already delicate mate with something that wasn’t likely to come to pass, except that Dean was coming into his dream with him this time. If Tom decided to show up again there’s no telling what he might reveal that would open up some of the cracks that finally seemed to be starting to heal.

“See, Sammy, this is your problem,” Dean said as they laid in the dark on the double bed, his concern about the situation evident in the fact that he’d agree to let Sam snuggle them up nose to nose and tangle their feet together. “You think so loud you even keep _yourself_ awake.”

The alpha snorted, playing with the collar of Dean’s shirt but being careful to stay clear of the mating scar.

“Is that right?” he asked, earning a murmured, “Mm hmm,” as Dean pressed in a little closer.

“What are you thinkin’ so hard about anyway?” the omega asked. “Worried about all the big bad things I might see once Jeremy starts poking around in there?”

“Actually…” It would have been easy to lie since they were in the dark and most of his tells were physical, but he felt like he should at least prepare Dean for some of the nastier things he’d dreamed about recently, even if he intended to omit the bit about Tom smoking on a tree stump. “I had some dreams while you were in Louisiana.”

“Yeah? Clowns or midgets?”

He could see the white of Dean’s teeth in the light bleeding under the door as the omega grinned at him like an idiot, and his alpha swelled with the need to roll his mate over on his back, press him down into the mattress, and cover him in hickeys. It was not particularly helpful when he was trying to prepare himself mentally to face a guy who had been practicing with the Dream Root for probably months and undoubtedly looked at them as insects when they were in his domain. He threaded their fingers together to massage the omega’s palm and kissed him lightly on the tip of his nose.

“You, actually.”

“Really?” The smile wavered and his hand trembled slightly, but Dean did his best to keep up the flirty facade. “What was I wearing?”

“Well…” Sam slid in a little closer, freeing his hand to settle it on Dean’s hip as he bent his other arm up under his pillow to take in the green eyes with the huge black pupils in the dark of the room. “In one you were wearing this green shirt and these khakis and Roman had you up against the sink.” Dean’s breath caught and Sam tightened his grip, not allowing the omega to scoot back even though he clearly wanted to. “And in another you were in a pair of cutoffs and he had you on his lap on the porch…”

“Okay, I get the picture, Sammy,” Dean rasped, trying to push off of the alpha’s chest and finding himself suddenly trapped by two strong hands against his back.

“There were worse ones,” Sam told him as his mate began to struggle and shake. “I just want you to be prepared. I don’t know what he’s going to throw at me.”

“Yeah, I got it. Can you let me go?”

“Not until you calm down and get your head in the game.”

“My head _is_ in the game! Let me go!” Sam released him with one arm, only to bring his hand up to draw the pattern of the scar on Dean’s neck until he shivered and relaxed. “Fuckin’… _stop_ , Sam…you’re cheating…”

“I don’t care, Dean,” Sam said softly as Dean’s eyes flitted closed and he couldn’t hold back a purr. “I don’t care about anything that I saw. I _don’t_. I don’t see you any differently. I know this isn’t about how _I_ see you, or how _I_ feel, but I need you to know that. I saw so many things that he did to you, and…god help me, I’m so glad you killed him, even if it screwed everything all to hell, because I wanted to kill him every time I saw him touch you and had to wake up without you there, and you need to know that no matter what you’re feeling, none of what he did matters to _me_. I love you, and I’m never going to stop loving you, and if we get into my head and something with him pops up, I need you to know that’s not what I see when I look at you. Okay?”

Dean had gone very still, his breath shallow as he kept his eyes locked on Sam’s and listened to what he had to say. He had a hard time believing that Sam could have seen even a little of what Roman had put him through and not feel differently about him. Dean knew he’d done what he needed to in order to survive and to keep Lizzie from being taken away, but Sam was an alpha. He couldn’t possibly be okay with the things the Senator had done to him. Still, Sam seemed so earnest in his declaration, and they needed to get hunting this guy Jeremy, so after taking some time to absorb what his mate said the omega nodded and softly replied, “Okay Sam.”

The brush of Sam’s mouth against his was almost enough to make him believe every word the alpha had just uttered, with the way the larger man captured his lower lip and pulled him in with an arm running the length of his spine, the leg formerly tangled up with his feet thrown over Dean’s thigh to haul him in closer. It was the most heated kiss they’d shared since arriving at the bunker, leaving the omega feeling flushed and warm and like maybe getting out of the dugout wouldn’t be _terrible_ at some point in the not too distant future. His heart picked up to a heady staccato as one of Sam’s huge hands wound its way into his hair, his mate’s mouth slanting across his as Sam’s tongue traced the seam of Dean’s lips. It was just a touch too much, literally, and the omega broke away, panting as he pushed himself off of Sam’s chest.

“Sorry,” the alpha gasped, his pupils dilated with more than the dim light in the room and a crimson ring shining around the outer edge. “I’m sorry Dean…”

“No…” Dean caught him for a quick kiss despite the trembling in his limbs that he couldn’t get to stop. “It’s okay. It was nice.”

“Yeah?”

The omega smiled at the small, hopeful question and nodded firmly.

“Yeah. Now go to sleep. I’m tired and I gotta stay awake until you’re off waltzing with the Sandman.”

Sam smiled and slotted his face up against Dean’s neck to scent him, his breathing eventually slowing down and turning to gentle snores. Dean pulled free enough to drink down the tea and try not to vomit from the taste, then wrapped himself up in Sam’s arms and laid down with their noses touching. He hoped like hell wherever he found Sam, it wasn’t in Dick Roman’s house outside of Baton Rouge.


	105. Well, I Gotta Sleep Sometime

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam and Dean have a dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm getting a little behind in my replies to comments, but I promise I'll catch up!

Dean wasn’t sure what the Dream Root was supposed to do, but it seemed pretty clear the tea he drank was a dud. Though quite honestly he supposed it didn’t knock him out because Sam hadn’t actually been asleep when he took it, since by the time he was laying on the pillow Sam was looking at him with his kaleidoscope eyes. He sighed and tried to get comfortable for a moment, despite how warm the room felt.

“So how long do we have to wait for this thing to kick in?” he asked, deciding while they waited that it wouldn’t be so terrible if they snuggled just a little bit and sliding in closer to his mate.

“Dude, I’ve been laying here for twenty minutes waiting for you to show up,” Sam said, giving him a swat on the butt before rolling off of the bed and heading slowly towards the door. “Come on.”

“Twenty minutes?” Dean climbed out of bed to pad quietly after him, catching the hem of his tee shirt before he could get out into the hall. “I drank the tea maybe thirty seconds after you passed out.”

“I don’t know what to tell you. Time works differently in here I guess. I’m just glad Jeremy left me alone until you fell asleep. Stay close.”

Sam didn’t have to tell Dean twice, particularly when it was very clear how bad an idea it had been to go to sleep with the lights off. He wasn’t afraid of the dark or anything, but he couldn’t see a damn thing and he was pretty sure Sam was in the same boat, given how he was feeling blindly around for the doorknob to get them out. For a second the omega felt a flair of panic at the thought that maybe Jeremy had gotten rid of the door and they were going to have to figure out how to get out of a concrete box, though the longer he thought about it the more that didn’t seem like a great plan for a super villain, unless he planned to follow it up by having the walls close in and crush them. It was exactly then that Dean decided it might be better if he stopped thinking before he blurted out his concerns, since he didn’t want to say anything to worry Sam.

Sam didn’t want to say anything to worry Dean, but as he felt the wall and couldn’t find the doorknob he had a momentary swell of anxiety as he thought there might not actually _be_ a door to open and Jeremy had sealed them inside a cinder block tomb. It wouldn’t be the best idea if Jeremy meant to toy with them, since Adam said the guy had really been enjoying chasing him and Jo through the woods and if he locked them in a box he couldn’t exactly do anything outside of waiting for them to suffocate. That’s when he realized he should probably not go down this road when Dean was waiting for him to get the door open and let them out, and just as he was really getting nervous he managed to fling the door open.

Both men thought it would be a relief to get out of the dark bedroom in the bunker into whatever it was Jeremy had planned. That was because neither expected the door to open into the basement at Shreveport, where Christian was mounting an unconscious dream-Dean while _Welcome to the Jungle_ blared in the background. Sam heard his mate’s breath catch, thanking every god there was that Dean was fully behind him, and he spun around quickly so his back was to the bed and puffed himself up as large as he could in an effort to make himself a barricade between the omega and a live action replay of the night he was raped.

“You said you didn’t watch the tape,” Dean choked, using all the mental resolve he had to force this memory back down and lock it away where he’d been keeping it safely stowed for some time, even as his ears were assaulted by the sound of Christian groaning and Mark egging him on.

“I didn’t,” Sam told him, holding him in tight and sliding them towards the door that would hopefully let them out of this room, since the door they came in had vanished. “I dreamed about it while I was up in Michigan.”

“Fantastic.”

“It’s just a dream, Dean, it isn’t real.” The omega scoffed even as the alpha wanted to cut his tongue out for the stupidity of his statement. “You know that’s not how I meant it.”

“Yeah, can we just get the fuck out of this room, please?”

Sam already had his hand on the next doorknob and was throwing it open, pushing them out into the outer basement, where Jeremy was standing on the stairs watching them with a grin. Sam slammed the door behind him, spinning the omega around as he exclaimed, “Jeremy!” a second before the man on the stairs took off, Dean sprinting after him with Sam close behind.

Dean had been fast enough at five months pregnant. Now without the extra baby weight, Sam wasn’t sure he was actually going to be able to keep up as the omega vaulted up the stairs and darted through the kitchen towards the hall while Jeremy was already disappearing out the front door. That the beta was able to outpace Dean was clearly due solely to the fact that he could manipulate the dream. Were they dealing with reality it wouldn’t have been possible for him to get that far out ahead of them with how quickly Dean was moving.

“Dean!” Sam shouted, growing frantic at the thought of getting separated from his mate. If Jeremy had tapped into the dream about the party there was no telling what he might pull out to throw at Dean if they got separated. “ _Dean_!”

By the time he made it to the front veranda he was barely able to catch sight of the omega turning the corner of the house to head back towards the pool and tore after him, even as he seemed to be getting farther and farther out in front. His shirt caught on the bushes along the side of the house, slowing him down a half step, and when he burst into the backyard Dean was vanishing into the pool house. Sam definitely didn’t like the idea of him being in such a confined space with Jeremy and grabbed a wine bottle to use as a bludgeon as he raced after them.

Rocketing through the entrance of the pool house landed the alpha in a rather unremarkable hallway with beach ball wallpaper, lined with doors on either side. He didn’t see Dean or Jeremy anywhere, and though he tried all the doors he found them locked. The way he came in had become an elevator with an “out of order” sign, leaving him only the option of moving forward to the door at the end of the hall, which was ajar.  

“Dean?” he called, making sure to keep an eye out behind him in case anything was coming out of one of the other rooms or the elevator doors were going to open and flood the hallway with blood. He really wished he’d laid down with his gun in his waistband as he pushed the door open slowly to take in the back of the dark haired man sitting at the desk across the nondescript hotel room, writing something out on a legal pad and occasionally stopping to click the pen in rapid succession. “Jeremy?”

The man chuckled, setting the pen down with long, slender fingers before rising to his nearly six and a half foot frame. He slid open the drawer of the desk and drew out something that flashed golden in the dimmed overhead lighting, then turned with a smile to take Sam in with glowing red eyes rimmed in black. The simple crown he held looked like it was on fire, but it didn’t burn his hands or his head as he fixed it in his wavy chestnut hair.

“Hey Sam,” he said with Sam’s voice and Sam’s mouth and Sam’s smile as he leaned Sam’s legs against the desk. “Glad you could join me.”

“Trying out a new look, Tom?” Sam asked, trying not to let on how unnerving it was to see a demon wearing his skin. “It’s a definite improvement over the last guy you were riding, that’s for sure.”

“I’m not Tom,” the thing replied. “I’m you. Well, what you _could_ be if you let yourself enjoy what your father has given you. But you know that. You sense that.”

“Right.” Sam smiled, tightening his grip on the bottle and hoping it was going to be enough to kill this thing, which at least didn’t appear to be armed beyond the flaming crown. “Good thing this is just a dream and I only have to listen to your sales pitch until Dean takes care of Jeremy.”

“You think _Dean_ is going to be able to take care of Jeremy?” The thing actually laughed. “Oh, Sam. I know he’s your mate, but you _have_ to realize how fragile he is by now.”

“Dean’s the best hunter there is,” Sam snapped, growling as the thing shook its head.

“No, Sam. He _used_ to be the best hunter there is. Now he’s broken. He has nightmares, he cringes at your touch, he can’t even buy a suit without you there to protect him from the beta salesman who looks at him funny.” The thing regarded him sadly, cocking its head to the side. “Dean is _weak_. He will never accept how much stronger you are. He’s terrified, and in over his head. You’re his alpha. You _have_ to start making decisions for him.”

“You’re not real,” Sam insisted. “ _DEAN_!”

“Dean can’t hear you, Sam,” the thing said. “Dean’s long gone.”

The thing wasn’t lying. Dean had chased Jeremy down the driveway and off into the oaks lining the property, eventually losing track of him and barely managing to dodge a tree branch that broke with a thundering crack overhead and landed beside him with a “boom.” The sound jolted him awake in the darkness of the room at the bunker, leaving him groping for the cup that had the tea in it so he could get back to sleep. Bobby must have come to check on them because the door was cracked, so he could see Sam had turned away from him, the back of his hair curling slightly with sweat. His mate’s breathing was slow and even, and he reached over to try to shake him awake, not wanting to leave him in the dream by himself with a lunatic demigod playing hide and seek.

“Sam,” he said, hauling his mate over onto his back only to see a beta with a beard staring back up at him with murder in his eyes. Dean scrambled back, forgetting they weren’t in their room and there was nothing behind him and fell off the bed, shouting, “Shit!”

“Why couldn’t you all just leave me alone?” Jeremy asked, crawling over the bed after him and taking one of Dean’s boots to the face, which gave the omega enough time to scramble around the end of the bed and make a break for the door. It wasn’t very brave, but he didn’t have any weapons on him and Bobby told Adam and Sam to run if they met up with the Jeremy when they were going into Jo’s head. Jeremy laughed, wiping away a thin line of blood on his split lip as he casually climbed out of bed and headed after his prey. “You have no idea what it’s like, not being able to dream.”

“Trust me pal, it’s a problem I wish I had,” Dean shot back, slightly relieved to find himself in the bunker as he pushed through the door into the hallway and took off in the direction of the armory.

“You never rest,” Jeremy shouted from somewhere behind him as the overhead lights went out and the emergency lighting came on and began to pulse through the hallway, casting everything in a red glow. “Not really. It’s like being awake for fourteen years!”

“Then why kill Dr. Gregg, huh?” Jeremy was obviously messing with the layout of the bunker as the hallway wound on much longer than it should have and when it finally turned there was nothing but an endless string of doors with a junction at the end. “If he was hooking you up with the Dream Root, seems like a stupid idea.”

“He took it away!”

Dean barely managed to duck in time as Jeremy was suddenly in front of him with a claw hammer that he swung at the omega’s head. It smashed the wall and stuck in the concrete as Dean scrambled back a few steps before realizing the end of the hall where he’d just turned was now a solid wall and he’d have to go past the psycho with the god complex.

“So maybe ask nicely to have some,” Dean suggested, waiting for Jeremy to swing again before dodging past him and hanging a left into the next hallway. “Killing seems a little extreme!”

“It was those fucking alphas in the study,” Jeremy snarled, and Dean realized Adam had not been exaggerating. He really did like playing with people once he got them into a dream. It was clear Jeremy could kill him any time he wanted to, and yet he was clearly enjoying drawing it out. “George and Martha. The dreams freaked them out! They said they were going to report Gregg to the university! And they didn’t even _have_ real sleep problems! Sleep apnea? What the fuck is that? I just wanted to be left alone! I just want to dream!”

“You’re killing people Jeremy. We can’t leave you alone,” Dean called, turning another corner and finding himself at the door to his and Sam’s bedroom, with the beta standing by Lizzie and Elliott’s cribs, hammer raised.

“That’s the wrong answer,” he said, pulling back to swing.

Logically Dean understood he was in a dream, but that didn’t stop him from roaring and charging forward to tackle the beta away from his children, hoping he’d have an advantage even here as most betas underestimated an omega’s strength, assuming that since they were weaker than alphas it meant they were weak. Jeremy did seem momentarily shocked by how powerful Dean was as he took them to the floor and drove a pair of punches into the man’s jaw, though it was still his world and he recovered quickly, getting his hands around Dean’s throat to push him back as he strangled him. Dean could feel his eyes bulging and lungs burning as he fought to pry Jeremy’s fingers away, managing finally to jab a thumb into one of the beta’s eyes, which had him yelping and letting go. The omega drew in a deep, gasping breath and sprang back to his feet, grabbing Elliott to get him up against his shoulder and then dragging Lizzie to his side, only realizing once the covers were off that they were nothing more than a pair of dolls.

Jeremy was looking at him from the floor, laughing and twirling the hammer in his hand as Dean darted out the door again, still trying to find the armory. He could hear the metal of the claw dragging against the brick behind him as he at last came to the right door and burst inside only to find it was empty. He should have expected it, of course, but it still sent a wave of panic through him as he realized the room only had one entrance and he’d done an excellent job of trapping himself.

“I’m getting better and better at this,” Jeremy told him as he appeared in the doorway, still twirling the hammer as he slowly advanced. “Stronger and stronger all the time. And you? Oh…there are so many things in this guy’s head that I can do to you…”

“Sam!” Dean shouted, letting Jeremy get a few steps closer before grabbing one of the empty metal shelving units where the broadswords and crossbows should be stored and dragging it down on top of the beta, who laughed like a hyena even as he was crushed to the floor. “ _SAM_!”

Sam was having his own issues with the dream version of himself, who wasn’t chasing him down the hall with a hammer but wasn’t exactly letting him leave, either. He’d been trying to wake up, studying the room looking for things that were off to help remind himself that this was just a dream and none of what the thing was saying was real. The comforters on the two queen beds were slightly blurry, like a painting, the same way the other dream had been, and the couch was raised off the floor even though it didn’t appear to have any feet. The carpet was Van Gogh’s _The Starry Night_ ; a ludicrous contrast to the water stains on the ceiling. He was very obviously in a dream, yet he couldn’t stop the thing from speaking to him and he couldn’t break free of the spell he was trapped in.

“What is it you’re so afraid of, Sam?” the thing asked as Sam repeated over and over to himself to wake up. “Losing yourself to the power of the demon blood inside you? Because I have news for you. That battle is already lost.”

“That’s the angle you’re going with?” Sam said. “I think I’ve proven I’ve got a pretty good handle on it.”

“You think so?” The thing was circling him now, looking him up and down with the black rimmed eyes. “You think you have what it takes to stand up to Azazel? He’s a Prince of Hell, Sam. He can do whatever he wants, and there’s nothing you can do to stop him. Might as well just give in. He’s offering you everything you’ve ever wanted anyway.”

“Yeah? And what is it I want?”

“Control.” It sneered at him as he blinked, not expecting this to be the route it was going to take. “To be in charge of your destiny. All those years spent living out what your grandfather wanted for you, stuck at that school, struggling to make friends because at every turn he undermined your attempts to just be _normal_. Never getting to have a life like other kids, a _family_ like other kids, pressed down under his thumb until you graduated and got away from him. And then once you did, what happened? Poor little Jess, burned up on the ceiling, because of a deal your _mother_ made years before you were even born. Why not just embrace it? Embrace your destiny and you can forge your own path, Sam. _You’ll_ be the one to say what happens to you, not your grandfather or your mother.”

“And Dean?”

The thing shrugged, straightening the crown on its head.

“Tom already told you that you can bring him with you.” A smile lit its face at it stopped between Sam and the door. “Think about it Sam. You could keep him _safe_. _Forever_. Down in Hell, at your side, nothing would think of raising a finger against him again. He’d be respected, adored - shit, he could even torture those bastards who raped him, that asshole Roman, that dick of a neurologist when he finally makes the trip downstairs. Don’t you want Dean to be able to get revenge on the souls that turned him into a human toilet?”

“You shut your mouth about Dean,” Sam growled.

“It’s the truth, Sam!” the thing cried. “You know it! You’ve had the dreams! You’ve seen what they did to him! Do you think you really have the power as a human to keep all the monsters away from him? Yellow Eyes has been manipulating things for _decades_! How do you think all those laws got passed that let alphas treat omegas as subhuman? Where do you think the blue plague came from in the first place?” It smirked at the shocked look on Sam’s face, crossing its arms over its chest in triumph. “Come on Sam. After what Roman told you, you must have suspected this, with your big ol’ brain. Alphas are the leaders of society, but they’re awfully hard to control. Azazel couldn’t just go around juicing up every newborn on the planet without a contract in place. Even demons have rules. But alphas can’t function without an omega. It messes with their head. They can’t think straight and they get all aggressive - start fighting each other for the few oms that are left, and when _that_ doesn’t work and most of them still have to settle for betas or watch omegas go around rejecting matehood, they just go right ahead and make it tough for an omega to survive without an alpha, period. Pretty smart, huh? Upset the natural balance and let society take itself down.”

While this proclamation made it very clear to Sam that he was obviously dreaming, it rendered him speechless just the same. The idea that the way things were for omegas was planned and purposeful, that the yellow eyed demon had been manipulating legislation and culture for _decades_ was insane. None of it could possibly be real. This was a dream and he was dealing with a demon and demons lied all the time to get what they wanted. He just needed to wake the fuck up, or at the very least get out of this room and find Dean.

“This has been fun,” Sam started, hoping he sounded more confident than he felt, “but I do have to be getting back to reality.”

“You could change it all,” the thing told him with a smile. “As King of Hell you could do anything you wanted. Smite all of Azazel’s special children. Wipe out ninety percent of the alpha population to restore the balance. Yellow Eyes wouldn’t care, as long as you and and your sweetheart were happy. Unless you don’t want Dean to be happy.”

“I told you to stop talking about Dean!” Sam shouted, swinging the wine bottle and cracking the thing in the temple.

The flaming crown skittered away across the floor as blood gushed down the side of its face from a huge gash where Sam had cracked bone. The thing laughed out loud at the alpha’s rage as Sam’s eyes turned red and his canines descended before he hit it again, knocking it to the ground. Even on the floor with its vision blurred by the blood it didn’t stop laughing, and Sam leapt at it with a growl, bashing it again and again until the top of its head was concave and an eye was nearly hanging from its socket. Every laugh that echoed from its throat just made Sam angrier, and he felt the darkness swelling within him. Nothing he'd said was funny. If even half of it was true, Azazel was destroying the lives of every omega who had ever been raped or claimed against their will or thrown into the OPS or had their children taken from them. Still the thing laughed until Sam caught it with the bottle low enough to smash its jaw, at which point it finally grew quiet and stopped moving.

Sam stood up gasping, blood and bone splattered across his clothes and his face as he loomed over the figure on the floor, it’s head so covered in blood Sam couldn’t make out any of the features. It helped to ground Sam in the reality that this was nothing more than a nightmare as he caught his breath and headed for the door. He screamed like a little kid when he felt a hand on his ankle and was yanked to the floor, looking back to see the thing sitting up and grinning at him as best it could with half its jaw hanging off.

“You can’t escape this, Sam,” it growled as he kicked it square in the chest to get it off of him and ran for the door. “It’s always going to be part of you!”

He barreled out into the beach ball wallpaper hall, noticing immediately that the elevator was gone and he had the option of turning right or left at the end of the hall, which grew longer and longer the more he ran. The thing was following behind him, roaring with laughter at his attempts to escape, and the bottle was so slick with blood he had a hard time holding onto it as he bolted along what felt like a moving track at an airport. Right before the thing reached him he made forward progress, darting around the corner to the right and running straight into Dean in the flashing red light of the bunker hallway and they crashed to the ground.

“Sam!” the omega gasped, not sure whether to hit him or kiss him, or if it was even really his mate since he was drenched in blood. “Where the hell did you come from?” Jeremy was stalking them from the direction Dean had just come, smashing the wall with the head of the hammer every now and then just for effect, and Sam hauled Dean to his feet, pulling him past the juncture where the thing was still approaching. Dean’s eyes went wide at the sight of it. “What the _fuck_ is that?!”

“My worst nightmare apparently,” Sam said as he shoved his mate down the hallway in front of him.

“And I thought the shit I dreamed was bad,” Dean griped as they threw open the door at the end of the hall and found themselves in the garage. He pushed Sam farther in, slamming the door behind them and dragging the standing tool chest in front of it. “That should hold him for about three seconds.”

“Dean, he can walk right through the wall if he wants to,” Sam told him as the smaller man wandered away among the cars trying to catch his breath.

“He can, but he likes the chase,” Dean replied just before Jeremy attacked the door with the hammer and split the wood. “Shit. Get over here, and be a wall, I need to think.”

“What?”

“Between me and the door, Sam! Be my alpha and protect me from the big bad wolf so I can concentrate!”

Sam flinched as Jeremy hit the door again and popped a hole in it big enough for him to grin through at them.

“Heeere’s Johnny!” he called before pulling back to swing again. “You and your mate? You’re not waking up. Not this time. I’m not gonna let you.”

The hammer collided with the door and another part of it splintered away, leaving quite a gaping hole in the top panel as Sam did as Dean requested and made himself a wall between the door and his mate, whose eyes were squeezed tightly shut to try to block out what was happening.

“Uh, Dean…” the alpha said as Jeremy reached his hand through the hole and grabbed the tool chest to shove it over. “I’m sure whatever it is you’re concentrating on is brilliant, but if you could concentrate a _little_ faster that would be great or our kids are going to be orphans.”

“Shh!” Dean snapped, covering his ears with his hands. “I’m workin’ on it!”

“See Sam?” The thing was standing in front of him, even as Jeremy was in the process of slowly pushing the door open, the tool box screeching as it slid inch by inch across the floor. Sam glanced behind him at the omega, who didn’t appear to be aware of the thing’s existence. Well, at least something in this dream was going his way. “You’re literally facing down death and Dean’s cowering behind you like the omega that he is. When are you going to accept that I’m right and give in to what you truly are?”

Sam swung the bottle and knocked it away from him and into the side of the Roadster. He was instantly grateful this was just a dream or Dean would kill him himself.

“Well done!” Jeremy said, tucking the hammer under his arm to applaud. “Not sure where I dragged that thing out of in your noggin’, but I like it! Maybe I’ll poke around some more and see what I come up with. I might just keep you here forever. I mean, there’s pretty much nothing I can’t do in here.”

“Because of the Dream Root,” Sam said as the bottle in his hand was jerked away and flew across the garage to smash against the far wall.

The beta smiled at him, taking the hammer back out while he advanced.

“That’s right.”

“Yeah?” Dean asked, stepping between Jeremy and Sam. “Well, you’re forgetting something, short bus. I took the Dream Root too.”

The door behind them was flung open as a black haired alpha in his thirties wielding a bat stormed in, heading straight for the beta with the hammer. Jeremy went ghost white, the hammer falling from his hand as he stumbled backwards and tripped, ending up on the floor of the garage while Sam grabbed Dean and pulled him flush against him before getting them both out of the way. It took a moment for him to recognize the man from the newspaper article Bobby had shown them in the kitchen.

“ _Jeremy_!” the alpha thundered, Jeremy flinching as he tried to crawl back and away.

“No…” he gasped, terror in his eyes. “No!”

“You answer me when I’m talking to you, boy!” Jeremy’s father commanded, raising the bat and bringing it down on his son’s head.

The beta screamed as the thing against the Roadster blipped into non-existence. Neither the alpha nor the omega were particularly interested in standing around watching Jeremy getting beaten to death, but they seemed to be on the same page with staying just to make sure his father didn’t vanish the second they left the room. Fortunately, it only took three hits before they woke up together on the full bed in the bunker, Sam scrambling for the light to make sure they really were back and turning immediately to check on Dean once he’d turned on the lamp and seeing his mate already making for the door. He called after him to stop, but Dean was moving like a man possessed, and he didn’t even acknowledge Sam until he was three doors down standing in their bedroom and getting the kids up out of their cribs.

“You’re going to wake them up,” Sam whispered as he took Elliott from his mate so Dean could get a firmer hold on Lizzie.

“Then I wake them,” Dean murmured, kissing Lizzie’s hair as she started to fuss. “Bein’ awake isn’t the worst thing on the planet, Sam.”

The alpha couldn’t argue with that when whatever Dean had seen when they were separated appeared to have him badly shaken, not that Sam was doing very well himself. The thing’s words wouldn’t stop playing in his head, promising him he could undo all the terrible things that happened to omegas so no one would ever go through the things Dean had. The demon blood hummed inside him, whispering that either of their children could be an omega and he could spare them the fear of ever being claimed against their will. The thought was more tempting than he dared admit.

“You boys are up.” They both nearly had heart attacks as Bobby came up behind them in the hallway, Sam moving instinctively in front of Dean even as he pressed Elliott closer to him. “I was expecting that to take a lot longer. You were only out about fifteen minutes. Did you get him?”

“I think so,” Sam replied, waiting for his pulse to slow down to a reasonable pace. “Dean thought of bringing his father into the dream. Jeremy’s fear took it from there.”

“Smart boy,” Bobby said, and Dean shot him a humorless smile.

“Yeah, well, I know a thing or two about nightmares,” Dean told him as Adam came around the corner from the showers.

“You guys are up?” he asked. “That was quick.”

“Did you two rehearse that?” Dean said, and Adam replied, “Great minds just think alike.”

“These great minds are going to bed,” Sam told them, setting Elliott back down and reaching to close the door. “If we’re not up in the morning we’ll know it didn’t work. How much of that Dream Root stuff do we have?”

“Enough,” Bobby replied. “Though I’m not sure how happy Henry’s gonna be if we go through it all on one hunt.”

“He’ll live,” Dean declared, and Sam said, “’Night guys.”

Bobby and Adam said their goodnights as Sam was shutting the door and Dean was getting Lizzie back to sleep. The alpha could tell by the tight line of the omega’s back that he was not in the mood for conversation, though he didn’t seem so closed off that talking about what he saw while he was off with Jeremy would be completely off the table when they’d both had a chance to calm down a little. Carefully he slid in behind his mate to gently massage his shoulders, being sure not to box him in and leave Dean an escape route if he needed it. Sam was both pleased and surprised when he didn’t take it.

“You okay?” he asked despite knowing the answer to the question.

The omega shrugged and went to sit on the edge of the twin beds still tied together beside Hannah, who had barely looked up when they came in and gone right back to sleep with a groan, crushing a throw pillow to his chest in a display of nerves Sam had become well acquainted with. He debated for a few moments going to sit next to his mate and eventually decided against it as he watched the color rising to Dean’s cheeks.

“First hunt in a while,” Dean replied quietly. “I’m all wired, you know?” Sam nodded as the smaller man dragged his toe across the floor, pulling the pillow in even tighter. “Normally I’d go out and get drunk, or uh…” He laughed at how stupid this was. Sam was his _mate_. He shouldn’t feel so uncomfortable about talking to his mate. “Get laid.”

“Dean…”

“Sam,” Dean cut in, holding up a hand. “Please, just let me get this out.” The alpha clamped down on his need to tell Dean that it was fine, that he understood, that he didn’t have to say anything, and felt for a moment that he was going to break a tooth while he waited for Dean to proceed. At length the omega said carefully, “I know that this isn’t what you want. And that I’m not being fair but I…This isn’t what I want either and…I just need you to know that I’m trying, Sammy.”

His mate’s bright carnation colored cheeks were adorable, but Sam wasn’t dumb enough to say that when Dean was being so uncharacteristically omega-like. Instead, he pressed a soft, chaste kiss to the pretty pink mouth in front of him and murmured, “I know,” before bundling the smaller man up in his arms to lay down for the night. That Dean allowed himself to be held as they fell asleep breathing in each other’s morning breath was a definite sign for the alpha that they might be starting to get somewhere.


	106. I Guess I’m a Little Numb to the Earth Shattering Revelations at This Point

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time to buy a bed.

Things shifted noticeably in the bunker after the experience with the Dream Root and everyone wandering around in everyone else’s heads. For starters, Jo tolerated her mother’s fussing longer than anyone would have expected, and it was a full week before Bobby and Ellen decided it was time to head back to Sioux Falls. Sam and Dean invited them to stay as long as they liked, but Garth had come down from Wisconsin to watch the salvage yard and Rumsfeld, and while Bobby liked Adam’s friend well enough he seemed a little overzealous. The old hunter was concerned he’d come home to find Garth had completely rearranged his library and he couldn’t find anything. The younger residents of the bunker politely took the excuse at face value, since the two older betas clearly wanted to believe that none of the “kids” noticed the quick kiss Ellen brushed to Bobby’s cheek when she brought Jo home from the hospital two days after news of a college student being found dead in a hotel room with no clear cause of death hit the _Franklin Times_. Unfortunately they _were_ surrounded by three trained hunters and a bartender, so it’s not like they were fooling anyone.

There was a change between Adam and Jo as well - a lot of small touches that hadn’t been there before that they genuinely believed no one was picking up on; a lot of going to walk Hannah together when Jo got home from work; a lot of jumping apart in the garage when Dean came in to tinker with one of the cars, trying to pretend they hadn’t just been huddled together against the back of the Stakebed. For some reason Dean had the misfortune of always being the one to walk in on them when they appeared to be about an inch and a half away from going for their first game of tonsil hockey. He didn’t really understand why they didn’t just hole up in their room if they were trying to avoid being detected while they tiptoed their way towards whatever it was they were tiptoeing towards, since he’d caught them in the kitchen, the garage, the shooting range, the dungeon, and even the library, which was Sam’s domain. After the third time barging in on them against the sinks in the communal showers it hadn’t even been fun to tease Adam about it anymore, though at least he was sure they were starting to agree with him and that everyone in the bunker should be wearing bells.

The biggest difference in behavior came from Dean himself, though. It took a few days for Sam to really realize what was happening, but his mate had apparently decided that he could maybe try a little harder than he had been when it came to getting them somewhere close to a normal, mated relationship. The changes weren’t earth shattering. Dean didn’t suddenly start going to bed naked or anything, and even though he had his own clothes now he still preferred wearing one of Sam’s tees or tanks under whatever shirt he threw on for the day ( _even as they were rapidly nearing August and it was really too hot for two shirts_ ), so he hadn’t stopped with the protective layering, even around the bunker. He did, however, touch Sam more. A brush on his arm when Dean set down Sam’s plate at breakfast, a trailing of a hand across the shoulders when Sam was in the library reading something, an unnecessary lingering of fingertips when they were passing one of the kids between them - not anything that would send Sam’s alpha into hormonal overdrive or lead him on, just enough to show that Dean _wanted_ to touch him.

He also relaxed a little when it came to tamping down the bond between them, giving Sam a tad more access to assess Dean’s emotional equilibrium. He didn’t throw open the gates by any stretch of the imagination, but it wasn’t as much of a mystery for Sam moment to moment how Dean was feeling when the alpha was in the room. Sam was surprised to find that for the most part Dean felt safe and content when he was around, and despite the occasional burst of panic he didn’t need to keep walking on the eggshells he’d assumed were still covering the floor. He did need to make sure to approach Dean from the side, and was starting to think he might never be able to come up behind him unannounced without losing a hand, which really was okay. If they could keep moving forward together anything would be okay.

Dean even showed more willingness to leave the bunker, and that was probably the most surprising change of all. Kevin finally got all of Adam’s files wiped from the various antiquated Kansas PD computer systems a day or so after Jo came back and Richard Roman’s murder had dropped far enough out of the news cycle that he felt it safe to release the virus into the OPS’ database without anyone noticing that files were gradually being deleted. They’d need to use the aliases for the foreseeable future, but there wasn’t much of a reason for them to stay inside hidden anymore. With Bobby and Ellen planning to leave, Jo working again, and Adam out job hunting, Dean thought they should take the opportunity while they still had built-in babysitting to go buy themselves an actual, proper bed. Besides, he was going kind of nuts cooped up inside, no matter how many cars and guns and knives he had to work on getting into shape. He could use a breath of fresh air.

Sam knew from his various explorations of the area that there was a household goods store twenty minutes away in Smith Center, but was pretty sure they didn’t have any memory foam mattresses. Salina was the closest place he’d found that had specialty stores, and that was close to a two hour drive. If there wasn’t anything they could find in Salina they could keep heading south another hour and a half or so to Wichita. To his great surprise, Dean readily agreed to a day trip down to Salina if it meant a wider selection of mattresses, and by the gleam in the omega’s eyes, Sam was pretty sure he was imagining the potential for throw pillows and maybe a matched bedding set with a nice, high thread count.

It was still difficult watching Adam and Jo drive off in the Impala so the men would have the truck on the day they’d decided to go pick out something large enough to sort of fit them both while they slept. As much as they trusted Kevin to know what the hell he was doing, Dean still had visions of Adam getting pulled over and his Baby ending up impounded somewhere with no legal way to get her out. After making him promise to go five miles below the posted speed limit and not to have sex in the back seat without putting down a blanket ( _the blush from his kid brother alone was well worth the furious glare he got from Jo_ ), the betas headed out for Nebraska while Sam and Dean climbed into the truck to spend the day looking for the perfect mattress.

Dean lost at rock, paper, scissors ( _he wasn’t ready to give up on the scissors yet, eventually someone had to slip up and go for paper, even if neither his brother nor his mate had done so to date_ ) so Sam got to drive _and_ pick the music, a perk that didn’t amount to much when they were in the middle of Kansas and their only real options for radio stations were country music or AM Christian gospel channels ranting and raving about Satan and sin. Dean actually begged to leave it on one of the fire and brimstone preachers because he thought they were hilarious with how wrong they got so many things and how often they insisted that monster sightings were hallucinations, the result of fluoride in the water, and Jesus would never let such evil things roam the earth. Dean tried to get Sam in the mocking mood, but the alpha couldn’t help thinking back to the thing he’d encountered under the Dream Root’s influence and what it had said about Sam sitting on the throne of Hell. He just couldn’t bring himself to laugh about the prospect of eternal damnation when it seemed like he was headed down that road no matter what he did.

“Earth to Sam,” Dean said when his mate had ignored his third frankly _hilarious_ pun based off of what the voice on the radio was saying. “Am I alone in the truck here, or what?”

“Huh?” was the best Sam could manage in response, earning a scowl from the omega in the passenger seat.

“Have you heard anything I’ve said in the last ten minutes?” Dean demanded, turning sideways to really regard his mate. “Because I’ve got a great voice and all but you’re the one who likes conversation for the sake of hearing yourself talk.”

“I…what?” That actually got his attention and a bit of a smug smile out of Dean. “I do not!’

“Really?”

“Yes. I do not carry on conversations just to hear myself talk.”

“Sam, you have a pathological need to talk about things that do not need to be talked about. You talk more than any alpha on the planet.”

“You just think that because you talk _less_ than any omega on the planet.”

“And I don’t deny it. So, come on. What’s got you all worked up?”

“I am not worked up.”

“Dude, the bond works both ways. You’re practically vibrating over there. I’m surprised you haven’t run us off the road. Five more minutes of your spaced out driving and I’m making you give me the keys, so spill it.”

The thing about Dean allowing more openness between them that Sam had been enjoying so much earlier in the week left him feeling no doubt whatsoever that the omega meant exactly what he said, and if Sam didn’t want his mate pitching a full-on fit until Sam turned over the keys he needed to start talking. Regrettably, Sam hadn’t so much as breathed a word of either demonic encounter during the hunt for Jeremy, and given the scope of what Tom and the King of Hell version of himself had talked about, that very clearly fell under the umbrella of “withholding information.” Sure, Sam could always claim he hadn’t wanted to burden Dean when his mate was dealing with so many issues, but that was a one-way ticket to sleeping on the leather couch in the library while Dean enjoyed the spacious comfort of whatever new memory foam mattress they walked away with today. Slowly he switched off the radio, letting the silence sit in the truck for a minute before continuing.

“So, you know the…uh…the hunt with the Dream Root,” he said, trying to figure out how to explain the two dreams in such a way as to get himself in the least amount of trouble while neither downplaying what he learned nor worrying Dean too much.

“Since it’s the only one I’ve been on in the last seven months, I think I’m familiar,” Dean snarked, the smirk vanishing from his face when Sam’s expression remained grim. “What?”

“When I was in Jo’s dream and I split up from Adam, Tom showed up. And he told me some things.”

Dean worked hard to contain the mixture of anxiety and irritation he felt, not wanting to presume that whatever Sam had been holding back from him was the end of the world yet not being able to recall a recent time that a demon encounter had resulted in anything other than very bad news for the two of them. That Sam appeared to have fallen back into his habit of keeping secrets for Dean’s own good ( _and he felt quite certain that’s where this conversation would eventually end up_ ) definitely wasn’t reassuring. When Sam didn’t continue on his own, the omega prodded, “What kind of things are we talkin’ about here?”

“Well, for starters, the one that was following me when I found you in the hallway in my dream.”

“With the face and the blood and the fire on its head?”

“That was a crown. And me.”

Not a whole lot of things rendered Dean Winchester speechless, but he really didn’t know what to do with that. The image of the creature that had been lumbering after Sam in the hallway laughing like a maniac was seared into his brain. He could probably draw it from memory, and he wasn’t exactly the most artistic person on the planet. That whatever it was and Sam were one and the same did not compute.

“I’m not following you,” Dean said, ignoring the little voice in the back of his mind that was trying to get him to panic.

“According to Tom, Azazel’s plan for me doesn’t just involve opening up the Devil’s Gate,” Sam explained as Dean bristled at the pheromones he was emitting into the vehicle’s interior to preemptively soothe the omega. “He also wants me to be the…uh…the King of Hell.” Dean blinked and stared and didn’t say anything. “Baby?”

“Come again?” the omega finally managed.

“He uh...Tom, that is...said that if Azazel achieves his goal of becoming the next Lucifer that he would need someone to basically...oversee Hell so he didn’t have to, I dunno, order paper clips and staples.” He turned a dimpled grin at his mate, looking back quickly to the road when his attempt at humor did not land. He cleared his throat and plowed ahead, deciding Dean couldn’t get much paler so he might as well just get it all out there and give him the rest of the drive to think about it. “The other version of me in the second dream was trying to get me on board, I guess. Said that Yellow Eyes has basically been destabilizing the planet since the blue plague…”

“What?” Dean asked, breathless.

“The King of Hell me said Azazel caused the blue plague. And that he’s had people in government for decades passing all kinds of laws to keep things out of balance between alphas and omegas.” Dean drew in a sharp hiss of air between his teeth, and Sam reached over quickly to squeeze his hand. “We can talk about this later, when we’re not driving.”

“What about Elliott?”

“What?”

“Elliott. What about Elliott? Does he have any of your demon blood in him? Does the yellow eyed bastard want something with our son, too?”

“I…” Sam could feel his cheeks heating up and withdrew his hand to place it on the steering wheel. “I didn’t ask…”

“You didn’t ask?!”

Dean’s eyes were the relative size of small planets, his mouth working furiously for a few moments as he huffed and tried to think of anything to say but came up empty. Sam’s face reddened some more as he found himself with nothing to offer either and the omega finally turned to face out the window. After several painfully long moments of unbearable silence, Dean reached over to turn on the radio again, fiddled with the dial and couldn’t find anything but the preacher, and finally switched it back off with an obscenely loud “click.” Sam wished he’d told Dean about the dreams right after, when he might be better able to understand how overwhelming and surreal it had all been at the time, rather than bringing it up nearly a week later when even the alpha had to admit bits and pieces about what had happened in there were starting to fade just like any other dream. Sam could feel the worry flooding Dean through their bond before the omega closed it right down, getting as close to the door as he could to put more space between them. It was an incredibly awkward drive the rest of the way to the mattress store in Salina.

The situation didn’t improve any once they got to the actual store. While it was clear to Sam that Dean wasn’t angry, per se, he was definitely upset and would likely rather be anywhere his mate was not. Sam didn’t even have the engine shut off in the parking lot before Dean was out of the car and stalking towards the store, back straight and fists clenched at his sides in case anyone got the stupid idea of trying to approach him. The alpha’s heart went into overdrive, hammering against his ribs as his mate vanished through the doors of the store while Sam was still trying to get across the parking lot, having almost been hit by two separate drivers who weren’t watching for pedestrians. The fact that he had a clear claim mark on his neck should keep anyone interested from getting too close, but it wasn’t something they’d actually verified yet and the thought of Dean wandering around somewhere without his alpha visibly present to someone looking to press their luck was harrowing.

Dean was working very hard at not being furious with his mate for not asking either Tom or that King of Hell Sam or whatever it was about Elliott. It wasn’t like the kids had occurred to him either until Jeremy was standing over their cribs when he was separated from the alpha. If even half of what Sam said was true it was understandable he would have been distracted. Even so, he was having a hard time with the idea that the mess that was his life - the kind of mess so many omegas mated early to avoid, whether they truly wanted to or not - had been purposely engineered through some kind of far-reaching demonic plan that started when his mother and father were just kids. It was an awful lot to take, in addition to whatever that other shit was about Sam running Hell for Azazel. Why Sam had waited until _now_ to tell him he didn’t know, and didn’t really care. This was a huge thing to keep to himself when it was going to impact Dean and their kids and the omega was struggling to reconcile the idea that Sam really loved and wanted to protect him with Sam wanting to sit on something this big.

Though they were there for a mattress, Dean diverted the second he saw the store had a bedding section to try out the squeezability of the various throw pillows and feel as many bedding sets as he could before Sam got there, hoping it might help him calm down. A sales associate was on her way over in under half a minute, all smiles and confusion at the sight of a solitary omega in the shop, mated or not. Dean forced himself to return her smile as she gave him the standard store greeting and immediately shifted the conversation to whether his alpha would be joining him.

It was difficult not to tell her where to shove her “Welcome to All Things Bedroom” when it had taken her all of a dozen words to let him know her priority was someone not even in the store yet, though of course because Sam was a giraffe his yardstick legs carried him there soon enough. He supposed he should at least be glad his mate didn’t run straight over to rescue him from the scary beta female after he came banging through the door, emitting enough anxiety that Dean couldn’t help but look up. The sales associate cast a glance at him over her shoulder and then turned back with a grin, congratulating the omega on his catch before leaving him and his tight lipped smile entirely in favor of getting Sam’s input on what they were looking for today.

Sam at least had the good sense to defer all decisions to his omega, making it as clear as he possibly could that this was Dean’s show and he was just along because it took two people to move a mattress. Dean appreciated the overture for what it was, sending Sam back for a cart so he had somewhere to put the pillows he wanted as well as the linens. They hadn’t really talked about what size bed they were getting, but their room wasn’t going to fit anything larger than a queen, and by the time Sam returned Dean had zeroed in on a pale green bedding set to hand him, followed by a flurry of coordinating throw pillows, plus a couple of new sleeping pillows so they could stop using the half-flattened goose down ones in the bunker that he knew had been throwing out Sam’s neck.

The sales associate was thrilled to help Dean find every little thing his heart desired once she realized he was there to _shop_ , leading the omega to suspect she worked on commission. Once they had the cart filled with everything necessary to make the bedroom restful ( _Sam didn’t dare say it would look pretty - he wasn’t a complete moron_ ) she took them directly to the high end mattresses and beds, talking up the benefits and warranties on the queen sets that started at twelve hundred dollars and went up from there. Dean finally started to relax as they got into trying them out, flopping around ridiculously with the insistence that he was just making sure it would hold up to how much Sam rolled around in his sleep, eventually finding himself caught against his mate’s chest while the associate tried to steer them towards bed frames, apparently of the belief that alphas and omegas routinely had public sex and she needed to head them off at the pass.

A queen really wasn’t large enough for them but would have to do, and they found the same memory foam they’d had at Bobby’s, as well as a lovely chestnut bed frame with built in storage underneath. It only cost fifteen hundred dollars, and the sales associate tried vainly to get them over to the hand carved canopy bed frames that went for two to three times that amount, boasting of their superior beauty and quality. The way Dean sucked in a breath and froze at just the mention of canopies had Sam taking charge of the excursion to hastily wrap things up and get them up to the front counter to pay for everything. The sales associate was clearly disappointed that she hadn’t been able to convince them to look at the more expensive frames, but she wasn’t about to quibble with an alpha who was ready to be checked out and get their purchases into the back of their truck, particularly when his omega suddenly looked quite pale.

Dean didn’t say anything as they backed the truck around to the loading dock of the store, because of course he didn’t, leaving Sam to have to wait until they’d stopped at a diner for lunch to press him on exactly what happened at All Things Bedroom. He pulled them into the 42nd Street Diner, which wasn’t New York City themed as much as it was New York City stereotyped, though that honestly didn’t bother either man very much. There was a seven foot tall Statue of Liberty replica by the hostess’ station, an entire wall was painted with a mural of the Brooklyn Bridge, there were framed posters from Broadway shows scattered around the room, and each of the tables had a holder for the little packets of strawberry and grape jelly in the shape of the Empire State Building. There were even subway signs pointing to the two sets of restrooms on either side of the dining space. Their waitress was a fresh-faced young beta who reminded Sam of Parker Posey’s character in _Waiting for Guffman_ , and he almost called her Libby Mae a couple of times even though her name tag clearly read “Lucy June.” Dean had no idea what movie Sam was talking about so that didn’t break the ice, and he had to wait until the omega had finished his lunch and had a slice of fresh apple pie in front of him before he felt it was safe to prod him into deeper conversation.

“I didn’t see any canopy beds in my dreams,” Sam said as Dean was mid-chew on his very first bite of pie. If anyone had asked the omega, he would have told them it was very unfair of his mate to ambush him when he was savoring a perfect blend of cinnamon and apples with just the right amount of butter in the crust. “And I feel like it’s something I should know.”

Dean chewed very slowly as he contemplated whether he wanted to get into anything in the middle of a random diner in Salina, Kansas or try to put the alpha off until later, something he was fairly certain wouldn’t work. Sam hadn’t pushed to know anything that happened in Louisiana, and he’d appreciated that even if he knew now it was because his mate had dreamed at least parts of what Dean had gone through. He’d never pushed to know about Shreveport either, despite having seen it, and in thinking about that Dean realized it must be taking a tremendous effort on Sam’s part not to ask him to fill in the gaps. Dean would want to know. If something like what had happened to him happened to Sam, he would _need_ to know, yet despite having a pretty clear idea the alpha never brought it up. It turned his stomach to think of talking about that last week with Fox, but he figured it was something Sam deserved to hear about.

He stared at the pie, setting his fork down carefully, and said, “Fox didn’t like me kissing you.”

“I know,” Sam murmured, unable to decide if he should hold Dean’s hand or offer him some other form of comfort and settling on running his index finger along the back of the omega’s wrist. “The court documents listed it as an example of your...disobedience.”

Dean snorted, turning his hand over to drag his fingertips against Sam’s palm until the alpha got the hint and took his hand.

“Yeah, but before that he...thought I should have an idea of what it would be like if the OPS took the kids,” Dean told him, still focusing on the pie. “So, he chained me to a bed for about a week, and kept Lizzie from me, and then shipped me off to Baton Rouge.” When he looked up Sam’s eyes had gone red and his fingers had stopped in their slow circles over Dean’s. Dean grabbed his coffee mug and drained it with an unconvincing shrug that was going for nonchalance and missed. “Four poster. Wooden canopy. At least I could get to the john.”

“He chained you…”

“In my underwear. Little satiny red things. You probably would have liked them under different circumstances.” He turned back resolutely to his pie. “ _I_ probably would have liked them under different circumstances.”

“Dean…”

“We should get the check, Sammy.”

“Excuse me.” The couple looked up together from the table into the face of two Salina police officers, Sam’s hand tightening until Dean was fairly certain his fingers were never going to work again. “Sorry to interrupt your lunch, but there are some people in Louisiana looking for you, Mr. Winchester.”

Sam started to rise, but his mate gave him a little tug, keeping him in his seat, before heaving a huge sigh and setting his fork down again. Sam was thoroughly confused, expecting Dean to be fighting his way out of the diner with the napkin holder based on the panic that was flooding their bond. Instead, he gave the police the most irritated, stereotypically omega expression Sam had ever seen, and declared, “Not this _again_. This is the fourth time this month!” He turned back to Sam, huffing. “I _told_ you we should have just rented a cabin in the middle of nowhere until they catch this runaway omega!”

“Mr. Winchester…” the officer began, and Dean turned a withering glare on him.

“It’s Smith,” he snapped. “Dean Smith. This is my alpha, Sam Wesson. I can show you my ID if you’ll let me get my wallet.”

“You expect us to believe that?”

“Run my name if you don’t! You have _no_ idea how irritating it is to constantly get confused with whoever this Winchester guy is. And lucky me, we have the same first name. _That_ hasn’t been a giant pain in my ass.”

“Sweetheart.” Sam was finally getting with the program, reaching across the table to stroke Dean’s face. “Please calm down, these men are just doing their jobs.”

“Their _jobs_?” Dean exclaimed. “Their job is to interrupt innocent couples in the middle of a nice afternoon meal?”

“I’m sorry, officers,” Sam said, reaching into his back pocket for his wallet and the fake ID pronouncing him “Sam Wesson” and extending it to them. “You have to forgive my omega. It’s...the hormones.”

Dean actually gasped and swatted his hand.

“ _Sam_!”

“It really has been annoying,” Sam told the police as Dean handed over his wallet as well. “I haven’t been able to get him out of the house in the last week.”

The officer was studying the IDs as Sam ran his fingers down to trace the scar on Dean’s neck. The motion caught the beta’s eye as Dean went slightly weak in the knees and leaned into the touch, and the officer asked, “So you’re one of those omega lib types who let your mate keep his last name?”

“ _Someone_ thought it would be funny to be able to tell people we were Smith and Wesson,” Dean replied, his words almost indecipherable as he purred.

“Right. Well, my partner is going to have to run these licenses, so we’re going to need you to sit tight for a minute.”

“Of course.”

Sam was being careful not to let Dean feel how worried he was about their first real test of Kevin’s computer skills happening in the middle of a themed diner less than two hours from their new home. Just because he had confidence in the kid to fix anything didn’t mean this wasn’t nerve wracking, especially when the officer who had been talking to them stayed right by the table while the other one went off to check Kevin’s work. He was sure the outdated computer systems that had been such a pain in the ass with getting Adam out of trouble would work in their favor this time as long as neither of them did anything stupid but he was still trying not to sweat.

He was absolutely not expecting Dean to unilaterally decide he needed to up their game, and his breath caught as he sensed what he could have only described as either something being opened or a wall coming down. It was very clearly deliberate and not a result of the situation overwhelming his mate; Dean was simply allowing himself to _feel_. The alpha was stunned at the kind of control his mate was able to exert over his emotions; that he was even able to lock them away to begin with. Sam was flooded with fear and frustration and anger, and when he’d managed to absorb the shock of it he realized that Dean was crying. He’d set down his fork again, turned to the window, and was sitting there with his shoulders shaking and giant tears rolling down his face as he tried not to openly sob.

The officer was caught completely off guard by the omega’s display, which Sam supposed was Dean’s goal, but that didn’t stop the alpha from feeling frantic and scrambling around to the other side of the booth, not even caring that he had to shove the man in blue out of the way. He was trembling as he pulled Dean against him, running his hands over his mate’s back and through his hair as Dean buried his face in Sam’s neck and bawled. This really appeared to make the officer uncomfortable, and the nearby diners who had initially been keeping their heads down to avoid being involved in some kind of police confrontation started to look up in concern over whatever was happening with the very young, very attractive couple.

There were obvious advantages to being a male omega that Dean had clearly not been exploiting as fully as he could. An immediately apparent one was that despite rigorous training, this particular policeman didn’t appear to know what to do with an over six foot tall man crying like the tiniest female omega he’d ever seen while his even taller mate cooed at and coddled him. A thought popped into the man’s head as he remembered Sam’s comment about hormones, clearly enough that he may as well have had an actual light bulb switch on above him like in a cartoon, and he asked, “Is he…carrying?”

“We would just like this sort of thing to stop happening,” Sam said, which was the truth even if he was avoiding the question. “It gets old after a while.”

The officer’s discomfort grew exponentially after that, his face turning bright red as he struggled to keep his composure while he waited for his partner to get back. It certainly didn’t hurt that the guy looked fairly young and probably hadn’t had a chance to become jaded yet. Dean had calmed down somewhat by the time the other officer returned to say that the licenses checked out, at which point there were some profuse apologies issued and something was said about someone seeing a flyer in the post office, and how the two of them should have a nice day before they were left alone with Dean’s tears and pie.

Lucy June came over as Dean was starting to get himself back under control to let them know their meal was on the house - another perk to playing the weepy little omega card it seemed - and while they both wanted to run back to the truck and tear out of town, that might look suspicious and they had no idea who called the cops. Sam stayed on the same side of the booth as his mate, continuing to run a hand up and down Dean’s back as he finished his pie, the fork shaking dangerously on the way to his mouth as he meticulously rebuilt his internal walls to keep all the awful things inside him from continuing to spill out. Sam was still somewhat dumbfounded by Dean’s willingness to cry their way out of a situation with the authorities, though he was fairly certain he was not in any way, shape, or form allowed to ever bring this up once they left the restaurant.

“You about ready to go?” Sam murmured when Dean was down mainly to the crust.

“We should wait a little bit,” Dean replied quietly, giving Sam a taste of the pie filling with a whisper of a kiss. “Use the bathroom, check out the stupid tee shirts they’re selling at the register. Make it look like I have a fucking right to be here.”

Three slender fingers caught the hinge of his jaw where it met his neck and turned his face so Sam could better sample the gooey apple and cinnamon mixture on his lips. Sam could hear the dream version of himself in the recesses of his mind, telling him that in Hell, Dean would be respected and adored, that he could keep him safe, like the opposite of a conscience and just as relentless. He pushed in closer to his mate to drive the voice away, feeling the steady quick thrum of Dean’s pulse where he brushed fingers down the omega’s neck and not pulling away until he got a whimper to sound behind the plush dessert flavored lips.

“I think we’re okay just heading home,” Sam said, hoping whoever rang up Andy Taylor and Barney Fife was watching and felt like a dick. “There are an awful lot of throw pillows to unload.”

Dean nodded rather dumbly and got another quick kiss before Sam pulled him out of the booth and dropped down a couple of dollars for Lucy June. The hostess avoided their gaze on the way out, Sam’s hand at the small of Dean’s back to steer him towards the parking lot, and the alpha felt like growling at the guilty flush of her cheeks but decided a quick peck to his mate’s temple would make her feel worse, and anyway it got the omega to catch his hand to tangle their fingers together as they made their way to the truck. While the test run to the outside world had been a relative success, they agreed quietly that they should give it a few more weeks before Dean ventured beyond Lebanon again, both hoping they could find something useful to do with their time to keep from going stir crazy.


	107. You Just...Gotta Put Your Mitt Down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Seriously though, it is completely unrealistic for them to have such great Internet and cell reception in the bunker.

July gave way to August very quickly, and the alpha and omega had little trouble finding ways to occupy themselves as the days progressed. They’d managed to figure out how to get the phones turned back on without actually calling the phone company to come out to their super secret bunker, since the line had never actually been disconnected and rolled over from one company to the next. Getting a landline ended up being as simple as replacing some old wiring inside the building itself, and though they suspected there might be some magic involved in how that all worked they weren’t about to question it when they had a way to reach the outside world that didn’t involve wandering around holding up a cell phone looking for bars.

Internet and cable services were a different problem entirely. They were, after all, in the middle of nowhere, and most of the people who actually lived in Lebanon had dial-up, so that’s what they ended up with as well. Sam seemed almost personally offended at the idea that there wasn’t a cable company willing to offer service to such a small population, though at least the main supplier in the area was willing to add them to a list to notify when they started eventually building out to offer residential service in the relative nothingness between Smith Center and Bellville, the only nearby towns along US-36 that had populations over one thousand people. While Sam’s readiness to pay the tens of thousands of dollars it would cost to extend cable from the road down to the bunker piqued the service rep’s interest, she wasn’t an engineer so taking down his information was the best she could do.

Even without access to the Internet that didn’t require them to wait for the connection to finish whirring and beeping before they could do anything, Adam found a job in a coffee shop near where Jo worked so the two of them carpooled to Lincoln most days, leaving Sam and Dean on their own to wrangle two rapidly growing children and a dog that just would not stop shedding in the summer heat. Most of the work fell to Dean as Sam found himself unable to adequately put off Sinclair’s insistence that they start working on his formal initiation into the Men of Letters, and though Sam refused to study at Sinclair and Henry’s bunker ( _wherever that was_ ) it did mean he, Dean’s grandfather, and the obnoxious bow-tie-wearing spell master were sequestered to the library eight to ten hours out of the day.

Having a foreign alpha wandering around his nest would surely have driven the omega crazy were he not completely occupied with keeping their babies from dying. Lizzie was well on her way to starting to toddle from one piece of furniture to the other at just about the same time that Elliott had figured out how rolling worked, got his first tooth, and started babbling nonstop. Though the playpen ( _or baby jail, as Adam affectionately called it_ ) was an excellent way for the Lizard to work on pulling herself up and practice putting one foot in front of the other, she clearly considered it a crime against humanity and broke into hysterical wails after about the third lap whenever she realized she _still_ couldn’t get out, which nearly always left Elliott in sympathetic tears. The one day Dean took pity on her and let her roam the bunker she face planted into one of the table legs in the war room and ended up with a bump the size of a hard boiled egg on her forehead, nearly having Dean running for the emergency room to make sure she wasn’t going to develop bleeding on the brain or something equally horrific. That Ellen just laughed at him when he scooped the bawling little girl up and called up to Bobby’s for advice and told him she could tell just by how loudly Lizzie was screaming that she was fine didn’t exactly make him feel better.

Trying to turn the bunker into a livable home for them with Henry and Sinclair roaming around and Adam and Jo becoming an official ( _rather loud_ ) couple presented its own challenges. Though the betas did spend more time in the room they shared, it became apparent quite quickly that the room their shared needed to be on the other side of the sleeping quarters from Sam and Dean if breakfast wasn’t going to be a terribly awkward affair. And after the second time Sinclair walked in on him while he was showering with Elliott after a diaper explosion that put his older sister to shame, Dean was officially done with having no alternative to the communal showers.

That Sinclair had the good sense to apologize without prompting and to take Sam’s furious gleaming eyes seriously was a step in the right direction of him respecting that the bunker was Dean’s home as much as it was Sam’s. Still, it left them with the issue of how exactly they were going to get a private shower in the place, and that led to Dean moving them into a room farther down the hall while he knocked down the concrete wall between their room and the adjoining bedroom so they would not only have twice the space for sleeping but enough space to actually put in a tub and shower.

He and Sam had agreed that if Sam was going to spend his days shut up in the library, once he was done the kids were his responsibility to bathe and feed and put to bed, so every night after dinner the alpha was on Daddy Duty while Dean went off to work out some aggression with a sledgehammer. It was the middle of August before he had the wall down completely and was studying how best to remove the steel studs and replumb the expanded bathroom. He’d had to get the plumbing turned on in a couple of rundown houses he and John had squatted in over the years, but it was nothing compared to putting in a whole new tub and shower surround. Sam mentioned something about compromising the structural integrity of the building by removing the studs without putting in some other kind of support, earning a lecture on the length of the support beams used in the ceiling and why Dean had chosen to take down that particular wall after studying the schematics that he found in the control room and how if removing a single interior wall was going to bring the whole building crashing down around them then the people who built it did a piss-poor job and it deserved to cave in.

Truth be told, the only reason Sam even brought it up was to spend some time shamelessly watching the omega work away with the sledgehammer in a tight grey tee shirt and carpenter’s pants. No amount of cranking the air conditioning could stop the sweat from soaking his shirt and glistening on his forehead and across his ever-growing biceps, shoulders, and chest, and if Sam made a point of checking to make sure he had enough water to stay well hydrated as he routinely worked late into the night then he was just being a good mate. It certainly wasn’t because it was the only time he got to ogle him, when Dean staying up every night to build them an actual master bedroom with a full bath meant he staggered to their room, water still dripping down his hair from the shower, and collapsed into bed to pass out, too exhausted for Sam to interest him in other nightly activities.

It didn’t take a nuclear physicist to figure out that Dean was using the bedroom and bathroom expansion as a way to keep things from getting more physical too quickly with Sam. Once the phones were hooked up he’d given Jody a ring, and though she encouraged him to come up on weekends for group therapy sessions he wasn’t interested, instead opting to set up regular calls with her to talk about what he had been through and how he was doing. She flat-out told him the remodeling project was a way for him to avoid further intimacy with his mate, and that Sam wasn’t a moron so he undoubtedly knew it, too.

Despite being embarrassed by his total lack of subtlety, it wasn’t enough to get Dean to change his behavior when he had a perfectly legitimate reason for wearing himself out every night before crawling into their comfy queen size bed with the calming green bedding set. After all, the kids were getting bigger and they couldn’t just keep taking turns with them in the communal showers. They truly did need a bathtub.

There was also the issue of his physical condition on top of his mental state, and his concerns about whether everything was - well - working the way it should. Fox had allowed him to attend his first postpartum appointment, which had been pretty awful, quite frankly, since he’d had to go alone, and at the time after all that he’d been through with Elliott’s birth he hadn’t been in the best shape. He was supposed to go back after six weeks to make sure everything was healing properly, but by then he’d been held prisoner in Fox’s house, and then he was on a plane to Baton Rouge. The only doctor he’d seen at all in Louisiana was the pediatrician who gave Lizzie her six month boosters. That was hardly who he wanted to ask about any potential issues he might have partaking in normal adult activities, as at that point he hadn’t exactly been eager to get back in the saddle and the doctor would have been required to share anything they discussed with Roman. It was not the time to ask about knotting and whether it would be okay.

Now that it was something he might want to resume at some point ( _definitely not yet_ ) he was more than a little scared that his plumbing was damaged, and that was just too embarrassing to mention to anyone, except maybe Jo, who was so busy putting a dopey grin on his brother’s face every day he didn’t want to interrupt their happy early relationship bliss with discussions of what he should do if he and Sam were in the middle of things and it...well... _hurt_. He couldn’t go back to Dr. Milton, because she’d have to see him under his real name due to state regulations, unlike Jody who was only legally obligated to share information with Sam. There were a couple of clinics in the area, but he’d called them just to ask some basic questions and didn’t like the snotty attitudes of the receptionists at the front desk, making him think they were probably like every other clinic he’d been to before he found Dr. Milton. Dean simply wasn’t up to dealing with the standard level of dismissiveness he’d come to expect from omega clinics when it came to something like this. He was twenty seven and a half and had two kids, the person he would have felt comfortable turning to with these problems had been killed by vampires seven months ago ( _Lisa would have even gone with him to the doctor without him needing to ask_ ), and not knowing how to handle this on his own was almost as embarrassing as when Dr. Milton had to explain to him how he got knocked up.

Besides, it wasn’t as if his relationship with Sam wasn’t moving forward _at all_. Sure, they may not be keeping pace with Adam and Jo, who frankly the omega would have told to get their own damn place if he didn’t need someone who could watch Elliott and Lizzie while he made dinner, but they weren’t exactly stagnant. They’d progressed to French kissing, and occasionally some clothed groping, as long as Dean was the one leading the charge. Granted, he didn’t lead the charge often, but it wasn’t as if he was the only one who was busy. Sam was off in the library with Henry and Sinclair the minute he was done eating breakfast, and he usually only reappeared for about half an hour for lunch and then not again until dinner, when it was his turn to take over with the kids. What was Dean supposed to do, offer up some afternoon delight instead of a sandwich? Sam was a big guy. There was no way he’d make it to dinner without passing out or gnawing off someone’s arm if Dean didn’t actually _feed_ him at noon, and really, he’d seen Sam hangry. Hangry Sam was not a nice Sam to have around. When you got right down to it, he was doing everyone in the bunker a favor by keeping lunchtime focused specifically on eating lunch.

Sam’s hand disagreed with him. He’d discovered four different kinds of lotion he was allergic to in the month or so since they got the new bed and was starting to think that if he invested in Scott Tissue stock it would provide them with a very comfortable retirement fund. That Dean seemed to be completely oblivious to what his work on the bunker was doing to his physique didn’t exactly help matters any. At least if Sam thought Dean _knew_ he could trick himself into believing that this was some kind of long build-up to when Dean would present the alpha with a brand new bedroom that he built with his very own hands and then use all that gorgeous sculpted muscle to pin Sam down to their memory foam and just ride him until they both passed out, woke up, and did it all over again. That clearly wasn’t what he was doing, though, if Sam was to take the number of times Dean had fallen asleep in the middle of a back massage as any indication.

He’d _tried_ to gauge Dean’s interest in more intimate activities, but it was a very fine line for him to tread when he knew he couldn’t push and that’s _all_ his alpha wanted him to do. They were coming up on two months since Sam had claimed him, and while the fact that they routinely made it to first base now was honestly fantastic he couldn’t help but want _more_. Dean was denying them both something they needed at a primal level, and while rationally he understood why and accepted that things had to progress on Dean’s terms, the animal that lived in him just wanted to make the omega submit, to show him what they were missing and how happy they could be if he would just trust Sam to take control of the situation.

It was a dangerous way of thinking. While he slept the thing he saw under the Dream Root would sit and talk with him about how much easier things would be if he accepted Azazel’s offer and embraced the power he’d been given. Sam rarely remembered seeing him, but that didn’t stop the King of Hell from telling him that he wasn’t doing Dean any favors by indulging his weakness, that it was his job to lead his omega down the correct path, that he needed to be strong enough for both of them. He’d awake in the morning feeling profoundly uneasy, terrified of the things that ran through his mind when he would look over at Dean sleeping a foot away, and more and more he’d be on his way to the library to prepare for Sinclair’s arrival before the omega had even stirred, returning only to share breakfast with him and then vanishing again.

Sinclair found the entire situation fascinating. As a scholar, he’d never seen the point to omegas, with their weak wills and their flights of emotion, yet he couldn’t help but see Sam and Dean’s relationship as an opportunity to study the ways alphas and omegas related to each other. Perhaps there was a benefit to having an omega around that he just hadn’t seen before. He still had no interest in them romantically, but from a research perspective there was definitely something intriguing about having one in the bunker.

Whatever it was alphas typically got from mated relationships, it became apparent the longer he worked with Sam that the young man wasn’t getting it. Or at least he wasn’t getting _all_ of it. SInclair learned quickly that Sam was not nearly as good at hiding his emotions as he liked to believe, and though Sam was keeping things decidedly professional between the two of them it took very little casual prodding to get Sam to confirm that there just might be some trouble in paradise. He was fairly certain he could use that to his advantage as their sessions progressed if whatever was going wrong with the pair was not resolved quickly. He just needed to keep Sam focused on their work so he could gain the young man’s trust.

Unluckily for Cuthbert, the second half of August brought with it a need to get Elliott his six month vaccinations and a corresponding trip to a clinic in St. Louis. Though Dean was still uncertain about leaving the bunker, they didn’t have much choice. Sam was going to have to take Elliott in under his own name so his medical history could be kept up to date, and though he’d shut up his apartment there back when Steven Wandell was killed, he owned the place and saw no reason to get rid of it permanently despite his grandfather’s recommendations. It would give Dean and Lizzie someplace to stay besides a hotel while Sam was off at the doctor’s with Elliott, and even if someone got curious about Sam Campbell showing up in St. Louis after two months off the radar it wouldn’t seem strange when he had a home there and was still a legal resident of Missouri. The biggest problem he could foresee was that his building didn’t allow dogs, but with Adam and Jo at the bunker that was hardly insurmountable.

Once he started really thinking about the trip, other problems popped up. For one thing, it was an eight hour drive, and though it was easy enough for Sam and Dean to do in a day, it was completely unrealistic to keep Elliott and Lizzie in the car that long. A stop over in Kansas City would split the travel time just about perfectly in half, but that meant staying in two large cities instead of one, and that the trip would be at least four days long. Given their son’s temperament, expecting him to put up with a doctor’s appointment and vaccinations after four hours of travel seemed like a spectacularly bad idea, which brought them up to five days, and once they were at five days it made sense to just go ahead and plan for a week so they could take their time and linger if Elliott had a reaction to the shots or they just wanted to relax and see the sights. Suggesting a week long trip to his omega, who had actually cried their way out of a police encounter the last time he left the bunker ( _and Sam was right, they were pretending that never happened_ ), seemed like it might be something of a hard sell. It was, though eventually Dean came around and acknowledged that they couldn’t skip Elliott’s vaccinations and he couldn’t very well send Sam off by himself when he’d made such a stink about it the last time Sam tried to go off somewhere without Dean.

When Dean had accepted they really did need to go to St. Louis and really would be staying over in Kansas City both on the way there and the way back and they really were going to be gone for a whole week, he threw himself into planning the trip with a kind of reckless abandon that was, simply put, enchanting. As much as he wasn’t a fan of computers ( _he could use them just fine, thank you very much - that didn’t mean he wanted to spend his life in front of a screen_ ) he had a lot of fun going to the library to look up different things they could do with the kids while they were there and finding interesting stops along their route. He and Adam had never gone anywhere with John just to _go_ somewhere, and he knew Sam hadn’t gone on family vacations either, so he was taking great pride in making their first one special. That the kids weren’t going to remember it at all didn’t matter to him nearly as much as having pictures to put in an album, and he really couldn’t have cared less about how stereotypical that made him. Sam had promised the only time they were going to go cross-country in the Impala was for proper vacations, and by golly Dean was going to take him up on it.

On the way out they’d be able to take in a preseason Kansas City Chief’s game on Saturday against the Rams, which he thought might be a little loud but wasn’t anywhere near to sold out because it was the preseason, after all. Obviously they would need to see the Kansas City Zoo, but besides the zoo, there were a host of other animal centered things to do on their first stop that Dean thought Lizzie could appreciate even as young as she was, including an alpaca farm, a petting zoo, and a nature center where they could strap the kids to their chests and go for a hike. Most of those he was saving for the way back, since there was a Cardinals game Sunday afternoon he wanted to make sure they could watch. Since Elliott’s appointment was on Monday, Dean didn’t see the point in rushing to take in all the sights, though after they were done getting him checked out there was of course the Gateway Arch, another zoo, some more animal attractions, and what the omega considered the best thing of all - checking out Sam’s bachelor pad.   

Taking a detour south along Route 66 on the return trip, they could see the world’s largest fork, the world’s smallest mating chapel, Home of White Squirrels, hit all the fun family stuff down in Branson, as well as the Titanic museum, the world’s largest ball of twine, and then a cowboy dinner and a rodeo in Carthage. On the way back up to Kansas City they could see the Giant Morel Mushroom and the world’s largest coal shovel. The last attraction was the one that had Dean wondering about Missouri’s apparent obsession with size and if they were overcompensating for something. Taking Route 66 would add a day to the trip, but it wasn’t as if they were in a rush to get home. All that was waiting for them was the half-finished bedroom expansion and Sinclair and Henry’s tutoring.

“I think your itinerary on the way home might be a little ambitious for a ten-and-a-half and six month old,” Sam said as Dean was busy highlighting their trip on an old Rand McNally map of Missouri he had from his years hunting with John, filling in big red dots at the approximate stops they needed to make for the world’s biggest random things. “And as much as I enjoy the St. Louis Zoo, I’m not sure they’ll appreciate the difference in exhibits between that one and the Kansas City Zoo.”

“News flash, Sammy,” Dean replied around the highlighter cap held in his teeth. “They aren’t gonna appreciate the football and baseball games either. This trip isn’t just for them. Besides, I left the whole day after Elliott’s appointment open so you can show us your old stomping grounds if you don’t want to hit the zoo.”

Sam laughed, sliding in alongside his mate so he could rub his shoulders. He’d been excited that Dean had beaten him to bed for once, until he saw the map and various print-outs from the library on the attractions Dean had planned for them to see strewn all over the comforter, throw pillows in a neat pile on the floor. At least he was wide awake for once.

“I didn’t really have any stomping grounds,” Sam stated as he worked his hands along Dean’s shoulder blades and kneaded his way down the omega’s ribs to his waist until his mate began to lose focus on the map. “It was just a place to crash between jobs. I didn’t even have a table to eat dinner at. I don’t think I have pictures up or anything. I _might_ have a throw rug or two back there.”

“Is that a hint that you want me to hit up Bed, Bath, & Beyond while you’re getting Elliott his shots?” The omega squawked as the massage turned into merciless tickling, kicking the map and most of the papers to the floor as he tried to escape. “ _Sam_! You’re gonna wake the kids up!”

It was hardly enough to deter the alpha when he was getting bona fide giggles out of his mate. Even Hannah waking up and “woo”ing a couple of times as she assessed the situation wasn’t about to make him stop when Dean was making such enchanting noises.

“They need to learn to sleep through noise if they’re going to keep sharing our room,” Sam told him, giving a decidedly un-alpha-like yelp as Dean got enough leverage with his legs to flip them, Sam ending up on his back while Dean assailed his ribs until Sam was begging him to stop.

The tickling turned to grappling, which turned to wrestling, which turned quickly to first base, Dean’s knees on either side of Sam’s thighs, his hands hopelessly tangled in his mate’s chestnut waves as Sam caught his tongue and sucked until he got a whimper. Dean rocked down against him, shuddering, as Sam released his mouth to latch onto his jugular and doggedly work on leaving a bright red hickey for all the world to see. It was one of the safe areas Sam had discovered, the opposite of Dean’s earlobes, and the happy sounds he was getting as a reward for his nipping and suckling encouraged him to tug at Dean’s shirt so he could gain access to his clavicle.

Much as he tried not to think about Dick Roman, especially not when one of his mate’s hands had started to wander and Dean seemed poised to go for a double, there was always a running list at the front of his brain of “don’t”s when it came to moments like these. Honestly, it was driving his alpha crazy, to always have to check his instincts when it longed for so much more than the omega was able to offer, and a dark little voice in his head kept reminding him that if he were King of Hell he could take whatever he wanted. That Dean was rapidly stripping off his shirt and sliding his hands up under Sam’s tee shirt to encourage him to do the same made things better and worse at the same time. The reward for letting his mate set the pace of suddenly finding a pair of plush, pink lips and a well practiced tongue lapping at his nipples along with with strong, calloused fingers trailing down to play at the waist of his pajama pants was barely enough to offset the growing need of his alpha to finish the job of mating the omega instead of continuing to spin his wheels in neutral.

Though after a moment of Dean palming him through the pajama pants it was clear that he didn’t intend for things to stay in neutral, which was a complete surprise, considering not only were both kids starting to make sounds like they were very much awake, but Sam hadn’t actually closed the door when he came into the room. He’d anticipated Hannah needing one last walk before bedtime, and he certainly didn’t think he was going to end up with his pajama pants tugged down below his ass and Dean’s hand pumping his painfully hard cock, his knot already starting to swell like a teenager getting his first handjob. He gasped at his mate deciding the alpha needed a hickey as well, right over one of his nipples, and stammered out, “The door...kids...not exactly appropriate…”

“You’ve known since you were six that I’m not appropriate,” Dean purred, somehow able to speak coherent sentences while Sam’s brain was barely firing enough to allow him to breathe. Sam cast a glance over as Elliott made a sound that came dangerously close to the start of a wail, but Dean got the alpha refocused with some well practiced strokes and a slight twist of the wrist, his thumb running over Sam’s slit to gather some of the pre-cum that was dripping out of him. Sam couldn’t manage anything beyond a strangled gasp that was embarrassingly high pitched. “What’d you say? I didn’t catch that.”

“Dean…” was all Sam had time to blurt out before he came like Mount Vesuvius, coating his chest and hitting Dean in the chin, eliciting an adorable giggle before the omega slid off to curl up at his side while he rode out the aftershocks. His knot at least hadn’t fully expanded, so he wouldn’t be stuck there jizzing all over himself for half an hour, but he still needed a washcloth or towel and his legs weren’t going to be working again anytime soon. As he waited for his heart rate to return to something close to normal he panted, “Third base. Wasn’t expecting that.”

“Yeah, well, I figured you deserve a reward for being so patient,” Dean replied, catching his lips for a few deep, soft kisses before rolling off the bed to check on the kids, close the door, and grab Sam a bath towel.

“I don’t need a towel that big,” Sam objected, and the omega raised an eyebrow as he pointedly wiped off his chin.

“Really?” he asked before tossing the terry cloth at his mate, who hastily wiped himself off and then seized the omega with his orangutan arms to pull him back down onto the mattress. Dean’s eyes went wide, though he did not look displeased or smell distressed. In fact, he smelled sweeter than he had in a long time. “Whatcha doin’ Sammy?”

“Well…” Sam got an arm under him, rolling them onto their sides to play with Dean’s hair, which would definitely need a trim before they started wandering around in major cities. “I don’t want to leave you hanging.”

“I’m fine,” Dean insisted, his statement betrayed by the full body shiver that rocked him as Sam ran a hand over the bulge in his sweatpants. “I mean...I’m mostly fine…”

“Mm hmm,” Sam agreed, his mouth at the hinge of Dean’s jaw - another safe spot - before he licked his way over to the mating scar on the omega’s neck to gently lock his teeth on it. Dean’s fingernails dug into Sam’s back as he arched into the alpha, who chuckled at the smell of his mate’s slick gushing down the back of his thighs. “That’s what I thought.”

“Sam…” Dean rasped as a massive hand stroked the length of his back and slid into his sweatpants to cup one of the perfect globes of his ass to pull him against his mate’s chest, his leg sliding up and over Sam’s without him even thinking about it to hold them tightly together.

Sam’s tongue was doing lazy circles over the scar and it was making Dean feel light and fuzzy and electric, like the best kind of buzz he’d ever had, and he’d had some damn good buzzes in his life. The pleasurable feeling only intensified when Sam’s fingers brushed delicately over the puckered source of the slick, which was now leaking out of him at an embarrassing rate. He couldn’t think straight, and really didn’t want to, until he felt two of Sam’s fingers slide in to search for his prostate and pain hit him so sharp he might as well have taken a punch to the solar plexus.

“Dean?” Sam asked, not sure what was happening or why Dean’s face looked like Sam was stabbing him. The room was becoming saturated with the smell of fear, but it was different than the way his scent changed when Sam had done something that triggered him.

“Stop, please…” Dean choked, swatting at Sam’s hand to get him to move it and sucking in a deep breath once his fingers had withdrawn.

“What…”

“Elliott messed me up some.” Dean was actually thankful for being in so much pain that it left him with no capacity to feel embarrassment. “I missed my follow-up to see how things were healing cuz I was on a plane.” He managed to open his eyes and look at Sam, who appeared on the verge of panic at having hurt him. “Looks like I haven’t healed that well.”

“Why didn’t you say something?” Sam demanded, torn between hugging him to make Dean’s fear go away and shaking him for being such an idiot.

“How was I gonna get to see a doctor,  Sammy?” Dean asked weakly. “I couldn’t in Baton Rouge and up here we’ve had to lay low.”

“So, what, you were just going to keep it to yourself and hope for the best?”

“Kinda…”

Sam did shake him then.

“There are at least four omega clinics in St. Louis,” he said, trying not to lose control of his alpha, which was not happy at the omega being so careless with his health. “I used to see ads all the time. After I’m done with Elliott, you’re going to one of them. Do some research online and figure out which you want to go to and we’ll all go together. You’re not going to just suck it up and live with the pain.”

“It’s not that big of a deal…”

“It _is_ that big of a deal! Christ, don’t tell me you’ve bought into that stupid myth about how it doesn’t really matter if sex is painful for an omega. You think I wouldn’t go to a doctor if my dick hurt every time I tried to knot someone? Shit, _you’d_ go to a doctor if your dick hurt every time you fucked a beta! Just because it’s a different part of your body doesn’t mean you can ignore it or it makes you less of a man if you’re having problems. You should have told me!”

“It’s embarrassing!”

“My name is not John Winchester and your health is not embarrassing. You’re going to a clinic and that’s final.”

He was up and across the room to turn off the light before Dean could say anything, then back on the bed climbing under the covers and turning away to face the wall. Dean wasn’t sure if he should be self-conscious, offended, or happy about Sam’s reaction, but he could worry about that after he got himself cleaned off and into a dry pair of sweats. The alpha was doing his best impression of someone who was asleep by the time he came back out, and Dean slid up against him to be the big spoon, slipping an arm around his waist and running it up Sam’s chest until it was caught by one of his mate’s gigantic paws. Sam’s heart pounded under his palm, still racing slightly with anger, and Dean tipped his nose up behind the taller man’s ear and said, “Hey, Sam? Thank you.”

“Go to sleep, you moron,” Sam griped, though he still lifted Dean’s fingers to his mouth to brush his lips across them. The voice at the back of his head was still muttering that he should _take take take_ , but he was able to quiet it much more easily this time. Things might have gotten complicated in trying to get them to a home run, but Dean being comfortable with third base was a huge step in the right direction, and Sam was happy for the win.


	108. It's A Brave New World

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yay! It's a family vacation!

Cuthbert was angrier than he had any right to be at the idea that Sam and Dean would be gone for a week, and for a few wonderful moments Henry was certain he’d shoot himself so badly in the foot that Sam would refuse to work with him anymore. Sinclair would need to find some other way to get into the room that had been sealed against him after he was expelled from the organization to get to the box himself, and since he hadn’t managed it in sixty years, Henry was fairly certain he wouldn’t figure it out any time soon. Sadly, Sinclair was self-aware enough to reign in his temper after the smallest hint of it burst out into his scent, and said only that he wished Sam had mentioned it sooner, as he had just planned to start in on the history of Nordic spells and it was a very difficult language to drop and then return to.

He did an excellent job thereafter of masking his irritation at the thought of Sam and Dean away for a week together, strengthening their bond. Sam didn’t explicitly state that was one of his reasons for wanting to take the whole family to St. Louis, but it was obvious even to someone like Cuthbert who didn’t understand matehood at all. Sinclair began to casually mention the omega just a bit more as they drew closer to when the couple was heading out, and the increasing zeal with which Sam talked about Dean was all the confirmation the older alpha needed that whatever issues the two had been having might be starting to right themselves, and it would behoove him to find a way to keep things tense between them.

Henry, petulant fellow that he was, took great offense to Sinclair even bringing up his grandson in passing, and thus became a genuine nuisance to live with. When he wasn’t questioning his mentor on why he was suddenly so interested in Dean or correcting his recollection of the former hierarchy of the Men of Letters ( _Sinclair had never had much use for remembering the other little people involved in the organization_ ) he was spending time with that damned angel and giving drunken lectures on how they were better off accepting their fate than continuing down the path they were on. That Dean and Adam’s grandfather seemed to have made his peace with the idea that he should be dragged to Hell because of a contract Sinclair was bound to certainly didn’t help the eldest Winchester seem less self righteous. As far as Sinclair was concerned, that had always been one of Henry’s worst traits, anyway.

After the first time Castiel decided to speak, the angel was much more verbose during the hours Henry spent in front of its cage. While it still wouldn’t reveal its intentions or why it was so unconcerned with being locked up in a ring of holy fire, it was more than willing to discuss its history, how long it had existed ( _apparently Castiel was relatively young for an angel at only about three hundred million years old_ ), what it was like to watch the first vertebrates crawl out of the ocean, and the things it had learned observing humanity over the centuries. Unlike most other angels, who tended to be disinterested in the mud monkeys roaming the planet, Castiel found people fascinating, particularly the way the designations related. It wasn’t anything the captive angel could understand, having no need for mating or sexuality in general, but being sensitive to the vibrations given off by human emotions it did find the wild flights of fancy when true mates found each other to be positively thrilling to experience second-hand.

It sounded quite perverted to Henry, who knew he was something of a prude, until Castiel explained that when true mates came together it was as if each of their souls had been deaf and were now suddenly open to a world full of music. Henry thought of his own mate, and how he had agreed to leave her with relative ease, thinking he certainly would have stayed if every time he looked at her his heart heard violins. It redoubled the guilt he’d lived with for decades since her death, knowing how difficult her life had been after he left, though the angel couldn’t understand his impulse to grieve all over again for someone Castiel could plainly say was not Henry’s true mate.

“She persevered,” Castiel assured him in what Henry would have called a clinical tone. “It was difficult, but her heart was not broken. Had you died instead of simply abandoning her she would have survived and mated again. Your relationship was not like your grandson’s. You mustn’t compare it.”

Henry had suspected from the first time he saw Sam and Dean together at Bobby’s house that they were more than just a bonded pair, but having it confirmed by an angel of the Lord still left him reeling. He was doing everything he could to slow Sam’s initiation down so he would have more time to devise a plan to get the Werther Box out of the bunker before his mentor had earned the alpha’s trust. It was a miracle they hadn’t stumbled across it yet as it was with how Dean was throwing himself into memorizing the layout of their new home and making renovations. If Sinclair was able to convince Sam to open it, his entire family could be lost, and even if they weren’t, Dean would never survive a claim break from the death of his true mate.

Sam realized something was different in the dynamic between Henry and Sinclair after he plainly stated they were going to St. Louis for a week, but he couldn’t put his finger on what it was; and anyway he was too distracted by the total change in Dean’s demeanor to really care. Sam expected there to still be some lingering hesitancy in his omega over going to two very large cities after what happened with the police in Salina, but after getting a haircut ( _Sam understood why it was necessary but he was always going to prefer longer hair on his mate_ ), finding a pair of sunglasses that looked great on him, and picking out a couple of baseball caps that he planned to live in whenever they got out of the car, he was surprisingly confident. Dean Winchester, it seemed, took family vacations very seriously.

Sam shouldn’t have been surprised, considering he’d known how passionate Dean got about things he loved since they were kids, but it still left him with the stupidest smile on his face watching Dean load up the back of the truck so they could get out of the bunker by ten in the morning, making sure they had enough diapers and bottles and formula and sunblock and road snacks for both him and Sam, consisting mainly of beef jerky and Gummy Bears. Sam barely managed to convince the omega that they needed to take the Ford for their very first family vacation, Dean declaring such a suggestion to be blasphemy, though eventually he couldn’t argue with the fact that as large as the Imapla’s trunk was, it still would have left them without enough room for everything they’d need to keep two babies comfortable in hotels for a week without leaving behind all of the weapons, something Dean staunchly refused to do. They might be working actively towards retirement, Sam’s Men of Letters obligations notwithstanding, but that didn’t mean they were going to act like supernatural threats had ceased to exist.

To appease the omega, Sam agreed to let Dean drive while he navigated - not that there was much to navigate. It was a straight shot down US 36 to I-29, getting them to the 816 Hotel by three o’clock after stopping for lunch. They debated going to the alpaca farm before the football game, as the kids had mostly napped in the car and were wide awake, but instead headed to a park with the double stroller Sam had picked up on a Walmart run. It was handy for days it was really too hot to walk around with the kids in the carriers, even if Dean did think the thing drew a ridiculous amount of attention to them.

The kicker was none of the attention seemed to be negative. It was perhaps the first time since he presented that Dean had experienced people looking at him admiringly and then going about their business with no further comment or action. As hard as he tried to just enjoy being out with Sam and their kids as an actual family unit, it was difficult for him not to feel a swell of anger that because he was fulfilling a stereotype total strangers were suddenly willing to respect him; or at least respect that he “belonged” to an alpha. Plus, it was surreal to be one half of a parental unit pushing a stroller with two kids in it among other parental units pushing strollers or throwing balls around or encouraging someone to come down the slide. He’d spent so much time cooped up, just him and Lizzie, that adding Sam and Elliott and the outdoors and other people to the mix felt weird.

Truth be told, he still didn’t feel like he was really bonding with his son, and it bothered him tremendously. While he was better at soothing the little boy and he was the one who spent the most time with him now, being separated from him for two months left Dean wondering if they’d missed something vital that was keeping them from becoming really attached to each other. Maybe it was that his birth had been so awful, or that the physical effects of it clearly still lingered, or because it had set off such a dreadful chain of events, but the kind of instinctive pull Dean felt with Lizzie just wasn’t there with his son. When both Lizzie and Elliott needed something, he invariably saw to Lizzie’s needs first; something he knew that logically was just not fair to the little boy, yet he couldn’t help it. Lizzie he knew, even though he hadn’t carried her, while Elliott felt like Sam’s son, not his, and he had no idea what he was meant to do with that. He’d mentioned it to Sam a couple of times, but Sam - alpha that he was - simply said Dean was dealing with a lot and not to worry too much about it. It seemed easy to say when he wasn’t the one who sometimes felt like he loved their son because he was _supposed_ to, not because he _did_ , and enjoying an afternoon in a park like a normal happy family was not turning out to be the fun filled start to this vacation he’d envisioned.

Sam, luckily, was not quite as knotheaded of an alpha as his omega sometimes believed. Dean might have set up a long list of things for them to do on this trip, but Sam had his own plans, the top one being figuring out a way to help Dean feel closer to their little boy. He’d understood exactly what Dean was going through when he said he didn’t think he and Elliott were bonding, since Sam had felt that way, too. He loved Elliott from the minute he laid eyes on him because he couldn’t _not_ love him, but he felt like he was taking care of a virtual stranger when he suddenly had a newborn on his hands full time that had previously been cared for by a slew of hospital staff and available for him to hold only during visiting hours. Being consumed with worry for Dean and exhausted most of the time hadn’t helped him feel like he was much of a father or was connecting with his son either. However, despite having gone through something similar himself, Sam was not about to play the, “I know how you feel” game and make the situation all about him.

Instead, he was determined not to let Dean take care of Lizzie once the entire trip, outside of when Sam had Elliott at the doctor’s office ( _they agreed it was too risky for Dean to be there, just in case there were questions about Elliott’s mother and something from the OPS case came up_ ). The omega sometimes forgot he’d mated another hunter who would notice things like the clear favoritism Dean showed when it came to the little girl. It wasn’t that Sam blamed him in gravitating towards their daughter over their son. Caring for Lizzie had undoubtedly been the only stable, happy thing Dean had for months when he was subject to the indignities of living with Fox and Roman. That he would feel deeply emotionally attached to her when she was all he had was understandable - expected, even. He’d mentioned it to Jody in one of the phone calls Dean didn’t suspect he was making now that they had a landline, and while Jody was no expert on mother-pup relationships it sounded to her like he was still relying on the little girl to ground him. Obviously that wasn’t healthy for Dean, but the longer it went on the more it would become unhealthy for Lizzie as well. In Sam's mind, the logical way to break up the pattern was to make sure Dean only had to take care of Elliott on this trip.

It was evident how thrown Dean was by this plan when they got to the little playground at the park and Sam immediately swooped the dark haired baby girl out of the stroller and went to do his best at squeezing his gigantic frame into one of the tunnel slides, Lizzie squealing as he held her to his chest. Dean was left sitting on a bench with the stroller, the diaper bag, their little boy, and a pair of beta moms discussing Mary Kay products. They eventually noticed Elliott and started chatting with Dean about diaper rash and teething and clueless alpha mates, reminding him for some reason of the beta he’d been involved with so long ago and how glad he suddenly was that she’d dumped him. The women were nice and all, but he felt like they were speaking a different language.

He was almost relieved when Lizzie started crying after getting some sand in her mouth over in the sandbox, leaping to his feet with Elliott to intervene. He didn’t know quite what to do when Sam waved him off, heading with her to a water fountain and insisting he could handle it. Dean had been anxious to switch the kids off for a little bit, a tightness growing in his chest the longer he went without holding her. Before too long Sam had the sand rinsed out and was blowing zerberts on her tummy to send her into a flurry of giggles, leaving Dean clutching Elliott as he tried to determine why he felt like he was about to have a panic attack. Lizzie was safe with Sam. Elliott was safe with him. No one had given him a second glance despite his alpha being all the way across the playground for a solid fifteen minutes. There was quite literally nothing for him to be afraid of, and still his heart was starting to race.

Sam was surprised he actually possessed the level of self restraint it took not to run across the playground at the low hum of terror he felt vibrating in his stomach through the bond. He didn’t know what was happening with his omega as there weren’t any clear threats in the park, but he guessed Dean would not like any attention drawn to him when he was this raw. He flashed a dimpled grin and jiggled Lizzie on his hip, striding over to his mate and giving him a quick peck on the lips as he ran a hand up and down Dean’s back.

“Lizzie’s first time on a slide and you didn’t even take any pictures,” he sighed, shaking his head as he felt Dean start to settle. “I’m starting to think all that talk about family albums was just a line to get in my pants.”

“Sam,” Dean scolded, relieved the alpha wasn’t making a big deal out of whatever the hell was happening to him, since he was positive Sam knew. He wasn’t doing a very good job at keeping his emotions locked down, and if Sam had made a fuss in public it would have been worse. “There are children present.”

“I’m sorry if I’ve offended your delicate sensibilities.”

Dean was probably never going to be very good at resistance when Sam’s eyes sparkled the way they were as he tugged the omega in a little closer, and he went up slightly on his toes to catch Sam’s lower lip with his mouth, smirking when he got a surprised little whine out of the alpha. Sam gave a contented sigh before angling his face down to give Dean easier access, fairly certain they shouldn’t be kissing the way they were on a children’s playground but not really caring. Sam still tasted faintly of the raspberry vinaigrette and grilled chicken from the salad he had for lunch, and Dean was glad he’d told the server to hold the onions on his burger. It was a little awkward trying to kiss around two kids, but at least they started babbling at each other, which kept them occupied as Sam ran his free hand up the side of Dean’s neck to cup his jaw, Dean pressing his fingers into Sam’s waist to keep him close. After a few moments one of the beta moms coughed loudly and pointedly and Sam giggled against his mate’s lips before pulling back.

“So, dinner before the game or at the stadium?” he asked, his hand traveling to the small of the omega’s back to steer him to the bench.

“At the stadium, obviously,” Dean replied, seemingly affronted that Sam didn’t know proper football game protocol. “What kind of alpha did I mate? I may have to rethink this whole thing.”

“Does it make it better or worse that I only really started caring about football when I got to Stanford?”

“So all those times when we were kids and watched the games on TV, those were just lies?”

“What can I say? I liked the company.”

“I feel so used.”

They were strapping the kids back into the stroller side-by-side, giving Dean the opportunity to tuck his nose against Sam’s neck for a second to scent him without looking obscene. The two betas were still casting them sideways glances, though the twin expressions of disapproval at the young couple’s public display of affection from earlier had turned into something that looked a lot more like jealousy. Sam turned to nuzzle against Dean’s forehead for a second before swinging the diaper bag onto his shoulder and grabbing the stroller handle to steer it out of the park. He could feel the beta’s eyes on their backs and gave Dean’s ass a little swat, earning a pleased yelp out of his mate and a scandalized gasp from the women behind them. Elliott’s well timed screech of delight had both of them laughing outright as they headed back towards the truck.

The football game was indeed too noisy for two small children, even though the stadium was only about half filled, but they made it to halftime before they were really fussing enough that their parents called it quits and headed out through the gift shop. It was kind of ridiculous how many pictures Dean made Sam take of him and the kids before they left, or made Sam pose for with the kids, or asked total strangers to take of them and the kids, which Sam highly suspected was payback for Sam’s comment at the park. Again, Sam insisted on having daddy-daughter time and had Lizzie in the Baby Bjorn they’d sized for him, helping Dean get the Moby wrapped around him to carry Elliott. Dean got some rude looks from a group of alphas in their section that they’d passed tailgating in the parking lot, and while he probably shouldn’t have demanded to know what the fuck their problem was, they didn’t do much more than blush, and he was pretty sure they weren’t big enough dicks to actually take on two men with babies strapped to their chests.

His gamble paid off, and though they continued to grumble under their breath, for the most part they shut the hell up until Sam and Dean were leaving. At that point they said something about keeping omegas hanging off their knot, Dean flipped them the bird, and one did turn out to be stupid enough to follow them out to the concourse. It was pretty easy to convince security to toss the alpha out and ban him after he grabbed Dean’s shoulder and the omega broke his jaw, what with the two hunters having small children attached to them. Even as they came out the victors, they agreed it was probably best not to attend any more football games until Lizzie and Elliott were at least old enough to kick someone in the shins.

The altercation with the alpha resulted in a spilled soda on both Dean and Elliott, meaning a shower before bed and Dean in a towel - a clothing choice to which Sam was never going to object. He already had Lizzie in her travel crib and asleep, a state of affairs that had the omega more upset than he was willing to admit as Sam declared he was going for ice so they could properly enjoy the minibar and left his mate to get Elliott settled as well. Their son was surprisingly accommodating about giving them grown up time, and Dean had just found _The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers_ on cable when Sam came back with the ice bucket.

“Is this something I’m supposed to take as a hint?” the alpha asked, disappointed that Dean had pulled on a pair of boxers.

The omega snorted, flipping open Sam’s laptop as he replied, “Depends on if there’s a drinking game for this one and whether you plan to get me pregnant.”

He squawked at the ice cube his mate decided to run down the length of his spine, turning to slap Sam’s hand away only to find him giggling and holding a finger to his lips as he whispered, “Shh. We have two sleeping infants ten feet away.”

“I thought you said they needed to get used to noise if they were going to keep sleeping with us.”

Dean snagged a cube to drop down the front of Sam’s sleep pants, and they ended up wrestling and then languidly necking on the couch as Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli were discovering that Gandalf had been resurrected. They were both too tired for anything beyond seeing who ended up with more hickeys, falling asleep curled up together with an hour left until the credits rolled. Elliott’s need of a diaper change in the middle of the night saved them both from stiff necks in the morning, Sam giving Dean a gentle shove in the correct direction of the bed, where he had already collapsed on top of the bedspread by the time the alpha managed to get the diaper bag open. Sam was pleasantly surprised when he crawled under the covers and Dean pulled him in to be the big spoon.

They just made it to St. Louis the next day in time for the baseball game, deciding the leisurely pace of the innings was definitely more appropriate for two infants. Sam again got Lizzie into the Baby Bjorn before Dean even had time to get the Moby out of the back, never mind getting it wrapped around his middle. The narrowed eyes he fixed on the alpha let Sam know he wasn’t being as subtle as he thought, despite holding his objections and squelching the urge to switch kids. It had been odd the day before carrying around a baby who was so much lighter than he’d gotten used to when he was busy keeping Lizzie within arm’s length, though at the same time it reminded him how much stronger he was now. Not that he’d ever had a problem carrying Lizzie around when she was Elliott’s age, but it was drastically different and easier to wrangle a baby with two working arms.

They didn’t bother with dropping their things at Sam’s apartment until after the game was over ( _or at least after the four innings the kids would tolerate were over_ ), and the alpha hadn’t been kidding about the place being less than inviting. Dean was only half joking when he told his mate that he’d stayed in one star hotels with more personality. Between the taupe walls, lack of personal decor, and sparse furniture, the place looked like a demo apartment for anyone considering moving into the building. At least it meant there were less things to have accumulated dust while Sam was gone.

Dean made it to dinner before he had a conniption about the state of Sam’s bachelor pad. The living room with nothing more than a couch and coffee table was one thing, and he supposed he could survive staying in the master bedroom even though there was only a bed and a dresser, and he could deal with the fact that there was literally nothing in the spare bedroom, but the mismatched dinnerware pushed him right over the edge. Having to eat their Chinese take-out off of green plates when the cups were striped orange and red was too much to expect of any omega, and as far as Dean was concerned Sam simply had no excuse for such terrible color coordination when Dean had somehow always managed to find matching cups at plates at the Goodwill.

Sam thought Dean’s offense at the state of his apartment was adorable right up until the omega grabbed the truck keys with the declaration that he was going to find a Walmart or a Target or some other large store that was open late and he wouldn’t be coming back without something to make the place feel homey. The idea of Dean heading off in a strange city ( _to him at least_ ) by himself at seven o’clock at night shouldn’t have been so terror inducing, but they were out in the hall arguing, Elliott in the crook of his arm and Lizzie on his other hip, before Sam really knew what was happening. His next door neighbor, a reverend’s daughter named Lori who always flirted with him, appeared at her threshold at the sound of the shouting, grinning brightly at the sight of his return until she spotted the two babies he was holding and the omega with angry gold eyes who had a prominent claim mark on his neck. Dean took advantage of Sam stopping to make polite conversation with her to make a break for the elevator, and by the time Sam had recovered his mate was waving to him with a smile as the doors slid shut.

The alpha had half a mind to call a cab and follow Dean, who didn’t even know his way around the city, except there were three Walmarts in St. Louis and he had no idea which one Dean would go to. The omega was obviously resourceful enough that Sam didn’t doubt he’d be able to get to one without too much difficulty, it was more the idea of him being somewhere _alone_ that was giving Sam fits. He realized that he was being a big, giant hypocrite, considering how he’d been prodding Dean to get out of the bunker more for weeks, it’s simply that he meant Dean should get out of the bunker _with Sam_ , or into the tiny town of Lebanon where people would get to know him and learn very quickly that he had a very large, very devoted, very deadly mate. He supposed he should be happy the omega hadn’t mentioned finding a Bed, Bath, & Beyond, or he might end up camped out overnight there, but it was difficult to be happy when he felt like he was having a heart attack.

Dean realized as he walked into the twenty-four hour Walmart Supercenter south of downtown that he might have bitten off more than he could chew, though he’d be damned if a Walmart got the best of him. The parking lot was nearly full, which he hadn’t expected after seven o’clock on a Sunday, and he was quite relieved to find a spot underneath a light pole - not that he would have ever admitted to it. He was overwhelmed by all the merchandise on display for Labor Day the following week once he entered the store, instantly realizing why the place was so busy and kicking himself for not paying more attention to the calendar. They were probably going to be fighting holiday traffic when they headed back home at the end of the week, and that was going to suck with two babies on board.

He got a lot of the unwanted attention he’d been expecting the day before; eyes lingering a little too long on him as he hit up the kitchen aisle, a comment about his ass when he bent over to get a bedding set, an offer to show him what a real alpha was like while he was checking out the towels, an actual wolf whistle during his meticulous search through the throw pillows to coordinate with some of the area rugs he’d already grabbed. It was just enough to make him angry without pushing him over into truly being uncomfortable, and he decided to cut the trip short despite wanting to grab a couple of cribs, mattresses, and other things for the kids. The apartment might not be much now, but it had potential and he kind of liked the idea of having somewhere they could go to get away from the bunker for a while if they felt like it that wasn’t too far away. The house in Fort Wayne wasn’t an option and wouldn’t be for a long time. He might as well turn Sam’s place into something livable.

It was a little after nine thirty by the time he made it back and buzzed Sam to be let in from the parking garage, everything except the rugs weighing him down. He was certain he could hear his mate pacing before he even stepped off the elevator, silly as that seemed, the nervousness seeping through the bond undoubtedly contributing to the feeling. He bristled at his stupid alpha reacting like a stupid alpha to him being at the store by himself, plastering a smile to his face before letting himself back into the apartment.

“Hey.” Sam had a similar smile plastered to his face as he moved to take some of the bags from the omega. Dean was genuinely glad that they were both on the same page in terms of accepting that he was capable of making a trip to Walmart by himself without it turning into a fight. “I was expecting you to come back with half the store the way you stormed out of here.”

“This is just temporary.” Dean set the bags Sam hadn’t taken down on the couch and started to unpack the things that needed to go into the kitchen. “We’re not going to be here long enough for me to properly nest.”

Sam couldn’t hold back a laugh even as he was pulling fluffy new towels out to lay on the coffee table.

“Properly nest? When did you turn into an actual omega on me?”

“For your information, I have never denied being a nester. Besides, we can afford to have a place that looks like someone put some thought into it if anyone comes over for dinner.”

“I don’t even have a dining room table and you’re planning to have people over to dinner in the apartment where we don’t live?”

“We’re retiring, Sammy. Retired people have dinner parties and shit. Not typically on plates they got from Walmart, but we gotta start somewhere.” He gave one of the alpha's butt cheeks a squeeze as he passed by to put the plates in the dishwasher. “And I like this place. It would be nice to come back occasionally. I got some rugs that are down in the truck. You want to go get them or wash the bedding and towels?”

“You want to do that tonight?” Sam asked as the dishwasher whirred to life. “I _have_ sheets and towels, Dean.” The single eyebrow Dean raised was all it took for Sam to abandon that line of thinking. “I will go get the rugs.”

“That’s what I thought you meant,” Dean told him, pressing a little kiss to the corner of Sam’s mouth on the way to the bathroom where the stacked laundry system was, the new bed in a bag in hand. “I want to get some stuff for the kids tomorrow. Does St. Louis have a Babies ‘R Us?”

“Probably. I’ll look when I get back.”

Dean was already on the laptop when Sam returned with the rugs stacked across his arms, switching off the search for Babies ‘R Us with his mate, who knew exactly where he wanted each rug to go. The washing machine had finished with the bedding right about the time Dean was stomping the last area rug into place, and after throwing the new linens in the dryer Sam managed to convince him that his sheets were, in fact, adequate for a single night and they could finish the laundry in the morning before Elliott’s appointment.

The sheets were definitely serviceable, holding up even as Dean clutched them while Sam did wonderful things with his mouth and tongue, Dean’s legs slung over his shoulders. For all of the many things he’d tried in his years of oat sowing, Dean had never had anyone spend so much time between his legs. He’d had blowjobs, of course, but most betas found slick to be gross and weird and weren't interested in getting anything more than their fingers involved with it, so the fact that Sam was practically drinking from him had Dean wondering if his brain was going to melt and leak out of his ears. Sam was really, _really_ good at what he was doing with his tongue - less so when he swallowed Dean whole, but what he clearly lacked in experience in that department he more than made up for in enthusiasm, realizing quickly that if he hummed with Dean in his mouth he got some fantastic sounds in response. They’d had to leave the doors open to both bedrooms since they didn’t bring a baby monitor and Sam kept whispering “Shhh,” every now and then as if it were humanly possible for Dean to keep quiet. The best he managed was a, “I...mmm...fu…” to try to warn Sam that he was about to come before he exploded down the alpha’s throat, catching Sam a bit by surprise and gagging him for a second. Trooper that Sam was, he soldiered through it, smiling up at the full body flush coloring the omega’s skin and wiping off his chin with Dean’s tee shirt.

“Welcome to my apartment,” he said, getting a string of unintelligible syllables and two thumbs up out of his mate, who officially couldn’t move. Sam laughed brightly, slipping up beside him and pulling the sheets and covers up. “Good thing we’re doing laundry tomorrow.”

More unintelligible syllables, another thumbs up, and some head bobbing that was meant to pass for nodding were the only responses Dean was capable of, and Sam laughed again, pulling the omega into his side. Dean flopped half over him with his head on Sam’s chest and his hand on his abdomen, thumb flicking over the head of Sam’s very prominent erection.

“You want…” he gasped, still trying to get his eyes to uncross. “I could…”

“I’m fine,” Sam assured him with a kiss to the top of the omega’s head. “Besides, I owed you for last week.”

“It’s been a _week_? We should do this more.”

“Let’s see what the doctor says tomorrow, first. Get some sleep.”

He didn’t have to tell Dean twice. His mate nodded blearily against his chest, gave Sam a little squeeze at the waist, and was lightly snoring a few minutes later. If this was the kind of forward progress they made when they got out of the bunker, Sam could definitely get behind taking family vacations.


	109. I Wish I Couldn't Feel Anything

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day two in St. Louis doesn't go quite as well as day one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: Triggery stuff ahead.

The pediatrician pronounced Elliott in near perfect health, though slightly underweight, even taking into account that he was premature and would necessarily be closer to the size of a four month old than a six month old. It didn’t surprise the doctor, considering pups that were separated from their mothers often struggled initially, but he assured Sam he’d done the right thing in claiming Elliott and not to worry too much about him. Eventually he’d catch up to his peers, with such a tall, strong alpha for a sire. He got his vaccinations and wailed all the way out of the office as Sam was doing his best to smile and nod along to the doctor’s bigoted statements about unfit omega mothers and how good it was the government made sure the fathers could remove children so easily, then hurried to the park across the street to where Dean was giving Lizzie a tiny taste of his chocolate ice cream cone, both of them in sunglasses and hats just in case anyone spotted them.

Sam took advantage of Lizzie’s whining for more than just a tiny taste of the ice cream and Elliott’s continued bawling to switch kids, and though he now knew exactly what his mate was doing, Dean wasn’t going to stop him. He’d felt a bit of a pull to take Elliott as soon as they came out of the building and Dean heard him crying, a pull that he didn’t normally feel, so maybe all this forced time with him was helping. He was definitely in a cooperative mood after the wonderful things Sam had done to him the night before, which made his heart rate pick up just thinking about them.

Dean’s appointment did not go as well as his son’s. The Om-OB/GYN was the kind of dismissive asshole Dean had come to expect from omega clinics, but the typical attitude was made exponentially worse by the whole exam process. Despite specifically requesting a beta doctor, Dean was seen by an alpha male in his mid-fifties who was openly disrespectful and threatened to have Sam thrown out when the young alpha growled at the way his mate was being treated. They’d already had to deal with the deep sigh and eye roll from the nurse practitioner after she asked if there was anything Dean wanted to ask the doctor about specifically or if this was just a regular checkup, clearly finding it a great personal hardship that she was going to have to tell her superior the omega had the audacity to want to know how bad the scarring in his channel was and if there was anything he could do about it.

When the doctor finally came in after Dean had been sitting in his paper gown over forty-five minutes, the kids were starting to grow very restless. The older alpha immediately insisted the couple calm them or Sam was going to have to take them out of the exam room. That they would have been fine if the family hadn’t been kept waiting nearly an hour seemed to be something that never even occurred to him. He got Dean’s medical history, not even trying to mask his irritation that Dean didn’t know everything the doctors did while they were frantically working to keep him from bleeding to death. That Sam wasn’t there at the time apparently wasn’t worthy of the same scorn as Dean being there but unconscious due to blood loss.

What Dean _could_ tell him was he knew there had been some tearing and would undoubtedly be some scarring, and the doctor at his three week postpartum appointment was concerned about how it was going to heal. Sam blamed himself when the doctor wanted to know why it had taken so long for Dean to schedule a follow up appointment, saying his job forced him to travel a lot and he hadn’t been around to help when Elliott was in the NICU, and that afterwards they’d gone right back to traveling as a family. Even with Sam falling on his hastily invented sword, the doctor still blamed Dean for not being more demanding with his mate about getting into a clinic before six months had gone by.

Dean knew he was not going to receive good news as soon as the doctor slid in the duckbills and his vision went white from the pain. He felt ridiculous having to grab Sam’s hand as he forgot how to breathe. He was a hunter, for Christ’s sake. His _life_ was one big experiment in how high his pain threshold was. This was not the worst pain he’d ever felt by far. It was, however, some of the scariest. What he was feeling wasn’t just intense physical discomfort; it was intense physical discomfort that indicated something was terribly wrong. That the doctor just continued to ratchet open the speculum, exacerbating the pain with each twist without even bothering to talk Dean through what he was doing, made it all the worse.

Sam held it together quite well in the face of Dean’s mounting distress until the doctor started swabbing and the omega actually yelped. Lizzie and Elliott both started crying when Sam started yelling about incompetence and questioning the man’s medical credentials, and it was only the spike of fear in Dean’s scent that got him to cool it when the doctor threatened to call security. Sam passed their son over to Dean to hold on his chest and calm him down while Sam soothed Lizzie, and the omega was grateful Elliott was still small and relatively helpless enough to be content laying on him, since it gave Dean something to focus on besides the horrible things the OB/GYN was doing to him.

Knowing the omega had a hyper protective mate did almost nothing to change the doctor’s behavior towards Dean. He continued the exam with little to no communication with his patient, only occasionally muttering something in disdain under his breath or asking Dean about what he had been instructed on as far as after care. He was highly displeased that the only thing he’d been told to do was take sitz baths and pop ibuprofen, as if it were again Dean’s fault the doctors hadn’t given him more information on how to take care of a medical condition he didn’t even realize he should be asking about when he was recovering from near death and had a premature infant in the hospital. He asked point blank and with great irritation if Dean routinely sat on omega pillows, which both he and Sam wanted to deny but knew they shouldn’t. Dean said something about using them to meditate, and that he’d never been told to avoid them, feeling that a half truth was better than a lie.

Both Dean and Sam were surprised at the genuine anger on the doctor’s face _not_ directed at either of them as he muttered something about how those pillows should be illegal and closed up and removed the speculum before tossing his exam gloves in the trash. He wheeled to his chart to take down a series of notes, instructing Dean to get his legs out of the stirrups and that he could sit up, which was easier said than done with how tender he now was. Sam got both Lizzie and Elliott back in the double stroller while Dean gingerly moved around to swing his legs down over the table.

“Mr. Smith, as I’m sure you and your alpha have discovered in attempting to knot since the birth of your son, you experienced significant third and fourth degree tearing during the whelping process,” the doctor said, rolling back over to really look at Dean for the first time since he came in the room. “I can certainly appreciate, given the circumstances as you’ve described them, that your doctors needed to focus on saving your life, however the kind of tearing you have required immediate surgery to correct so you didn’t end up in exactly this situation farther down the line. I don’t know why they even attempted a natural whelping rather than delivering surgically, though based on the state of your cervix it’s very possible your cerclage tore and they didn’t have a choice. Either that or they were concerned the anesthetic would kill you with the blood loss. Regardless of the reason, because you were on bed rest and prohibited from knotting, your channel was in no way stretched enough to deliver even a premature pup naturally. That no one mentioned to you the need to avoid kneeling on omega pillows while you healed due to the pressure sitting in such a position forces on your channel borders on malpractice, in my opinion. You aren’t still using them, are you?”

“No,” Sam replied when it became clear Dean was having trouble with language. “He hasn’t used them in a couple of months.”

“That’s good. There are surgeries that can help at this stage to remove some of the tissue build up that is causing your discomfort, and honestly, I would recommend you schedule surgery sooner rather than later. You’re six months postpartum so your hormone levels will have returned to normal by now. You’ve probably noticed how much more emotionally stable you’ve been feeling in the last few weeks. Unfortunately, this means you’ll be coming into heat soon, and heat sex will only worsen the scarring as it currently stands.” He ripped the top sheet off a prescription pad and held it out to the young men. “That’s for a cream that will help with sensitivity and reducing the scar tissue while you decide how you’d like to proceed. Please be aware that it can cause a drop in slick production and in some omegas may result in bacterial infections. You’ll want to keep an eye out for any additional discomfort or strange discharge. They’ll give you some pamphlets at check out with additional information on your condition, the cream, and your surgical options. Good luck to you, Mr. Smith.”

“Thank you,” Sam managed numbly on his mate’s behalf when Dean sat staring straight ahead, his skin a bright pink of mortification from his hairline to his upper arms. The doctor nodded and clicked the door closed behind him as Sam stared at the prescription they’d been given. “Dean…”

“I don’t want to talk about it Sam,” Dean rasped, moving as quickly as he could to get his clothes back on and wincing slightly at the feel of his boxer briefs against his ass. “I’m gonna need different underwear, I think.”

“Dean…”

“I said I don’t want to talk about it!”

“We have to talk about it Dean!”

“Yeah, well we don’t have to talk about it right the fuck now!” He yanked his tee shirt on and jammed his feet back into his shoes before grabbing the diaper bag and heading for the door. “Get the kids, we need to buy them some shit at Babies ‘R Us.”

If Sam had some way to force Dean to walk slower he would have, but trying to wrangle the double stroller back down the halls of the clinic left him unable to do much more than trail along behind the omega asking him to please slow down. Of course that resulted in Dean _refusing_ to slow down, even if he wanted to, and boy did he ever want to. He was doing his best not to limp towards the checkout desk and failing quite spectacularly. It was hard to think of anything other than how grateful he was they’d already gotten the sporting events out of the way so he wouldn’t have to worry about how he was going to sit down on hard plastic seating for hours.

Dean couldn’t keep up the pace by the time they got to the parking lot and had fallen back to walk along beside Sam and the stroller, a decided hitch in his step. Sam didn’t press the issue further, though he did suggest they go to Walmart so they could get two carts, since they had two babies and alphas weren’t allowed in Babies ‘R Us. He hastily added that he knew Dean could handle shopping for the kids by himself as he saw the flare of anger in his omega’s eyes, insisting that he _wanted_ to be involved in picking things out and not just be a walking credit card, finally earning a shrug and a quiet, “Okay,” from his mate.

Sam didn’t mention how Dean needed to sit angled on his hip in the car, or how he leaned a little on the shopping cart and tried to play it off like he was just talking to Elliott and making sure he was okay hanging out in his car seat while they wandered around the store. The alpha quietly dropped off the prescription at the in-store pharmacy with a guaranteed hour pick-up before they headed over to the baby and toddler section, putting epsom salts into his cart so Dean could take a sitz bath after the omega had left the health and beauty section. He focused on getting the cribs and changing table Dean wanted, discussing the various bedding sets and what to get for the kids ( _he felt quite strongly that while Jo’s matching theme idea was great, they should have their own stuff in Daddy’s apartment_ ), flagged down a sales associate to get them another shopping cart when it became obvious they’d need more than two, and sent the employee off with the first full cart to keep up by Customer Service.

They picked up some groceries and more kitchenware while they were there to allow them to eat in for dinner, deciding to restock on baby food as well so they could stay an extra couple of days if they felt like it. The rest of the afternoon and evening was spent putting things together, washing the new linens and towels, and setting up the bedrooms in relative silence, the radio playing an ‘80s station in the background as they turned Sam’s apartment into something that looked like people lived there. They successfully avoided discussing what they were going to do about Dean’s scarring, even as Sam was reading the application instructions and side effects while his mate was in the bathroom _very_ gently applying a layer of the thick white cream to the walls of his channel. He decided ruefully that at least he could be thankful the scars were so painful that he knew exactly when he was getting the cream on them.

The next day they headed out to the zoo, wandering around the different exhibits as Dean explained to the kids that the cheetahs were the fastest land animal and pointing out the huge ears on the fennec foxes, then complaining at how overpriced the food and gift shop items were even as he picked out a tee shirt with a monkey on it for Lizzie and one with a lion on it for Elliott and grabbed matching coffee mugs for him and Sam. The omega’s insistence on acting like he hadn’t been told the day before he needed corrective surgery was infuriating, as was his refusal to play the “Mommy takes care of Elliott” game. While Sam was in the shower Dean had adjusted the Baby Bjorn to fit him and before Sam had the truck in park at the zoo Dean was out of the passenger seat and moving to get Lizzie. He barely touched Elliott the entire time they were there.

After the zoo was lunch, where Dean pointedly handed Sam Elliott’s bottle and then turned to feed Lizzie. When the kids went down for a nap, the omega told his mate to find them a painter who could redo their apartment in something other than institutional beige and marched off by himself to Home Depot to pick out paint swatches. Though it pleased him that his mate had so quickly taken to calling the place “theirs,” the alpha was not at all on board with his omega picking out paint colors without him, not that he had much choice but to stay behind and twiddle his thumbs. Sam had to admit when Dean finally returned that it was impressive he managed to turn picking out paint swatches into a two and a half hour task, even if he was frantic by that time. Demanding to know where he’d been got only a very terse, “Uh, Home Depot, getting paint swatches,” and a warning growl before the omega started talking about picking up the pace because they needed to get to Big Joel’s Safari and he had a coupon that was only good before five o’clock.

Big Joel’s Safari was almost an exact replay of the zoo, with Dean putting on the Baby Bjorn before they even got in the truck just so Sam was clear on where things stood in their little family. As much as Sam was trying to be supportive, a very angry voice was growing louder inside him, its fury increasing as Dean fawned over Benny’s daughter and ignored Sam’s son. It was a basic instinct, animalistic way to feel, and Sam didn’t care. Dean was being utterly unfair to his child, and Sam suddenly understood why a lion killed all the cubs when he took over a pride.

Still, the alpha managed to hold his tongue until after dinner. When Sam suggested Dean work with Elliott on tummy time and the omega said he’d been planning to help Lizzie with her toddling, the younger man officially had enough. The voice in his head was shrieking at him to stop the mistreatment of his pup, and after keeping quiet about it all day he really had no hope of handling the topic well.

“Exactly how long are you planning on treating Elliott like a leper?” he demanded, well aware that there was probably a better way he could phrase the question but not really wanting to bother finding it.

“Excuse me?” Dean said, his eyes narrowing as he held onto Lizzie’s fingertips to help her keep her balance as she made her way across the living room.

“I’m pretty sure I didn’t stutter,” Sam snapped as he picked Elliott up off his play mat to present them as a united front.

Dean huffed a laugh and shook his head, turning his focus back to Lizzie.

“I am not treating him like a leper,” he said flatly.

“Really? You’ve held him _once_ today. _Once_. I get that you’re upset about what the doctor told us yesterday, but you can’t just ignore it, and you _cannot_ take it out on our son.”

“You think I’m _ignoring_ it?”

“Considering we haven’t talked about it _at all_ , yeah, I’d say you’re ignoring it, Dean.”

“Wow.”

The omega clenched his jaw as he picked Lizzie up to put her in her playpen by the couch, then stalked off to the bedroom, returning a moment later with his cell phone and the keys to the apartment.

“What are you doing?” Sam said as Dean made his way to the front door. “Where are you going?”

“Out,” Dean hissed, his mate right after him as he tried to slam the door.

“Out?” Sam echoed incredulously, and Dean shot back, “I’m pretty sure I didn’t stutter.”

“Dean, we need to talk about this.”

Sam’s omega whirled on him, his eyes an enraged gold, not caring in the slightest that people were starting to crack their doors to see what was going on in the hall.

“No, Sam, _you_ need to talk about this,” he spat. “ _You_ need to talk about this so that you can feel better, so that you can feel like everything will be okay, like _I_ will be okay, so you don’t have to beat yourself up about not being able to get me out sooner or for walking away in the first place.”

“Dean…”

“No, you wanted to talk, so let’s talk. Let’s talk about how for four months I told myself no matter how many times someone hit me, or licked me, or dragged me around by a collar, or made me sit on the floor like a goddamn dog, or jerked off on me, they weren’t going to break me. Let’s talk about how I didn’t fight back, not because they broke me but because I didn’t want them to take the kids, and how I had that to cling to while I begged for _anything_ that could hear me to come help. Let’s talk about how the last two months where I’ve been trying to get past all that crap and get back to some kind of relationship with my mate, I’ve at least been able to talk myself through all the goddamn panic attacks by repeating in my head that I was going to get through this, and things were going to get better, because they didn’t break me. Let’s talk about how it feels to _finally_ be in a place that’s good enough in my head where I want to be with you again physically the way an omega is _supposed_ to want their alpha only to find out, surprise! _They fucking broke me_! What the fuck, exactly, do you think talking is going to accomplish when I need fucking _surgery_ to fix what they _literally_ broke inside me, Sam?”

The neighbors had clicked their doors closed, not that either man was really paying attention, though Sam was very aware that he needed to get them back into the apartment because Lizzie was still in her playpen. Dean’s eyes were shiny, his mouth was set in a hard line, and the alpha could smell the rage and the anguish cascading off of him, frustrated to have his hand batted away when he tried to reach out for his mate.

“Baby…” he tried again, but the omega spun on his heel and snapped, “Don’t wait up.”

Rocky’s Bar was two blocks from Sam’s apartment. It was half empty, due undoubtedly to the relatively early hour, the fact that it was a Tuesday, and the strange squirrel and moose theme the place had going on, which was just fine with Dean. Every head in the place still turned in his direction when he entered, which was also just fine with Dean. It’s not like he wasn’t used to it by now, and not too deep down he really hoped someone was willing to press their luck because he was just itching to hit something. Sure, he wanted that something to be big and Sam-shaped, but he wasn’t going to just haul off and punch his mate, no matter how clueless Sam was.

Dean knew he was being unfair to Elliott. Of course he knew that. His current medical state was not Elliott’s fault, even if it was a result of his birth. It was just something that happened and that he’d known could happen if he tried to deliver naturally. That’s the whole reason they’d planned on a surgical delivery. None of that meant he could just stop resenting his son a day after a doctor told him he had scars from third and fourth degree tearing. A stop at the library to check out WebMD on the way to Home Depot gave him a horrifyingly clear idea of exactly what that meant, complete with illustrations. How Sam could imply that he was treating Elliott the way he had been on purpose or because he wanted to when Dean was just trying to process this new complication and how he felt about it cut deeply.

And that was another thing. Just because Dean didn’t process things the way Sam did, it didn’t mean he wasn’t processing them. He’d figured out when they were kids that Sam needed to talk everything through; probably because he was an only child and his grandfather was an ass and most of the time he didn’t have anyone around who would listen when he wanted to discuss why _She-Ra_ wasn’t a bad spin-off of _He-Man_ because the main character was a girl, but because it made no sense that He-Man’s parents would have just acted like their daughter never existed simply because she’d been kidnapped as a baby, until Mattel realized they could cash in if they could make a line of toys that would appeal to girls the way He-Man appealed to boys. Sam was simply a talker by nature, and most of his life he’d had no one to talk to.

Dean just didn’t work that way. Sam probably thought he did because he grew up with a brother, but Adam was six years younger than him. How was Dean supposed to talk to a seven year old kid about their dad almost getting killed on a werewolf hunt over the summer when Adam thought they were just off camping? Even if he _could_ have talked to Adam about that kind of stuff, what would the beta have been able to say that could have possibly made it better? There was John who knew what he was experiencing, of course, but the idea that John would talk about _anything_ that was bothering Dean was laughable, even before he presented as an omega. Dean had an entire lifetime of learning how to deal with things himself because he didn’t have a choice. Why Sam apparently expected that to suddenly change he didn’t really know.

The bartender was nice enough, trying to chat him up as per her job description and eventually accepting that the solitary mated omega in her bar just wanted to drink. A pair of alphas tried their hand at flirting with him, whipping out the old standard “If I was your alpha…” line to impress him with how protective they’d be in never letting him step outside the house by himself like he was some kind of maiden in a tower, too precious for this world. Both backed off when Dean offered to educate them on what broken bones felt like, though neither went very far when they retreated.

Dean was willing to give his mate credit in waiting a whole hour and a half before his phone started ringing. After the fifth time he sent the call to voicemail he considered just turning the damn thing off, but didn’t really want Sam to start breaking furniture waiting for him to get back ( _though it would give him a reason to replace that god awful modern design couch in the living room_ ). The alpha switched to text messages then, the phone buzzing so frequently Dean finally pulled it out and set it on the bar next to his growing line of beer bottles because he was tired of it vibrating against his thigh. The text messages continued off and on for another hour before stopping, and then he still held out for fifteen more minutes before K.D. Lang’s cover of _Hallelujah_ playing overhead had him flipping open his phone to start reading.

 

_Dean, please pick up the phone._

 

_Dean, please._

 

_Baby, I’m sorry, please call me back._

 

_We need to talk about this._

 

_Look, I get that this is hard for you, and I don’t really understand it, but please come home so we can talk._

 

_Or we don’t have to talk._

 

_We can talk whenever you’re ready, just come home._

 

_Fine, if you don’t want to come home just tell me where you are so I can stop worrying._

 

_I swear I won’t come and drag you back or make you talk or anything, I just want to know that you’re okay._

 

_Baby, I know you’re pissed, but please text me when you want to come home so I can come get you._

 

_I promise I won’t make you talk about it._

 

_Are you even getting any of these?_

 

_Can you at least let me know you’re getting my texts and aren’t dead in a ditch somewhere?_

 

_I’m going to put the kids in the stroller and start checking the local bars for you._

 

_Dean, I’m serious._

 

_Do you really want me taking our infants into bars?_

 

_After the bars we’re going to the local hospitals and morgues._

 

_I mean it! I will take our children to look at dead people!_

 

_Dean. Please._

 

“Holding out in the hopes of awesome make-up sex?” the bartender asked as Dean was scrolling through the texts that she’d listen to roll in.

“How much do I owe you?” he said, gesturing to the string of bottles as he finished off his ninth and last beer while simultaneously digging out his wallet.

The bartender rang up his tab and brought it back with the receipt and credit card he’d handed her so he could scratch down a signature that looked vaguely like the name on the Visa, filling in a generous tip and wishing her a goodnight. He was a little surprised at how unsteady he was when he got up off the bar stool to tuck his wallet and phone back into his pockets, thinking he was going to have to build his tolerance up again. There had been a time when nine beers over roughly three hours would have barely given him a buzz, but now he had to admit as he weaved slightly on his way to the bathroom that he was bordering on drunk. Maybe this was just what happened the closer you got to thirty.

Honestly, he’d fully expected the two alphas who’d been hitting on him to follow him out of the bar, so it really wasn’t a surprise when he felt a hand yanking him into an alley about three buildings down from the apartment. He had his head down to text Sam that he was almost home and knew he should have been paying closer attention to his surroundings, especially when he realized one of the alphas had called in a couple of buddies and there were four different scents mixed in amongst the garbage and human waste as he was shoved against a wall behind a dumpster. The scrape of the brick wall against his cheek did a lot to offset the pounding in his head from getting his face slammed into a building, and at the feel of a hand at the back of his waistband he thrust his head back, hearing the cracking of nose as the alpha behind him yelped and something warm and wet landed on his neck.

“Mother _fucker_!” whined the alpha, one of the two from the bar, his hand on his face as blood gushed down over his mouth and chin.

“That’s how it’s gonna be, bitch?” the other alpha from the bar snapped, moving in with the two newcomers and telegraphing his punch in enough time for Dean to duck. His hand hit the dumpster behind the omega and he howled as his knuckles split, a couple of his fingers clearly broken. “ _Fuck_!”

Dean threw a shoulder into the attacker’s stomach to push him back enough for the omega to get clear. Dean darted past him straight into the remaining two alphas, who tried to grapple him into submission, one getting him into a bear hug while the other went for his legs. The one at his legs pulled them apart as he hoisted Dean’s feet up from the sidewalk, but that gave the omega a chance to get a leg free and kick him in the face. As the alpha stumbled backwards, Dean pushed against his shoulder with his free foot, driving the man holding him into the brick wall behind them and freeing his other foot at the same time. The man wheezed and coughed, his grip loosening enough that Dean, feet now on the ground, could get a couple of elbows into his ribs and throw his head back to break another nose, though by the time he’d gotten that alpha to let him go the other three had recovered enough to pounce.

The nine beers definitely weren’t working in Dean’s favor as he made for the end of alley, his phone starting to ring repeatedly where it had fallen to the ground. A torrent of worry swept through him from his mate, who must have known something was wrong given how close he was to the apartment and how his phone didn’t stop going off until the alpha with the broken fingers swung him around to ram him into one of the buildings. He heard the phone crunch under someone’s shoe, struggling to get a foot up to push against the wall and throw the man behind him off balance, but there were more hands on him a second later that flung him to his stomach on the ground.

“Your mate’s gonna regret letting you out of his sight tonight, pretty boy,” the one with the broken knuckles snarled as they pinned Dean to the ground and the alpha with a shoe print on his face got a boot on the back of his neck to hold him down. “Never been with a male om. Can’t wait to see if it’s different.”

Dean’s brain briefly dropped offline at the sound of a belt buckle being undone behind him as the two alphas with the broken noses grabbed his arms to haul him back up to his feet and pin him against a wall again, splitting open his lower lip. The panic flooding his system and the alleyway briefly had him considering screaming for help, though he quickly dismissed that thought. No one had passed by the alley during the scuffle, and unless someone in one of the buildings they were sandwiched between heard him, he was on his own. Which was fine - he was used to that, he could get himself out of this, he just needed to calm down and think, something that would have been a whole lot easier if he hadn’t been an idiot about how much he drank. If something _did_ happen that’s the first thing the police would ask, not that he could go to the police because they’d figure out who he was, and goddammit he needed to stop panicking and getting sidetracked and _focus_.

“Be sure to leave some for the rest of us, Henry,” footprint face growled as Dean’s shorts were yanked down past his ass, and Dean’s brain snapped back online at the mention of his grandfather’s name.

“ _A me avalore furcifer_!” he shouted, his legs buckling as the four alphas were thrown back from him, the ones with the broken noses hurtling down the alley in opposite directions while “Henry” and the fourth man ended up against the alley wall behind him and in the dumpster, respectively. His baser instincts to flee won out over his desire to beat the alphas to unconsciousness, due in no small part to the growing alarm he felt coming from Sam that was effectively driving his omega to demand he return to the safety of his den immediately. He grabbed his shorts and pulled them back up, holding them closed along the side where they’d ripped down to the bottom hem as he bolted for the sidewalk and ran the rest of the way to the apartment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you do not know what the different levels of tearing associated with childbirth are (and you probably don't if you haven't had to deal with it) then...I mean, I can't *force* anyone not to look it up if they're curious, but I would recommend remaining in blissful ignorance if you can.


	110. If You’re Not Careful, You Will Have to Waste Me One Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean gets home.

A little old lady was at the mailboxes in her bathrobe and slippers putting a letter in the outgoing mail slot when Dean managed to get the front security door unlocked with shaking hands and came barreling into the lobby, wiping at his lip and realizing his nose was bleeding as well. She jumped about a mile and gave him a look that bordered on disgust as he made a beeline for the elevator doors, nodding shortly at her and trying to look casual as he went. The adrenaline was helping him hold it together as the elevator slid shut and he got an inkling of what he looked like in the blurry reflection of the doors.

He had a scrape on his cheek, blood dripping from his lip and nose, it looked like his knees were skinned, and of course there were his torn shorts. After a few moments he realized his shirt and shorts were damp and he smelled faintly of urine, but he was fairly certain he hadn’t wet himself so he must have landed in a puddle of piss. Sam might never let him out of his sight again.

His omega wanted very badly for him to burst into tears as the elevator dinged at the floor of their apartment but he refused to give in, and by the time he was trying to get their door unlocked he was trembling so badly while working to keep himself reined in that he didn’t even try to be quiet and ended up dropping the keys. He was in the process of picking them up when Sam flung the door open, a wave of alpha rage hitting him and lasting all of three seconds as Dean snatched the keys up and hurried inside with a muttered, “Thanks.”

“Dean!” The omega spun around and recoiled, knocking Sam’s hands away where the alpha had gripped his shoulders. His mate would not be so easily deterred, however, grabbing the sides of Dean’s jaw to tip his face and check for injuries, scenting him quickly to determine if anyone had molested him, and assessing the state of his clothes. “Who did this to you?”

“It’s fine, Sam,” Dean said, pushing away to head for the bathroom.

“It is not _fine_ , Dean!” Sam snapped, pursuing him down the hallway and getting a foot in to stop his mate from slamming the door. “Stop walking away from me!”

“You’re gonna wake up the kids,” the omega retorted, turning on the shower and losing his balance slightly from the combination of adrenaline dropping and alcohol. “I took care of them, it’s _fine_.”

“It’s not fine.” Sam stopped him from falling as he tried to toe off his shoes while still holding the shorts together. “You’re not fine!”

Dean laughed a little hysterically, finally getting his feet free and letting the shorts fall before dragging his shirt off over his head.

“How is that new or different?” he demanded. “Some knotheads wanted to get better acquainted. I strongly declined. Can we please just drop it so I can take a shower?” Sam glared at him for a moment before turning to leave the bathroom. “Where are you going?”

“You won’t tell me, I’ll just follow your scent until I find them.”

“What, so you can defend my honor?”

“So I can fucking kill them, Dean.”

Sam had made it out into the hall by that point, which was unlucky for the omega, who was only in his underwear, and Dean barely managed to get a hand on Sam’s arm from the doorway. The alpha turned to pull free, his eyes ablaze and rimmed in black, nostrils flaring as he inhaled the smell of his mate’s distress that was still filling the hallway in a straight line pointing directly to the elevator. He was certain it would lead him to whoever had put their hands on Dean if he left right now to find them. The scent was so intense it might as well have been a flashing neon arrow.

“I just want to take a shower, Sam,” Dean said quietly, not doubting for a second that Sam meant to track the four alphas down and literally rip their throats out. While normally he’d be on board with that, he was currently drunk and covered in some stranger’s urine. “Please.”

The demon blood was snarling and hissing at Sam to follow the scent trail, like some kind of deranged animal that could only be silenced through vengeance. He could hear the demon-him from the dream whispering that if he were King of Hell he’d be able to kill the offenders with a simple thought without ever leaving Dean’s company. Both were hard to resist, and he was able to ignore them only due to how forcefully his alpha was insisting he care for his obviously injured mate. Nice-neighbor-Lori was peeking through a crack in her door again, and Sam moved to block anyone’s view of Dean in his underwear.

“Come on,” he murmured at last, running his fingers through the omega’s hair until Dean closed his eyes and released a shuddering breath. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

Dean nodded, leaning into the touch even as he forced down the emotions that were trying to sweep him away in a river of tears as relentlessly as an undertow. He allowed Sam to bathe him and dress him in some of the alpha’s sleep pants, putting antibiotic cream on the scrapes on his face and his knees and bandaging the ones that required it, before crawling under the covers and burying himself in Sam’s chest. As bad as it had clearly been to get completely drunk, Dean was glad to feel the alcohol really hit his system and drag him under. One more thing had just been added to the list of things Sam was going to want to talk about in the morning, and he needed a good night’s rest if he they weren’t going to end up at each other’s throats.

Sam had no idea how Dean managed to hold his emotions back from his scent and seeping through their bond as often and as well as he did. Hiding his rage so his mate wouldn’t feel it until Dean had fallen asleep had the alpha wanting to fly out of his skin. He was glad Dean was quite drunk and only took a few minutes to fall into heavy slumber, stripping off his shirt to make a Sam scented pillow that he tucked between the omega’s arms as he extricated himself from the bed and grabbing another shirt from the dresser before slipping out of the room.

Dean’s scent was still very strong in the hallway, elevator, and lobby, though it dissipated some as he exited the building, not that it prevented him from finding the alley where the omega had been attacked. Between the blood on the buildings, dumpster, and ground it wasn’t difficult at all to pick out the smell of the alphas responsible and to follow them two blocks away to Rocky’s Bar. He’d passed the place more than once in his time living in St. Louis but had never been inside. Dean’s scent was mixed in and two of the alphas smelled stronger than the others, leading Sam to suspect they’d followed him from the bar to begin with and then gone back after he got away from them. That was incredibly stupid.

The alpha was fairly certain he could still so easily pick out the scent trails because the demon blood was enhancing his senses, but he honestly didn’t care. He realized he probably should be frightened by how there was an emptiness where he somehow knew his soul was supposed to reside, but he didn’t care about that either. His conscience appeared to have hitched a ride to wherever his soul flitted off, and he was left only slightly irritated that the dark tint to his vision from his eyes rolling over black was like wearing sunglasses at night.

He was aware of the growl rumbling low in his chest and that it didn’t sound human, even to him, though he thought that could easily be due to how drastically heightened sounds seemed to be. Somewhere he could hear a very small voice telling him to stop as he pushed open the door and swept the room for the source of the scent trail, but the demon blood may as well have been holding a pillow over it for how well Sam was able to make out what it was saying or pay attention to it over the roaring in his ears. The bar’s decor stood in stark contrast to _Until it Sleeps_ playing overhead, and he guessed the music was by request since the place was empty besides the bartender and the table of men towards the back nursing beers and various injuries.

“What can I get you?” the bartender asked as she finished polishing a glass and threw the towel back over her shoulder.

“ _Take a walk_ ,” Sam ordered without bothering to look at her.

Her expression blank, the bartender dropped the towel, moved out from behind the bar, and exited out onto the sidewalk. Sam watched her wander away down the block for a moment before approaching the table, the alphas having noticed the bartender’s strange exit and sitting up on alert. As he neared them the men tried to rise but found themselves pinned to their chairs, growing frantic as a group when they realized none of them could stand.

“Evening, boys,” Sam said as they balked and struggled in vain before he took in a long inhale of the lot of them over the tabletop. “So, you’ve met my omega.”

“What?” one of the two men with an obvious broken nose choked, looking at his companions with open panic. “Listen, we don’t know what you’re…”

“Don’t play dumb,” Sam snarled. “He’s not the sort of man you forget.”

The men looked at each other, two of them obviously wanting to continue to deny it while the other two clearly saw no point in lying. They were stuck to their fucking chairs, for god’s sake, and the enraged alpha glowering at them was enormous. Sure, they were probably going to get their asses handed to them, but it’s not like he could straight up kill them or anything. The bar had cameras.

“Look, buddy, we were just havin’ fun,” stammered a guy who looked like he’d messed up his hand pretty badly, nearly tipping over backwards when Sam moved a little closer and his solid black eyes became visible under the weak overhead lighting. “Holy Christ!”

“No, the other direction,” Sam hissed as the four alphas fell over themselves trying to get away from him, screaming and unable to get anywhere because of the chairs that might as well have been superglued to their backsides. They begged and cursed and thrashed until Sam bellowed, “ _Quiet_!” at which point they went silent, staring up at him as one with terror in their eyes. For a long time he didn’t move, waiting until he could smell that at least one of them had pissed himself, then one by one he stared at the beer bottles on the table until they burst, leaving a pile of jagged bottlenecks along with several large shards of glass. When the alphas had stopped trying to scream, two of them crying, he growled, “ _Pick up the bottles and castrate yourselves_.”

A sort of primal fear came over the alphas who suddenly found themselves able to stand but couldn’t resist moving to unzip and drop their pants then reach for the remnants of the beer bottles as the man with the black eyes stepped carefully back from the table, having never laid a finger on them. Sam was on his way out the door by the time the shrieking started, the music switching over to _Smells Like Teen Spirit_ , which put a little spring in his step. He felt a happy buzzing in his brain that was making it difficult to really understand what he’d just done, and while he had a vague sense of having released something he wouldn’t be able to cage again, he just felt too _good_ to care. If only Dean weren’t sleeping off his drunken escapades. The two of them could have some real fun while Sam was soaring like this. Although, if he stopped and thought about it, did he really need Dean to be awake for the two of them to have fun? They were mated now, after all. That did give him certain rights, didn’t it? He could really just take whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted it.

Still, he needed to remember that at the moment Dean had a severe internal injury, so maybe he should take a second to reconsider. That thought snapped Sam out of his own head and he found himself at the foot of their bed, looming over Dean, who was on his stomach with one arm under him, his legs tangled in the sheets as he snored softly. He gasped and stepped back quickly, not remembering when he got back to the apartment or how long he’d been standing there staring at his unconscious mate. The demon blood still hummed inside of him, insisting Dean wouldn’t mind, that he wanted Sam to take control - _needed_ Sam to take control. Dean was only an omega and what happened to him earlier was ample evidence he wasn’t capable of making good decisions when left to his own devices. Those alphas never would have looked twice at Dean if he smelled like he was properly mated. He’d really be doing Dean a favor.

Sam was sweating bullets as he burst into the bathroom to splash water on his face and try to banish the horrible thoughts he was having about his mate, to squash the impulse to just take him while he was unaware; that it would probably hurt less if Sam knotted him while Dean was drunk and unconscious. His heart was pounding like he’d just finished a race and he turned on the cold tap in the shower before climbing under the stream fully clothed, realizing suddenly that he stank of beer from the bottles he’d smashed with a simple thought. He leaned over to throw up in the sink as the image of what he’d done sprang up before his mind’s eye. Not that he regretted making those alphas pay for what they’d done to Dean, more the fact that he’d not only ordered the bartender to leave but the alphas to butcher themselves without so much as a second thought to what tapping into that power might do to him. The icy spray helped shock him back to his senses, and he stayed under the water until he was shivering.

Dean’s torn and urine stained clothes were still on the bathroom floor, so Sam stripped out of his clothes to climb into a bathrobe, got all of their things into a garbage bag, and trudged down the hall to the chute for the incinerator. Elliott was awake and fussing as he came back to the apartment, and when he turned down the hall he saw Dean stumbling out of the bedroom heading towards what was now the nursery. He was still very unsteady on his feet and looked a little green in the light from the bathroom.

“Hey, go back to bed,” the alpha ordered, hurrying to stop him from continuing to stagger through the apartment while using the wall for balance.

“He’s gonna wake her up,” Dean slurred even as he let Sam steer him back towards the bedroom.

“Then I’ll get her back to sleep, too,” Sam said. “I’ll be in soon.”

Dean hummed and toppled face down onto the mattress, burrowing into the sheets and pillows. Sam managed to get Elliott up and changed before Lizzie started crying in sympathy, walking around and jostling him for a bit until he was settled enough to put back down. He lingered with the babies for a long time, hoping that exposure to Elliott in particular would help to reset whatever had clearly gone offline in his brain. Eventually he grew tired enough that he trusted himself just to sleep next to his omega and wandered back to their bedroom to get into a pair of boxers and the tee shirt he’d pulled over the pillow.

“Y’okay?” Dean mumbled, his face still half buried, as Sam finally slid under the sheets on his side of the bed.

The alpha laughed outright, getting a tiny shove to the chest from his omega, whose hand he grabbed to link their fingers together and haul Dean up against him. His mate went limply, not objecting to being held but having no energy or coordination to help move across the bed. Dean gave a half-grunt, half-hum and snuggled lazily up against Sam’s neck to breathe in deeply and let the _mySam_ scent relax and soothe him as his mate’s laughter died away.

“You want to know if _I’m_ okay?” Sam asked, running a hand through Dean’s hair and tipping his face down to inhale behind the omega’s ear. “Jesus, Dean. I’m not the one who was assaulted.”

“”S’not the first time I’ve been dragged down an alley.” He wasn’t expecting that to get him a kiss on the forehead and Sam’s arm snaking the length of his back to draw him in tight, but he was glad it did. He didn’t intend to say anything, but he badly needed Sam to hold him. “Go to sleep, you big octopus.”

“I love you, Dean.”

“I know.”

“Dude, not the time to Princess Leia me.”

Why that made Dean shudder and press in even closer, Sam had no idea, but he was not going to force the issue. Dean trembled for a bit while his alpha made a mental note not to bring up Princess Leia, finally ducking his head down under Sam’s chin and curling up as small as he could. It was impressive how little he could make himself when he was not a petite man to begin with. Once his breath had evened out Sam allowed himself to close his eyes and gradually drifted off as well.

They hadn’t been sleeping more than an hour before Lizzie decided she also needed a diaper change, pulling Sam out of a dreamless sleep to wander in a weaving line down the hall. Unlike her younger brother, she hadn’t done her father the courtesy of simply peeing, and he could smell her before he even got into the room. With a heavy sigh he got her out of the crib and let her know they’d be having a talk about her diet, walking her straight to the bathroom when he took a peek down the back of her diaper and saw the mess he was dealing with.

He was getting them both wrapped in towels after the impromptu shower ( _there was no way he was breaking out the baby bath tub in the middle of the night_ ) when he heard Dean mumbling in his sleep, his voice growing more forceful and distressed with each muttered sentence. It was hard to make out what he was saying beyond, “No,” though as Sam moved into the bedroom with Lizzie held at his side Dean said quite clearly, “Give me my kid.” He was struggling against where one of his legs had gotten tangled in the comforter, panting and babbling incoherently, and just as Sam was about to shake him, he jolted awake on his own, looking around the room wildly as sweat poured down his face and chest.

“Lizzie,” he gasped, though it was more of a question than an acknowledgement he was aware of her presence in the room.

“She’s here,” Sam said quickly, moving with her so Dean could get a hand flat against her tummy to feel that she was, indeed, there. “Had a poop explosion, so we just took a quick shower.”

“Where’s Elliott?”

“He’s sleeping. He’s all right.”

Even in the barely-there light streaming down the hallway from the bathroom Sam could see Dean start to shake and fight against the tears that were sliding out of the corners of his eyes to trail down his face, managing to bite back a sob as he nodded and sniffed.

“Where are we?”

“Our apartment in St. Louis.”

Dean considered that for quite a while before he said, “Okay,” a couple of times and laid back down, shoving his face into Sam’s pillow as he struggled to get himself back under control. He was almost all the way over on his mate’s side of the bed when Sam got back from putting Lizzie to sleep, and he latched onto the alpha like a spider monkey with absolutely no sense of shame the second Sam was within arms’ reach. Sam definitely would have teased him some other time about being a girl just to break the tension, but he was too grateful to have Dean in one piece and relatively unharmed that he simply wrapped his arms around the omega and held on tight.

Breakfast sucked, and not just because Sam couldn’t cook for shit. After the second pan of burned scrambled eggs ( _Dean wasn’t even sure how he managed to burn scrambled eggs_ **_twice_** ) the omega insisted that coffee, toast, and ibuprofen would be fine, head down miserably on the island as he wondered when he turned into such a cheap date. Lizzie and Elliott were well rested and carrying on some kind of unnecessarily loud conversation in baby babble, complete with enthusiastic squeals whenever they were apparently in agreement, and Sam was well aware Dean wasn’t in any condition to walk away from a discussion of the many events from the previous day his mate would just like to avoid.

“I used a spell,” Dean said when the alpha had dared to broach the subject of the attack and wanted to know what happened and how Dean got away. “One of the ones Henry looked up for me. It’s short, four words, powered by intent. The more you mean them, the better the spell works. I really, really meant them.”

“I’d feel better if you didn’t go out alone like that anymore,” Sam stated, trying his best to sound more like a worried mate and less like a controlling douchebag.

He apparently didn’t succeed, based on the way the omega growled, “I have a very prominent claim mark. I should be able to go wherever the fuck I want, whenever the fuck I want without shit like last night happening.”

“Just because you’ve got a scar on your neck doesn’t mean you smell mated,” Sam told him, retrieving Elliott’s bottle from the floor and wiping the nipple off with the hem of his tee shirt.

“So you’re saying it was my fault?” Dean asked with an arched eyebrow as he lifted his head to glare up at the alpha.

“You must still be drunk if you’re really asking that,” Sam snapped. “I’m saying you don’t smell like you have an alpha who is interested in what you do or what other alphas do _to_ you.”

“What are you talking about? I know I smell like you. Half the time I’m wearing something of yours. I was wearing one of your shirts last night!”

“True, but you don’t smell like I’ve been…”

“Like you’ve been what, Sam?”

“Making regular deposits to your bank account.” Dean stared at his mate so long that Sam eventually turned bright red, cleared his throat, and went to scrub out the pans before the burned on egg rendered them completely unusable. “Which brings me to your...uh...problem.”

“Oh god…” Dean sighed, dropping his head back down to the island.

“Just...hear me out, all right?” Sam asked, and Dean raised a hand to indicate he should go ahead. The omega didn’t begin to have the energy to stop him, and if he tried he knew his stubborn alpha was just going to dig his heels in until Dean relented anyway. He really had made a mistake mating a mule. “I did some research yesterday into your condition and the surgery and the cream they gave you while you were running around getting paint swatches.”

“Of course you did,” Dean grumbled.

“Dean,” Sam snapped, his expression pinched and lips pursed as he glared across the table. Dean sighed again and sat up with some difficulty to give the alpha his undivided attention. “The surgery has almost a one hundred percent corrective rate and about a month long recovery, but there’s a fifty-fifty chance that outside of your heats you wouldn’t have much sensation when we were…”

“Sheathing the meat dagger?” Dean suggested, earning a look of total shock from the younger man. “Oh come on Sammy. You just talked about making deposits to my bank account. Don’t tell me you’ve never heard that expression.”

“We don’t all have an encyclopedic knowledge of euphemisms for sex at our fingertips, Dean.”

“Says the man who just used both encyclopedic and euphemisms in casual conversation.” He took a bite of his toast and chewed for a few moments before his stomach sent out a warning flare and he dropped the piece back down onto his plate. “So the doc wants me to get a procedure that’s great for you and sucks for me. Figures.”

“It’s not that simple.” Sam got Elliott out of his high chair and passed him over to Dean before turning to Lizzie to clean her off from the mess she’d made eating Cheerios and cut up peaches with her hands. “The surgery is what doctors typically recommend because it’s the only option with such a high success rate that will allow an omega to fully heal before their next heat. The fifty-fifty odds aren’t great, but they want to keep omegas who have been...hurt from ending up with any more damage.”

“Well, I guess we find me a surgeon then,” Dean muttered, not sure why they were having to discuss this since surgery was what they knew he needed yesterday.

“It’s not the only option for you, Dean,” Sam told him, putting Lizzie in her walker so she could bump her way around the kitchen and taking Dean’s wrist to swipe a thumb over his pulse point. After a few seconds the omega turned his hand over to allow his mate to thread their fingers together. “I said I looked into the cream as well, and it’s got a great success rate in reducing the scarring and tenderness over time, and helping the damaged tissue become more elastic again, and you’ll still feel the...meat dagger sheathing the same way you did before. But it takes a lot longer.”

“How long are we talking?”  

“Between six and nine months. And it’s contraindicated for omegas on suppressants, so it’s really only a prescribed treatment for omegas whose heats have stopped that never had the surgery when they were younger. I get that you don’t trust doctors, and there’s really no reason you would after everything, but for most oms your age surgery really is the only recourse. You, though.” He cleared his throat and swiped a piece of Dean’s toast, rubbing little circles into Dean’s palm as he felt his mate’s anxiety spike. “Henry told me all the side effects of the elixir, so I know that as long as I haven’t knotted you, you won’t go into heat, and I won’t hit my rut.”

“Did he tell you the other side effects?” Dean asked quietly, running his hand up and down Elliott’s back as the little boy grabbed his earlobe and burbled, drooling all down his chin onto the shoulder of his mother’s shirt. “Six to nine months is a long time.”

“Are you saying you really want more kids, Dean?” Sam retorted. It wasn’t lost on the omega, however, that his alpha looked at their son when he said it. “He said there's no telling how long it would take for us to end up sterile. We could be fine.”

“I’m not sure right now is the best time to make these kinds of decisions,” Dean said evenly. “Right now...right now I don’t really know what I want, but I know that I don’t like the idea of having the choice to have more children or not taken away from us.”

“Well, it’s a risk I’m willing to take if it means you aren’t hurt more than you’ve already been,” Sam told him firmly, a flush coloring his cheeks. “I’m not going to lie and say I don’t want more kids, because I do, but you told me not even a year ago that sex used to be one of your favorite things, and I really want to help you feel that way again. It’ll be a lot harder to do that if the only time knotting is any good for you is when you’re in heat.”

“Aren’t you a romantic?” Dean laughed, even as he was watching Sam with watery eyes.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Sam said, picking up his cue to lighten the mood. “I know plenty of tricks to keep you happy either way. The forty-five minute cuddling while we’re tied together will just be better if you’re not effectively numb.”

“Now the truth comes out. It’s really about the cuddling.”

“It’s always about the cuddling. I’m an octopus, after all. Plus, I can’t really do anything with the surgery, but I can help you with the cream.”

He waggled his eyebrows and turned on all the dimples, his reward for the effort a loud laugh and then a long kiss from the omega, or at least as long as Dean could manage before his split lip started to hurt too much to continue. It was just as well, as the humming had started beneath Sam’s skin, making him feel restless and needy and like he’d just proven he knew what was best for Dean, so that obviously would extend to other areas of their life. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if he accepted Azazel’s offer and took Dean with him as his consort. He could guarantee that nothing like what had happened to him the night before ever would again.

Sam tried to act casual as he pulled back from his mate and got to his feet, covering his dismay at the unwelcome thoughts that were suddenly enveloping him by chasing after Lizzie, who had escaped towards the living room. He swept her up out of the walker, focusing on her squeals of delight to drive down the desire to make Dean bend to his will and the corresponding horror he felt that such impulses could enter his mind to begin with. They should get out of St. Louis, he decided, thinking surely getting back to the bunker and resuming his lessons with Sinclair and Henry would give him something else to focus on until he could subdue the demon blood again. Besides, it couldn’t possibly help either of them to stay in a city where Dean had been attacked the night before, just a few buildings away. A change of scenery would help them both move past it quickly and focus on other things.

Dean had no objections to heading out as soon as possible. Sam was acting strangely, and he sensed it had to do with what had happened on the way home from the bar but his alpha was being very cagey. If packing up and leaving earlier than planned was going to make Sam start acting like Sam again, Dean was all for it. Besides, they still had a lot of things they needed to see and they were halfway through their vacation. They hadn’t made it to the Gateway Arch yet, and then there was the whole long list of World’s Largest stuff down along Route 66 on their way to Branson. He hadn’t originally planned for them to leave until lunch, but heading out before noon would give them extra time to add in a few more stops and take pictures at the various attractions, even if he didn’t want to appear in their first set of vacation photos with a split lip and scratched cheek.

Sam seemed to relax throughout the day, the omega deciding they’d definitely made the right call. He was still a little edgy at the Arch, but his mate’s intense need for cuddling after the night before definitely helped mellow him. Dean would never be one to eschew public displays of affection, but he didn’t tend to initiate unless he was feeling vulnerable, and the way he was staying pressed up into Sam’s side as they wandered around was drawing his alpha out to protect the omega, even from himself. Once they got out on the open road he really started to unwind, laughing and fighting with Dean over the radio stations. Dean thought that while _technically_ the driver got to pick the music, the fact that it was his truck ought to count for something, even if Sam was the one who bought the truck to begin with. They were still bickering like an old mated couple when they stopped in Cuba only about an hour and a half after getting on the road, deciding to look around the town some before heading to lunch at The FourWay.

Neither the alpha nor the omega really appreciated all the stares they were getting as they walked around the town, people openly noticing Dean’s cheek and bruising before giving Sam dirty looks and turning to whisper behind their hands. It had Sam suppressing a growl whenever someone looked at them a little too long, and Dean couldn’t decide whether it would be better to be openly affectionate with his mate or just try to ignore it. The stink eye Sam was getting from their waitress when she came to see what they wanted to drink was the last straw, and Dean stood up on the bench seat of their booth to announce that he had taken on four alphas the night before and won while his mate was home watching the kids, and he’d be happy to meet anyone out in the parking lot who wanted to keep glaring at Sam like he enjoyed slapping omegas around. When there were no takers he planted a huge kiss on Sam’s slack jawed mouth, then sat back down to order coffee.

After Cuba they stopped to see a small scale replica of Stonehenge in Rolla, the Route 66 Museum in Lebanon, and the Fantastic Caverns and Wonders of Wildlife National Museum & Aquarium in Springfield. They caught dinner on the Showboat Branson Belle before grabbing a hotel room for the night so they could check out the Pythian Castle the next day, which was supposed to be haunted. It wasn’t, but it was fun listening to the tour guide try to rile up all the normal people who wouldn’t be able to control their bladders if they saw an actual ghost. From there it was a straight shot to Branson and the Titanic Museum, Promised Land Zoo, boating on Table Rock Lake, and Dolly Parton’s Stampede. It was a lot to pack into one day with two very small children, and Sam was relieved Dean had made actual reservations at The Pineview Hotel just outside the city so they wouldn’t have to try to find a place with two exhausted and cranky babies.

That is, he was relieved until they got to the reception desk and the reserved middle aged beta behind the counter said, “Welcome to The Pineview Hotel. Are you here for the convention?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Work is getting busy so posts might start to go down, but I'm still going to shoot for at least two chapters a week.


	111. It’s Not Really “Jumping the Shark” if You Never Come Back Down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> That's right, a convention.

“What convention?” Sam asked at the same moment Dean was saying, “Yes we are,” with one of his thousand watt smiles plastered to his face. “It’s under Smith and Wesson.”

The clerk turned to his computer screen to look for the reservation as Sam looked - really looked - around the lobby and discovered with some dismay that it was filled with people dressed up as hobbits, elves, and dwarfs. A female beta wandered by in a long grey robe with a really terrible long grey beard and matching wig to join a male beta in white robes and an equally terrible white beard and wig combination. He couldn’t stop himself from backing up as a group of five Ringwraiths came down the main staircase and walked right past a sign that proclaimed, “Lord of the Rings Weekend” with little plastic pockets that had arrows drawn to them with the titles “Schedule of Events” and “Map of the Shire.”

“Ah yes, here you are!” the clerk declared, returning Dean’s beaming smile. “Mr. Dean Smith and Mr. Sam Wesson. I take it you kept your unmated name for the joke aspect?”

“It was his idea,” Dean replied, elbowing his mate to get his attention. “Sammy, pay the man.”

“Dean, what _is_ this?” Sam demanded under his breath as he fished out his wallet on autopilot and the omega grabbed it to pull out one of the credit cards.

“What does it look like, Sam?” Dean said, getting Elliott out of the stroller to bounce on his hip as the little boy started to squawk about being restrained.

“Thank you very much, Mr. Smith.” The clerk passed the card and receipt back to him, which Dean slid over to Sam to sign. “If you need any costumes or accessories, there are vendors set up in the ballroom. They’ll be opening at eight o’clock sharp tomorrow morning before the first round of events.”

“ _Events_?” Sam blurted out while Dean was slipping the key cards into his pocket.

“Yeah, events!” Dean’s eyes were wide with glee as he grabbed the diaper bag and headed over to the placard with the maps and schedules, an “Ooo!” escaping him as he went. He set down the bag and grabbed one of each, looking over the schedule and then turning back to where Sam was rooted by the reception desk to declare, “We haven’t missed the opening night fireworks!”

“We… _what_?”

“I was afraid the stampede put us behind schedule. Come on Sam!” Dean had returned to him, eyes gleaming with joy and bright white smile on full display. “We gotta get this stuff up to our room before they start. Uh…” He looked past his mate to the clerk. “Can we get two cribs sent up? The Pack ‘N Plays are a pain in the ass to get out of the truck and our kids don’t really sleep well in them anyway.”

“Absolutely Mr. Smith.”

“Thanks.” He put Elliott back in the stroller and headed off with the children for the stairs, diaper bag slung over his shoulder. A couple of hobbits greeted him as they passed, and he got the stroller turned around so they could carry it up the stairs as Sam continued to just stand frozen where he was. “Sammy! Get the lead out! I’m willing to be the one walkin’ backwards but I can’t do this all by myself or we’re gonna have _very_ unhappy kids. Do you guys have a bellhop or someone who can help with our bags?”

“We certainly do,” the clerk responded.

“Fantastic. Sammy, tip the man.”

“Oh, that’s not necessary, Mr. Smith.”

“Course it’s necessary. You’re gonna need to watch our bags until someone comes to bring them up. Sam?”

For someone who had been so out of his depth when they were in Chicago, Dean had certainly adjusted to being well-to-do, and Sam fished into his pocket again for his wallet so he could pull out a twenty dollar bill and hand it over to the clerk, who smiled at his generosity. He dodged a couple of orcs on the way across the lobby to where his mate was still patiently waiting with his hands on the stroller handle facing backwards on the wide staircase. He was in front of the placard when the female beta in the Gandalf costume crossed in front of him and declared, “You shall not pass!” before breaking into laughter with her Saruman and smacking Sam on the arm on their way to the dining room. Sam nearly had a heart attack and barely managed to restrain himself from throwing the instinctive punch he wanted to at being touched by a stranger. The fact that Dean was full on cackling didn’t make him feel any less murderous.

“You booked us into a hotel holding a _Lord of the Rings_ convention?” he asked as he grabbed the front of the stroller to hoist it into the air while Dean raised the back and started moving carefully up the stairs.

“I know!” The omega was so thrilled with himself Sam didn’t know quite what to do. “Pretty awesome, huh? As soon as I found it when I was looking for stuff for us to do, I knew I had to book it. There’s a fencing tournament _and_ an archery tournament tomorrow. Not real swords and bows, obviously but the premise is the same. The winner of the fencing tourney gets a replica of Narsil and the best archer gets a golden arrow. Which, let’s be real, that’s from _The Adventures of Robin Hood_ and I’m sure they’re gonna get called on it but I checked out how much those Narsil swords cost and they probably could only afford to give one really _good_ grand prize.”

“Dean…”

“I’m honestly not clear on how the archery tournament is supposed to work since they can’t use live arrows. I’m thinking maybe it’s more like paintball. We’re gonna have to get costumes and shit tomorrow morning, but I figured I’d enter the fencing tournament and you could impress me with your bow skills. I mean, I’ve never done this LARP-ing thing but I thought it would be really awesome when there are two events right off the bat that we’re _obviously_ going to win.”

“Dean…”

“I was thinking I could be Aragorn and you could be Legolas, keeping with the sword and bow theme. Oh! Unless we want to do the reverse and go in having everyone think we’re in the wrong events. That could be fun.”

“Dean!”

They had reached the door to their room, the omega blissfully ignoring his mate’s pointed stare as he swiped the key card and let them in. A particularly well costumed Eowyn and Galadriel passed them, earning an appreciative once over and nod from the blond before he pushed the stroller inside, his mate trailing behind him, exasperated.  

“What?” Dean asked, getting Lizzie up onto her feet so she could stretch her legs some and then setting Elliott on the floor to practice crawling after her around the very tastefully decorated room with the separate sitting area and king sized bed. “You don’t have to be Legolas. You could always be Arwen. Not that I pegged you for gender bending but hey, to each his own.”

“What _is_ this?” Sam demanded again, leaning in to stop their daughter from face planting completely on the carpet.

“It’s a LARP-ers convention, Sam,” Dean said simply.

“I _know_ it’s a LARP-ers convention. Why are we _here_? We don’t LARP.”

“Actually, we kind of do, if you think about it. Half the time we’re on a hunt we’re saying we’re something other than hunters so we don’t freak out the locals.”

“Okay, fair enough, but that still doesn’t explain why you’re suddenly so gung ho about dressing us up like elves.”

Dean looked as bewildered as Sam felt, hauling Elliott up before he had a chance to drag the comforter any farther off the bed as someone knocked on the door.

“Cuz it’s our anniversary, Sam,” Dean told him, going to open the door with the little boy on his hip. It was the bellhop, followed by two hotel staff with the cribs. “Thanks guys.”

Sam dutifully tipped all three staff members without having to be prompted while Dean set Elliott back down so he could start working at getting the cribs up and made with the linens that were brought with them. He knew he was going to regret asking, but he had no clue what Dean was talking about. They’d only been mated since the beginning of July and though yes, tomorrow would be exactly two months, they hadn’t celebrated their one month anniversary, and he didn’t really think Dean was going to want to celebrate every month for the first year or something like some other omegas might.

“What anniversary?” he said, his brain screaming at him to abort mission as Dean’s face fell.

“Laramie,” Dean replied softly as the screaming voice repeated, “Shit, shit, shit!” in Sam’s head.

He realized he probably had about two seconds to say something profound, but the only thing his brain supplied was, “Oh.” Sam could feel Dean’s walls going up but just stood there dumbly, like the moron that he knew he was. His mate had just gone full omega on him without any warning and there was clearly no salvaging this as the smaller man turned gruffly away to focus on the cribs.

“Never mind,” Dean told him, quickly burying the flash of humiliation that made the room smell like burnt sugar. “It was a stupid idea, it was a couple of weeks ago anyway, we’ll just leave in the morning.”

“Dean…” Sam tried to rub his back and got very forcefully shoved off. “Please.”

“It’s _fine_ , Sam,” Dean snapped, his face burning red as he pointedly avoided looking at the alpha.

“Jesus Christ, stop saying things are _fine_!” Sam exclaimed, grabbing the back of Lizzie’s shirt before she went head first into the corner of the coffee table. “You have no idea how much I hate when you use that word, especially when I’m trying to apologize for being an ass!”

“No need to apologize,” Dean insisted, digging into the diaper bag for the Moby wrap as Sam watched helplessly and fought the urge to strangle him. “I’m going to take Lizzie down to watch the fireworks, I think they’ll probably scare Elliott. Get the cribs made up, will you?”

“Dean…”

The omega already had his key card, the Moby, and their daughter and slammed the door behind him on the way out. Sam was pretty sure Dean had to be out of his mind if he thought he was just going to walk out on the alpha after what had happened two nights ago, but as he scooped Elliott up off the floor the little boy scrunched his face up in a look Sam knew all too well. Seconds later the smell of poop filled the room as his diaper got heavier and heavier, and he just kept scrunching, throwing in some grunts for good measure. Clearly Dean was going to get more than a decent head start as Sam broke out what he needed in the diaper bag while he waited for his son to stop emptying his bowels so he could change him.

Dean hated that he’d given in to his instincts and booked them a room in this stupid hotel during this stupid convention in some kind of effort to be romantic or sentimental or some such shit. There were reasons he didn’t give into his instincts or do sentiment very often, and this was exactly why. He thought about mentioning something when it actually _had_ been a year since they got drunk and got over their hang-ups and ended up on the floor of the Holiday Inn together, but they hadn’t even gotten past second base at that point and he didn’t want to lead Sam into thinking they were going to have a replay of that evening. When he found the convention on The Pineview Hotel’s website it seemed like a sign, only now it was clear the sign read, “Don’t do dumb omega stuff, you dumb omega.”

Lizzie was starting to feel surprisingly heavy as he headed down the hall towards the rear of the hotel, making him wonder if he’d messed his shoulder up again when he was fighting those douchebags in the alley. The map had a layout of the hotel on one side and the events on the grounds on the other, but he turned left when he should have gone right and instead of ending up at the rear exit he found himself in a library. The hotel appeared to largely be empty, and he figured everyone was outside already since he heard the first burst of fireworks going off. Lizzie gave a delighted little shriek as he set her down by an armchair to put on the Moby, hurrying after her as she toddled towards one of the bookcases to start pulling things off the shelves.

“Slow down there Seabiscuit,” he chided, swinging her up to tuck her into the carrier, facing her forward and regretting letting her legs dangle free as soon as she started kicking and caught him in the groin with her foot. “Oof! We’re gonna have to have a talk about appropriate times to kick a man in the family jewels, young lady.”

The way the temperature dropped as he turned back to the door was definitely disconcerting, as was the blue-grey little boy with brown hair and eyes in the filthy clothing that looked to be something like a school uniform who was now standing in the hallway outside the library. He took a step towards Dean as the omega covered Lizzie with his arms as fully as he could and looked around for something iron. A poker and shovel sat by the fireplace on the opposite side of the room, but they looked like they might be more decorative than functional and he would have to get quite close to where the ghost was standing before he could get it. With Lizzie strapped to him, he didn’t want to get any closer than necessary.

“Help us!” the little boy cried. “Help us! Miss Gore won’t let us have any fun!”

“Okay, I can help,” Dean told him calmly, staying frozen where he was since the ghost child showed no sign of moving into the library. “Who’s Miss Gore?”

Instead of responding the boy vanished, and Dean released a sigh of relief, leaning against the leather armchair next to him and kissing the top of Lizzie’s head. An instant later he yelped as he was hauled into the air and flipped upside down by one foot, balling himself around the little girl as he was flung into one of the glass doored bookcases, then across the room against another, then into a mirror, and then into the door. Lizzie was shrieking as he twisted his body to try to ensure his back or shoulders absorbed each impact, screaming for Sam whenever he was able to catch his breath. His erratic movement stilled and he was hanging upside down in the center of the room after his body was used to knock over both armchairs, blood rushing to his head as he tried to get enough air into his lungs to shout for Sam again. He struggled to focus enough to look around, feeling something warm and wet running towards his hairline from his ear as he blearily took in the room. A voice behind him rasped, “Naughty, naughty, naughty!” and as he twisted around a woman in a filthy blouse and long, dark skirt appeared and stood glaring at him, her hands balled into fists at her side.

“ _SAM_!” he shouted again, curling in around Lizzie quickly as the ghost streaked towards and through him before his foot was released and he crashed down nearly head first onto the coffee table.

For a minute he must have lost consciousness, because the next thing he knew Lizzie was wailing and Sam was kneeling over him, panicked, with Elliott strapped to his chest. Ever one to be triggered by his sibling, Elliott was bawling as well, which brought Dean around more than anything else. No one could have stayed unconscious with those two trying to out-cry each other, and it looked like Sam was on the verge of tears himself.

“God, Dean…” He was running his hands over the whole upper half of his mate, trying to locate the many places from which he was bleeding. “What happened?”

“I booked us a haunted hotel,” Dean replied thickly, allowing Sam to hold him down when he tried to sit up and found his head immediately starting to pound.

“You’re kidding,” Sam said, continuing his assessment and pulling a couple small shards of glass out of the back of Dean’s neck and shoulder as the omega hissed.

“’Fraid not.” He smiled weakly as his alpha was poking at a cut in his hairline to determine whether or not it was going to need stitches. “See, this anniversary thing really was a bad idea.”

“Shut up Dean, it was not,” Sam ordered gently. “It was thoughtful and I’m an asshole.”

“Yeah, well, apparently you’re right about me needing to stop going places alone. Jesus I’m sore.”

“Can you get up?”

“Yeah, I don’t think she broke anything. Except the bookcases.”

Sam got an arm under Dean’s back, running it up behind his neck so he wouldn’t strain himself while he was trying to stand and noticing Dean’s shirt was wet and warm. The omega’s head was swimming and he wasn’t too proud to grab onto his mate’s shoulder when he lost his balance and started to pitch forward, which gave Sam a chance to really check out his back. There were tears all down his shirt, which was soaking through with blood, though it at least looked like most of the cuts were small and already clotting. There was one particularly large piece of glass lodged in Dean’s left shoulder, and Sam decided to just leave it for the moment until they could get back to the room.

“All right, come on,” Sam said, wrapping an arm carefully around Dean’s waist to help keep him steady and grabbing the poker from beside the fire to test the weight of it. It passed inspection as the right heft for iron and he wielded it like a sword as he led Dean out of the room. “We need to get supplies out of the truck. Did you pack the med kit?”

“Did I pack the med kit?” Dean winced as Lizzie struggled against the Moby, still screaming, and it pulled against the shard of glass in his shoulder. “Have you forgotten who you’re talking to? Wait...” The shard dug in deeper, and he stopped to reach back and pull it out, Sam grabbing his wrist before he could. “Sam, this glass fucking hurts. Just get me back to the room...”

“Uh...have _you_ forgotten who you’re talking to? This is the second time this week I’ve watched you walk off without me and had you come back bloody.”

“Sam, please.” Lizzie was really starting to go nuts and pull on the Moby, and Dean simply refused to move. “She’s gonna tear open my shoulder if I don’t get her out of this thing, and I’ve got to check her to make sure she’s okay. Just give me the poker and leave the two kids with me. We’ll be fine for five minutes.”

Sam’s alpha raged against the idea of leaving his omega unguarded, but Dean was getting paler each time Lizzie kicked and he still wasn’t steady on his feet. He also had a point about needing to look their daughter over for injuries. Whatever happened in the library, Dean had clearly absorbed as much of the impact as he could, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t hurt, and it wasn’t like she could tell them what was wrong. Besides, the way the omega looked it would be difficult to explain what happened to anyone who saw them going out to the parking lot and coming back. That the building didn’t have an elevator as far as he had seen meant the trek down the stairs and back up was going to be even harder on his mate.

“Okay,” he finally agreed. “But don’t take that glass out until I get back. I’m just going to grab the shotguns, rock salt, and laptop. It shouldn’t take more than ten minutes.”

“And the med kit,” Dean requested, hobbling with him towards their room.

“And the med kit.”

“And my EMF meter.”

“You packed that thing?”

“I told you, Sammy. I never leave home without it.”

They could really hear the fireworks and the cheers from the other guests as Sam got the door open and hurried to get Elliott down in one of the cribs, Dean leaning against the door to catch his breath. The glass in his shoulder was in deep, and getting thrown around a room after being thrown around an alley wasn’t exactly helping the stiffness that had just started working its way out of his back over the course of the day. Sam came back to untie the Moby and take Lizzie to the couch, and after thoroughly looking her over he only found a bump on her head. Dean limped across the room to sit down next to her, poker in hand, and nodded for Sam to get their tool kit.

Both Lizzie and Elliott were calm when the alpha returned, duffel bag slung over his shoulder with everything they were going to need to make it safely through the night and figure out who was haunting The Pineview Hotel. Dean had moved to the bed next to the cribs and was leaning over singing quietly and badly to the infants, the sweat beading on his forehead an open sign of his discomfort. Sam salted the doors and windows, loading both shotguns to set them on either side of the bed before grabbing the med kit and nudging Dean towards the bathroom so he could get him cleaned up.

It went without saying that the shirt was a total loss, though the omega still griped about it because it was one of his favorite ones of Sam’s, all soft and worn in without looking threadbare. It was a lucky thing he’d been wearing the Moby or the injuries likely would have been much worse. Multiple spots needed a stitch or two, but the one where the glass got stuck required seven to close and had the alpha thinking they might want to go to the hospital just to have it properly cleaned before remembering why they couldn’t go. That he’d forgotten the whole debacle with the OPS started because they took Dean to a hospital in Minnesota spoke to just how scared he still was after hearing his mate shouting for him and finding him unconscious in the library on top of a broken table, glass shattered all around him and Lizzie screaming her head off.

As Sam worked, Dean told him about the little boy who said Miss Gore wouldn’t let them have fun, and then the woman who was presumably Miss Gore. They both wore clothes that he guessed were from the turn of the last century, and the ease with which she’d lifted and flung the omega around meant she was either very, very angry or she’d been dead long enough to have gotten very strong; or she’d been dead a long time _and_ was very, very angry. Sam found it interesting that she called him naughty, which got him some flirty innuendo even though Dean was in no condition to do anything about it. His back was a complete mess, Sam had used an entire box of Band-aids on him, and he was going to be sleeping on his stomach for at least a couple of days. Much as Sam would like to start proving to Dean that he could keep him happy without knotting him, once the pain meds kicked in he was probably going to be high as a kite, and Sam wouldn’t take advantage of that, no matter how badly the demon blood wanted him to.

After Dean’s back was patched, he kicked Sam out of the bathroom so he could apply his scar cream, assuring the alpha that eventually he’d start letting him help but at the moment it was a little too awkward and new to do in front of an audience. The kids had fallen asleep, so Sam grabbed the laptop and set about researching Miss Gore and the hotel. He didn’t like the idea of potentially leaving Dean alone with Lizzie and Elliott, but if people were in danger he needed to know so he could try to take care of this tonight. The longer she was there the more likely it was the FDH would get involved, and Sam wanted them to at least be able to stick around for the two tournaments the next day and not have to make a run for it to avoid other hunters. While Kevin’s virus may be doing its job in wiping them out of the OPS system, Dean was the only omega hunter there was. He was _known_ , and resented. No doubt half the hunters in the country had heard he’d been shuttled off to a government rehabilitation program and figured it was about time someone put him in his place.

“If you want anything out of me, tell me now, because once I hit that mattress I’m not moving,” Dean announced as he trudged over to his side of the bed while Sam scrolled down the page he was currently reading. “I’m really getting too old for this.”

“Give me a second and I’ll come over there,” the alpha told him, grabbing the map of the grounds as he unplugged the power cord by the couch. He was already checking for an outlet near his nightstand as Dean crawled on top of the covers with a groan. Sam sat down next to him, giving the omega’s arm a tug until Dean moved into his side so they could both look at the laptop while Sam ran a hand absently through his mate’s hair. “You okay like this?”

“Mm hmm,” Dean hummed, lazily tracing sigils on Sam’s stomach. “What’d you find out about this place?”

“Well, when you inadvertently book us into a haunted hotel, you really pull out all the stops. This place used to be an orphanage; Gore Orphanage, to be precise. Your little playmate, Letitia, was the founder’s granddaughter, and according to legend she shows up once a year on the anniversary of the day she killed herself back in 1909.”

“Which I’m going to guess is today.”

“Right, but that’s not all. She killed herself _after_ she murdered four boys who lived in the orphanage with a butcher’s knife. One of them was her son.”

“So she’s not winning any mother of the year awards. Where was Mr. Gore during all of this?”

“There was no Mr. Gore. Our ghost was an unmated omega. The going theory is that her son was the product of a rape, but even with that, the stigma of being unmated back in the day eventually became too much for her and she finally snapped. She only shows herself to omegas or betas with children. She’s not usually violent, though.”

“Why’d she fling me around like a ragdoll then?”

“My best guess? Even though you’re an omega, you’re still a man.”

“Where’d she carve up the kids?”

“Up in the attic. I figured I’d check it out while you get some rest, see if there’s anything else we need to be worried about.”

“Guess my walkman EMF is going to come in handy,” Dean said smugly, getting a swat on the ass and a kiss on the forehead.

Sam set the laptop onto the nightstand and picked up the map, unfolding it as he continued, “The good news is there’s a cemetery on the grounds, and by all accounts that’s where she’s buried, so we just have to make sure that’s who we’re after, then we can wait until tomorrow night after the awards ceremony for the tournaments and the fireworks to dig her up and burn her bones.”

“There are more fireworks tomorrow?”

Sam suspected the pain killers played a huge part in putting the dopey grin on Dean’s face, and he laughed as he folded the map back up so both hands would be free to very carefully massage his mate’s back.

“They have fireworks every night of this thing,” he said, and while Dean would deny until his dying day that the sound he made was a squeal of delight, the omega definitely squealed with delight. “You’re such a nerd.”

“Yeah…” Dean yawned, tipping his face up against Sam’s neck. “But I’m your nerd. You don’t want to take care of her tonight?”

“No.” The sloppy kisses Dean was trailing along his skin were very distracting, and as much as the dark thing inside him growled to toss the omega down and _take_ , it was clear his mate was stoned and not really aware of what he was doing. “You’re the first person she’s ever attacked, and we’re close enough to midnight I doubt we have to worry about her. Go to sleep. After I check out the attic I’m going to look up who the vendors are tomorrow morning so we know what to hit up before the fencing tournament starts.”

Dean’s grin grew even wider and he leaned up with only a little difficulty to give Sam an open mouthed kiss on the lips before sliding off to his own side of the bed and struggling his way under the sheets. Sam responded with a kiss to the crown of Dean’s head and went to switch off the overhead light, turning the TV on low to listen to an episode of _Buffy, the Vampire Slayer_ while he continued working around the cuts on the omega’s back to help keep his muscles from knotting too badly. The episode ( _Once More, With Feeling_ ) wasn’t even halfway through before Dean was asleep, and Sam left it on in the background as he quickly grabbed the duffel with the pre-packaged canisters of salt, the iron poker he’d taken from the library, a lockpick, flashlight, and Dean’s EMF meter, then laid salt in an arch inside the door so he wouldn’t break the line when he left.

It wasn’t difficult to find the door to the attic on the third floor, particularly when it was the only door in the hallway that drove the EMF meter wild. It was also the only door in the hallway that had an icy draft blowing out from under it, and with the old style skeleton key lock on it he only needed about thirty seconds to break in. The EMF was officially rocketing off the charts, and he decided it had done its job, stowing it in the duffel in exchange for the poker and the flashlight as he headed up the narrow stairs.

The collection of antiques gathering dust amongst the random boxes and pictures from earlier incarnations of the building spoke to the long history of the place, and he hoped they wouldn’t have to worry about blood stains or some other item that might be keeping Letitia Gore bound to the hotel aside from her bones. He was glad for the age of the building, because it meant he was dealing with a full attic instead of just a crawl space and could actually stand up straight, even if he did keep walking face first into cobwebs. He checked into a couple of boxes, looking for any information packed away on the hotel’s history or the Gore family, locating a roster of the boys who had passed through the home from 1908 to 1909 that he put into the duffel as the temperature dropped and he saw his breath puff out white in front of him when he exhaled.

“My mommy loves me,” a small voice said behind him, and Sam spun around to see a little boy huddled in the corner, his hands covering his head as he cowered in the beam of Sam’s flashlight.

“Okay,” Sam replied calmly, tightening his grip on the poker just in case the ghost’s mommy decided to weigh in on the discussion.

“I said my mommy loves me!” the ghost repeated in earnest.

“I’m sure she does,” the alpha agreed. “Is she nearby right now so I can talk to her?”

“My mommy loves me this much!”

He moved his hands down from his head to reveal a bloody wound where his skin and hair had been sliced off, all the way to his scalp. The white of the bone was visible as red liquid oozed from the wound and dripped until it had covered his face in tiny rivers, at which point he blinked into nonexistence. The EMF meter was still screeching away in the duffel bag, and Sam decided that even though he had the poker it might be best to make for the stairs before anything else showed up.

He waited just a half second too long to make his retreat. As he neared the stairwell he felt a hand grab the back of his shirt and yank him backward, throwing him across the room and into one of the antique chairs packed away. It broke quite thoroughly under his weight as he tried to catch his breath and find where the poker had fallen during his flight. He was in the process of digging into the duffel when Miss Gore herself appeared above him, her long, stringy hair hanging down in his face as she reached out to dig her fingernails into his chest, snarling, “ _Naughty, naughty, naughty_!”

Sam understood immediately why Dean had been so badly beaten up when he found the omega unconscious in the library. Letitia Gore was one pissed off spirit, no doubt angrier than normal because he was an alpha who had just been with her son. She obviously planned to kill him, which would _really_ ruin his mate’s anniversary plans. He was just on the verge of passing out when he got a hand on the salt canister and managed to pop the top off and sling it at her. She screamed and disappeared in a cloud of grey smoke as Sam gasped for enough air to make a run for it.

Though not normally the sort to flee from something as simple as a ghost, Sam didn’t like his odds against Miss Gore when he was down both the iron and the salt and the shotguns with the rock salt shells were sitting down in the room with Dean and the kids. He grabbed the duffel and tore down the stairs, slamming the door behind him as he took off for the second floor. Some of the conventioneers were just starting to come back up from the fireworks as he rounded the bend of the hall to their room, and he slowed down and fixed his hair in an effort not to look like he’d just been attacked by a ghost. The best they could hope for at this point was that no one in the hotel went poking around looking into all the historical details of the place, and that none of the staff discovered what had happened in the library until morning.

The credits were rolling on _Buffy_ as he opened the door to their room and stepped carefully over the salt, and Sam couldn’t help but be shocked that it had barely been more than half an hour since he left Dean snuffling into his pillow. Dean stirred as he came in, though Sam was quick to convince him to go back to sleep, wanting to stay up longer to listen for any telltale screaming that someone else had encountered Miss Gore. After several hours of hearing nothing he decided it was probably safe enough to go to bed and slid in next to Dean, pulling him over to sleep on Sam’s chest as a pillow despite the pain where Letitia had tried to reach in to stop his heart. Waking up with a drool spot on his shirt would be more than worth it for getting to smell his mate snuggled up safely against him after the last forty-eight hours.


	112. I Am Your Number One Fan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Let's do some LARP-ing!

Sam was not expecting the price tags on the cosplay items they needed to buy the next day if they were going to successfully pull off Legolas and Aragorn without looking like they’d slapped something together at the last minute. Granted, the clothes were all high quality and he had just enough vanity not to want to wear one of the cheap wigs that looked like French vanilla ice cream, but it still was a shock how quickly they racked up a thousand dollars in costume and accessory purchases. He felt slightly better about it when he saw how genuinely adorable the kids looked as dwarfs ( _apparently a lot of LARP-ers got their children involved at a young age_ ) and how excited Dean was about the balance of his costume sword, and that he’d be able to clean up in the tournament with it. The way the green leather jerkin and red linen shirt for Dean’s costume accentuated the breadth of his mate’s chest and shoulders certainly went a long way towards Sam seeing the money as an investment as well. He could really get into the idea of cosplay if it meant getting Dean into leather.

It cost two hundred dollars to enter the tournament, which probably shouldn’t have surprised either man, given how much they’d just spent to dress up like characters from a movie trilogy. The alpha taking sign-ups looked from Dean to Sam before asking if they were _sure_ Dean wanted to enter, and did he _really_ understand that he was going to be facing off primarily against alphas and a couple of betas before sighing and muttering something about the folly of letting omegas out of the kitchen. Sam very nearly told the guy where he could shove his kitchen, but his mate convinced him the look on the guy’s face when Dean wiped the floor with all the other competitors would be much more enjoyable if they just kept quiet.

The couple were surprised at how well organized the event was in anticipation of having a high number of entrants, which it certainly did. The goal was to have the final match by noon, since the archery tournament started at one, and in order to keep things moving swiftly the early rounds featured multiple simultaneous matches so they could whittle down the field to the quarterfinals within an hour to an hour and a half. The rules were simple; no swinging anything above the shoulders, only wooden swords allowed, and matches were won either by driving an opponent out of bounds or forcing them to yield. The omega popped a couple of ibuprofen to help with the headache still lingering from the night before and gave his mate a goodbye kiss before heading off to the competitors’ arena, where entrants could spar or stretch or do whatever they wanted to prepare for matches so long as they kept things light and civil.

The convention actually had a special section for attendees to sit if they were with one of the combatants so they wouldn’t miss any of the action, and though it was very odd being the only alpha sitting there Sam was at least glad that there were plenty of betas and a couple of omegas with little kids. Unfortunately, they tried to make small talk, their smiles becoming forced when he pointed out his omega mate in the crowd of contenders to be declared the best swordsman at the convention. The three omegas near him - all of them petite and dressed as elves - found the idea of Dean fencing not only thrilling, but seemed to be in awe of the fact that Sam would _allow_ him to enter to begin with. As much as Sam wanted to say it wasn’t up to their mates to “allow” them to do anything, he just smiled and asked how they were enjoying their stay, and if they’d head the rumor that the place was haunted. Only one of them had, and she hadn’t seen anything, which left Sam free to relax and enjoy the day knowing that they could take care of Letitia Gore after dark without worrying about the rest of the guests.

Once the tournament started and Dean began quickly dominating the early rounds and picking off opponents it was clear how worth it it had been to drop the two Benjamins. The omega was completely in his element, barely breaking a sweat despite the impractical clothing for fencing outdoors in early September. The first alpha he faced off against all but laughed in his face until Dean disarmed him in three moves and utterly humiliated him in front of the crowd. After that the men ( _and one woman_ ) going up against him took him a little more seriously, growing increasingly frustrated and increasingly aggressive as he won match after match. By the eighth time the announcer had to begrudgingly announce Dean Smith as the winner of the round and the first qualifier for the quarterfinals, the crowd was openly cheering for the lone omega in the tournament, and Sam felt like he was ten years old again watching Adam’s older brother clean up in the inter-school qualifiers, only without the ridiculous jealousy directed at Benny Lafitte.

Right about then was when he realized Dean had stopped smiling two matches ago.

After the remaining fighters had been determined they took a break, giving the omegas Sam had been talking with a chance to fawn all over Dean and let him know how inspired they were by his performance while their alphas, two that he’d beaten, tried their best to suppress their growls. Dean was very flattered and very gracious, giving Sam a chaste kiss before downing the bottle of water he was holding out for his mate to re-hydrate. He made up an elaborate story about being a stuntman just like his father but it was rough getting back to work after having Elliott to explain away the split lip, cut on his forehead, and scraped cheek, touting Sam as a big shot producer who fell for him while watching him in one of the race scenes he shot for _The Fast and the Furious_. The omegas and even their alphas looked positively starstruck at the fictional Hollywood lives of Sam Wesson and Dean Smith. A couple of the nearby betas said how impressed they were with his performance and wished him luck before congratulating Sam on having such a talented omega, leaving Dean to laugh bitterly at the backhanded compliments.

“You okay?” Sam asked quietly as the fangirling finally stopped at the announcement that the tournament would resume in two minutes.

“Course I’m okay Sam,” Dean replied, though he looked off across the field instead of meeting Sam’s eyes. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I don’t know.” Lizzie woke up from the nap he’d lulled both babies into by rolling the stroller forward and back rhythmically and he got her up and out quickly before she could wake Elliott. “I was just thinking this would have been a really fun couples thing to do with Benny and Lisa. I used to love watching you guys compete.”

“Please, you hated him back then,” Dean snorted humorlessly, and Sam shrugged.

“Even so,” he said, running his hand carefully over the omega’s back. “It would have been nice to see the two of you competing again.”

Dean took a long pull of from the second water bottle Sam had given him and nodded, his eyes glassy as he rasped, “Yeah. Lucky you, though. You wouldn’t stand a shot at the archery tournament if Benny was here.”

“Maybe, maybe not. You missed all my competitions. I just might impress you.”

That got him a laugh, even as he could feel Dean pushing back against a violent swell of grief, and Sam decided that sending his mate back onto the field with lips puffy from kissing would probably be better than letting him go off fighting back tears. With their nearly year old child braced on one hip he cupped Dean’s face with his free hand and pulled him in, doing his best to ignore how weird the fake scruff of facial hair felt against his chin as he caught Dean’s lips with his. His plan succeeded, the omega just starting to purr as the announcer called the competitors back to the field, and Dean broke away, complaining that Sam was going to ruin his rep before heading off.

More than one of the betas near him was quietly demanding to know why their mate didn’t kiss _them_ like that, which had Sam grinning smugly to himself as Dean was called up in the first round. The two alpha males with omegas that Dean had beaten reached over to give Sam pats on the back, having recovered from the wounds to their pride and letting the young man know he’d done well for himself before giving their mates little squeezes and thereafter being more openly affectionate with them. The third omega, the one who knew about Letitia Gore, leaned over as Dean was parrying and thrusting and kicking her mate’s ass to let Sam know the convention had sitters lined up for the evening so attendees with pups could enjoy the awards ceremony, in case he and his mate wanted to have some alone time, a bit of information that had Sam grinning even wider. He was contemplating the many ways he could show Dean how much he appreciated his prowess in combat, since it looked like his back was feeling a whole lot better, when he heard an unfamiliar voice exclaim, “ _Sam Campbell_?” and his heart nearly stopped.

A petite beta with light brown hair and hazel eyes who barely came up to his shoulder was standing at Sam’s elbow, staring up at him in wonder. She was dressed as a hobbit, which struck him as appropriate given their dramatic height difference, and though she’d just blurted out his real name she didn’t look like a hunter, nor did she appear threatening. To the contrary, she looked like she was on the verge of wetting herself with excitement as she gazed at him and moved just a bit too much into his personal space.

“Uh…” Sam managed, really not quite sure how he was supposed to respond to that. This woman knew his name and by all outward appearances seemed to know she had correctly identified him, but even as unlikely as it was that anyone here would know the name “Campbell” he didn’t want to encourage her in case she just started blurting it out all over the place.

He was saved from making any decision by Dean winning his match, which he must have done in a spectacular fashion based on the roar of the crowd and the fact that people were starting to chant his name. Sam was highly irritated at having missed whatever magnificent thing Dean had clearly just done and adjusted Lizzie on his hip to cheer belatedly for his mate, hoping that if he just ignored the beta she’d wander away without him needing to be openly rude. The fates were not so kind to him this day.

“Oh my god, are you a _manny_?” she exclaimed at the sight of the little girl held snugly against him. Sam was really confused now, as she wore the same expression Jess used to get when she joked about her ovaries having just exploded. “Strong enough to hunt monsters, but sensitive enough to change diapers. You’re the perfect alpha.” She placed a hand on his chest and inhaled a shuddering breath as he glanced around for a hidden camera that would prove this was some kind of prank. “And you’re so firm.”

“Could you stop touching me, Miss…”

“Rosen,” she told him breathlessly. “Becky Rosen. I was Adam Winchester’s roommate at Duke last year. Well, until his older brother almost got him killed and he had to drop out.” Her smile vanished and her voice dropped to what he supposed was meant to be a sexy purr as she said, “I know everything about you.”

The fact that she was just some random civilian who happened to know Adam and not another hunter or a psychic made the fact that she still had her hand on his chest somehow worse, and he tried to figure out how to extricate himself from this situation without causing a scene. She’d already said his last name, Adam’s last name, and then mentioned he was a hunter. At the moment she hadn’t said Dean’s name yet, and he had to keep it that way, no matter how small the chance was that anyone would recognize it.

“Look, Betty…” he began, and she beamed as she corrected, “It’s Becky.”

“Becky, right.” There was polite applause as another match finished and a very large alpha advanced to the semifinal round and Sam glanced up to see Dean looking at him and the small woman touching him in bewilderment from the line of competitors. “I’m actually here on a case, so if you could stop saying my name and that I’m a hunter…”

“A _case_?” She squealed with delight before getting herself under control and lowering her voice again, this time conspiratorially. “Is it anything I can help you with?”

“Uh…no, but I appreciate the offer.”

“Is that why you’re posing as a manny?” she asked. “Part of your cover? I was an _au pair_ for a couple of summers, and I have to say you’re doing a great job with the disguise.”

“A manny?” Sam said.

“Yeah. A male nanny.”

“No…” Why such a term even existed he had no idea, and he didn’t really want to get into a discussion of how ridiculous it was to invent a whole new term for a man in a traditionally female job. No one talked about mecritaries or murses. “These are my kids.”

Becky seemed positively crestfallen at the news that Sam had not only apparently had sex with someone that wasn’t her, but had actually procreated with them. She recovered quickly, though, giving a slightly smaller smile as she declared, “Well, how lucky is the lady who hauled you in?”

“We gotta burn this thing, Sammy,” Dean said, whipping off his Aragorn wig as he trotted over, then working to unlace the jerkin. “The wig, not the rest of it. I don’t know how you haven’t melted yet with the way you typically run so hot. In fact, why don’t you take the kids in for a nap. It’s gonna be a little while before the finals. They’re taking another break after this last match. Go get some lunch or somethin’.”

“You really think I’m going to miss any of your matches when it’s going into the semifinal round?” Sam asked as the omega crouched down to check on Elliott, who sighed loudly in his sleep.

“I don’t really want them out here in this heat,” Dean told him, and Becky declared, “ _Dean_?”

It didn’t raise his alarms at all to hear someone saying his name, since the announcer had been rattling “Dean Smith” off as winning his matches all morning, and he glanced up with a nod before turning his attention back to Elliott. A second later his brain supplied him with her identity, and he shot to his feet, backing up against Sam. It was clear to the alpha that his mate shared the same concerns Sam initially had, and he placed a hand on the small of Dean’s back to steady him.

“Oh, hey!” Dean said with a shaky smile. “Betsy, right?”

“Becky,” Sam provided as Becky looked Dean up and down, even less impressed than she’d been when he walked into Adam’s apartment the year before. Her expression flashed with anger at the claiming scar on Dean’s neck. “I’ve already explained to her how we’re here on a case and trying to keep a low profile.”

“Right!” He laughed, the sound coming out slightly nervous and earning him a reassuring squeeze from his alpha. Becky’s eyes clouded over like a storm and for a few moments she looked positively murderous. “How’ve you been…Becky?”

“Oh, you know,” she snapped. “Struggling financially since my roommate had to take a semester off and I needed to find somewhere else to live that I could afford.”

“Oh.” He felt his cheeks heating up as Sam cleared his throat to try to break the tension. It didn’t work. “Well, that’s…that’s a shame. But hey, great festival, right? You must be doing better now if you could afford to shell out the kind of money this place takes you for.”

“I’m working the event, actually.” Her glare didn’t let up, and as badly as Sam wanted to be polite to her, he was starting to find his limits tested. The omega was clearly struggling with how to handle this as well that didn’t end up with all eyes on them - two very large men - as they rebuffed a very small woman. “I’m one of the sitters for this evening during the awards ceremony.”

“Cool!” Dean blurted out, trying to stuff his hands into pockets he didn’t have and eventually ending up with his arms crossed over his chest. “Cool. Well, I gotta get back to the tournament.” Figuring out where to kiss Sam that wouldn’t send the borderline disturbed beta off the deep end when she refused to stop staring daggers through him was interesting, and he finally settled on the middle of his mate’s jaw. “Get the kids off the field.”

“Not gonna happen!” Sam called after him as he headed back to the lineup, the linen shirt billowing as he went.

“So you’re into LARP-ing,” Becky said, her mood clearly improved somewhat by Dean leaving.

“Well, no,” Sam admitted, hooking Lizzie back into the stroller as Elliott woke and gave his standard wet diaper cry. “First time, actually.”

They were indeed taking a break over where the four finalists remained and Sam headed away from the spectator’s area with the diaper bag over his shoulder to find a better place to change his son. Of course Becky took that as an invitation to follow, standing too close to him as he located a tree where he would be able to get both the kids into the shade for a while for some food. Dean hadn’t been wrong about either point in seeing to Elliott and Lizzie’s needs.

“What inspired you to come to this one?” she asked as Sam was getting out the changing pad, spare diaper, and wipes, then laying a squirming Elliott down to strip off his shorts.

“It was Dean’s idea. To celebrate our anniversary.”

“Really?” He noticed how thin and tight her smile had become and wondered where on earth Adam found her. “Dean wasn’t mated when he came to see Adam last fall.”

“Yeah, no, the anniversary of when we made this little guy,” Sam told her pointedly, snugging the velcro straps closed on Elliott’s fresh diaper while the little boy burbled at him. “We were watching _Fellowship of the Ring_ and got distracted.”

“Oh.” She looked like she was sucking on a lemon. “How romantic.”

She babbled on for some time after that as Sam was getting Elliott a bottle and Lizzie some cut up bananas and cereal, going over the differences between the books and the movies and telling him all about the various conventions she’d been to. There were some very awkward questions about Dean being pregnant when he came to visit Adam, and some less awkward questions about the case. Sam couldn’t determine if she was interested in the story of Letitia Gore because she was a ghost hunting enthusiast or because she was hoping he’d invite her to help him dig up bones in the moonlight, but her romanticized ideas about hunting were definitely disturbing.

He was saved from further discussion with Becky about anything having to do with Adam, Dean, or their children by the tournament starting up again. Dean was up first against some alpha named Gerry, who had decided to LARP as Peregrin Took and didn’t at all look like the kind of guy who would make it to the semifinal round of a fencing tournament that actually had weeded out a surprising number of competitors who seemed to know what they were doing. Unlike Dean, he didn’t have a wig to remove, which led the omega to suspect he went to these conventions a lot, because his hair was the perfect length and his costume looked hand made.

He was on the small side for an alpha; blond, with sharp blue eyes, a couple of inches shorter than Dean and very slight of build, but he was fast. Dean had been watching him progress through the ranks and knew he liked to start off quick and hard, and he’d won most of his early matches by basically surprising his opponent and overwhelming them. Dean was fairly certain Gerry was known by the people running the tournament, since he hadn’t been put up against anyone who vastly outsized him the way Dean was at first until the organizers realized he wasn’t going to lose just because they paired him up with someone Sam’s height. That made Dean his first real challenge, and he attacked with gusto.

Dean had to hand it to Gerry. Wherever he learned how to fence had taught him well, though he expended a lot of energy right off the bat with his initial flurry of lunges, parries, and feints. He was a fan of the remise, apparently thinking if he just kept attacking without letting up he’d stand a better chance of getting lucky and forcing Dean out of bounds or catching him off guard. Dean spent most of the time parrying and retreating, allowing Gerry to wear himself down until he had an opening to go on the attack. It was by far the longest match Dean had fought all day, but Gerry overextended himself. His technique might be excellent, but he didn’t have Dean’s strength or stamina and apparently had never seen _Rocky III_ , and by the time they were four minutes into the duel the wooden sword Gerry had, no matter how evenly weighted it might be, was starting to feel awfully heavy. After allowing three more lunges Dean began to attack, and within five moves had forced Gerry out of bounds and won the match.

Sam had both kids out of the stroller by then, and joined in with the cheering from under the tree as Dean was announced the winner and first finalist. Becky finally gave up as Dean was on his way over, telling Sam it was nice to meet him and maybe she’d see him around. He said something along the same lines, not really paying attention to her with his mate approached looking winded, a little sore, and very happy.

The other semifinal match didn’t last nearly as long as Dean and Gerry’s bout had been, the two large alphas vying for the other final slot trying to outdo each other with brute strength as the omega popped a couple more ibuprofen. Dean knew he should probably be studying their techniques so he could develop a strategy to face whichever man came out the winner, but neither of them employed much technique. Besides, Sam was offering him a back rub while Dean spent some time with the kids, and he wasn’t passing that up just to watch two knotheads go at each other.

Three minutes later the orc, whose real name was Bernard, came out the winner, and a fifteen minute break was announced before the finals. Sam wanted to show Dean how much he appreciated the display his mate had been putting on since nine thirty that morning, but he didn’t really think they could get up to the room and back in time for Dean to wipe the proverbial floor with Bernard, plus he didn’t really want him going into the finals unfocused. People were coming over anyway to wish him luck, so it’s not like they were in a position to slip away behind a tree somewhere even for a bit of frantic necking, and Dean was not about to forgo a massage when his back had started to stiffen.

“The archery competition starts in about an hour,” Sam told him as Dean dropped his head forward to give the alpha better access to his neck. “You sure you want me entering that?”

“I’ve literally never seen you compete, Sam,” Dean replied, sounding practically offended that Sam would suggest skipping it. “I’m gonna need to take a break with the kids once I embarrass Bernard, but I should be back down by the time you’re moving up to the quarterfinals.”

Sam laughed, working carefully around the stitches on his left side to knead his shoulders, saying, “You seem awfully confident in my skills for never having seen me compete.”

Dean leaned back to give him a soft kiss at the hinge of his jaw, replying. “I only mate the best.”

There really was no way Sam was going to be able to resist at least a _small_ make-out session when they were alone with the kids under the tree and Dean was angled with his neck exposed and he’d been so damned impressive all day. His twelve year old self was clearly still alive and well in his subconscious, since he felt all giggly and tingly at the idea that he was kissing Dean Winchester in public, and more importantly that Dean Winchester was kissing him back. The break before the finals wasn’t nearly long enough as far as Sam was concerned, though he was willing to allow he might be biased by how much he was enjoying the feel of Dean smiling against his lips while the omega hummed contentedly.

When the one minute mark was given until the tournament continued Sam finally broke away, asking, “How are you going to take out the orc? He’s built like a tank.”

“Don’t worry about that, Sammy.” Dean grinned at him, eyes bright and more than a little mischievous. “I have a plan.”

Once he felt his mate was sufficiently loose for one more sword fight, Sam got the kids into the stroller and headed over to the spectators’ stands while Dean marched back to the field of combat to wait for the announcer to start the match. The younger man felt a flare of possessiveness as the alpha Dean was facing came up to talk with him during the final announcements, undoubtedly suggesting something along the lines of them finding more productive ways to spend their time if the way he ogled the omega was anything to go by. Dean smiled and said nothing, opting instead to move far enough away to give himself room to warm up, his back to Bernard, who continued to leer at the stretching omega.

While Dean was working out his shoulders, Bernard decided the best way for him to warm up was to remove the layers of leather armor he’d been wearing throughout the competition, revealing his well sculpted torso and arms covered in grey-blue body paint. It wasn’t clear whether he was trying to intimidate Dean or attract him, but he accomplished neither as the announcers ordered the two men into the combatants’ ring. What was clear was that Bernard did not expect for Dean to follow suit and remove his red linen shirt as well.

The alpha stood, astonished, at the sight of the omega’s creamy skin sprayed with freckles; the breadth of his chest and shoulders, the scars scattered across his torso and arms, the divot in his left shoulder where Johnny bit him. He blinked, rooted in his spot, his eyes raking over Dean’s figure, the red flash to his eyes indicating how pleased he was that underneath his cosplay the omega was solid muscle and clearly battle tested. Bernard was nowhere near recovering by the time the match started, and it took less than a minute for Dean to force him out of bounds and win the whole enchilada.

The audience loved it. Bernard did not. He was immediately disputing Dean’s win, demanding the event organizers review the rules and insisting that there _must_ be something in them banning omegas from fighting shirtless. He refused to accept that there wasn’t, and to the shock of everyone in attendance he charged Dean while the smaller man was in the process of putting his shirt back on.

John never would have forgiven his son if he knew that Dean was too happy at having won the tournament to be paying attention to his surroundings. It was the kind of rookie mistake that got people killed, and his father had drilled it into his head to always know who was nearby since long before he presented. Dean had certainly been through enough recently to know he couldn’t trust being in a crowd would keep him safe, and yet he’d still allowed the festive atmosphere and the fact that he was with his mate to lull him into a false sense of security. He scented Bernard in just enough time to half turn before the alpha was on him, driving him into the grass.

He went down hard on his left shoulder, feeling both the joint and the stitches pop and getting a mouthful of dirt. Bernard was yelling something at him and the spectators seemed to think the alpha had crossed a clear line, judging by the booing and shouting, but Dean was just dazed enough by how hard he hit the ground not to be able to figure out what anyone was saying. Bernard wasn’t doing anything other than pinning him to the ground and screaming at least, not that that wasn’t enough when the alpha outweighed him by a good thirty pounds of muscle.

Dean was in the process of formulating a plan to get the orc cosplayer off of him when he saw a blur of green fabric and Bernard was thrown off of him and back a good ten feet in a cloud of enraged Sam smell. The growls and “thunk”s of fists hitting flesh echoed across the field as the onlookers began to whoop with animalistic delight at the sight of a territorial brawl between two huge alphas. The omega tried to determine whether his shoulder had ended up dislocated again and was grateful the shirt was red so it would hide the blood from where his stitches had split as a handful of hotel staff were rushing towards the fight to break it up.

How they thought they were going to break it up Dean wasn’t entirely sure. As he managed to get himself righted around and his head began to clear, he realized that Sam was absolutely thrashing Bernard. The guy may have been big, but Sam was irate, sitting on his chest with his fists flying at the alpha’s face, his eyes bright red and long canine teeth ready to take out Bernard’s jugular if necessary. The three omegas who had congratulated Dean earlier on his progression through the tournament were huddled around the stroller taking care of Lizzie and Elliott, Sam’s stupid wig half covering one of the wheels where he’d tossed it down along with his bow and quiver before darting across the lawn to defend his mate.

“Sam…” Dean gasped on the way to try to get his alpha to climb off of the other man. Bernard was apologizing the best he could through the blood staining his teeth and pouring out his nose and the hotel staff were almost there. “Let him up.”

Sam stopped the assault, his knuckles split, and grabbed Bernard by the hair, snarling, “You understand I could fucking kill you very easily if I wanted to, right?”

“Y...yes…” Bernard choked, coughing up a couple of teeth. “Yes I do.”

“Apologize to my mate,” Sam ordered, and Bernard looked up at Dean, stammering, “S...sorry man. Good match.”

Sam gave one last growl before climbing off him and standing to adjust his make-up stained clothes, the event staff letting the hotel workers know that Bernard was the one who started the fight by attacking Sam’s omega while Sam walked over to Dean and grabbed his elbow to direct him towards their children. He wanted to remain calm - Christ how he wanted to - but his alpha was out and he was having a hell of a time getting it back under control. It had been difficult enough for him to stay put with the rest of the mates and and the babies when that fuckbag in the orc costume was eyeing Dean’s ass. Watching Dean strip to the waist as some kind of distraction technique had him fuming. It was like he hadn’t listened to anything Sam said about the omega not smelling like he had a mate who was interested in him. Sure they’d been pouring on the PDA all morning, but that wouldn’t mean much to an alpha like Bernard. Dean putting himself on display like that was dangerous with so many strangers around.

“What the fuck was that?” Sam hissed after they had collected the kids from the omegas with a quick round of thanks and he was attempting not to shove Dean back towards the hotel too forcefully.

“What was what?” Dean asked, trying to roll his left shoulder and finding himself in too much pain to do so. Maybe he wasn’t going to get to watch Sam clean up in archery after all.

“Taking your shirt off in the middle of two hundred fucking people,” Sam snapped, knowing he was coming across as an asshole and far too angry to stop himself.

“That’s called strategy, Sam,” Dean replied, a warning in his tone and his eyes. “The way he was checking me out trying to get into my head, I figured it was only fair to flip the script. Besides, he took his shirt off first.”

“You think I give two shits that he took his shirt off first?” Sam demanded as they made their way into the hotel through the back door and he let Dean go to grab the double stroller and awkwardly haul it into the air so he could carry it up the stairs.

“No, but I gotta say I’m having a hard time figuring out why it’s such a problem for you that I took _mine_ off.”

“Are you serious? You’re my _mate_!”

“Yes, Sam. _Mate_. Not _property_.”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me.”

“I have never _said_ you are my property. I have never _treated_ you like my property. But if you’re honestly going to stand there and act like I don’t have a right to be upset at my _mate_ getting half naked in front of a bunch of strangers just to win a stupid LARP-ing tournament without it somehow implying ownership over you, then you’ve either got heat stroke or we’ve got some major problems.”

He’d managed to wrestle the stroller to the top of the stairs and turned it around to head off down the hall towards their room, leaving Dean fuming behind him while trying to figure out how to determine if his shoulder was dislocated and stitch his back up on his own. Dean hadn’t done anything he wouldn’t have back at school, back when he thought he was going to present as an alpha, especially with how many of the other students eyed him hungrily like he was forbidden fruit. He’d always used his looks to his advantage before Laramie. To have Sam criticizing him for something any alpha or beta would have done without hesitation, not even considering how much discomfort and apprehension Dean had to bury in order to pretend he was just a regular guy like anyone else, that he had no idea what it felt like to be drugged and raped or paraded around in hooker clothes or forced to calmly sit on someone's lap while they rubbed one out - well, it wasn’t a bad thing that cream was going to take six to nine months to work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I consider it to be positively criminal that the show has not yet found a reason for Dean to be involved in an honest-to-god sword fight. I've choreographed more than one sword fight for the stage, and when you have an actor who can learn combat like Jensen can, you MAKE UP A REASON to put a sword in his hand and why Dean would be good at it. A spell. A cursed object. I don't care, just give that man a sabre!


	113. You Have No Idea What I'm Going Through

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just a little lovers' quarrel.

Elliott and Lizzie had synced up diaper blowouts, and Sam was in the middle of getting their son taken care of when Dean finally felt calm enough to enter their room without immediately picking a fight. Once inside it became even more obvious to him that they all needed a break after being outside for so long in late August. Even just sitting in a stroller had tuckered the kids out, and Sam was already halfway out of his costume. Clearly he’d given up on the idea of the archery tournament as well, which was fine by the omega. He was hot, sticky, and pissed off. The last thing he wanted to do was go hang out on a field and cheer on his knotheaded mate who probably wouldn’t win anyway because Sam was too worried about people hitting on his omega.

Sam got the kids down for a nap and got stripped down to his breeches, taking out his laptop to do more research on their hotel - specifically the roster he found in the attic - as Dean stomped into the bathroom and slammed the door. The plume of pissed off omega that followed him had the alpha sighing in frustration. Sam wanted to apologize for _how_ he’d brought up Dean taking off his shirt, but he didn’t want the omega thinking he was apologizing for bringing it up to begin with, because he wasn’t, so he didn’t say anything. He was still worried and furious and just plain scared. There were a lot of people at the convention, which meant a lot of people who could make trouble for them. All it took was one alpha holding a grudge that Dean had beaten him to call the cops and report that the omega had cuts and bruises all over his back and they could find themselves in a high speed chase out of Missouri with two babies in the back seat.

On top of that, Sam felt the shock of pain when that douchnozzle tackled his omega, and the way Dean was holding his left shoulder, Sam was pretty sure it was messed up again. Dean might be good at taking care of himself, but anyone with a bum arm would be at a disadvantage if someone got some liquid courage at tonight’s dinner. Sure, this was a family friendly event. That didn’t mean there weren’t jerks here who would overstep their bounds, and one of the things touted in the event calendar was the open bar every night from six to nine. Sam couldn’t protect Dean from everything or everyone, especially tonight when he was going to be down salting and burning Letitia Gore’s bones while Dean was alone with the kids, and open bars plus potentially pissed off alphas didn’t generally mix well to create a calm and inviting atmosphere.

When Dean got out of the shower, dripping his way shirtless over to the cribs to check on the kids, Sam thought briefly again of apologizing before deciding it best to focus on the case. Dean was purposefully not looking at him as he checked out the damage to his back in the full length mirror on the front of the bathroom door. The bruises from the night before were starting to go from pink to purple and Sam felt very lucky the people around him bought the stuntman story when Dean was fighting shirtless, though he suspected that was probably because everyone was just so shocked in the moment. Dwelling on that was going to lead them directly into another fight, however, so he turned back to the case.

They hadn’t had a chance to discuss in detail the night before about Letitia coming after Sam and the little boy who had been scalped, which at least gave them something to talk about while Dean sat down on the bed facing Sam on the couch and very deliberately did not put a shirt on. Not willing to rise to the bait, Sam focused on going over the roster and the names of the boys who had died, as well as trying to determine why Letitia appeared to him when she typically only showed herself to omegas and betas. Dean guessed she either figured out he was there for her or just didn’t like an alpha near her kid, which was what Sam thought himself so it was nice to know they were on the same page about something at least.

Dean grudgingly asked for help with his shoulder, giving Sam a chance to really look at his back without either of them having to admit they were in the wrong - a game they were very clearly playing. Some of the smaller cuts had obviously opened and closed throughout the day between the tight jerkin and the movement during his matches, and though the shower had cleaned up some of the messier ones there were still cuts in need of antibiotic cream. His shoulder didn’t appear to be dislocated so much as just badly strained, so Sam focused on the cuts while they went over the game plan for getting rid of Letitia after the awards ceremony. Things between them had thawed slightly by the time Sam was re-stitching the wound over Dean’s shoulder blade, allowing his fingers to brush carefully over his mate’s back, Dean fighting not to lean into the touch.

Dean didn’t like the idea of sending Sam off by himself to salt and burn Miss Gore, but Sam didn’t like the idea of leaving the kids with the convention’s sitting staff, even with Becky among their number and clearly the president of the Sam Campbell Fan Club. The alpha made the mistake of suggesting Dean was jealous when the subject of Becky came up and the omega sounded slightly bitter, and all that led to was Dean pointing out the fact that he hadn’t just thrown a tantrum over a shirt. The frost returned to the room and Sam swallowed the retort that wanted to burst free of him, turning back to his laptop while Dean decided to nap with the kids, his head starting to pound from how hard he’d been driven down by Bernard and not enough time having passed for him to take more ibuprofen. They both needed to get their heads in the game before dark so they’d be on the ball in case Letitia tried to interfere with their plans to send her to her final rest. The last thing either of them wanted was for a simple salt and burn to go sideways.

Since it was an orphanage there wasn’t much information on the four boys Gore had murdered beyond the newspaper reports of the times. Most of what was written was sensationalized, and there was no apparent motive beyond Letitia simply snapping one day. Considering there were over a hundred orphans in residence back in 1909 it would have been nice to have an idea of why she singled out the three boys that she did in addition to her son. The idea that it was random just didn’t sit very well with Sam.

Eventually he decided the Internet didn’t have any information he hadn’t already read about the case and headed in to take a shower himself. While he would readily admit his Legolas costume looked awesome, it did not allow for much air flow and now that the high of watching Dean win all his matches had worn off, Sam was acutely aware of how uncomfortable he was and how badly he stank. He hoped they weren’t expected to go to the dinner thingy in costume, because if they were they needed to hit up the vendors downstairs for something slightly less authentic and slightly more breathable. It might be worth it if another shopping spree got them past their silent standoff, given how much Dean had enjoyed picking out costumes this morning.

Sam was looking through the dresser for a clean pair of boxers, a towel slung low around his hips, when Dean muttered, “If you think walking around like Adonis in terry cloth is gonna get me to apologize, you’re wrong.”

Well, so much for the silent standoff the alpha thought as he clamped down on the urge to snarl.

“I don’t expect an apology, Dean.” Sam turned his back icily to the bed and pulled his boxers on before dropping the towel. “You’d have to think you did something to apologize _for_ , and hell, all you did was undress in front of a couple hundred strangers. Nothing wrong with that, is there?”

“We’re really going to do this now?” Dean asked, sitting up to watch his mate get dressed as Sam refused to turn to him.

“Nope. I’m going to go find out if we can show up tonight in street clothes or if we’ll look like a pair of giant dorks. You know, more than we already did after you spent all morning playing dress up and fighting with wooden swords.”

Dean took advantage of the fact that Sam was pulling on a shirt to storm across the room and shove him into the couch, incensed. Sam whipped around, just as angry as his mate, whose hands were clenched at his sides as he glared at the alpha with bright gold eyes, a growl building in his chest. Sam didn’t bother to conceal his anger from his scent, wanting Dean to be able to make an informed decision on whether he should keep pushing or back down. He knew what he would _recommend_ the omega do, but it was not the same as what he thought Dean was _likely_ to do.

“Fuck you, Sam,” the smaller man snapped, shoving against the wall of Sam’s chest again and finding his mate immovable.

“Don’t put your hands on me Dean,” Sam warned.

“I actually had _fun_ today!” Dean shoved him again, not caring that his mate’s eyes were turning red. “And you just had to go and ruin it with your overprotective _bullshit_ …”

The fourth time Dean shoved him was one time too many, and Sam grabbed his wrist and spun him so he was trapped with his back against Sam’s chest, Dean’s arm’s crisscrossed in front of him, forearms caught in his mate’s massive hands. The thing from the dream was cheering, thrilled that the alpha was on the brink of giving in to his darker urges, as he felt the demon blood bubbling up from his stomach and spreading across his chest. Dean immediately began to struggle, trying to throw his head back into Sam’s nose and stopping at the sound of the larger man snarling by his ear. He tried to get his arms free, but Sam tightened his grip until Dean stilled, his breath coming shallow and quick.

“ _Calm down_ ,” Sam ordered, and instantly the omega’s breathing evened out and he relaxed against Sam’s chest, even while his mind was racing as he looked around for something to grab to get the alpha off of him. “I’m sorry if my overprotective bullshit ruined your day, Dean. Do you know what ruined my day? My omega coming home from a bar two nights ago soaked in piss after four alphas put their hands all over him and tore off his pants. I don’t know why you think that just because I’m protective of you it means I think you’re some kind of damsel in distress, but it doesn’t. You’re my _mate_. I am _hardwired_ to protect you. It is literally written in my DNA. I _love_ you and the need to keep you safe is carved into every single cell of my body. If you make it harder for me to do that by stripping off your shirt so a bunch of complete strangers know exactly what they’re missing, don’t be surprised when I get upset. And I get it, you should be able to take off your shirt just like any male alpha or beta would without worrying about someone taking it the wrong way, but that’s not the world we fucking live in - the world I need to protect you from. I don’t care how much fun you were having today, what you did was _stupid_ when we don’t know _any_ of these people, whether it was just a strategy to win a tournament or not.”

He ignored the pulse from the blackness simmering beneath his skin trying to drive him to pin the omega to the floor and thrust into him, and released Dean as quickly as he’d trapped him. Dean was fighting to regain his composure and stop shaking as Sam stalked over to the bed to put on his shoes and grab his wallet and keycard. He could feel Sam clamping down on something very, very dark and evil that he probably thought he was keeping from seeping through to his mate but definitely wasn’t.

“I just…wanted to do something I wouldn’t have thought twice about before this last year,” the omega said, the fire behind his words going out as Sam kept his focus resolutely on his shoes. Despite the alpha just scaring the crap out of him, or perhaps because of it, he desperately needed a hug. “You have no idea what it’s like to feel helpless.”

That got Sam’s attention back on him. The look of incredulity on the younger man’s face was almost comical as he gaped at his mate, thinking he couldn’t possibly have heard him right. A flare of anger had Dean taking a step back in the direction of the couch as Sam stood and moved slowly towards him.

“I have no idea what it’s like to feel _helpless_?” he echoed, stopping by the cribs. “Do you actually think through what you say before it comes out of your mouth, or do you just say it? I don’t know what it’s like to feel _violated_ , I’ll agree with you on that, but I sure as fuck know what it’s like to feel _helpless_. Every single terrible thing that has happened to you is because I didn’t do my _job_ as an alpha. You haven’t got a _clue_ how helpless that makes me feel! I left you in the bathroom at my grandfather’s and found you unconscious in the basement, and now I get to dream about Mark forcing you to blow him until you finally pass out from the drugs he gave you when _I_ wasn’t there to stop him. I left you to hunt down the vampires that killed Benny, Lisa, and Ben and I get back to find out Johnny tried to force a claim on you and you’re in basically a medically induced coma in the fucking hospital. I left you to find Adam and Jo and when I get back they tell me you almost died having our son, which has done major damage to you internally. I left you after Elliott was born and you ended up getting legally taken away from me and put into a system that’s going to have us running around under aliases for the next year, _at least_ , just to make sure they can’t take you away again. I left you after the visit with Fox and you were chained to a fucking bed then shipped down to Louisiana, where I got to dream about Dick Roman bending you over a couch and fucking you through your heat if I couldn’t get to you in time. You think I don’t know what it’s like to feel helpless? That’s _all_ I fucking feel when we’re outside the bunker and you’re not in the same room with me, Dean, when I’m not close enough to kill someone for trying to touch you or take you away from me!”

“Sam…”

“Don’t. I get that my feeling helpless is pretty much entirely my own damn fault, but after what you just pulled downstairs I really can’t tell if you don’t _know_ that’s how I feel or if you just don’t _care_. Or maybe you just don’t listen to anything I tell you about alphas because shit, it’s not like I _am_ one or something to know what the hell I’m talking about! If I tell you that the scar on your neck is basically meaningless right now because you don’t smell like you’re _really_ mated, it’s probably just more of my overprotective bullshit, right? I’m just like every other alpha, trying to control you and tell you what to do. Might as well just have you walk around wearing a collar and a leash since I’m no different than Fox or Roman. I can’t _possibly_ be concerned for your safety after the only reason you made it home in one piece two nights ago is because you _literally_ know magic. _You_ , with all your fucking training and all your fucking years hunting monsters _told_ me you wouldn’t have been able to fight your way out of that fucking alley because you had a few too many beers and were glad your grandfather knew simple self defense spells you could use. There’s no way I’m worried about what could happen to you in a crowd this size if someone decides you look good enough to eat, thinking hell, if I _really_ cared there’d be more proof we’re mated than just my claim. I’ve spent a lot of time telling myself that it would be okay if I left you, that _you_ would be okay if I left you, because you’re Dean Winchester and you’re a badass and you can handle yourself and I don’t have to worry; and whatever is in charge of our stupid little corner of the galaxy has worked _very_ hard at showing me I’ve been an idiot to think that way. Cuz the whole fucking world seems to be against you, and I didn’t get that before but now I do, and now that _I’ve_ stopped leaving, _you’ve_ started doing dumb shit, like going off to a bar by yourself to get drunk and not telling me where you are so I can at least come to walk you home, or taking your fucking shirt off at a convention where half of the people you beat in that tournament were alphas that I guarantee would just _love_ to get back at you for embarrassing the shit out of them in public the minute my back is turned or you go to the bathroom by yourself. Instead of just ganking a ghost, I’ve gotta keep my head on a swivel now in case someone decides to press their luck, and I swear to _god_ , if you dare to tell me that I don’t need to protect you, I will drive the fuck back to Kansas with the kids and send Adam or Jo to come pick you up so I don’t have to deal with your ‘I am an island’ bullshit! You don’t exist in a vacuum, Dean. What happens to you affects the people who love you, too!”

“Sam…”

Dean had one of the cream colored pillows up off the couch and was clutching it to his chest, his eyes huge and dewy as he stared at Sam, who was on the verge of tears. The kids were still sleeping, a testament to just how overwhelming the morning had been for them, and they kept right on sleeping as Sam stalked across the room to take Dean’s face in his hands, pressing their foreheads together like he could make Dean feel his intent through osmosis. He tightened his grip at the feel of the omega trembling in front of him, his eyes slipping closed and a pair of tears leaving twin streaks down his face as he threaded his fingers into the smaller man’s hair.

“What do I have to do to make you understand that I can’t breathe when I don’t know you’re safe?” he demanded brokenly. “Do you think _I_ don’t really love you, or do you just think _no one_ would?”

Dean dropped the pillow and grabbed two fists full of Sam’s tee shirt, shaking him as he tried to swallow past the pain clogging his throat and making his eyes burn with saline.

“I don’t want to spend my life on a leash, Sam,” Dean said, hating how his voice cracked and his chin quivered when he spoke. “Especially not some kind of metaphorical one that I can’t fucking cut off of my neck.”

His breath hitched when Sam lunged forward and caught his lips, crushing the omega to his chest in desperation. Dean could feel Sam’s heartbeat thundering against his sternum as he was backed up against the wall, one of the alpha’s hands in his hair and the other at the base of his spine to keep Dean close enough into his body to stop his shoulder from tearing again against the wallpaper. Dean anchored himself to his mate, clutching the sides of Sam’s neck as all the emotions flooding through their bond and filling the room made his head spin.

“I don’t want to put you on a leash, Dean,” Sam choked when he finally broke the kiss, feeling the dampness on his mate’s face and realizing the tears were Dean’s as well as his. “I just want you to stop and think whether you _really_ have to do something that could get you attacked or hurt or killed. You could’ve beaten that guy without your little distraction technique.”

“Yeah, but it would’ve taken longer and my back really hurts, Sammy,” Dean told him, pulling a watery smile as he looked up at the green-blue-gold eyes a few inches from his own.

The little tug Sam gave to Dean’s hair made it very clear he wasn’t in the half-joking mood, and he said, “I don’t want to lose you to some knothead in a bar with a broken bottle just because I’ve pissed you off and you’re too stubborn to answer your phone.” The tug turned into a caress after a moment and the omega’s lashes fluttered as he chased the touch, dropping his head onto Sam’s shoulder and tilting his head to bask in his mate’s scent. “I can’t lose you again. I _can’t_.”

“Okay,” Dean murmured, nuzzling up against Sam’s neck to plant the whisper of a kiss below his scent gland. “For the record, I don’t want to be lost.”

Sam, surprisingly, was all talked out. Dean thought he’d never see the day, and he probably would have teased the alpha about it if Sam ever stopped running his tongue around the inside of Dean’s mouth. The kind of hungry kisses he was getting out of his mate as Sam stripped his shirt off and toed out of his shoes as he steered them towards the bathroom were not worth giving up just for a couple of good verbal jabs. Dean wasn’t really sure why they were headed to the bathroom but wasn’t going to protest, especially not when he was soon pinned against the closed door with Sam pressed flush up against him from hip to shoulder, slotting himself in between the omega’s legs as he grabbed both of Dean’s wrists in one hand and trapped them up above his head.

“Is this okay?” the alpha breathed, proving that maybe he wasn’t done talking after all. Dean shook his head, his pupils so large there was only a tiny ring of green left around the outside rim, and Sam released his hands before attacking his mouth again, murmuring, “I love you,” as he slid his lips across Dean’s skin.

Dean figured out very quickly why they were in the bathroom as his pants ended up around his thighs, one of Sam’s hands pinching his nipples and the other stroking both of them rapidly towards climaxing. The alpha was positively growling at the little breathy whines coming out of his mate as he sucked and nipped a line of bruises from one side of Dean’s throat to the other, the omega managing to hook one leg around Sam’s to give himself a little more leverage to grind into the taller man’s fist. He came with a surprised little shout about an octave above his normal register, Sam following him half a second later, his mouth hanging open while he panted against Dean’s ear as the omega arched into him, riding out the aftershocks as their stomachs became a sticky white mess. Sam only spent a moment catching his breath before his mouth was moving again, kissing up Dean’s neck and along his jaw until he found his lips, Dean’s hands moving from where they'd been tangled in his mate's hair so he could clutch at Sam's back and pull him in while the door creaked with their combined weight.

They easily could have stayed that way for the rest of the afternoon, necking against the bathroom door with their shorts pooled on the floor until they were ready to go again, acting like the freshly mated couple they were and not leaving their hotel room unless the building was on fire, but the sound of both of their children in the other room brought them back to reality. Sam got a washcloth to clean them off, his legs having started working again first, and Dean yanked him in by his wrist for a few more frantic kisses before pulling his pants up to go see what the problem was. Sam cursed the fact that he had to go dig up Letitia Gore, wanting nothing more than to drop their kids off with the babysitters at the convention and spend the better part of the evening on every type of make-up sex they could manage without knotting.

The only real issue the infants appeared to be having was that Lizzie wanted out and Elliott was upset that Lizzie was upset. Not only was the little girl wide awake, she was protesting loudly to being confined from where she’d pulled herself up on the side of her crib. Her younger brother had crawled over to the side of his crib nearest her, where he was sitting on his diapered butt and wailing away in sympathy. Dean checked them both, still feeling flushed and wobbly, and after confirming that neither of them needed a diaper change he got them up so they could work on their respective mobility levels in the hotel room.

It took Sam a good deal longer to emerge from the bathroom, neither his alpha nor the demon blood wanting to shift from predator mode into parent mode, and by the time he got himself together Lizzie was trying to take a header into the coffee table and getting hastily swung into the air by Dean, his hand in the back of her shorts. That sent her into another crying jag, which set Elliott off again, leading Sam to quietly wonder if their kids were becoming unhealthily codependent. He stole Lizzie away from his mate to airplane her around the room until she stopped crying, then plopped her down on the bed to put his shirt and shoes back on. Dean looked very disappointed that Sam was getting dressed as the omega worked at convincing Elliott to stow the tears now that Lizzie was happy again, agreeing with a sigh that they needed some non-grass-stained clothes for the dinner and awards thing but that there wasn’t much point in both of them going to revisit the vendors downstairs. He at least got the alpha to promise not to bring him back a girl’s costume and earned himself some final heated kisses before Sam was out the door.

When he returned he had slightly less elaborate clothing for both of them. Dean still got to be Aragorn, but there was no way Sam was getting back into that damned blond wig, so he was spending the evening as Boromir. They were both going to get to wear chain mail, which was delightfully drafty even if it was heavy, and Dean guessed the metal links would actually feel quite nice against the small cuts on his back. For the time being, though, they were staying in street clothes so they could get a look at the graveyard on the hotel grounds.

The kids were happy to be out of their cribs, the room, and the stroller, burbling as Sam and Dean headed across the back lawn well past where the archery tournament was taking place with the infants in their handy carriers. It was surprising how many people recognized them even out of costume and waved as they tried not to look too conspicuous in doing their recon. Checking the cemetery out in the daylight had been a good idea, as it turned out Letitia’s headstone was broken in half and mostly illegible. It would have been very difficult for Sam to find her by himself after dark.

The rest of the afternoon dragged by until dinner, since the tournaments were the big thing to do on the first day and they weren’t bothering even watching the archery tournament. It felt like a dick move when the whole convention practically had watched Dean be awesome all morning, but now that it had been a while since Dean was trouncing alphas with a wooden stick both he and Sam were realizing the omega was slightly sunburned and he was now feeling a little ill from the heat. Sam decided it was lucky the seats for the competitors’ family and friends had been partially shaded or he and the kids would likely be in rough shape, too. Had they been planning to both take care of Miss Gore that evening, they certainly wouldn’t be after getting Dean back up to the room and laying him down with a cool cloth on his head as he vehemently protested that he was fine, even as he looked like he was probably going to throw up shortly.

Despite his protestations that Sam should stop fussing over him, Dean certainly enjoyed being catered to if the exponential increase in his willingness to cuddle was an indicator of his mood when the alpha ordered their late lunch and made sure to ask for pie. Sam initially thought they could just put something on the television and the kids could hang out on the bed with Dean while he double checked everything they knew about Miss Gore and the boys she killed, but _Cujo_ was on television and Dean wanted to watch it but very much did not want to watch it alone. Sam was about to launch into how Steven King was a shitty writer whose books tended to get turned into even shittier movies until he remembered that Dee Wallace was in it and Dean’s mom looked like her. Though he was pretty sure it was a spectacularly bad idea for them to watch a movie about someone who looked like Dean’s mom trapped with her little boy by a large, rabid dog while she waited for someone to come save them, he wasn’t going to shoot him down, not after the fight they'd had about Sam being overprotective. Dean wanted to watch it for some reason, so they could snuggle up on the king sized bed as a family and try to keep the kids entertained while a St. Bernard attempted to kill Tad and Donna Trenton.

Sam was glad he’d kept his mouth shut, as it turned out that Dean wanted to watch the movie because he’d never seen it, which he explained in delight as the opening credits rolled. For obvious reasons he’d avoided Dee Wallace movies, but it was one of those horror flicks that everyone in their age bracket had seen and he felt like he should at least watch it once. It was like _Friday the 13th_ or _Poltergeist_ , and besides, he was a fan of horror movies. His mom had been gone a long time and he figured he could handle it with his mate and a piece of pie and an upcoming hunt and their kids crawling around on the comforter to help keep him distracted.

He was very wrong. To his credit, the omega held it together extremely well through the relatively boring first act where the Trentons were established as a couple with a little boy who were having marital problems, his distress only mounting slightly when Vic went off for a few days, leaving his wife and son alone. He knew something bad was going to happen once Cujo got bitten by the rabid bat, and though he fell victim to a couple of the jump scares, it _was_ an early ‘80s movie and so a lot of it was cheesy enough to not really be terrifying. Yes, it was difficult watching someone who looked and sounded a lot like his mom walk around living and breathing on television, but Sam was right there and kept checking in with him, asking at each of the commercial breaks if he wanted to change it to something else, so he felt confident there wouldn’t be anything in the story he couldn’t handle.

Then Cujo attacked the car for the first time after they stalled at the mechanic’s house with Donna and Tad inside. Sam had never seen another human being grab a pillow so fast. The kids had crawled and toddled and rolled themselves to sleep and were back in their cribs for a little nap, and that was a very good thing because Dean probably would have kicked one of them with how quickly he drew himself up into a little ball against the headboard, alternating between watching the movie and hiding his face in the pillow sham. Sam was quite adamant they change the channel, but Dean insisted even if he was having a hard time in that moment that it was okay, because obviously Donna and Tad were the protagonists and it was an early ‘80s film so they were ultimately going to survive. No one in their right mind in the early ‘80s would kill off Dee Wallace.

The alpha was willing to go along with his mate’s stupid idea to continue to watch this stupid film that was obviously traumatizing him right up until Donna tried to make a break for the house and the dog attacked her and drove her back into the car. Dean had both pillows by then and was doing his best to muffle his sobs so he wouldn’t wake the kids up, though quite frankly if the sound of Danny Pintauro wailing in the back of the Pinto while Wallace tried fending off a rabid St. Bernard with a coffee thermos wasn’t enough to wake them up they could probably sleep through anything. Sam made the executive decision to flip through the channels until he found an episode of _Scooby Doo_ , assuring Dean as he held him and rubbed his back that the mom eventually managed to kill the dog with the dead cop’s gun and the dad showed up to save them and everyone lived happily ever after once the mom and the kid got a series of really painful injections to keep them from dying of rabies. And then he banned Dee Wallace movies forever from their house, saying it wasn’t going to kill their kids if they grew up never having seen _The Howling_.

It took Dean a long time to calm down after that, despite sequestering himself in the bathroom and Sam running across _Dirty Rotten Scoundrels_ , which the alpha proceeded to laugh all the way through from the minute Lawrence and Andre started pushing Fanny Eubanks into the potted plants until the British sailors had glued Freddy’s palm to the wall. He’d composed himself by the time Sam went to drop the kids off with the convention sitters, Dean deciding to hit up the open bar since Becky would probably be nicer to their children if the alpha handed them over. Though Dean had pounded back several shots of whiskey and had a nice little buzz working by the time Sam joined him at the bar, he stopped drinking as soon as his mate arrived so they could head in to the dinner and he could walk straight.

The food was edible and the awards ceremony was brief, since there were just the two main awards to hand out. Everyone cheered when Dean’s name was called, which made him feel a little better about the day overall and not quite as raw emotionally. They stuck it out through the golden arrow presentation but skipped the dessert course, Dean opting to wait in the bar again with Narsil by his side just in case something happened with the kids when Sam went out to take care of Letitia before the fireworks started at ten while everyone was distracted. Sam had her bones dug up and salted before she showed up to try to stop him, a quick blast of rock salt to her center mass dispersing her so he could squirt the lighter fluid and drop a Zippo. She disappeared in a screaming pillar of flames and he waited dutifully for the fire to burn out completely before filling the grave in and heading back to the hotel. He wouldn’t deny there was a spring in his step as he thought of a quick shower and then going to pick Dean up in the bar so they could truly enjoy the hour or so left they had of free babysitting.

It was exactly then that he pulled on the hotel doors and found them sealed shut, the pale blue-grey face of the little boy who had been scalped staring back at him through the window.

“Why did you send my mommy away?” he demanded a second before three little boys with maniacal eyes appeared behind him and raised the butcher’s knives in their hands.

Letitia’s son shrieked and vanished, the tallest of the three boys looking at Sam and saying with a twisted grin, “Now we get to have fun!” before they disappeared as well, their laughter echoing down the hall. Sam reached for his cell phone in his pocket to alert Dean, only to realize he was in a costume and didn’t _have_ pockets. Then he remembered it wouldn't matter anyway, since they hadn’t replaced Dean's cell phone yet. He struggled with the door for a few more seconds before running around the perimeter of the building to try to find another way inside, growing ever more frantic as each window and door was equally firmly sealed. His mate and his kids were in there, and without a way to warn Dean about the three ghosts they were all going to be sitting ducks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone who has never seen Cujo:
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyKHdjh7_2E
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CS1t_QtZOU
> 
> It's a typical '80s Steven King film, but Dee Wallace and Danny Pintauro sell the hell out of all their scenes in the car.


	114. We’ve Gotta Save As Many People As We Can

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maybe this convention wasn't such a great idea after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm falling behind in my responses to you wonderful people. I will catch up!!! You have no idea how much joy your comments bring me.

The open bar only applied to well drinks, which was all right since the whiskey wasn’t half bad, even if it wasn’t top shelf. Dean was being very careful to pace himself, knowing now that his tolerance had dropped ( _and really, he should have realized it would after a year of no drinking_ ). He didn’t want to be shitfaced by the time Sam got back in the building or if he had to go get the kids from the sitters, even if it would probably make him feel bold enough to hand the scar cream over to the alpha and ask him for a little help, but there was still an edge he needed to take off after watching that dumb movie that he really shouldn’t have watched after Sam asked no fewer than three times, “Are you _sure_ you want to watch that?”

He’d figured, what the hell, he’d been through enough crap recently between Fox and Roman, how could a horror movie from the ‘80s of all things possibly top that? Obviously he knew the basic premise of the story - a mom and her kid get trapped by a rabid dog - he just hadn’t expected it to be...well... _that_. Sam, bless him, really had done his best to dissuade the omega from putting himself through what he clearly knew would not be a fun experience, but Dean had chalked most of his mate’s concern up to a difference in taste. He knew Sam didn’t get his attraction to television and film. Sam was a reader, and that was fine. Dean was, too, when the right book caught his interest, he just preferred his stories to be told in visuals instead of print. He could turn himself over to a movie for two hours or a network show for sixty minutes ( _including commercials_ ), but sitting down to lose himself in a book? Dean didn’t typically have the time for that, or the patience to stay still that long, and it was easier to zone out when his mind just wouldn’t stop whirring with a _Jerry Springer_ episode than a copy of _War and Peace_. Plus, it was easier to take a date to a movie than it was to take them to a book. He prided himself on his knowledge of popular films and it had seemed like a safe enough environment with Sam right there to scratch _Cujo_ off his list of films he’d never seen but felt like he should.

Except - man. Dee Wallace _really_ looked like his mom. And Danny Pintauro had “terrified little boy who just wants his mother to save him” down to an artform. And then the dog looked like a monster and attacked the mom and she ended up covered in blood and it was just…

Really the problem was that he never should have asked Bobby to get a hold of his mom’s case file from the police that summer after he turned fourteen and John took him out of Acteon just to ditch him at Singer Salvage Yard the first time they had a fight. Not that he hadn’t loved spending time with Bobby back then, but he’d just found out who he’d be a second for when he entered his freshmen year and he could have used that summer to get an idea of who this Benny Lafitte guy was and work on his skills and really be sharp for when they started competing together. Bobby had for once tried to defend John, saying Dean didn’t understand what his dad had been through when he lost his mom, and that led to Dean hounding Bobby until through a series of barters and called in favors he got the case file, which the beta begged the kid not to look at.

Of course Dean was going to look. He was fourteen. He knew _everything_. He certainly knew better than his stupid father who had dumped him in that stupid school and then wouldn’t even let him stay there with his kid brother year round and have some real sense of permanence. Plus, despite everything he’d seen since his mother died, he couldn’t possibly have imagined what those crime scene photos would actually look like; how wrong the color of Millie’s skin was, how vacant her eyes were, how much blood there was everywhere. He couldn’t have known they would be so much worse than anything he’d ever seen, or that he could never go back to unseeing them, could never unknow what his mother’s entrails looked like or the musculature of a kitten after it was skinned. He certainly couldn’t have known that a relatively simplistically plotted movie about a sick dog was going to bring all those pictures back up to the forefront of his mind like emotional vomit.

“Hey there.” An alpha just about Sam’s height dressed as Faramir had taken up the stool next to him, throwing Dean an easy smile as he ran a hand through his short brown hair. He gave the omega a once over with deep set, stormy eyes and raised a beer to his full lips. Dean suppressed the urge to growl, expecting Sam back any minute and figuring he could handle this guy if it came down to it while hoping that it didn’t. “You were great in the sword competition today.”

Dean flashed him a smirk and replied, “I know,” before pointedly turning away to his whiskey.

“I won the archery competition,” the alpha said, waving his golden arrow as proof and then setting it down on the bar to extend his hand. “Nick Munroe.”

“Congratulations,” Dean sighed as more people from the dining room started to filter in to take advantage of the last few minutes of the open bar.

“Where’s your alpha?” Nick asked, realizing Dean was not going to shake but pressing on regardless. “Watching the kids?”

Dean was about to drop his head onto the bar and groan in frustration at his attempts to be polite all going for naught when a gravelly voice declared in a clear British accent, “I believe you’re in my seat.”

Nick turned away from Dean to size up the brunette man standing beside him in a beautifully tailored dark suit and shirt with a red tie, and clearly decided he was less than impressed.

“Well, I didn’t see your name on it,” the alpha retorted agreeably.

“Look again,” the interloper insisted. “For Crowley.”

“You’re about three months late,” Dean snapped as Nick was considering his next move in asserting his right to the stool since he got there first. Dean cast an angry glance at the petite bearded demon who was still waiting rather impatiently for the alpha to get the hint and vacate the premises. “I really could have used you back in Louisiana.”

“Yes, well, office politics and all that, darling.” Crowley turned to glare at the Faramir cosplayer who still had not moved from Dean’s side. “Perhaps I wasn’t clear before. _Bugger off_!” The flash of red eyes entirely different from those of an alpha had Nick Munroe scurrying off of the bar stool and towards the interior of the hotel, nearly tripping over a chair in his retreat. “I can’t leave you alone for a minute without every stray in town sniffing around, it seems.”

“I can handle myself just fine,” Dean growled.

“Really?” Crowley raised an eyebrow and let it fall as the bartender came over to see what he wanted. “Glencraig, neat.”

“Sorry, we only carry Glenlivet,” the bartender told him, seeming genuinely apologetic.

The demon heaved a deep sigh.

“If I must.” He gave Dean an easy smile as his drink was poured, watching as the omega remained entirely focused on his own glass, his jaw clenched and eyes hard. “If handling yourself is what you called the little altercation in that alley a couple of nights ago, I’d hate to see what you consider being in over your head.”

“Are you watching me or somethin’?”

“Perish the thought.” He took a sip of his scotch and gave a slight nod of semi-approval. “I certainly don’t want your mate doing to me what he did to those alphas who had the bad sense to muss your hair, should he catch me peeping at you in the shower. Congratulations, by the way. I had planned to bring you a waffle iron to celebrate the nuptials but since Sam failed to deliver my onesies after the birth of your son I’m feeling less than appreciated.”

“What do you mean?” Dean demanded, recalling how strange Sam had been two days ago when they decided to leave St. Louis in the morning instead of waiting until the afternoon, and that unsettling darkness he’d felt while they were arguing earlier. “What did Sam do to those guys?”

“He had them cut their manhood off,” Crowley replied plainly, smiling when the omega paled. “He went a bit too _Titus Andronicus_ for my taste. I prefer more subtle forms of torture. But he was effective nonetheless.”

“Are you serious?”

“I never joke about alphas being made into eunuchs.”

“How do you know?”

The demon appeared to have no patience for Dean’s nauseated stomach as he snapped, “It was on the front page of our quarterly newsletter. How do you think? He’s at the top of the watch list for demons on both sides of the fight between Azazel and Lilith. When Yellow Eyes’ favorite halfling starts edging closer to a live action remake of _Scanners_ those of us in the lower ranks tend to sit up and take notice. You’re just lucky the authorities couldn’t make him out clearly on the tape.” Dean mulled over this information silently, staring at his glass of alcohol as Crowley eyed him appraisingly. After several moments he asked, “You aren’t _really_ upset that I didn’t come running to your rescue, are you?”

“I needed help,” Dean said flatly. “I honestly would have sold you my soul to get out of there knowing my kids would be safe.”

“But then your mate wouldn’t have been able to ride in on his white steed and save you from the dragon. Besides -” He drained his glass, signaling the bartender for another round. “- I wouldn’t have bought it anyway. We have very specific orders not to touch you in the event it sends your alpha flying off the rails.”

“Yeah, well Dick Roman apparently missed the memo.”

“Haven’t you become the drama queen.”

“What are you doing here Crowley?” Dean demanded, giving the smaller man his full attention. “You obviously didn’t come for the LARP-ing, even if you are the size of a hobbit.”

“Can’t I just stop in and say hello?”

“No.”

“So suspicious, squirrel.” He gave Dean a wide smile as various costumed convention attendees milled about and filled up the bar. “Your father has come up with a bit of a suicide plan to finally get Azazel where he wants him - namely, dead. As John and I have a few agreements in place that he will not be able to fulfill from beyond the grave, I would very much like to see him convinced there are other ways to take down the Prince of Hell than a kamikaze mission.”

“ _Are_ there?”

Dean turned to the demon and held his eyes for a long while, until Crowley smiled coldly and shook his head.

“Don’t you know yet?” he asked, his voice low and his eyes hard. “Your puppy is in the early stages of hydrophobia, Dean. It’s far too late for a vaccination. So you can put him down, find yourself trapped in a car with your children while he tries to tear your throats out, or unleash him on another target. And thank you for finally watching that movie so my analogy would make sense.”

“You are watching me,” Dean snapped, waving for another drink and earning a sigh from the demon.

“I find myself…attuned to your more intense emotions,” Crowley admitted at length. “Believe me, I don’t like the implications of that any more than you do.”

“I thought you said you wanted me to stop Sam from opening the gate,” Dean said, starting to wonder where the hell his mate was. A simple salt and burn should not take this long. “Now it sounds like you want me to push him into using his psychic thing.”

“I wanted you to either stop him or kill him,” Crowley shot back. “Clearly you’re not going to kill him now that you’re mated, as it would be the equivalent of killing yourself and you have two pups to think about. As for stopping him, the best it seems I can hope for now in that department is that you’re able to keep him happy enough with your relationship that he’d never choose Azazel over you. I’d advise you also try to get him back on the chessboard to dispose of Yellow Eyes so your father can take the noose from around his neck. The eggs are already broken, might as well try to make an omelette with them.”

“Sam’s really dangerous?” Dean asked quietly, turning the tumbler in his hand and watching the liquid swirl in the light. He knew he shouldn’t trust Crowley, that demons were nearly allergic to telling the truth, but _this_ demon hadn’t lied to him to date and Dean had a terrible feeling growing in the pit of his stomach.

“As a rabid St. Bernard,” Crowley replied coolly, tearing his eyes from the omega as the sound of screaming echoed in from the hallway. He drained his glass quickly, saying, “And that’s my cue.” He threw a twenty on the bar as he stood, the room quickly becoming a scene of confused chaos, then clapped his hand down on Dean’s shoulder, adding, “Mummy wasn’t the bad guy,” before vanishing with a snap.

There was something deeply calming after the way the day had gone so far about hearing the continued terrified screams and feeling certain he would know what to do about it that got Dean moving from his stool the second Crowley was gone, even if he was slightly unsteady on his feet. More voices were joining the first one as people ventured out into the hall to see what had happened, and it wasn’t difficult for the omega to find the source of all the commotion in the west hallway of the first floor suite of bedrooms. A circle of dwarfs and elves was gathering with horror-filled expressions as Dean pushed his way through the crowd to discover none other than Nick Munroe on the floor, eyes staring vacantly at the ceiling due undoubtedly to the multiple stab wounds in his chest, a large chunk of his scalp missing. Dean checked his pulse out of habit and closed his unseeing eyes before instructing everyone to stay back.

A set of small bloody footprints led away from the corpse and down the hall to the picture window looking over the side lawn, the cemetery off in the distance, and Dean followed to try to figure out where the ghost went. He was peering out into the darkness when a face appeared in the window and he jumped back, trying not to look like an amateur in front of the continually growing congregation of onlookers despite his mounting sense of dread. It took a second for him to recognize that what had initially looked like a disembodied head was in fact Sam, and this side of the hotel was simply so high off the ground he was only tall enough for his face to be seen.

“Dean!” he exclaimed, his voice muffled by the glass but the relief in his tone clear.

“Sam, what the hell is going on?” Dean demanded, kneeling down so they were closer to eye level as Sam banged on the window.

“The kids!” Sam shouted. “It wasn’t Gore, it was the boys!”

“Fuck…” Dean breathed, trying to think of the best place to get everyone holed up while he retrieved the shotgun and poker from their room.

“I need their names!”

“What?”

“Their names, I need their names!”

Sam pantomimed digging and Dean caught on, telling his mate to wait there while he worked to move everyone back into the dining room and raid the kitchen for salt. The hotel manager objected highly to the hunter poking around in their kitchen as it was in definite violation of numerous health and safety codes, and a few of the attendees he’d beaten that morning were highly disinclined to do as he instructed until one of the three ghost children showed up in the hallway and plunged a butcher’s knife into the bellhop’s liver. It was considerably easier to get the rest of the guests and staff on board with staying in the dining room and lining the doors with salt after that.

Once he had as many people as possible sequestered in the dining room with specific instructions not to open the door and break the line, Dean grabbed more salt and headed off at a run to the small conference room where the babysitters were. As he passed by a reading nook next to one of the hotel’s many fireplaces he snagged a poker just in case he had a use for it, which he did nearly the second he turned the corner at the end of the hall. Two of the ghosts were in front of him, knives dripping with blood in their hands, and as he stopped to fend them off with the poker and the salt he felt the temperature drop around him, like he’d been plunged into ice water. He swung around just in time to avoid taking a knife to the gut from the third ghost, who was grinning at him maniacally, but still ended up with a long cut across the front of his shirt as he swung the poker to banish the ghost before whipping around to dispatch the other two with the same technique. He never imagined he’d be so glad to be wearing chain mail as he continued to the conference room to make sure the sitters and kids were okay.

Two of the three sitters were shrieking inside the room, herding the twenty or so kids under their care from one side of the room to the other as one of the ghosts kept appearing in different places to play tag and cackling as he terrorized them. Becky was standing in the middle of the room with a candlestick that she was hoping was iron with the goal of fending the kid off. She’d grilled Adam enough about his time at Actaeon to know the basics of hunting some low-level creatures, and had Elliott in a carrier while another sitter was holding Lizzie, since they were by far the youngest children in the room and the only two who were not fully independently mobile. Both of Dean’s children were wailing as he burst through the door and shouted to get Becky’s attention, giving her just enough of a warning she could turn with the candlestick and keep the ghost from killing her with a swipe through his center mass. She squealed in delight at having bested him while Dean wasted no time in laying down an arched salt line by the door so he could get out of the room without putting the sitters and children at risk. After the salt was laid down he hurried over to do his best to calm Elliott and Lizzie and keep from falling apart himself, asking Becky and the other girl again and again if they were all right. Having to worry about keeping his two babies alive without being able to stay in the room with them made hunting down a trio of psychotic spirits considerably more frightening, but he ultimately had no choice and needed to leave them in the sitters’ care.

Becky seemed a bit too enthused about the idea that there were multiple murdering ghosts in the building but promised Dean that she would not break the salt line and she would defend Sam’s children with her life. The zeal with which she made the statement should have been more of a comfort, but the omega didn’t have a lot of time to dwell on just how creepy she was when he still needed to get the names of the dead boys from their room so Sam could salt and burn them. He swapped the poker and the candlestick with Becky and headed back out into the hall, only a small amount of salt left in the bag, and dug into the small money pouch at his waist to grab his keycard.

The boys came after him relentlessly, sensing that he planned to get rid of them and seemed to know how to do it, trading off assaults as he made his way to the second floor. Dean was lucky it took them longer to materialize than it did to take them out one after the other, and that they didn’t stagger their attacks better to keep him constantly on the defense. Still, he was sprinting by the time he got to their room and barely managed to keep the arched salt intact as he burst through the door to get the shotgun and rock salt shells. The three boys were looming in the hallway outside, the shortest right up to the salt line as Dean dug through the duffel to find the roster.

“So what’s the deal with you guys, huh?” he asked as he came up empty and started going through Sam’s drawers. “Did a game a Cowboys and Indians get out of hand? You ended up scalping Miss Gore’s son and she killed you? And ever since she’s been keeping you in check? Something like that?”

“We were just having fun,” protested the tallest of the boys, his hair blond and eyes dark as he glared through to Dean’s soul.

“Sure kid,” Dean agreed, locating the roster half under the couch. He rushed to the window, smashing through it with several hits from the butt of the shotgun then covering the broken glass at the sill with a pillow so he could lean out into the dark and shout, “ _Sam_!”

“You’re not going to spoil our fun,” the shortest boy growled before the three of them phased into nothingness while Dean continued to shout for his mate.

It took about a minute for Sam to come running around from the other side of the building so Dean could toss the roster down to him, as well as extra rock salt shells. He told the alpha to hurry, that he was sure there were still people wandering around the hotel he hadn’t gotten to safety, and went back for his EMF meter as Sam took off for the graveyard. He could hear screaming before he even made it out of the room, the lights in the whole building flickering as he kept the meter out to follow the trail of the ghosts, shotgun tucked against his side so he could shoot from the hip if necessary. The entire hallway was freezing, leading Dean to wonder if there were other spirits trapped here simply by virtue of the building’s rather tragic history of being an orphanage, though it was definitely something they could worry about later. At the moment he needed to find out who was calling for help and why.

The answer to his question was about the worst thing he could have imagined in this scenario. He could hear people running through the halls screaming as they tried to get to their rooms. There was a small group at the front door to the hotel fighting to get out and trying to break the glass, and at Dean’s barked order to get to the dining room where it was safe, they told him some of the parents had panicked and made a run for it to get their children, breaking the salt line and letting the ghosts into the room. Dean demanded they come along anyway, getting them clustered in behind him as they made their way back to the rest of the guests. They nearly made a run for it again, as people were bleeding out everywhere from wounds to the stomach, back, and throat, but Dean insisted the dining room would be the safest place for them. It was a hard sell when numerous guests had been scalped, some of them still alive, and the two of the ghosts doing all the damage were still in the room. It explained why there were shrieks coming from other sections of the first floor as well - there was a ghost hunting down all the idiots who’d left the safety of the dining room. Dean shot both ghosts with his double barrel, shouting for someone to re-salt the door, before taking off towards the other cries in the building; the ones that were coming from the direction of the makeshift nursery where he’d left Becky with the fire iron.

There was so much blood the entire hallway reeked of death as Dean stepped carefully over the bodies of the couples who had tried to get to their children, all of them dead or dying. He felt like Wendy in _The Shining_ , the walls dripping red from the arterial spray. One of the omegas who helped watch Lizzie and Elliott during Dean’s last match was trapped under the body of her dead alpha, who had clearly been trying to protect her, as she rapidly expired from a neck wound, gurgling at the hunter as he passed. He wanted to stay and comfort her, knowing by the pool of blood already under her that she wasn’t long for this world, but there was still screaming coming from the room with the children in it and the lights were going crazy. He couldn’t take the chance that the ghosts had gotten into the conference room with only Adam’s weird ex-roommate to defend them.

A beta mother had made it into the room, disrupting the salt line before being stabbed through the base of the spine by one of the dark haired spirits, and most of the children had fled with a babysitter who was praying she could lead them to safety. Becky was still there with Elliott strapped to her, poker held out in front of her like a sword to fend off the little boy advancing on them, the third sitter holding Lizzie and cowering behind her. Dean was turning the corner into the doorway just as a second boy stabbed the sitter holding Lizzie in the back of the leg and she crumpled, dropping the little girl and ending up with the ghost looming over top of both of them. Lizzie’s right leg made a terrible snapping sound and she shrieked, Dean firing at the ghost in sheer panic. Elliott was crying hysterically as the omega struggled to reload the shotgun with trembling hands, and Becky shouted, “Dean!” a split second before he was tackled to the ground and found himself struggling to hold back a little boy with a knife who was trying to scalp him. Becky was too busy swinging the fire iron at the other two ghosts to provide him any assistance, when suddenly all three boys vanished in fire spouts and screaming, the temperature in the room returning to normal.

Dean gasped for breath, checking his forehead for cuts before rolling over to tend to his daughter, who was crying so badly her face was bright red and it looked like she was about to hyperventilate her way into passing out. Elliott was beside himself in sympathy, screeching as the omega got Lizzie up off the floor to check her for injuries and sent her into even higher pitched caterwauling when he felt her leg. He was fairly certain it was broken with how violently she reacted to his palpating her shin and couldn’t hold back the frantic tears that sprang out of him at the knowledge that one of his kids had gotten hurt because of a case.

“It’s okay, you’re okay, you’ll be fine,” he babbled over and over as he fought to get both himself and her calmed down, Elliott continuing to sob. “Becky, thank you for…”

He stopped as he looked up at the beta holding his son and saw her eyes roll over white before he was thrown back into the wall and pinned there, Lizzie left behind on the floor, Becky’s face lighting up with a broad smile.

“Hi Dean!” she exclaimed, moving towards him with a single finger pointing up to keep him where he was. “I missed you! Did you miss me?”

“Lilith…” the omega choked, his chest compressed like an elephant was sitting on him.

“You remember me!” She looked positively thrilled, stepping past Lizzie and twisting her free hand to snap the neck of the sitter with the stab to her leg. “I was starting to get worried you’d forgotten our little talk. You weren’t doing very well the last time I saw you. I thought you were going to get your dad and Sam back in fighting shape.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve been kind of distracted,” Dean told her, looking from Elliott over her shoulder to the little girl on the floor. “It’s okay baby, I’m here.”

“I know. Isn’t Azazel just the _worst_? You can see why I want to get rid of him.” How the first demon Lucifer created managed to sound like a gossipy middle-schooler Dean wasn’t quite sure, but she moved to stand right up against him and crane her neck to look up. “But you’ve been back with Sam for a while now. Why is he still hanging around that frustrating bunker none of us can get into when he should be out helping John take out my nemesis?”

“Why do you care so much about Azazel trying to take over?” Dean countered, and she scowled.

“He wants to replace my father,” she snapped. “There can be only one Lucifer.”

“When did this become _Highlander_?” he demanded just as he heard Sam shouting, “ _Dean_!”

“Oh yay!” The demon clapped her hands and the pressure on Dean’s chest let up some. “This should be super fun!”

The alpha appeared in the doorway moments later, terror masking his face at the sound of the kids yowling. He froze at the sight of his mate against the wall, lifting the shotgun to blast two rounds of rock salt into the demon’s back. She flinched but didn’t seem terribly hurt, casting a glare at him over her shoulder.

“Ow,” she said, turning fully to him so he would see his son strapped to her. “That wasn’t very nice, Sam.”

“Who are you?” Sam growled, his eyes immediately shining red with a prominent black ring around the outer edge of the iris.

“I’m your boss, honey,” she replied, tsking at the snarl that rumbled out of him. She slowly smoothed Elliott’s hair, letting her hand rest at the back of his neck to squeeze just a little. “Everyone really should calm down.”

“Get your hands off my son, you bitch!” Dean shouted, and with a series of flicks of her wrist he was slammed back into the wall repeatedly until he passed out while Sam was screaming for her to stop. She slammed Dean three more times for good measure before allowing him to crumple to the floor.

“There.” She threw her bright smile Sam’s way. “That’s much better. I do like Dean, but he has this silly mama bear tendency that is just - woo! Tedious to deal with.”

“What is it you want?” he asked through clenched teeth, trying to lock down the demon blood that was about to overtake him. He couldn’t risk losing control when she had Elliott in a harness, Dean was unconscious, and there was clearly something very wrong with Lizzie.

“For you to do your job, silly goose!” She tightened her hold on Elliott’s neck, smiling when Sam’s eyes rolled full over black. “You know, the one Ruby recruited you to do.”

“You’re Lilith,” Sam hissed, feeling a dark power course through his veins, making his hands and feet tingle.

“In the borrowed flesh.”

“How did you get in here?”

“What, you think a couple of elementary school aged ghosts can keep _me_ out?” She laughed outright at the absurdity of his presumption, thinking for a second that Ruby had definitely misjudged Sam’s level of intelligence. “It took an awfully long time for those little boys to start attacking and Dean to lay down some salt lines. All I had to do was sneak in after dinner and just wait until all the killing and screaming started. But now that’s all over and you and I can talk!”

“What exactly do you want to talk about?”

“Making sure you keep your eyes on the prize. You’ve been dragging your feet for a long time, Sam, and Azazel’s going to need you to open the gate soon. I just want to be sure we’re still on the same page when it comes to you killing him instead of helping him.”

“He poisoned me. He ruined my mate’s life. Pretty sure I don’t have any incentives to help him.”

“Okay then!” Her smile was back and she moved her hand to stroke Elliott’s hair again. “As long as you stay focused I won’t have to do any micromanaging or take disciplinary action. I know neither of us want that. It was very nice meeting you, Sam!”

Becky’s head was thrown back as a long column of black smoke burst out of her mouth and swirled around the room before vanishing though an air conditioning vent. The beta collapsed, unconscious but alive, and Sam caught her quickly before she fell on top of Elliott. He could tell his eyes weren’t rolling back over from black to hazel as he tried and failed to suppress the enraged demon blood. He wanted to crush Becky’s windpipe, even as he knew being possessed was in no way her fault, and focused on getting his son unhooked from her, seeing what was wrong with Lizzie, and trying to wake Dean. With all the dead bodies strewn about the hotel they needed to get out of there fast, before the authorities started showing up, and clearly Lizzie at least had to be seen by a doctor. The Hell-him whispered that he could always just kill her and blame it on Lilith, and then Dean would have to devote all his time and attention to Elliott. Exactly how tempting that thought was brought him crashing back to reality, and he was surprised to find how difficult it was to formulate an escape plan when it was all he could do not to be sick. This definitely was not the simple salt and burn they’d expected.


	115. He's Forgetting Things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Don't get multiple concussions in a row, kids.

Dean wouldn’t wake up. Sam wasn’t entirely surprised, given how much blood there was at the back of the omega’s head. He would moan and flutter his eyes and look at Sam as the alpha desperately tried to will his mate out of unconsciousness, but his eyes never stayed open and he didn’t seem to _see_ Sam even in his few seconds of wakefulness, and he sure as hell wasn’t aware of his wailing children or the fact that the hotel was now filled with dead convention goers. Fortunately he just smelled like he was injured and not like he was dying, not that it made the situation that much better.

Sam was having a hard time thinking when faced with getting Dean and Lizzie out of the room with one arm now occupied holding Elliott to his chest and the demon blood roaring through his veins. The alpha couldn’t seem to concentrate on anything other than adding Lilith to his list of high ranking demons to kill so he could take over Hell and sit on his promised throne, Dean safely at his side. It only made sense if Azazel didn’t really want to run things that he wasn’t actually necessary to have around, and it would be easier for Sam as King not to have to answer to anyone. With the way the First Demon just tossed Dean around she obviously would not respect the omega as his consort, so she was just going to have to go, too. The only question was whether the Colt would work on her as well as Yellow Eyes or if he’d have to find some other way to put her down for good.

Something deep within his core was recoiling at the idea of giving himself over so easily to the darkness twisting his thoughts and his insides, and he tried waking Dean up again so his mate could pull him out from under the deep, black water where his sanity and reason were drowning. He needed to get the omega and their daughter to a hospital, but could tell his eyes hadn’t returned to normal by the way everything he looked at was cast in semi-shadow, and he needed to make sure no one asked questions about what happened to them outside of the ghost attack. The only thing he could think to do was buy himself some time by packing up their room and hope Dean was awake ( _and still alive_ ) by the time he got back so he could help Sam regain control over himself from the increasing demands of the monster that was living and breathing inside him.

Sam managed to convince the hotel manager, who had somehow survived the night, to get in touch with Gwen Campbell at the FDH and let her know everything that happened before he called the police. She’d get a team of hunters out to check the area and make sure not only were there no more ghosts from the orphanage, but that none of the people who’d been killed at the convention “lingered.” He’s gotten the kids and the bags into the truck before he even broached the subject, as it took that long for his eyes to return to normal, and then went back to the conference room for Dean.

The alpha couldn’t decide what scared him more; the obvious injury to Lizzie’s leg ( _he was positive she’d broken it_ ) or the fact that he still couldn’t wake his mate. At least the omega’s breathing was steady and the blood was starting to clot, even if his head lolled against Sam’s shoulder while the larger man carried him out to the truck. Either Lizzie or Dean’s condition could land them in the hospital after the ER visit they clearly wouldn’t be able to avoid ( _in all likelihood both would_ ), and no matter how confident they were now that Kevin’s IDs would hold up, an omega and a pup not even a year old showing up together with serious injuries could land them in hot water fairly quickly.

He declined the offer of an ambulance ride when the manager called 911, saying there were other victims who needed it more and he would rather keep his family together and drive his injured mate and child himself. In reality he was terrified that if he sent Dean and Lizzie off with EMS there would be police waiting for them at the hospital. He prayed the town’s relatively small population and location in the Ozarks would work in their favor at keeping them under the radar, and got Adam on the phone as he drove them to Branson Health to let him know what had happened and that he might need help getting Dean and Lizzie out of the state quickly.

Pulling up to admittance was like the worst case of deja vu he’d yet experienced, including all the things that reminded him of Shreveport. He’d hoped they were done with the sterile smell, industrial carpeting in the entry, bright lights, and white walls of healthcare facilities for the foreseeable future, and every terrible thing that had happened to Dean to land him in a hospital bed came flooding back. He knew he probably should have relented and let the manager call them an ambulance, but he just couldn’t stand the thought of letting Dean and Lizzie go ahead without him and Elliott or having them all ride together and being stuck at the hospital without a vehicle until Adam showed up the next morning. Even though logically he knew the odds were slim his mate and their daughter would be going anywhere before Adam could make the nearly eight hour drive, just the idea of being trapped in the hospital with no means of escape for the four of them was making it hard for him to breathe.

The ER attendants fortunately bought the story of Dean getting pushed down the stairs by a ghost while holding their daughter, due in no small part to Sam’s genuinely distraught state and the fact that he had another infant with him who was in perfect health, if very upset. Calls were already coming in that a large number of casualties were on their way from The Pineview Hotel after some kind of major supernatural event so it didn’t seem at all outside the realm of possibility. Helping to sell the idea were both Dean and his mate showing up in costume, which lead to a bit of frustration in getting Dean disrobed so they could take care of him as there was no way to cut the chain mail shirt off.

The attending nurses did mention their concerns about the condition of the omega’s back to the physician once they had his torso exposed, but Dean chose that moment to kind of sort of wake up and try to find his children and his mate. Sam rushing over to insist that they were all there and Dean shouldn’t try to move because he’d really hurt his head, unable to stop caressing the omega, went a long way to convincing the doctor that he was telling the truth when he explained Dean was attacked by the same ghost the day before, and that he’d tried to get his mate to go to the hospital to be checked out then, only they were on vacation and the omega was stubborn. Dean wasn’t able to stay awake for very long before his eyes just felt too heavy to keep open, though by that point the hospital staff weren’t about to try to separate him from Sam.

Sam didn’t have a choice but to leave Dean when they had to get Lizzie an x-ray and Dean an MRI. The hospital was planning to keep the two of them in the same room so at least the alpha wasn’t put in a position of choosing between who to stay with, but he couldn’t go in with Dean for the MRI and Lizzie needed him more anyway. The little girl hadn’t stopped crying yet, which meant that Elliott hadn’t stopped crying either, and Sam was fairly certain everyone in the ER was planning to do a jig when the two howling infants finally left the area.

Lizzie's leg was definitely broken, though at least the doctors didn't think surgery was necessary. Dean was already set up in a room in the omega wing when they'd gotten the little girl's leg set in a pink cast, the results of his scan showing two skull fractures and some brain swelling. Lizzie would be able to go home in the morning but they insisted on keeping Dean for a few days to make sure he woke up and didn’t have any complications. Two cribs were moved into the omega's room so Sam and Elliott could stay with him and Lizzie, it obviously being in the hospital’s best interest to appease Dean's agitated mate. Rooming them together had the added benefit of freeing up badly needed space, as the small hospital was quickly becoming overwhelmed by the influx of injured convention attendees.

Getting Elliott to sleep was much easier when Lizzie was already out from a very mild sedative that Sam had come close to refusing, having visions of Dean waking up in the morning to find the little girl had died because of an incorrect dosage of medication and deciding he had to stop thinking in terms of the worst case scenario or he was going to be up all night. Once the doctors had convinced him that she would be closely monitored and that they would never recommend it if she weren’t under medical supervision, he felt slightly more confident that the staff didn’t want to kill their eldest child and just wanted her to be able to rest comfortably. He even considered asking for some sedatives himself as he kicked off his shoes and stripped down to his boxers before crawling under the sheet and blanket on the too-small hospital bed beside his mate, fully expecting sleep to elude him all night. In reality, the stress of the evening had worn him out, and once his adrenaline really stopped spiking it took him no time at all to pass out pressed up against Dean’s side.

By the time daylight rolled around the omega was in a semi-conscious state where he was opening his eyes and responding to stimuli but couldn’t answer questions and didn’t know where or who he was. That the doctor didn’t seem too concerned about it had Sam wanting to climb the walls. Dean not knowing his own name, his mate, or their kids seemed to be a pretty big deal to the alpha, even if the doctor insisted it wasn’t unusual in cases like Dean’s where there was significant swelling on the brain.

When Adam arrived shortly after nine to check Lizzie out of the hospital, switch vehicles, and drive both the kids back to Lebanon with a stop in Kansas City, it left Sam with nothing to do but worry over the condition of his mate and kick himself for not letting EMS bring Dean in, which was not helpful when it came to getting a grip on his darker thoughts. For all he knew he’d made Dean’s injuries worse and was directly responsible for why he wasn’t waking up. Once again, he’d left the omega by himself and Dean had landed in the hospital. The safety of the throne of Hell was starting to look very appealing indeed.

Dean wasn’t really awake the next day either, when the FDH started making the rounds of the hospital to interview all the surviving victims of the ghost attack. The hospital was wisely allowing Sam to continue staying with him, so he was there when Gwen knocked on the door and came inside with a steno pad in hand, checking quickly behind her to make sure none of the other hunters were coming their way before clicking the lock behind her. She’d suspected the Sam Wesson who told the hotel manager to call him was her cousin based on the beta’s description of the tall, muscular alpha with the pretty male omega mate, demanding to know whether he was behind the suspected demon attack in St. Louis earlier in the week when four alphas castrated themselves. The surveillance footage was grainy and had a line running through it over the face of the man who had been in conversation with the victims before they mutilated their genitals, but she thought she recognized Sam’s build and she definitely recognized Dean from earlier in the evening.

Sam swore to her all he did was talk to the guys and he had no idea they’d do what they did. Three of them had succumbed to blood loss, the fourth too terrified to give a description of the man that had been at their table. If he thought ever so slightly while they were talking that she ought to believe everything he said and keep her suspicions to herself it wasn’t _really_ because he meant to control her. It was more a hope she was still willing to run interference for him and his mate after all the things their family had put Dean through, and if it had the side effect of influencing her thoughts, well, he couldn’t help that. She agreed to bury the tape for Dean’s sake, assuring him she had his back before hurrying back out into the hall while he curled back up around his mate and begged him to come back and take Sam’s mind off of Lilith and Azazel and how difficult it was becoming to keep the demon blood restrained.

Their third night in the hospital Sam dreamt he was running through an endless field of black alfalfa that had grown up to his waist, hurrying to reach a red sun setting in an orange sky before the day was lost. A black forest rose up behind him, the sound of crows echoing at his back, and as he neared the horizon the entire murder followed out of the trees, leaving them barren sticks in the dying light, like they’d been burned to husks by the fiery sky. He dove into the cover of the grass as the birds swooped down at him, covering his head with his hands as they tried to peck out his eyes and his ears, calling for his mate and getting no response. The skin on the backs of his hands split under their beaks, and after a few desperate moments hoping they’d fly back to their perches on the empty branches he sprang to his feet only to realize he was back where he started in the field. It went on endlessly like this, Sam running for the horizon, the crows pursuing him from the forest, diving into the grass to avoid them, each time Sam getting just a little closer to the small house that had appeared on the horizon but never reaching it. Every time he ran, screaming, “ _Dean_!” he got no answer other than the crows.

Dean was in the middle of his own nightmare, having realized it had been a mistake to run with the kids to the utility room, even if it did have one of the thickest doors in the bunker, as the furnace was on full blast and it was far too warm in there for the three of them. There was also very little he could use as a weapon since he insisted that all tools be returned to the garage after use and he wanted to keep this area clear of clutter given the limited square footage there was. He would have expected back in the days when this place was built for the architects to make sure there was enough room to get in there and fix or replace things, but considering the mechanics were likely enchanted like half of the rest of the place it probably didn’t seem to be a big deal at the time. Now with Elliott strapped to his chest and Lizzie clutched to his side as all three of them started to overheat it was a very, very big deal.

Both kids were screaming as Dean looked for somewhere safe to put them down so he could figure out how to shut down the furnace and the boiler to get them some relief, and he did his best to calm and shush them. He didn’t think Sam knew where he’d run to, though it was only a matter of time before he tracked them down by scent, and he didn’t want the screaming to draw him in. The omega hadn’t expected an argument about Sam going off to hunt Azazel again to set him off, but when he saw his mate’s eyes turn solid black and his mate tried using alpha commands to get him to stop his retreat it was like he was back in the bathroom in Fort Wayne, only this time he had lamps and books and chairs to throw at the alpha to buy himself a head start to get the kids from their room. He was glad Sam spent so many hours in the library with Sinclair and Henry, because it meant Dean knew the bunker better and how to lead Sam down into the lower levels before doubling back for Lizzie and Elliott.

Like most alphas, Sam underestimated Dean’s speed, something the omega knew he would do, especially when he was having some kind of violent episode like this. His canines were on full display as he raced after the smaller man, who had an easier time navigating the corners of the hallways despite Sam screaming for Dean to come back right this second or he was going to be so very sorry. Dean had read somewhere that when evading a large predator it was best to run in a zigzagging line because the predator’s size and weight would work against them, and while the omega was large himself he was definitely willing to use anything to his advantage that he could to get away from his snarling mate.

Except now he was trapped in the utility room because Sam had guessed he’d make a break for the garage and cut him off, and just as he got the kids down in a corner the alpha threw himself against the door, filling the room with the echo of denting metal.

“ _Little pig, little pig, let me come in_ ,” he growled, his voice more animal than human as he connected with the door again and the babies shrieked.

“You need to calm down, Sam!” Dean shouted, using the hem of his tee shirt to try to turn the knob on the furnace that would lower the output and finding it thoroughly frozen in place by age.

“ _I just want to talk to you Dean_.” The door hinges creaked under Sam’s continued assault, Lizzie and Elliott bawling so loudly it was hard to hear anything else. “ _Come out so we can talk_.”

“How about you calm down first?” Dean suggested right before the door gave and Sam came barreling into the room, blood on his forehead and his shirt torn from the angle he’d first rammed the metal at, his eyes still shiny black and saliva dripping from his teeth as he panted.

Dean spotted a leftover length of duct and dove for it as Sam launched himself at his mate, teeth sinking into the nape of the omega’s neck as Sam tackled him to the floor. Dean’s shouts sent the kids into even higher pitched yelping as he got the duct in hand and did his best to roll over and hit Sam in the head with it. He didn’t have much luck with Sam’s teeth still deep in his neck, feeling the warmth of his own blood pooling beneath him as the alpha pulled back just long enough to sink his canines into the omega’s skull.

Dean woke with a jolt, gasping, hearing a loud and hectic beeping that he recognized after a few seconds as a heart rate monitor. Strangely, it seemed to be beeping in time with the frantic way his heart was pounding as his brain processed the industrial cleaning smell around him and the feel of a scratchy hospital gown, not to mention the arm and leg thrown over him, pinning him down to the uncomfortable bed under flimsy sheets. Well, at least it made sense why he had actually felt overheated in his dream, what with Sam half sprawled across him, calling his name and twitching in his sleep - a situation that didn’t in all honesty make him feel calmer. He tried to push himself out from underneath his behemoth of a mate, struggling to control his breathing, but the alpha had awakened seconds after Dean and was already trying to soothe him. The omega had no idea what was going on or why he was in a hospital, though it was obvious that whatever had happened was severe enough for Sam to be filling the room with the twin smells of relief and hysteria.

“I’ve got you,” Sam assured him, immediately covering Dean in kisses as he completely misinterpreted the sharp spike of fear pulsing out of his mate and holding him closer instead of letting him go. “Jesus, Dean, thank god. You had me so worried.”

Dean’s forebrain thought that was about the most ludicrous thing he’d ever heard, still replaying the images from what he realized now was a very lucid dream. His hindbrain, however, insisted he take the comfort his alpha was offering, even if he had no idea why he wanted it so badly. Something must have happened to him, since he was now very aware that he wasn’t imagining things and was indeed the last place he ever wanted to be. He had no clue why they were there, though it was obviously because of him if the wires and I.V. were anything to go by. Clearly it was bad, or Sam never would have brought him to a hospital and certainly wouldn’t be clinging to him this way.

“I don’t…” His tongue felt thick and trying to figure out what he wanted to say made his head hurt. So did keeping his eyes open in the morning light cutting through the blinds. “What’s going on?”

“I’ve been waiting for you to wake up for the last two days,” the alpha said, holding him down when he tried to get out of bed. “Don’t try to sit up, I’m going to call the nurse.”

“Why’d you bring me to a hospital?” Dean demanded without any real anger behind it while Sam was pushing the call button. Everything was fuzzier than it should have been and Dean was starting to become concerned. “I was pretty sure we agreed on the no more hospitals unless someone’s missing a body part rule.”

“You mean you being unconscious for two days isn’t enough?” Sam murmured, nuzzling his cheek and still reeking of dread. “You have a couple of skull fractures and some brain swelling. They’re not open or depressed but still, you need to just relax.” Well, that explained why Sam was being so delicate about finger combing his hair. “They’re probably going to want to keep you a couple more days for observation.”

That got Dean’s attention, no matter how bad the pounding at the base of his skull was. He forced his eyes open so he could look up at Sam, who was very plainly scared shitless. His scent was pungent with barely controlled panic, skin unusually pale, and eyes glued to Dean’s face. Dean ignored the lingering fear from the dream that was already starting to fade and leaned into the alpha’s hold, too tired and hurting too much to be able to care about being in a hospital bed.

“Did you try kissing me to wake me up?” he asked, earning a huffed laugh in response to him even thinking about cracking jokes. “Hey, it works for my brother.”

“Don’t,” Sam ordered quietly, gently tipping Dean’s face away so he could better scent him. He was silent for a long time, pressing into the omega’s side and breathing deeply against his skin. “Please don’t, Dean.”

“Okay,” Dean murmured at length, a purr vibrating in his chest at his mate’s continuing soft caresses. “Where are the kids?”

“Home. Adam came and got them.”

“Are we just gonna cuddle all day or can you tell me what happened? Cuz the last thing I remember is packing up the truck.”

“Wow. Really?” Dean hummed as Sam stroked his face while trying not to freak out at his mate having lost the entire week. “That’s…that’s not a big deal. The doctor said you might have some memory loss at first but it should come back to you eventually.”

The omega tended to believe him, as something was needling Dean at the back of his very painful brain, trying to bubble up to the surface of his newly returned consciousness. It was slippery and wouldn't stay no matter how hard he tried to hold it, despite feeling all the way down to his bones that it was important. After a few minutes of letting Sam pamper him a thought flashed quickly and clearly enough for him to grasp it and he asked, his heart rate picking up again, “Is Hannah okay?”

“What?” Sam said, thoroughly confused, which made Dean feel a little better about the idea of a sick dog that was now hammering him relentlessly and that it was not the Pyr. “She’s fine. Why wouldn’t she be?”

“I don’t know…” He leaned back heavily against the pillow and threw an arm over his eyes to try to block out the light. He probably looked like some leading lady from the 1930s and didn’t give a damn. He’d ask Sam to get him his sunglasses if he thought there was any chance of the alpha leaving his side in the near future, or that he’d _want_ the alpha to leave his side, which at the moment seemed unlikely. “When is she due for her rabies shot? She’s okay now that we basically live in the woods, right?”

“Yes, I promise, she’s fine.”

“Why do I keep thinking she’s rabid?”

“Oh!” Dean could tell by the tone of Sam’s voice that he’d finally gotten his mate to smile, and he peeked up at him in spite of the pain opening his eyes caused. “We watched _Cujo_.”

“Yeah?” Dean said, his head still pounding but his eyes wide with delight nonetheless. “I’ve wanted to watch that for forever. Did I like it?”

“No,” Sam told him firmly. “I kind of hope you never remember that part of the last couple of days. There will be no Dee Wallace movies in our house.”

Dean didn’t like the sound of that at all, especially when the little buzzing at the back of his brain was insisting the sick dog was _not_ Cujo, that it was something closer to the bunker, that he’d been warned specifically about it by…someone. He was fully planning to press the issue when a white haired, rosy cheeked beta nurse who looked like someone’s grandmother came in, smiling at finding Dean awake.

The way she asked Sam to move so she could check on her patient, assuring him she’d only be a minute and he could climb right back in bed with his mate made the omega very certain this sort of thing had been an issue while he was out. For some reason he felt like Sam had been having trouble breathing for the past two days, and on top of that he was genuinely afraid to have Sam that far from him, like something bad was going to happen to him if he wasn’t within arm’s reach of the alpha. He didn’t experience that very often and it made him wonder if he really wanted to know what he had forgotten or if ignorance truly was bliss.

Sam was practically quivering as he waited for the nurse to finish taking Dean’s vitals and poking and prodding him so he could climb back in bed with his mate. He didn’t even bother to put on pants, regardless of his suitcase being right there on the visitor’s chair or the door being open so passersby could see him standing there in his boxer briefs. Keeping the demon blood from swelling up to take control of him had been an exhausting battle the last two days, particularly when people kept coming in to assess Dean’s condition and no one could give the alpha any idea of when his mate might wake up or what state he would be in when he did. He’d been adrift since Adam and Jo showed up and took the kids home, and the longer it took for the nurse to check Dean out the more agitated Sam felt.

The alpha was doing a lousy job of keeping his anxiety from leaking through their bond, which was making Dean’s head feel considerably worse as the nurse told him it was good to see him up and left to get the doctor. The omega was surprised given how much pain he was in that they’d allowed Sam to stay with him while he was unconscious, though maybe now that they were mated Sam had a lot more rights and couldn’t be so easily separated from him or relegated to a chair at his bedside. Sam looked like his skin was crawling as he waited for the doctor to come in, fidgeting and shifting from one foot to the other, every move he made leading Dean to worry that whatever he couldn’t remember at the moment was serious. He extended his fingers and pulled when he felt Sam’s hand slide across them, drawing his mate up against his side again, and sighing as the alpha scented him in a way he hadn’t since…damn, outside Adam’s mom’s house in Minnesota. While more than a little disquieted by the tension flowing steadily out of Sam, the omega had to admit it was awfully nice to be coddled this way, no matter the reason for it. Dean very much hoped the doctor could do whatever they needed to do around his mate so Sam and his orangutan arms would be able to stay right where they were.

A very attractive blonde alpha in her mid forties arrived before long, one hand in the pocket of her white lab coat and the other holding a clipboard. She smiled as she looked at Dean and said, “Well. Look who’s up! How are you feeling omega?”

“I’ve told you, Dr. Visyak,” Sam snapped, barely controlling the growl that wanted to fill the room. “My mate’s name is Dean.”

“It doesn’t matter, Sammy,” Dean insisted, just wanting to get whatever the doctor was going to do over with so she could close the fucking blinds and leave them alone. “I don’t feel good enough to care what she calls me.”

“How badly does your head hurt?” she asked, coming over to gently pull his arm away from his eyes so she could check his pupils. At least she was being cordial as she had him sit up so she could check his breathing and he winced, Sam rising next to him so Dean could lean into him rather than stay upright wholly under his own power. “On a scale of one to ten?”

“About a three,” Dean replied, and Sam hastened to add, “That’s about an eight for a normal person. He has a very high pain threshold.”

“Well, we’ll get you something for that.” She smiled at him genuinely, even if her expression was one that might be more appropriate if directed towards a child. “You seem to be having some trouble seeing.”

“No, it’s just the light is really bright.”

“All right, I’ll let the nurses know to leave the lights off in here when they aren’t checking in on you.” She made a few notes on her chart, lines furrowing her brow as she told him, “I’m concerned about this photosensitivity. Is that the only sense that’s bothering you? Are sounds and smells all right?”

“Yeah, it’s just the lights.”

“We’ll get you scheduled for an MRI sometime today and see if we can figure out why that is. Do you know what day it is?”

“I know it _was_ Saturday.”

“What was the date?”

“August 26th, 2006. Why, what’s today’s date?”

“September 4th, 2006.” Dean’s eyes went wide for a moment before he had to close them, turning his face into Sam’s neck to block out the light. “Don’t worry, as I’ve told your alpha these things often happen with this type of injury. I expect you’ll begin to recall the last week as your concussion and fractures heal. Don’t try to force anything, just let it come back on its own.” Dean nodded, eyes still shut against his mate’s skin, as Sam massaged the nape of his neck. “Any other complaints besides the headache and the overhead lights?”

“I’m starving,” Dean said, and she chuckled.

“Well, we’ll get you something to eat then,” she assured him. “One last question before I head out. Now that we’ve got you awake I need to know if you’d prefer our nurses continue to apply your scar cream or if you’d rather have you mate handle it for you. He’s been rather vocal in his objections to having others working with your channel without your consent but it’s hospital policy and I know it can be awkward for some alphas.”

That had Dean’s eyes wide again as he turned to her and instinctively pushed himself up against Sam. The alpha stroked his hair and pressed his lips softly behind Dean’s ear, running his other hand up and down his mate’s arm as his pulse began to race, sending the monitor wild. The idea of someone “working with his channel” while he was unconscious, even if it was a member of the hospital staff and Sam was with him, had him feeling queasy.

“I can handle it,” Sam replied firmly, squeezing Dean in tighter to his chest. The omega was starting to think _Cujo_ wasn’t the only thing he’d be better off not remembering from the past week. Sam seemed to know exactly what was going on in his head, because he said quietly, “The scars from Elliott are pretty bad. We’ll talk about it later though, okay?”

That was absolutely okay with Dean, who felt completely defiled and had the sense it was because of more happening than just the nurses doing something with some cream in relation to the scars he knew were internal and deep, though apparently worse than he’d imagined. The memory of brick against his face and the smell of urine hit him like a punch as the doctor was saying something about him looking to be in good shape, all things considered, and that they were going to keep him a couple more days before heading out and flicking the lights off behind her. Sam got them laid back down, nuzzling and kissing him as he joked that they should think of this like a honeymoon, where they got to lay in bed all day while people brought them food. It worked to loosen the tightness in Dean’s chest some, and he readily gave in to his mate snuggling him as they waited for the nurse to return with the promised painkillers for his head.

Once the nurse had come and gone and the throbbing in Dean’s skull began to dissipate, he found himself in a completely unexpected though not unwelcome make out session with his mate. Sam’s touches bordered on inappropriate for the setting, leading Dean to suspect the alpha was trying to overwhelm him with pheromones to help him relax and he couldn’t be bothered to care. Between his empty stomach and the exhaustion from his pounding head he didn’t begin to have the physical or emotional reserves to stiff-upper-lip his way through this situation like he otherwise would, and anyway his mate plainly needed to be close to him like this. The omega was not going to object to lazily necking in a hospital bed when he couldn’t shake the feeling that he might be the one with a couple of skull fractures, but there was something much worse going on with Sam. He just didn’t remember what.  


	116. Makes You Feel Better, Big Foot's a Hoax

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Getting out of the hospital and getting home are two completely different things.

It was three more nights under supervision before the doctor decided to release Dean, and it was a damn good thing she did since Sam was about to sign him out against medical advice or sneak him out under a sheet if he had to. The omega was still experiencing intermittent headaches, the light was not his friend, and almost nothing of the past week had come back to him ( _he vaguely remembered Sam and Lizzie on a slide at a park_ ), but he’d had it with hospital gowns and hospital food and a complete lack of privacy. The nurse had managed to walk in on them all three times Sam was applying Dean’s scar cream, which undoubtedly looked much sexier than it was, and though Dean wasn’t shy when it came to things like sex, what they were doing definitely wasn’t sex, and he was definitely humiliated.

Sam very briefly explained to him what was going on with the scarring in his channel, and while he sensed he’d reacted badly to the news when he got it initially, it didn’t seem like something insurmountable. However, he was pretty sure he wasn’t melting down about it because Sam had sugar coated the situation, but he was okay with that at the moment. He could press his mate on it further once he was in his own bed at home with his kids and his dog and a door they could lock. When Sam told him about the cream versus the surgery Dean thought that the cream would be a much more fun method of fixing his problem, though he was definitely concerned about how long it was going to take. In reality it was just messy and awkward. The sooner they got checked out and back on the road to the bunker the better, so they could at least be messy and awkward without the potential for onlookers wandering in and saying, “Don’t mind me, just keep doing what you’re doing,” before checking Dean’s vitals and pupil dilation while ignoring entirely how violently he blushed at getting caught with two of Sam’s fingers shoved inside him as he grimaced against the discomfort.

They didn’t have the omega’s discharge papers until a little before noon on Thursday, which left Dean grumbling, as they didn’t bring him lunch because he was getting discharged and then they kept him at the hospital through lunch. Sam suggested stopping to eat something before they headed north but Dean just wanted to grab some snacks from a nearby gas station and get going, opting for a later lunch once they got clear of the area. He arched an eyebrow at his mate’s clucking about their first post-hospital meal consisting largely of Cheetos, Twizzlers, and Dr. Pepper as they wove through the aisles of the Conoco, popping a pair of wrap sunglasses on his face before marching wordlessly to the counter with his armload of preservative-filled junk food. Sam heaved a long-suffering sigh and got out his wallet, failing to suppress a smirk when he got a kiss right on the mole by his nose from the blond already tearing open the Twizzlers.

The sugar from the candy and the soda brought on a headache about twenty minutes outside Branson that had Dean curling up against the passenger window with his overshirt pulled off to cover his face, new sunglasses stowed in the glove compartment for safe keeping as he ignored his mate’s “I told you so.” Sam thought he was nuts for wanting to wear two tee shirts since it was supposed to be a very warm day, autumn nowhere near close to setting in fully yet, but he absolutely didn’t mind when he got a peek at Dean’s tummy while he was undressing. Dean wasn’t sure himself why he felt the need to layer. Something at the back of his mind kept pressing him to cover up and make sure one of the shirts he wore belonged to Sam, which led to him finding the stinkiest shirt the alpha had in his duffel from their trip. He knew he probably smelled like he’d forgotten to wear deodorant with how the alpha tended to sweat, and yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that he didn’t smell right and needed to make sure everyone knew he was Sam’s omega and not free for just anyone to touch.

It didn’t take long for the car’s movement to lull Dean to sleep, his consciousness trying and failing to let him drift deep enough to dream, until he finally heard someone say, “Never been with a male om. Can’t wait to see if it’s different,” and jerked awake, his heart pounding against his ribs and sweat drenching the back of Sam’s shirt. He own tee shirt had fallen off of his face and he squinted in the afternoon sunlight at the diner they’d just pulled up to, a high pitched ringing echoing in his ears as he tried to get his bearings. He almost flung himself into the door at the feel of a hand on his shoulder.

“Are you okay?” Sam was asking, blatant concern in his eyes. “Dean?”

“Yeah,” the omega lied, running a hand over his face to try to clear his thoughts. He fought back the urge to slide across the bench seat directly into his very large mate’s arms, not frightened by the voice he heard as much as he was not knowing where the hell he’d heard it. He’d had a couple of not exactly dreams, but flashes of dreams in the hospital that were equally disturbing - one about his cat, the other about being an extra on _The Fellowship of the Rings_ and getting attacked by an overly enthusiastic orc - and each one left him feeling increasingly unsettled at having so much missing time. “Why’d we stop?”

“You didn’t really think we were going to have Cheetos and Twizzlers for lunch, did you?” Dean may have held back from sliding across the seat but Sam showed no such hesitation, scooting over so he could more easily run a hand through his mate’s hair. “You’re sure you’re okay?”

“Said I was,” Dean snapped, immediately leaning in to soften his tone with a kiss that caught the alpha by surprise and had him gasping against his mate’s lips.

Sam was definitely into the idea of letting lunch wait for a bit, his thumbs ghosting along the omega’s jaw as he threaded his fingers through Dean’s hair. Dean allowed himself to be pressed back against the door until he’d forgotten all about the dream, at which point he pushed gently on Sam’s chest to stop him before they needed to move into the back seat. A parking lot in the middle of the day wasn’t exactly the best place to take things up a notch.

“I guess you are okay,” Sam murmured, looking at Dean a little dizzily and willing himself to move back to the driver’s side, adjusting as best he could in his suddenly far too tight jeans.

“Where are we anyway?” Dean asked, deciding he would be all right getting out of Sam’s sweaty tee shirt and switching it out for his own, then digging into the glove compartment for his sunglasses.

“Elwood, Missouri.” He climbed out of the car and hurried around to the passenger side to help Dean straighten, the smaller man wincing as a spike of pain drove through his head from the forehead to base of his skull. Sam slung an arm around his waist to pull him in and breathe deeply against his temple as they headed across the parking lot towards the Out of This World cafe. “It’s just outside of Springfield. Only about an hour away from Branson, you barely got in a cat nap. Apparently it’s the UFO capital of the country. Or so the welcome sign said.”

“UFOs aren’t real, Sam, any more than unicorns,” Dean told him flatly as the alpha dropped his hand from the omega’s waist to link their fingers together.

“I wouldn’t say that. I found a unicorn.”

“Yeah, I fart rainbows and everything.”

Sam chuckled and gave Dean a peck at the apex of one of his perfect cheekbones, pushing open the diner door to let them into the ‘60s space-themed interior, _The Flying Purple People Eater_ welcoming the pair. The decor was a mixture of shiny faux chrome and hard white plastic, the tables all round, undoubtedly to mimic the appearance of flying saucers, the chairs one solid piece that curved to match the tables and looked neither comfortable nor attractive. A long chrome counter swept the length of the restaurant in front of the kitchen, winding like a wave with a line of stools that matched the chairs. The overhead lights alternated between silver orbs closely resembling disco balls and colored spheres that looked like the planets. Perhaps the most tasteful thing in the entire place was the black and white checkered floor, which stood in such stark contrast to everything else the couple didn’t know whether to laugh or run screaming back to the Impala. The mini dresses the waitresses wore and the name badges held in place by pins that looked like upside down vees skirted the look of classic _Star Trek_ just enough that the owner of the establishment was probably able to avoid being sued for copyright infringement.

The hostess station was empty, and since the sign standing next to it clearly instructed them to wait to be seated, Dean took up a place on the bright orange bench seat just inside the door while Sam wandered a few feet away to look at a bulletin board filled with various posters and fliers of the different alien-themed things going on in the town. The alpha could practically feel the pain building in his mate’s head, fully intending to make him take some of the medication they’d been sent home with, which was meant to tide them over until they could get to a pharmacy to fill Dean’s actual prescription, once they were back in the car. It was clear the omega was trying to ignore the pressure building behind his forehead, so Sam decided to follow his lead and not push the issue until they were seated, studying the board intently instead. That was how he noticed the four separate missing persons posters showing a series of smiling young men, all about the same age, who apparently vanished over the course of the last month. The “Missing since” dates were spaced out exactly a week apart, with the last disappearance happening seven days ago.

“What are you looking at?” Dean asked from where he was leaning heavily into the corner where the bench met a partition wall.

“I’m not sure,” Sam said, pulling down the flyers and folding them to fit in his back pocket as he turned to his mate. The sight of the omega trying to curl up on the seat, hand pressed to his forehead, had him hurrying over just as the hostess returned. “Dean!”

“Greetings fellow earthlings, and welcome to Out of This World!” the hostess declared brightly, her smile never faltering even as the two men completely ignored her. “Table for two?”

“Dean…”

“I’m okay, Sammy.” The blond struggled to his feet, using his mate’s shoulder to push himself up, and keeping Sam’s hand in a death grip as the alpha followed closely behind him. “Yes, table for two, please.”

“Right this way!” she chirped, grabbing two menus and bouncing off through the dining room on a pair of shiny silver platform pumps.

“I just need food,” Dean insisted even as he leaned into Sam’s side. “I promise, I’m just hungry and dehydrated.”

“Fine, but we’re done traveling for the day,” Sam said flatly, pressing on when Dean opened his mouth to object. “No, I wanted to stop in Kansas City on the way home and you wanted to drive straight through, so this is how we’re going to compromise.”

“How is stopping before we even get close to Kansas City a compromise?” Dean demanded, though he allowed Sam to steer him to the table the hostess was standing by and gingerly lowered himself into his chair.

“It isn’t. I’m just calling it that so you can tell yourself you didn’t lose the fight.”

“Sam…”

“I’m finding us a hotel in town as soon as we’re done here, and that’s final. They’ve got to have a pharmacy where we can get your prescription filled.”

Dean oh so desperately wanted to continue arguing the point until his mate backed down and agreed to keep driving after lunch. It was bad enough that Sam was acting like he was some kind of sick little kid who needed a nursemaid to take care of him, asking the hostess to move them to a booth after Dean almost toppled out of his chair so he could slide in next to the omega and massage his neck and temples like Dean didn’t have two working hands. The bitch of it was the overhead music had switched to _Watcher of the Skies_ , and holy Christ, the organ intro went on for _days_ and the way the sound was making the thudding in his head worse soon had him feeling sick to his stomach. He decided it wouldn’t be _too_ terrible if he let Sam believe he’d won for the moment, and then after he got some food and water in his system he’d get back out on the battlefield to try to convince the alpha he’d be much better off if they simply went home. Until then he supposed he could just let himself go limp against Sam’s side and be pampered until a server made it over with some water or some other liquid he could suck down to help make his brain stop exploding against the inside of his skull.

He was more bothered than he wanted to admit by the fact that Sam hadn’t yet told him why he’d landed in the hospital with a couple of skull fractures, the alpha saying he’d like to give Dean a few days to see if he remembered what happened on his own like the doctor recommended. So far Dean was coming up completely blank outside of the weird dreams, but his body certainly felt like he’d been through something relatively major, and almost as if it had been ongoing. Whatever the final incident was that left Sam feeling like they had no choice but to head to the ER, it seemed very much to Dean that he’d been beaten up immediately prior to that event, and more than once. None of it made any sense. How could he possibly have been repeatedly beaten? They were on vacation, after all, not working a case.

The waitress finally made her way over after what felt like decades, by which point the only reason the omega hadn’t fallen asleep from the alpha’s gentle massage was that his head hurt too badly for him to think he was ever going to sleep again. If he could have mustered up the strength to be embarrassed he definitely would have been by the way he was curled up on his hip on the seat, his fingers clutching Sam’s tee shirt as he tried to bury his face in his mate’s neck. His sunglasses had been discarded on the table for several minutes so he could use Sam’s skin to block out the overhead lighting and breathe in his scent to help his muscles further relax. The way he was close to panting, his exhales whispering across Sam’s clavicle, probably had any nearby diners wondering if he was on the verge of going into heat.

Sam was an excellent caretaker, Dean was definitely going to give him that. As much as he hated feeling this needy and clingy, especially around other people, Sam wasn’t turning it into a big deal, just calmly continuing to work at the knots in his neck and trapezii as he quietly ordered coffee for himself and apple juice for Dean. Knowing he was getting apple juice sure didn’t help the omega feel less like a toddler, even as he was well aware he needed more than just water to properly hydrate. The server - a teenage omega who introduced herself as Kim - picked up on Sam’s lowered voice and quietly asked if Dean was okay, making him want to growl that he was just fine and they didn’t need to talk about him like he wasn’t in the fucking room.

Instead he let Sam briefly explain that he’d been in an accident and they’d just left the hospital and he really needed some lunch to get his blood sugar up, one of his thumbs still rubbing circles into Dean’s temple. Kim said something about how sweet Sam was being and that her boyfriend used to do things like that for her, filling the area briefly with the sour smell of despair and leaving Sam wanting to ask what was wrong. She was off and away with their drink order before he could, and he decided to leave it be since Dean mumbled that staying in town might not be a bad idea after all.

The double bacon cheeseburger Dean stuffed down his gullet did an awful lot towards helping his head feel better, just as he said it would. He was also willing to allow that the soup Sam insisted he order in place of the fries hadn’t been a bad idea either, even if he knew he was probably going to have to pee like he was still seven months pregnant in an hour or so. A series of Bowie songs accompanied their meal - _A Space Oddity, Starman, Life on Mars_ \- before suddenly it was The Byrds and _Mr. Spaceman_ , which felt so on the nose, even in a town that touted itself as being the alien encounter capital of the country, that the omega couldn’t help but laugh. Seeing his mate so drastically improved had Sam leaning in to catch his smile in a kiss, and when the sixty-something betas at the next table over interrupted them to say stiffly that this was a family establishment ( _despite there being nary a child in sight_ ), Sam shot back, “We’re on our honeymoon,” before capturing Dean’s mouth again and turning what had previously been quite chaste into something that bordered on filthy.

The betas choking on their indignance left Dean practically cackling, forcing Sam to give up on kissing him by the time Kim came back to find out if they wanted dessert. Dean asked if they had any pie and was immediately vetoed by the alpha, who insisted that a sugar rush wasn’t going to help him when they’d just gotten his headache under control. Kim mentioned them being on their honeymoon, which Dean hastened to confirm, giving Sam’s thigh a squeeze and causing him to jump up, knocking into the table and nearly tipping over what remained of their water. The alpha’s momentary irritation at his mate left Kim smiling sadly, poisoning the air again before she got herself under control, then recommending they head on over to the Avalon Bed and Breakfast in town if they didn’t have anywhere to be. The owner, Marian, was a little weird but the place was the nicest in Elwood and she and her boyfriend, Patrick, had been planning to have their mating ceremony there. The way she said her alpha’s name made it clear to both Sam and Dean that something very bad had happened to Patrick, but she pushed it away to collect Sam’s credit card and told them she’d be right back with the receipt.

Sam watched as she handed the card to the cashier, wiping at her eyes, before remembering the missing persons posters he’d stuffed in his back pocket and pulling them out to lay on the table. The oldest poster was for Patrick Brennan, and when Kim came back he couldn’t help but ask if that was her boyfriend. She clenched her jaw and forced a smile onto her face, saying that it was while sliding the receipt and a pen over to Sam, who really wanted to be able to let this go, book them into the bed and breakfast, and spend the rest of the day making sure his mate felt _very_ good but couldn’t stop himself when looking at the girl’s watery eyes.

“So he just…disappeared?” he asked as Dean leaned over to get a look at what Sam was talking about.

“Yeah,” she said, her voice trembling as she tried to hold herself together. “We were out in the cornfield, by the crop circles. It’s kind of the local joke, the place everyone goes to...you know, and he heard something and went to check it out and…” A sob broke from her and she swiped at her eyes again before choking, “They took him.”

“Who took him?” Dean said, finding himself as unwittingly drawn into this as his mate.

“I don’t know,” Kim cried, squeezing her order pad in both hands. “There was this light, and then Patrick just vanished!”

“It’s the aliens,” interjected a petite, dark haired man with a severe case of male pattern baldness in the booth butting up against theirs. He turned to lean over the seat left empty by the two young men sharing the same bench and lowered his voice while extending his hand. “Wayne Whittaker, Jr. I’m telling you boys, this town has become the center of extraterrestrial activities for the entire country.”

“I thought it already was…” Dean said as Kim hurried away to collect herself.

“Well, yes, _officially_ it has been for years, but unofficially there have always been rumors, you know,” Wayne said in hushed tones.

“Actually, we don’t,” Sam stated, reaching forward to shake the man’s hand, even though he was concerned about the semi-crazed look in his eyes. “We’re from Kansas, just passing through on vacation.”

“I heard. Congratulations, by the way.” Without invitation, he picked up the plate with his turkey club sandwich, chips, and pickle spear, and moved to the vacant seat in their booth. “The rumors that what’s going on here isn’t extraterrestrial but simply supernatural.”

“And you don’t agree with that?” Dean asked, grabbing his sunglasses from the table to slide on his face so the strange little man wouldn’t notice him rolling his eyes.

“Oh no! I have personally recorded dozens of eyewitness accounts - lights in the sky, the crop circles, the disappearances. We are right in the middle of what is known as a UFO flap, and I’m as happy as a pig in shoes!”

Wayne picked up half of his sandwich and took a large bite, grinning at Sam and Dean around the wheat bread, meat, cheese, and vegetables. Sam was starting to regret having brought this up, no matter how distressed their waitress was, and Dean was trying to figure out why the hell shoes would make pigs happy.

“Well, thank you very much Mr. Whittaker,” Sam said, collecting the posters to put back in his pocket and sliding out of the booth with Dean right behind him.

“Please, call me Wayne,” Wayne replied before crunching down on his pickle. “If you have any questions we’re always happy to help new believers realize the truth! We’ve got an RV camp off of Route 266. Stop by anytime!”

“Sure thing,” Sam said as Dean was making a bee line for the door. “You enjoy your pickle!” Dean’s head was twinging a bit as he pushed his way out of the diner with a quick nod to Kim, and Sam hurried to catch up to him, asking quietly, “Is the crazy on me? I feel like the crazy is _on_ me.”

“Hey, it’s not his fault he took the brown acid,” Dean replied, yelping as his mate goosed him on the way to the car. “We’re not getting involved with this alien thing, are we?”

“No,” Sam stated as he unlocked the passenger side door before heading around to the driver’s side, though he was quick to hedge, “Well…”

“Well what?” Dean leaned on the top of the Impala, arms outstretched in front of him as he took in his mate, who was looking back towards the diner. “Talk to me, Sam.”

“It’s just...something’s happening here, Dean.” Sam really didn’t want to get deeply involved in whatever was going on in this town, but it just didn’t feel right to simply walk away after seeing how heartbroken Kim was at having lost someone who undoubtedly would have been her mate. He could sympathize with her far too easily to turn his back. “There have been four disappearances in the last month, all young men, exactly one week apart. That poor kid lost the alpha she was going to mate. I don’t know, it can’t hurt to just do a little poking around to see if it’s something worth contacting Gwen about.”

“Gwen?” Dean raised an eyebrow at him, unsettled by the mere thought of reaching out to anyone from the FDH. “Your cousin Gwen?”

“Yeah, she’s in the area, she could look into it quickly,” Sam replied before climbing into the car. He was reaching to start up Baby when he realized Dean was just standing there outside the passenger door and popped his head back out to look at the omega, who had gone pale. “What is it?”

“Why is Gwen in the area?” Dean asked, swallowing back the bile rising to his throat. Try as he might, he couldn’t squelch the surge of terror that was gripping him at the thought of anyone from the FDH other than Kevin Tran being so close to them when he was so far from being at one hundred percent and missing huge chunks of time.

Sam debated how much to tell him, concerned that if he filled in too many blanks at all once he might make Dean’s condition worse. It would be different if the encounter with Lilith was the only one he’d had, but Sam had very little doubt Dean’s current memory loss and headaches were a culmination of the fight in the alley, getting dropped on the table, and getting tackled by Bernard before Lilith bounced his head repeatedly off the wall. Every hunter knew how to play through a concussion because they rarely had a choice, so Sam fully expected Dean had been concussed the entire time they were at The Pineview Hotel and just didn’t say anything about it because - well, that was Dean. The less Sam did to compound the damage at this point, the better.

“The Pineview Hotel was haunted,” Sam replied at length, hoping Dean wouldn’t press him further. “There were some casualties, and I told the manager to call the FDH and ask for Gwen specifically. They were going to get called anyway and it seemed like the safest thing to do was get someone down there we could trust.”

“You think we can trust her?” Dean demanded, thoroughly blanched.

“Yeah, I do, actually,” Sam said simply. “She’s had plenty of time to dick me over on the family estate and she hasn’t. She also made sure she was the one at the hospital to interview Sam Wesson and Dean Smith about what happened at the hotel. They probably have it cleaned up by now, but she’s not a very active hunter. I’d be surprised if she’s left the state yet.”

Dean considered that for a moment, thinking that if he couldn’t trust Gwen he could at least trust Sam. He’d like to know what was haunting The Pineview Hotel, since there hadn’t been anything online about it and accomodations in touristy-type places like Branson typically tried to differentiate themselves from the competition. “Stay at the Haunted Hotel” definitely would have made the place stand out, and Dean might have known better than to book them there, _Lord of the Rings_ convention or not.

“Hey, did you like the convention?” he said, realizing he hadn’t asked if they made it or how it went. He was dying to know if he ending up enrolling in the fencing tournament and if he won. That Narsil sword looked sweet.

“What convention?” Sam said, dead serious, though he couldn’t keep up the facade at the look of disappointment on his mate’s face. “I’m kidding. It was great, right up until the running and screaming started.”

“So it was more like a _Jurassic Park_ convention.”

“Ha ha. Get in the car so we can book a room at this bed and breakfast and do some poking around.”

“Are we sure we want to, though? The last couple of times we were just gonna check things out I ended up in the hospital. Obviously including whatever happened at The Pineview.”

“Are you actually refusing a case?” Sam asked, coming back around the car to cage Dean in against the passenger side door.

“I thought you wanted me to stop and think before doin’ something that could get me hurt or killed whether I really needed to do it or not,” Dean replied, immediately eying the alpha with uncertainty at the shocked look on Sam’s face. “You _did_ say that to me, right?”

“Yeah, I just...I didn’t think it was actually going to sink in,” Sam told him quietly.

Dean had absolutely no idea why he was suddenly getting kissed so deeply in the middle of the Out of This World parking lot, though he wasn’t about to object when his toes were curling and his knees were just about to buckle. He had a sense of deja vu, something really nice having to do with a bathroom door, and very much wanted to get to the Avalon Bed and Breakfast. His head wasn’t up for anything too strenuous, but there were definitely things he felt confident they could do that would certainly get them arrested for public indecency if they tried to do them here. Someone honked at them as they exited the parking lot, making them both jump before Sam broke into laughter, every dimple showing as he trailed kisses up Dean’s pink cheeks to his hairline.

“I mean...I suppose we could talk to a couple of people and maybe check out the crop circles,” Dean murmured when he’d caught his breath. “Kim _did_ say it was where all the kids went to...you know.”

Sam laughed again before pressing a final, firm kiss to the omega’s mouth and heading back around to start the car. Dean climbed in once he was sure the tingling in his limbs had subsided enough for his hands to work, popping a couple of the pain pills from the hospital to keep the pressure behind his eyes at bay.

The Avalon Bed and Breakfast was a giant Victorian mansion on the outskirts of town that looked very much like it was plucked out of _The Addams Family_ , had a side porch added on, and then was painted white. Dean raised a skeptical eyebrow the minute they pulled up, betting that the interior was done entirely in floral wallpaper and declaring that if he was right they were _not_ staying there. He wasn’t right exactly, the peach wallpaper that greeted them the second they walked through the doors sporting fairies instead of flowers, but even then no amount of gorgeous vintage architecture or polished hardwoods was going to save the space in the omega’s eyes. Sam was of the same mindset, feeling like he was bound to break something just by existing in such a delicately decorated space, and they were about to turn around and leave when they were spotted by - presumably - the proprietor, who grinned at them from behind the cherry reception counter at the base of the dark staircase sweeping up to the second floor.

“Hail fellow well met!” she exclaimed cheerily, tucking several strands of her curly blonde hair back where they’d fallen loose from her banana clip. She was a pleasantly plump middle aged beta who wore way too much jewelry and a shade too much make-up, reminding them both of Marge from Sioux Falls, except she seemed to have fallen accidentally into her look and it therefore worked decidedly less well. “Newly mated, if I know the look. May I book you and your sweetheart a room, my good sir?”

“Uh…” Sam stammered, only able to presume she was speaking to him, which didn’t stop her from barrelling right on.

“We’re listed as one of the finest bed and breakfasts in the entire Midwest,” she said. “I’m the owner, Marian Jennings, and I can assure you, you’ll find a pleasant night’s rest here! And romantic, too. All of our rooms have king sized canopy beds.”

“We were just checking a couple of places,” Sam hastily told her, pulling Dean into his side at the mention of the canopies as the omega suppressed a full body flinch. “We’re in town because of all these disappearances.”

“Oh?” She raised an eyebrow at them before coming out from behind the desk carrying a basket of cookies, which she extended to the couple. “Well, this is the only place in town that offers homemade cookies! Though I can’t tell you much about any disappearances.”

Sam smiled and declined the offer even as Dean was reaching out to take one, telling her, “We’re actually thinking of staying somewhere a little farther out, closer to the crop circles. We’re kind of UFO buffs. Do you know anything about them?”

“The crop circles?” The sunny smile was replaced with a scowl, and Marian shook her head while Dean nodded in approval at the cookie’s flavor. “Everyone thinks this latest rash of disappearances have something to do with aliens.”

“And you don’t?” Sam guessed.

“Of course not,” she said with an irritated huff. “They should know it’s not UFOs.” The alpha and omega were just about to agree with her when she added, “It’s fairies.”

“Fairies,” Dean echoed.

“ _Yes_ ,” she insisted. “If you ask me, it’s Mr. Brennan who brought them here. His grandmother was a great believer in the fae. And his son was the first one taken, you know.”

“No, we didn’t,” Sam replied, casting a glance at his mate, who raised an eyebrow at him. “We just arrived in town, we hadn’t really talked to anyone about the abductions yet. We were really hoping to find someone who had maybe been...probed.”

“Well, you won’t get very far with the truth with most of the people around here,” Marian told them, her mouth set in a firm line. “They’ve all bought into this _X-Files_ nonsense, but believe me when I tell you, we’re being visited by creatures from another reality.”

“Okay, we’re...we’re done here,” Dean muttered to Sam, who was smiling as he said, “Thank you for your input Ms. Jennings,” before steering the omega back to the car.

They found a no-frills motel outside of town closer to where the the crop circles were, discussing the potential for Marian’s fairy theory to be true in any way. While Dean had taken on that ogre and a couple of trolls, those kinds of creatures were extremely rare, and fairies themselves were generally accepted to be a myth. Sam agreed with his assessment, but a quick Internet search of the town turned up a lot more than the four missing persons from the last month. There was a whole rash of disappearances in and around Elwood, most of them drifters or drunks, though they were sporadic instead of evenly spaced, and unlike the disappearances in the crop circles, which left no trace behind, in each of the prior instances the missing person’s clothes were left in a pile. They all shared one thing in common, however. Whenever someone went missing, witnesses in the area mentioned a blinding flash of light.

Just the mention of bright lights seemed to make Dean’s head feel worse, and he laid down for a short nap while Sam continued to look up the history of Elwood and try to find connections between the people who had vanished. A short nap turned into sleeping until dinner tucked up against Sam while he scrolled through police files on the laptop, then they grabbed a bite from the bar near the hotel and got directions to the nearest crop circles. By all accounts they’d have to wait until after nightfall for the best shot at a UFO encounter, which was no big deal since it was already six thirty before Dean even started to rouse. The bartender tried to warn them from going out into the cornfields after dark, Sam replying that they heard it was the best place in town for necking and getting an eye roll out of his mate. Unwilling to be mocked in public, Sam leaned in to clean the ketchup at the corner of Dean’s mouth off with his tongue before straight-up winking at him and how flushed he was. Not one to be outdone, Dean leaned in to clean Sam’s salad dressing off his lower lip a few minutes later, and they could barely keep their hands to themselves by the end of dinner. Though they both really wanted to just go back to their crappy motel with the weird green patterned comforter, there _were_ blankets in the Impala, so ending up in a cornfield wasn’t necessarily going to be the worst thing in the world.

They agreed to give the crop circles one walk through before abandoning whatever this hunt was for the night to pursue other activities. Both felt like they already had enough to go to Gwen with just based on the weird disappearances alone, but if they could say they’d looked into the UFO angle and thoroughly ruled it out it would at least save Sam’s cousin an extra step. Not that either of them really thought the FDH was going to start taking alien abductions seriously, it would simply be better to let her hit the ground running. Sam knew she had trouble being respected as a hunter, even if she was an alpha, and any additional information they could give her to help keep her from being laughed at behind her back they were sure she’d appreciate. Still, they probably could have been paying a little closer attention to the surrounding area and a little less attention to each other, so that the figure moving through the corn wouldn’t have caught them so off guard, nor would they have been so surprised after following it at the bright white light that appeared overhead and started chasing them.

Whether it was aliens, fairies, or something else, it became obvious to the two men that there was definitely something in the cornfield when the light stopped over top of them and they vanished.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, the show had this set in Elwood, Indiana, but there is actually an Elwood, Missouri, though obviously I've taken liberties with the place.


	117. There Ain’t No Me If There Ain’t No You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hmm...what took the boys?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have a present for the weekend since it's Jensen Ackles' birthday.

The pull they felt as they were sucked first into the light and then dragged along through the dark towards a blinding white room was definitely something neither Sam nor Dean had ever experienced before. Wherever they were didn’t have any air, which would have been distressing except they felt no need to breathe. They had their guns drawn before they came to the room and were released, immediately beginning to fire at the shapes approaching them, too bright to look at directly to figure out what they were, though it was clear there was some sort of table in the center of the room. Sam was trying to hit whatever their attackers were but Dean was firing with his left arm bent over his eyes, the gleaming room too much for his head to take and sending a searing pain straight through him.

Sam could feel his agony through their bond and grabbed the back of his mate’s shirt right before Dean gave a shout and collapsed into the alpha’s side. Sam had three more rounds than Dean, who had emptied his clip quickly, and kept firing even as something reached into his chest, grabbed hold of his core, and crushed it into rubble. The whole of him felt the loss of whatever it was that had been destroyed, an all consuming sense of despair rushing in to fill the emptiness. He knew instantly he’d lost something essential to his sense of equilibrium, quite possibly his sanity, and was surprised to find he was screaming as he was yanked back through the darkness and plunked down in the middle of the cornfield with his gun out and clicking uselessly, Dean still unconscious at his feet with Sam’s hand fisting his shirt.

Sam didn’t know what was happening to him, but it was obviously serious with how - there wasn’t any other word for it - _heartsick_ he felt. His pulse was racing, he couldn’t catch his breath, and he was on the verge of bursting into tears. The void in his chest was the worst thing he’d ever experienced, and the demon blood was already trying to crawl up from the pit of his stomach to fill it. He needed to get a grip, get him and Dean back to the hotel, and try to wake his mate up. He let go of Dean’s shirt, letting him slump over into the corn, crumpled in on himself, dropped his gun, and leaned forward with his hands on his knees to inhale deeply through his nose and exhale through his mouth in an effort to reel this horrible feeling in.

The third inhale, when he had somewhat regained control of himself, was when Sam realized he couldn’t smell Dean. It hit him hard enough he had to take a step back to try to process the total lack of his mate’s scent and what it might mean. The only other times he hadn’t been able to scent the omega at all had been when he was so heavily drugged he was completely unaware of what was happening to him. Sam reasoned this was probably what was going on now, trying to sense through their bond how deeply under Dean was. All he felt in response to his attempt to connect with his mate was an agonizing stab straight through the part inside him that was crushed, like he’d been impaled. Instantly he knew that it was their bond he’d felt breaking, and any pretense he had of being a strong, confident alpha broke as well.

Dean still lay in a rumpled pile on the flattened corn stalks, completely still in the near total darkness of the cloudy night sky. Sam found his breath hitching as his will to hold back the flood of tears demanding release utterly failed him and he nearly collapsed in on himself. He supposed that was to be expected, since he was empty in a way he never could have imagined. He was empty, life was empty, the universe was empty, except of course for the grief that was now rising up to swallow him. He didn’t even know what happened. One minute Dean was with him, and then he was gone, the only thing left the shell of him laying half on his stomach on the ground as Sam fell to his knees, holding himself up with one hand and sobbing. Dean hadn’t even really wanted to come on this stupid investigation. This was all his fault.

“Dean…” he choked, reaching out with his trembling free hand to grab Dean’s shirt and roll his mate onto his back to try to figure out in the pitch black what had gone wrong. Maybe there’d be some sign that whatever creatures took them had killed him so he could undo it, or maybe whatever they’d done had resulted in an aneurysm. Not that it mattered, really. Nothing mattered without his omega. “Dean…”

What was left of his heart ( _which wasn’t much_ ) just about stopped at the sight of his mate on the ground. Because it was Dean, only it _wasn’t_ Dean at the same time. The body on the ground would at some point later in life be Sam’s mate, but right now Dean was for all intents and purposes an unpresented beta teenager. Sam tried to think of when he’d last seen _this_ Dean, and decided he must have been about ten years old. The pretty pink lips, high cheekbones, and smooth skin; the impossibly long lashes; the wiry frame in the early stages of really being able to build muscle - this was Dean from when he entered high school and started to drift away from Sam and towards ( _he thought at the time_ ) Benny. At about a year and a half from presenting, this version of Dean was breathtaking, still expecting he would be an alpha, still thinking life would be a relative cakewalk. This Dean did nothing to calm Sam’s alpha down, even if the shock of seeing him this way momentarily stopped his meltdown.

The meltdown started again as soon as Sam reached forward to check Dean’s pulse, feeling the impossibly baby soft skin of his neck and seeing that his mating scar was gone. Of course it would be. Fourteen year old Dean Winchester wasn’t mated - _couldn’t_ mate - wasn’t even an omega yet. His heartbeat was strong under Sam’s fingertips, which he supposed was at least something he could cling to, even if it didn’t make him feel any less like his entire world had imploded. His forebrain knew that Dean was alive, that he was here with Sam, that they just needed to figure out why he’d been turned into a kid and turn him back, but his hindbrain was grief-stricken, his alpha desperate to smell roses and cloves and bereft of any consolation reason might try to supply. He pulled the boy’s body up against him ( _and that’s what Dean was now, just a boy, and had he really been this tiny at some point_?), one hand covering the entire back of Dean’s head as he pressed his nose behind his mate’s ear in vain and could only smell generic dish soap, and bawled.

It took a considerable amount of effort to get Dean up off the ground and into a bridal carry, not at all because of the omega’s size. He had to be close to a foot shorter than Sam at this point, and he weighed maybe a buck fifteen soaking wet. Back when Dean really was this age he’d had time to build up some strength and stamina before he started competing with Benny after winter break, and at his current size he was smaller than most of the female betas Sam had been with, including Jess, who had been close to six feet tall. Sam’s legs simply didn’t want to work to get them back to the Impala, the real possibility that they could be taken again a meaningless threat in the face of their bond shattering, but somehow he forced himself to stand and found his way out of the corn to the road. As they went he noticed that Dean’s clothes were literally falling off him and wondered how he hadn’t seen the difference sooner, although of course he’d been distracted by all the grabby incandescent douchebags. He got his mate who wasn’t really his mate anymore laid down across the back seat before starting Baby with trembling hands, hoping he could stop crying long enough not to crash the car on the way back to the motel.

He was glad they hadn’t really talked to anyone in town and that Dean stayed in the car while Sam went to book the room, since it meant no one in the area had seen who Sam was with besides the random patrons at Out of This World, Marian, and the people at the bar where they had dinner. It would make it easier to question Patrick’s father if the man didn’t want to know where Sam’s omega was and why he suddenly had this kid with him. He tried not to think about how bad this situation was, or how much he literally physically hurt without his connection to Dean, or how difficult of a time he was having with the demon blood and the thing from the dream as he pulled into a parking spot in front of their room, killed the engine, and climbed out to get Dean out of the back.

Dean was still very much unconscious, twitching and moaning slightly as Sam got his hands under his mate’s armpits and hauled him out and up against his chest, Dean’s head lolling on his shoulder in the crook of his neck. The omega’s shorts and underwear almost came off when he slid across the seat, and Sam hastily adjusted them so no one would think he was a pedophile, not that there was anyone around at this hour. That actually was surprising, since they’d headed out to the cornfield around eight o’clock and only been gone in that other space a few minutes. There should be people milling all over the area, heading out to look for flying lights, going out to play pool, or even just arguing in their rooms. The motel was just the kind of place where night owls and less desirables booked a room. To have everything be dead quiet so early was just weird.

As he swung the door open and got the small body in his arms inside he understood quickly why there was no one out and about. The clock on the nightstand, facing the door, very clearly read “4:07 AM”. They hadn’t been gone a few minutes - they’d been gone the entire night. Much as he didn’t want to start believing in little green men, what he and Dean had experienced was starting to fall in line with all the abduction stories out there - bright lights, missing time, everything. It didn’t account for Dean’s de-aging, but maybe that was an entirely separate issue. Or maybe that’s what really happened to people who had been abducted. Though that didn’t make much sense, because those people would still get returned, just as younger versions of themselves, and if that was the case why was Dean the only one who ended up as a teenager? Did they just get away before the shiny things could change Sam? Whether it was because he realized what time it was or because he was completely emotionally spent, Sam was suddenly far too tired to care about the stupid case that had taken his mate without _taking_ his mate, and decided to just go to sleep with the hope that this would all be a nightmare and he’d wake up in a couple of hours to find Dean fully grown and up for a little honeymooning.

Getting Dean undressed was incredibly easy when his shoes had already fallen off in the car and Sam only needed a tug to get his shorts off without even unbuttoning them. Sam felt a bit like a pervert, his desolate alpha recoiling at the thought of undressing a child that wasn’t his, no matter how many times he told himself it was his mate and he was allowed to touch him like this. Dean’s boxers did end up coming off with the shorts, but fortunately his shirt was long enough to provide him with some modesty as Sam tugged his underwear back up and folded the back in on itself before rolling the waistband down a couple of times to keep them in place. Tucking Dean under the covers took less effort than getting out of his own clothing, as small and light as the omega was now, and by the time Sam had toed out of his shoes and dropped his shorts into a pile by the bed he didn’t even have the energy to brush his teeth, sliding up behind the tiny figure in the bed and pulling Dean tight against him. The lack of Dean smell to be found on his skin nearly had Sam bursting into tears again, and he dropped his nose to the shoulder of Dean’s tee shirt to breathe in as much of his scent as he could before it was just too much to keep his eyes open and he fell into a dreamless sleep.

Daylight streaming through the half drawn curtains of the motel room woke Dean several hours later, his body feeling totally drained and begging him to stay asleep a little while longer despite his raging morning wood, and with a groan he tried to pull the pillow over his head to block out the sun. Immediately he froze, his eyes snapping open, finding himself unable to move beneath the huge body pressed up against his back and the arms wrapped around him like a boa constrictor. It certainly looked like he was in their motel room, but he couldn’t smell Sam, nor could he feel him when he tried to reach out through their bond, and whoever was behind him was much, _much_ larger than Sam; like, a foot taller than Sam, and holy shit, how did he end up in bed with someone seven fucking feet tall, and how was he going to get out from under his two hundred pound fucking arm so he could find his way back to his alpha, who had to be going out of his mind at this point after everything that had happened to Dean on this trip? Between the guys at the bar and then Bernard and then Lilith…

Dean’s brain almost dropped offline for a minute as he realized he could remember everything from the previous week in all of its gory detail. He remembered the four alphas trying to rape him in the alley. He remembered the doctor who just jammed cold metal into his channel and started spreading him. He remembered getting flung into glass bookshelves; the hallways filled with dead conventioneers; Lizzie’s leg snapping and the sound of her screams; Lilith pinning him against the wall. He remembered _Cujo_ and Crowley and the warning that his mate was incredibly dangerous, the implication being that Dean was the only thing keeping Sam from spiraling out of control. At least he also remembered Sam welcoming him to St. Louis, the football and baseball games, the competition, and making up in the bathroom after their fight. He was more than a little upset that Sam hadn’t told him Lizzie’s leg was broken, but he could worry about that once he got away from the guy with the gigantic hands who had him very thoroughly trapped at the moment.

For some reason, the idea of being trapped by a much larger man had Dean thinking of screaming for help. It was one of the most ridiculous things he could imagine, and yet he felt like something internally was off with him. He didn’t feel unbalanced, exactly; not like he had when he was pregnant or right after having Elliott when his hormones had him completely out of sorts and generally unable to rein in his stronger emotions. No, he felt like he couldn’t rein in _any_ emotion - like he simply didn’t know _how_ to. It was as if he was still learning how to shut down fear or anger or sadness and just power through to get the job done, and being pinned down by someone so much larger and stronger was sending him into a panic even as he was repeating in his head that he needed to calm the fuck down right now or there was no way he was ever getting out of wherever he was.

The body behind him jolted suddenly and Dean tried to use the man startling awake to his advantage to scramble out from under the arm that temporarily released him, the giant paw that had been circling his chest landing on his shoulder. He’d half made it off of the bed when the hand on his shoulder clamped down hard, and god help him he screamed, surprising himself with how high pitched his voice was. He must really be terrified for that sound to come out of him. The hand on his shoulder moved to his mouth, silencing him as he was flipped onto his back and pinned down, his eyes squeezed shut as he shrieked, “ _Sam_!” against the palm that was almost suffocating him.

“Dean!” The sound of Sam’s voice coming from whoever had trapped him against the mattress had him looking up even as tears leaked down his face. Sam looming over him looking totally wrecked, his eyes puffy and nose red, did not compute, not when whatever this thing was that was wearing Sam’s face was so much larger than his mate. He screamed again, but all it did was make the Sam above him start to cry, and that…that was not expected. It actually silenced the omega for a moment before he resumed screaming, struggling to breathe through his nose and figure out what was happening as Sam put his very large forehead against Dean’s and sobbed, “Dean, please stop.”

So, this was weird. It was obviously the real Sam hovering over him, knees on either side of his waist as he kept himself propped up on his elbows over the omega’s chest, but he was just so _huge_. Either that or Dean was somehow little. That thought occurred to him with no small amount of accompanying horror, and he stopped screaming and inhaled through his nose again. Sam was inches from him, yet Dean couldn’t smell him at all. Not only was he unable to smell him, his presence brought the omega absolutely no comfort whatsoever. His heart was still pounding and his mind was still racing, and he was having a very difficult time stopping himself from screaming a fourth time. It was like Sam was just some random beta ( _some_ **_enormous_ ** _random beta_ ) and not being able to scent or feel him was just making these intense, uncontrollable emotions Dean was dealing with more intense and uncontrollable. He was getting _really_ damn tired of waking up not knowing what the hell was going on.

After a few seconds when he must have decided that Dean wasn’t going to start shrieking again, Sam moved his hand off of the omega’s mouth as he tried to squash his tears and didn’t do a very good job. Sam looked like someone had _died_ , for Christ’s sake. Despite his rabbiting heartbeat, Dean reached up to stroke Sam’s face to try to calm him down, which was when he saw how small his hands were.

“What the fuck…” he said, his eyes going wide at the sound of his voice as he stared up at his mate. “What the fuck, Sammy?!”

“I don’t know.” Sam was beside himself, and Dean threaded his tiny hands into the alpha’s hair, trying not to panic again that his need to soothe Sam was purely emotionally based and had no instinctive drive behind it whatsoever. In fact, he didn’t feel _anything_ instinctive when it came to Sam. “Whatever grabbed us, when it dumped us back in the cornfield you were like this.”

Apparently Dean had calmed down enough for Sam to feel like he could let him up, since he put up no resistance as the omega pushed on him to slide out from under the covers and head to the bathroom. Sam didn’t follow, sitting on the edge of the bed with his head in his hands and struggling to regain his composure. He’d hoped when Dean woke up it would help him feel less like he was having a mental breakdown and it definitely didn’t. He heard Dean say, “What the fuck…” again and struggled to get to his feet, everything in his body wanting him to just curl up back in bed and die, before padding his way over to the bathroom door.

Dean was staring at his reflection in the mirror, ashen, as he lifted up the gigantic shirt that had fallen off one of his shoulders to take in the state of his body. He had tiny little pectoral muscles, his abs were nonexistent, and his legs looked like they belonged on a chicken. A peek down the front of his far-too-large boxers had him blushing, the brush of the fabric against his skin instantly bringing back his teeny tiny boner that had gone soft during all his screaming. The flame in his cheeks reinforced how hard of a time he was having controlling his emotions, which made no sense whatsoever because he was still _him_. He had all of his memories, including the ones he was missing from the previous week, undoubtedly because however old he was now ( _he guessed maybe fourteen-ish_ ) he didn’t have skull fractures or a concussion to deal with. He still felt like an adult and thought like an adult, so he _should_ remember how to deal with things like an adult, but he didn’t, wiping at the tears that were springing to his eyes in response to how scared he was.

Sam appeared behind him, filling the doorway with his massive frame, and it just made the situation worse. His alpha was barely holding it together, looking like he’d spent the night a blubbering mess, and no matter how badly Dean needed to bury himself in _mySam_ scent, the only thing he could smell was Sam’s deodorant and that expensive flowery shampoo he used. The _much_ larger man moved in behind the omega, reaching out tentatively to place a hand in Dean’s hair ( _Jesus, Sam’s hand basically covered his entire head_ ), and Dean hastily swiped at his eyes again, his whole face and torso flushing as he was rapidly turning into as big of a baby as Sam.

“Don’t know what you’re so upset about,” he said, glancing down at the counter. “I’m the one with a four-inch dick that I have no control over. It’s up, it’s down, it’s up again for no reason…”

That got a broken laugh out of the alpha, who tightened his grip slightly and moved in a little closer. Dean chanced a look up at him in the mirror, which was a mistake. Sam was crying again - silently at least, there must be a god after all - and looking at Dean with such open misery the omega had no idea what he should be doing.

“It feels like you died,” Sam choked out, swaying slightly on his feet like he might collapse. Dean turned to him quickly, grabbing the alpha’s wrist and giving it a tug so he would come closer, reinforcing for himself at the same time how impossible it would be for him to move Sam with this kind of size difference between them. The colossus went willingly, stopping with his fingers on Dean’s tiny waist, Sam’s hands large enough to span it almost entirely, and he dropped his forehead down to press against the top of his mate’s head. “Rationally, I know that this is you, but the bond is gone and I can’t…you’re not _here_ anymore to me.”

Well, at least it made sense now why the alpha was a basket case. Dean couldn’t feel their bond either, but he was unpresented, and to this body it would be years before he and Sam mated. His omega wouldn’t have any idea what it had lost, that there was anything _to_ lose, because his omega was still dormant. At least that was an upside to the whole situation. If he were presented and going through what Sam was trying to deal with, he’d probably be close to death by now.

“We’ll figure it out,” Dean assured him in a voice that cracked halfway through his attempt to calm down his non-mated mate. He felt Sam nodding against his head and moved in to wrap his arms around his waist, wishing Sam could feel how unnerved he was by their size difference so he would know to soothe him. “I can’t just stay like this. Hannah will be able to knock me over by breathing on me.”

That got a genuine, if brief, laugh out of Sam even as he was completely enveloping Dean and doing his best to smell his hair gel. He needed something to get his alpha under control, as experiencing this level of distress was making it nearly impossible for him to hold back the demon blood, and it already felt like bits and pieces of who he was were starting to switch off. It was dangerously close to the feeling he’d had when he was tracking down the alphas from the bar, and it terrified him to think he might become consumed by that kind of mindless rage with no omega scent to get it back under control.

“This…uh…this happened while we were wherever it was we were,” Sam sniffed at last, running a hand up and down Dean’s back in an attempt to soothe them both. He might not be able to scent what the omega was feeling, but he was pretty certain Dean had to be scared half to death right now. “You were fine and then you collapsed and I just felt this...god, this _pain_ , and you were like this when we got back to the cornfield. Do you remember anything about it?”

“Well…” Dean considered the night before, his memory a little fuzzy undoubtedly because everything had been so bright and there had been a high pitched whining that distracted him. “There was this…there was this bright white light, and then we were in this…I dunno, it was this different place, and there were these…beings, and they were too bright to look at, but I could feel them pulling us towards this sort of table, but I couldn’t really look at that either because it just - it hurt my head too much. And…and we started firing. Both of us. And then I just felt this…pain all over and I woke up here.” He pushed himself off and punched Sam in the chest, his tiny fist landing with a dull thud as he craned his neck back to look up at the alpha. “When were you plannin’ to tell me Lizzie broke her leg? You weren’t just gonna let us pull up to the bunker and go, ‘surprise,’ right?”

“What?” The random switch in gears was a welcome surprise and helped Sam pull himself together a bit. “You remember that?”

“I remember everything from last week,” Dean told him. “It just kind of all came back when I woke up. No head injury, no memory loss apparently. So spill it. When were you going to drop the bombshell that one of our kids got broken on a hunt?”

“Well, I wasn’t going to wait until we pulled up to the bunker,” Sam replied with a faltering smile, having a conversation that felt like it was really with his mate calming him down a bit. “I figured if you didn’t remember by today I’d tell you that at least, and then fill in other bits and pieces a little at a time. The doctor was very clear about me not breaking your brain by hitting you with too much all at once and waiting until you asked about something that came back to you.”

“I guess I can accept that. There’s a lot from last week that I definitely wish I didn’t remember,” Dean grumbled, leaning back to hoist himself up on the counter. He hooked his heels around Sam’s thighs to pull the alpha into the vee of his legs, though how much he actually pulled was debatable, as was whether Sam came anywhere close to fitting between his knees. Sam went willingly, closing his eyes and sighing at the feel of the little hands resting on his ribcage. “Is she okay though? I mean, is she really okay? She’s not gonna end up with a permanent limp or need surgery or something…”

“She’s really okay. I’ve been checking in with Adam during your naps and she’s not happy about getting carried everywhere, but otherwise she’s herself.”

“And Elliott? Nothing happened to him after that bitch swatted me like a fly, did it?”

“Nothing happened to him. We can call Adam and check in if you want.”

Dean considered that for a minute, thinking about how he had _just_ been getting past the need to have Lizzie with him all the time, and how he probably couldn't handle checking in without being able to be with her, before saying, “No, I don’t think that’s a good idea. I feel like myself but I also don’t, you know? I’m freaked out enough about all this stuff without freaking myself out further about the kids.” Sam nodded, leaning forward to press their foreheads together again. “On the subject of my size, what are we gonna do about figuring out how to reverse this? I can’t leave the room when my underwear keeps trying to fall down. I need clothes that fit.”

“I’m not leaving you,” Sam insisted, his eyes snapping open instantly and fixing on Dean’s breathtakingly beautiful face. God, he’d forgotten how really gorgeous the omega was when he was a teenager. No wonder Sam had fallen for him way back then - he never even stood a chance against those eyelashes, really. He ran his hands through his mate’s hair, tracing his cheekbones and the delicate lines of his jaw. “There’s absolutely no way I’m leaving you.”

“Sammy,” Dean said, narrowing his eyes since he was completely incapable of growling and sliding a hand up under Sam’s shirt to brush along his abdomen.

“I wouldn’t even know what sizes to get you,” Sam protested in spite of how nice Dean’s soft fingertips felt, or how it was helping to further calm his alpha being touched the way Dean knew he liked.

“I think the sizes are basically the same as your age,” Dean told him, tugging on the waist of Sam’s boxers to really bring him in close. “I’m pretty sure I’m about fourteen and a half, so get me some fourteens and then whatever the next size up is.”

“Dean…”

“Sam. I can’t leave the room wearing a shirt that’s practically a dress, and we can’t fix me if we don’t leave the room. So either go get me clothes or spend the day working this case without me.” Sam sighed, running his hands along Dean’s arms and shoulders, which were small enough that he could close his whole hand around them with ease. “Get me some flip flops too, so I can at least walk around and then we can go back out to get me some real shoes and other stuff, okay?”

“I just…”

“Sam.”

The alpha had tipped his head down, eyes closed, letting out a deep, frustrated sigh at the thought of leaving Dean by himself in the motel even for a short amount of time. The sneaky little omega took the opportunity to close his hands around Sam’s jaw as much as he could and pull him down into a soft kiss. Sam’s hindbrain definitely recognized the lips, even if it was terribly confused, and he moved forward with his hands on Dean’s hips to pull him in closer, leaning back and blinking when Dean gasped and shuddered against him.

“Are you serious?” he asked as Dean panted and blushed and looked somewhere in the vicinity of Sam’s left shoulder.

“My body’s fourteen, Sam,” Dean replied as calmly as he could. “Up, down, up again for no reason. Go get me some clothes so I can take care of this in private, okay? It’s kinda embarrassing not having any input over what it wants to do.”

“Okay,” Sam said quietly, giving Dean one last kiss to help him along. He remembered how awful it was to not know what the separate being that had appeared like magic in his pants was going to do from one minute to the next those couple of years before he presented, when his body started testing everything to make sure it worked. A stiff breeze just had to blow against him and he’d be running for a bathroom before he creamed himself. Part of him felt weird, anyway, kissing a kid - no matter how right it seemed in the moment. “Don’t let anyone in, all right?”

“Scouts’ honor,” Dean promised, getting _another_ one last kiss before Sam grabbed the keys and headed out to find somewhere he could get Dean some clothes.

“Little Dean” - now very appropriately named - stayed at full mast the whole time the omega was hurrying to put the chain on the door while he listened to Sam pull away and then get out of his boxers and shirt. He thought about planting himself face down on Sam’s side of the bed, but it wasn’t like he could smell his scent anyway, so he headed off to the shower to try to contain the mess. Plus, there was conditioner in the shower, and now that he wasn’t producing slick he would need something if he felt like getting a little adventurous. Then again his channel wasn’t open yet, and he’d been too busy being focused on competing when he was this age the first time to do much experimenting, so he wasn’t entirely sure of how his anatomy worked at the moment, and hey, apparently overthinking things still did the trick in killing the mood, because he was flagging by the time he got in the shower. His relief at not having to deal with the situation was short lived, the scent from Sam’s shampoo when he went to wash his hair shooting straight to his dick. After he’d gotten off once the traitor living between his legs wanted to do it again, and he’d never been so grateful for cheap motel rooms with limited hot water as he was when the spray turned cold after only twenty minutes, otherwise he might not make it out of the stall until Sam got back.

He was thoroughly wrapped in one towel and drying his hair with another as he came back into the bedroom, the movement of the terry cloth getting Little Dean interested yet again to his great consternation, when the door to the room burst open and a tiny orb of light hung there just on the other side of the threshold. He wasn’t sure what to do at first when it moved in a few feet and stopped, but after a minute or so he slowly advanced on it, squinting against the brightness as he tried to figure out what exactly it was. After a moment he was able to make out an hourglass shape and long flowing hair, muttering to himself, “Nipples?” right before the thing hit him square in the forehead and knocked him flat on his ass on the floor.

“Bitch!” he exclaimed as the little light flew back a few feet, the color of the light changing from a yellow-gold to a more angry red-orange, and came at him again as he struggled to his feet and dodged, trying not to lose his towel.

He considered making a break for the door except, obviously, he was naked and didn’t really want the kind of people staying in the motel spotting him running around the parking lot without any clothes on, and the orb hit him in the face again even harder, knocking him back into the heater by the windows and giving him a bloody nose. He ducked another attempt and ran for the other end of the room, ending up in the kitchenette by the microwave, and turned back just as the light was charging him again, one hand still on his towel and the other trying to stop the blood flowing down to his upper lip. The light made a tiny, tinny screeching sound and he pulled open the microwave quickly as it surged forward, slamming it shut with the orb inside and hitting the “reheat” button. One minute popped up on the timer as the light bounced around inside it, banging against the door, which he really had to hold shut with all his might until at last the orb exploded in a pink mist and the timer dinged.

“Ha-ha!” he exclaimed to no one, thrilled that he’d managed to fight off whatever the thing was and yanking open the microwave door to look at his handiwork. Apparently, his emotions and his penis weren’t the only things that wanted to react like he was actually fourteen and he very quickly found himself running to the bathroom to throw up at the sight of all the blood and gunk now coating the microwave’s interior. No matter how proud he felt of himself, he was definitely leaving that for Sam to clean up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am not tagging this fic underage because Dean *isn't* underage, just be warned that if you're someone who doesn't like underage fics the next set of chapters might make you feel a little squicky (though at this point ya'll know nothing's going to be explicit).


	118. I Mean, There's Got To Be An Explanation For This

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam and Dean try to adjust to Dean's little problem.

The drive to the nearest Walmart outside of Springfield was pure agony. It wasn’t far, only about twenty minutes from the hotel, but still - that was twenty minutes away from the closest approximation Sam had to a mate. The longer he was away from Dean the more his entire body hurt, and the less control he had over the dark little voice telling him not to worry about it, that things would be easier now that he didn’t have to concern himself with convincing Dean to be his consort, that this may have been the best thing to ever happen to Sam. It would take more than a decade for Dean to feel their broken bond, and by then their kids could survive on their own if Sam couldn’t woo Dean into joining him in Hell. The sections of his brain that would normally have fought back such terrible thoughts were in deep mourning for his lost omega, unable to comprehend that he wasn’t lost. Sam had never wished more strongly to be a beta than as he killed the engine and stepped out into the parking lot, wiping a hand over his face in the vain hope it would make him look slightly less like he’d spent most of the morning crying.

The boys’ sizes were exactly like Dean had postulated and he grabbed some random size fourteen and size sixteen shorts and shirts, though the size sixteen looked like his mate would end up swimming in them; a couple packages of briefs in different sizes since he was just shooting blind when it came to that; and a range of flip flops. He knew he should probably put more thought into what he was getting, that Dean would probably prefer jeans over shorts, and he grabbed one pair of Levi’s and some hoodies, but mostly he just wanted to ring everything up and get back to the hotel. He did stop at the stacks of graphic tees to pick him out a Batman shirt, thinking Dean would probably appreciate that, before heading for the registers and hightailing it out of there.

He stopped at a Hardee’s to grab them something to eat, since the only other fast food chain in the entire fucking area that opened earlier than ten o’clock was Chick Fil-A, and no matter how much Sam preferred salads to burgers he wasn’t eating one for breakfast. It was a full hour and a half before he was back at the motel, by which point his skin was vibrating, his stomach was churning, and he was having a hard time breathing. For a few minutes after turning off the car he just sat behind the steering wheel trying to collect himself, then grabbed the shopping bags and the food and climbed out on wobbly legs, his body seeming to have forgotten how walking worked.

The door to the hotel room was flung open and teenage Dean in a towel and tee shirt that skimmed the middle of his thighs stood there with wide green eyes, looking more beautiful than any teenager had a right to, exclaiming, “Dude, finally! I was about to send out a search party. Is that food? I’m fucking starving.”

He grabbed one of the Hardee’s bags from Sam with one hand and took the alpha’s elbow with the other, the feel of Dean’s fingers immediately making Sam feel a little more centered and less ill. The omega had obviously been doing research, since Sam’s laptop was open on the table and a chair was pulled out, though he wondered what else he’d been up to since there was a funky smell in the room that made Sam’s already queasy stomach do a very unhappy flip. Dean was in the process of taking a bite out of the breakfast sandwich and moaning in delight, following it up with a huge slurp from one of the orange juices in the drink tray, then turning back to tug insistently on Sam’s shirt until he leaned down enough, bewildered, for Dean to press his soft little lips to the alpha’s mouth.

Sam’s brain didn’t quite know what to do, even as his alpha calmed somewhat at the contact. It was proving difficult trying to reconcile the idea that this was his mate with his repulsion at the thought that he was taking advantage of a child. Dean didn’t have any such qualms, going all the way up on his tiptoes and sliding his skinny arms around Sam’s neck as he nipped slightly on the alpha’s lower lip. After a few seconds of the kiss starting to light up his fingertips Sam decided he was just going to ignore the fact that the body in his arms was really too young to be doing these things to him and enjoy how good of a kisser Dean was even with a much smaller mouth.

When Dean finally pulled back, out of breath and trying to hide the hard-on poking against his towel, Sam managed to slur, “I should bring you breakfast more often.”

“That’s a given,” Dean told him with a smile, carding skinny fingers through his hair before grabbing the Walmart bags. “Check out the microwave while I get dressed.”

“Uh…” Sam did as his mate asked, feeling a sharp pang in his chest as soon as he let go of Dean to move towards the kitchenette. “Okay.”

Dean was busy behind him by the table digging through the packages of underwear to find a pair that would fit him while Sam was approaching the microwave and realizing it was the source of the terrible smell. Upon opening the door he knew why. There were little chunks of flesh and bone stuck to the sides and hanging down from the top, blood covering the interior. He was glad he didn’t have anything in his stomach or he might have lost it.

“Batman! Sweet!” Dean said as Sam slammed the door shut and turned to the boy who was pulling on the tee shirt and then starting to hold up flip flops to the bottom of his feet to figure out which ones would fit.

“Dean, what the hell?” Sam asked, swallowing back some bile as the stench hit him again. He suddenly felt completely irrationally angry about whatever Dean had done to the microwave that wasn't even theirs, storming over to grab him by the arm and yank him in close. The terrified look on his mate’s face did nothing to stop the way he squeezed Dean’s bicep, the black thing at his core all too happy to remind him this was _not_ his mate; not really. “What’d you do? Nuke a frog?!”

“Sam…” Dean stammered, his eyes wide as he struggled to pull his arm free and discovered it wouldn’t be possible unless he kicked the alpha in the crotch or something, which would probably just piss him off more. He didn't even know _why_ Sam was so pissed.

Sam couldn’t have cared less about the tremble in his mate’s voice, dragging the omega into the kitchenette so forcefully he lost one of his flip flops. Dean tried to grab onto the half partition wall to make Sam stop, but it was futile, and the alpha flung him against the counter before boxing him in to glare down at him.

“How are we supposed to use this thing now with all the ick and the blech and the blood?” Sam demanded, swinging the microwave door open and hitting the omega in the back of the head before spinning him around and holding him in place so he’d have to look at it. “What the fuck did you put in here?”

“A little…naked lady…” Dean said, struggling to keep himself from crying. Sam was really hurting his arm, and he was so angry and so _big_ and Dean had no way to tell what was going on with him when he couldn’t scent him. “Please Sam, you’re scaring the crap out of me…”

“A what?” Sam asked, his hold loosening finally even as the fury remained.

“It was a - it was a little, glowing… _hot_ naked lady,” Dean told him, getting his arm free finally and turning to look up at the alpha, his chin quivering. “With nipples. And she hit me.”

“She what?” The alpha finally seemed to really be calming down, stepping back as he apparently noticed that he had Dean fully pinned against the counter. Dean edged far enough away from the counter to swing the microwave door behind him closed and rubbed his arm. “You’re kidding me.”

“No! She hit me twice here!” Dean insisted, pointing to his forehead. Sam moved forward to get a look, but the omega sidestepped him quickly and went over to the laptop. “And she had wings. I’ve been doing some research, and uh…one of the fringier theories I found is what that whackadoo at the bed and breakfast was talking about.”

He pulled up one of the web pages he’d been looking at and turned it around for Sam to read while he grabbed a cup of coffee and went back to retrieve the flip flop he’d lost. The alpha appeared to be calming down considerably, but Dean still wanted to figure out how to stash a knife somewhere on him in case he needed it. He didn’t think the waistband of the khaki shorts he was wearing would adequately keep a gun in place, and he wasn’t even sure where his Colt ended up after the night before.

Sam was sitting and reading the page, his alpha becoming morose again as his anger slowly died away. After a few moments of looking at a page titled, “The Faerie Feast” he asked, “You really think it might be fairies?”

“Well, it fits.”

“How so? I mean, fairies seem to be a pretty big stretch from UFOs.” He turned to look at the omega, who was standing a few feet away holding his arm. Sam could just barely see huge fingerprints turning pink against his delicate skin and was horrified. “Oh god...Dean, did I hurt you?”

“It’s...it’s fine Sam.”

“It’s not fine, Dean!”

“Okay, it isn’t, but I’m not made of glass and I’ve had worse.”

“God, you’re just a kid…”

“I am not!” Dean’s face flamed red with anger and he shoved Sam as hard as he could, which wasn’t even enough to budge the alpha, then stepped back quickly out of his reach. “I’m fucking _not_ and you’d better wrap your stupid, thick, knotheaded brain around that or we’re really screwed, Sam!”

“I’m sorry.”

Sam looked like he was about to start crying again, and that wasn’t going to get them anywhere, as Dean considered his next move for a moment before he huffed out a breath and tried not to shake too terribly. Finally he went back over to the table and climbed into Sam’s lap, leaning up against his chest as he clicked over to a couple of the other tabs he’d been looking at. Though completely shocked to suddenly find himself with a lap full of unpresented omega, Sam carefully placed a hand on Dean’s hip to read over his shoulder, gently rubbing the arm he’d hurt in a silent apology.

“Look, for centuries people talked about humans disappearing in fairy rings, or being led away by Will o’ the Wisps,” Dean said, getting them back on track. “The glowing lights, the abductions - people just kind of switched over what they thought it was once movies introduced the idea of aliens to a bigger audience than just fans of Verne or Wells. It’s really kind of a straight line.”

“So you think we’re dealing with ultra-terrestrials instead of extraterrestrials?” Sam asked, noticing with a bit of confusion that Dean smelled like coffee.

“I did pizza roll Tinkerbell,” Dean replied, holding very still as Sam leaned forward to take a deep inhale behind his ear, his hand tightening on the omega’s waist. “You okay?”

Was Sam okay? That was just about the dumbest question he thought he’d ever been asked. Dean was starting to smell like himself again, even if it was faint and only one of the wonderful aromas that made up his scent had returned. The pain that had been constricting his chest since the cornfield actually subsided some, and he leaned forward to close his teeth over the meat of the omega’s shoulder.

“Your scent…” he said, pulling the small figure in against him and burying his nose in Dean’s skin, his eyes sliding closed as he caressed the omega’s arm and finger combed his hair and sighed.

“Oh. Yeah, about that…” Dean turned in Sam’s lap, getting the alpha to open hazel eyes that took a second to focus. He almost looked stoned, something feral in his expression as he watched Dean chewing on his lower lip. At his body’s current age his face was an open book, which Sam really kind of liked, except that right now there was genuine worry and fear in the mossy orbs looking at him. “I researched some other stuff as well, and uh…what it feels like for you, with us not being mated anymore. Does it hurt? Physically, I mean.”

“What?” Sam asked, his mind foggy with happiness at being able to scent his mate even slightly again. “Yeah. Yeah it actually does. A lot.”

Dean still looked very concerned, but a blush was rising to his cheeks that really made Sam want to take them back to when he first returned from Walmart and they were kissing, even at the risk that it might result in Dean making a mess of his new underwear. At length Dean said, “I’m about to go all romcom on you and if you laugh I swear I’ll Lorena Bobbitt your ass.”

“Lorena Bobbitt didn’t exactly go after her mate’s ass,” Sam replied, getting a smack to the chest. “I’m kidding! I won’t laugh. I promise.”

“Okay.” The blush deepened as Dean dropped his eyes down to look at Sam’s neck while he played with the collar of his tee shirt. This would have been strange enough to bring up as an adult and with the added teenage hormones it was flat out mortifying. “Do you believe in true mates?”

Azazel back in Michigan sprang immediately to the forefront of Sam’s mind, talking about having misjudged the alpha’s devotion to Dean, but he couldn’t remember mentioning that to the omega currently turning pink in front of him. He leaned back a little, really considering the question and whether he thought the demon had been lying, and finally decided, “I do. Yeah. Why?”

“Cuz…uh…I think we are.” Dean looked like a beet, clearing his throat and trying to regain the facade of being the coolest guy in the room and not someone who was about to start writing love sonnets. “True mates, that is. I think we are.” He turned to the laptop again before Sam was able to process what he said, pulling up another series of sites. “Once I got done with all the UFO-fairy crap I figured I’d see if there was something I could do to help you feel more stable until we can get me back to _me_ , and what you’re going through - it’s not normal, Sam.”

“What do you mean?” the alpha asked, leaning forward to read over his shoulder again.

“Well - not that I can really tell how you’re feeling anymore because I can’t scent you or…you know, but anyone who looks at you can see that you’re a mess,” Dean replied, half turning to gaze at him. “The way you broke down in the bathroom this morning, and it’s obvious you’re barely holding it together now, and…it’s only been half a day but you look like you haven’t slept in a week. I think you have withering disease.”

“I have what?”

“Withering disease. Pretty much exactly what the name says, they don’t get points for originality with that one. It…okay, I don’t usually go into long explanations of stuff, just, you know, get right to the point, so bear with me. You know how when an alpha dies an omega usually will, too, but not the other way around? If an omega dies the alpha survives but just kind of becomes…for lack of a better way to say it, my dad?”

“Yeah…”

“With true mates that’s not - it doesn’t work that way. If a pair are true mates and the omega dies the alpha will, too. Eventually. I mean it’s not overnight, but it isn’t with the omega either. It’s just this kind of really slow, painful, awful death.” Sam’s eyes were now trained on him and Dean directed him back to the main website he’d been using to research the condition, continuing, “When you told me that you felt pain when I collapsed last night, I knew that wasn’t right. That happens to omegas when they lose their mates, not alphas. There are a bunch of theories on the evolution behind it that explain why, but it basically boils down to back in the day when we were all packs roaming around and fighting for territory, a pack couldn’t just have alphas dropping dead in the middle of combat if something happened to their mate back home. Omegas, on the other hand, worked as kind of an early warning system for the pack. If they started getting sick all at once the pack would know their alphas were losing the fight and the betas could move any pups before the rival pack found their den, without the rival pack being able to follow a scent trail.”

“Kind of like a canary in a coal mine,” Sam murmured as he scanned the page.

“Exactly like a canary in a coal mine.”

“That’s fucked up, even if it does make a sick kind of sense from a pack survival standpoint.”

“Yeah, you guys get to go off and die, we get to stay home and die, but at least the kids survive. Anyway, alphas developed a kind of immunity to feeling the bond break, and wouldn’t know until they got back to the den all, ‘Yeah we’re big and strong and killed everyone, come hang off my knot’ and found out their mate was gone. By then they’d be surrounded by pack members and family who could help them cope. But if an alpha is with their true mate there is no immunity. The people studying it don’t have it figured out - something about the biology being too deeply intertwined - but either mate will feel when the other one dies and then they just kind of waste away. There are recorded cases everywhere, going back centuries, of alphas who lost their mates and died after a couple of weeks or maybe a couple of months, but people used to die from a hangnail back then. It wasn’t until so many omegas died all at once in the blue plague and a bunch of their alphas died too that anyone started looking into it as something real.” Sam was staring intently at the screen, reviewing the medical information on the phenomenon and all of the studies that had been done to verify it, leaning in to Dean’s neck again. “I figured that until we can get me changed back I can at least dab some coffee over my scent glands to try to trick your stupid hindbrain into understanding I’m alive since whatever did this tricked it into thinking I’m dead. There might be somewhere in town I can get some rose oil, too. I saw some kind of hippy shop on the way to the B and B, which is where it looks like we should probably go anyway after we talk to that Brennan guy about his missing kid.”

“You’re using coffee as cologne?” Sam asked with the first dimpled smile he’d had since this whole thing started.

“We don’t know how long I’m gonna be like this,” Dean replied, dead serious, as he leaned against Sam’s much larger shoulder, slinging and arm behind his neck to play with the alpha’s waves. “If I have to roll around in cherry pie every morning, I’ll do it.”

“I kinda feel like you’d do that anyway.”

“Don’t joke,” Dean ordered with a small tug where his fingers were buried in Sam’s hair. “I don’t want you to die if we can’t figure this out before your alpha just gives up, Sammy.”

“I’m not going to die, Dean,” Sam said gently, and the omega scowled at him, tugging his hair again.

“See, that’s why you should watch horror movies more,” he huffed. “That’s what someone _always_ says right before they go outside and get cut in half by a psycho with a chainsaw.”

Sam actually laughed, which felt good. The coffee trick was definitely helping to keep him calm and he even seemed to have regained his control over the demon blood, pushing it deep down and away into a corner of himself that would take it a while to work free from. He was still deeply bothered by the idea of wanting to kiss an unpresented teenager, but figured things could be much worse, like if he’d had a mate who didn’t think to look this up and come up with a way to fake his scent.

“Hey, worst case scenario we rub some coffee, rose oil, and cloves on you every day until you turn sixteen,” Sam said, giving the omega’s hip a little squeeze.

Dean really scowled at that, retorting, “If you think I’m going without sex with you for a year and a half you’re a crazy person. Six to nine months of limited activity is one thing, but I don’t even have the right equipment in this body to get out on the playing field. Plus up, down, up again...We’re _definitely_ fixing this.”

Sam laughed again as Dean climbed off of him to finish eating, pushing the bag of food Sam had gotten for himself across the table while he wolfed down the rest of his first breakfast sandwich. Sam turned back to the laptop to read over the rest of the information on withering disease, gradually losing interest in his breakfast as his stomach started to roil again and his chest began to ache. He tried to ignore it, forcing himself to smile up at the boy inhaling food across from him, but it didn’t take long for him to give up on eating completely, pushing the rest of his breakfast back across the table to Dean, who raised an eyebrow at him.

“Not hungry,” Sam said in response to the query of what was wrong, pressing a hand to his chest as if he could stop the dullness spreading out towards his arms.

This was ridiculous. Dean was three feet from him, too far away to smell the coffee he’d wiped on his skin, and after just a few minutes Sam was starting to fall to pieces. It was like having been able to scent him again for a little while, real or not, had shortened the time it took for him to lose control over his emotions. Dean watched the alpha’s hands shaking as he scrolled down the page he was reading, took in the lack of color to his skin beyond the dark circles under his eyes, and set down the rest of his sandwich, even as his stomach gurgled in protest.

“Get out your phone,” he ordered, polishing off the orange juice and taking a couple sips of coffee. “We’re calling Gwen.”

“What?” Sam asked, finding the room tipped a little when he lifted his head to look at Dean.

“Gwen,” Dean repeated, grabbing the alpha’s arm to drag him out of the chair and over to the bed. “Your cousin who you’re pretty sure is still in the state? We’re calling her. Lay down.”

“Why?” Sam said, though he did as he was told, pulling his cell out of his pocket as Dean got him down on his side and pulled Sam’s shoes off before kicking out of his flip flops.

“Well, we’re calling Gwen because we obviously need back-up, my brother is eight hours away, and you said we can trust her,” Dean explained, heading over to their duffel bags to dig through for two of his dirty tee shirts. “And we’re laying down because you need to sleep.”

“Dean…”

“Shush.” He grabbed Sam’s pillow and pulled one shirt over it before stuffing it back under the alpha’s head, tossing the other over the back of Sam’s chair at the table. “Put Gwen on speakerphone.”

Sam really had no idea what Dean was thinking, but the Dean scented pillow was already making the pain spreading through him subside so he wasn’t going to question it. He pulled up Gwen’s number in his contacts and dialed, hitting the speakerphone button as Dean crawled in against his chest and started to pet his hair. Sam’s eyes fluttered closed as Gwen’s cell rang on the other end and he had a very hard time stifling a moan as the call picked up and she said, “ _Sam_?”

“Hey Gwen, it’s Dean,” Dean said as Sam slid in closer to him and huffed out a breath against his forehead.

“ _Dean_?” she sputtered, sounding just about as confused as he’d expected, which was understandable given how weird his voice sounded even to him. “ _What…_ ”

“I got hit with some kind of de-aging thing, but it’s me. Sam’s here with me.”

“Hey Gwen,” Sam slurred, half asleep.

“ _Hey Sam_.”

“So listen -” Dean stretched up to press his lips to Sam’s forehead, earning himself a happy sigh. “Sam said you might still be in Missouri on account of the thing at the Pineview. Are you?”

“ _Yeah, there’s something going on in Ozark. Looks like it might be ghouls._ ”

“Can you drop it? We’re over in Elwood and we could really use your help.”

“ _What’s going on up there_? _Besides you turning into Jesse McCartney._ ”

“Ha - I didn’t think your family was capable of pop culture references.”

“Just because some of us prefer reading…” Sam objected softly, getting a gentle kiss to quiet him.

“There have been a bunch of disappearances and we’re not sure what’s doing it,” Dean said to his cousin-in-law. “But our going theory is fairies.”

“ _Fairies_?”

“Yeah.”

“ _Fairies don’t exist, Dean_.”

“Well, that’s what we thought until I microwaved one that attacked me this morning.”

She laughed on the other end of the line until he finally managed to convince her that he wasn’t kidding, then explained the recent abductions, what Marian at the bed and breakfast told them, and how he and Sam had been taken the night before and when they were returned he was in the exciting throes of puberty for a second time. He’d found some information online that fit everything that would otherwise qualify as an alien encounter to explain it being fairies, and the naked lady splattered all over one of their kitchen appliances seemed to be pretty solid confirmation he was on the right track. Unfortunately, the lore was so wide ranging they didn’t really have a starting point for figuring out what to do about it or how to keep more little naked ladies from coming after them, and they needed her to come up to help them out.

Though accepting that the two of them weren’t trying to make her look like an idiot, Gwen still didn’t understand why they needed her to forget about the ghouls and meet them ASAP. Granted, ghouls were typically harmless and only ate dead bodies, but they were still pests that needed to be gotten rid of. Sam, though half asleep, told her about how Dean turning into a fourteen year old was making him sick, and Dean hastened to add that Sam seemed to need Dean close to him to function. However, he looked like he was just a kid and they couldn’t walk around town with Sam all snuggled up next to him or someone was bound to call the cops. Dean thought if Gwen came up they could go talk to the crazy fairy lady who was only missing a couple dozen cats while Sam talked to the first victim’s father, and that way they could cut their interviewing time in half which it would get them back to the privacy of a motel room quicker to go over whatever information they got. Gwen seemed a bit uncomfortable with the idea of hanging out with the two of them when they needed privacy, but Dean assured her there wasn’t really anything they could do that went beyond a PG rating, though he spared her explicit details of how he was _very_ small and Sam was _very_ large and it was highly unlikely Tab A would fit into Slot B without Slot B needing to be seen by a doctor afterwards. Finally she agreed to get checked out of her hotel and that she’d meet them at the Stargazer Motel where they were staying within the hour, and Dean turned his attention back to getting Sam to really sleep until she got there.

It was probably incredibly stupid of them to let down their guard like this in the middle of the day when Dean had already been beaten up by a Disney sidekick who didn’t have any problem breaking the lock on the door or knocking him around, but Sam looked so awful reading from his laptop and ignoring his food Dean couldn’t just pretend everything was all right. The omega didn’t know how much Sam had gotten through before he decided to force the alpha to take a nap, though he hoped he’d made it to the section where they discussed how alphas experiencing bond breaking sickness often became violent, their mental capacity deteriorating along with the rest of their internal organs. His arm was still throbbing a bit from being jerked into the kitchen earlier, and it was taking all the limited self control he had in this disloyal body not to run screaming to the motel’s manager for help. He’d stayed in enough of these skeevy places to know the manager wouldn’t _really_ care about something happening to him, but he sure as hell wouldn’t want the cops coming down to see what else was going on in some of the rooms.

Now that he had Sam laid down on one of his tee shirts and the other set aside for Sam to wear while he was off interviewing Mr. Brennan to make his hindbrain think Dean was with him, the alpha was truly starting to relax into his mate’s touch. Dean guessed that if Sam could smell him and feel him without seeing him it would further the illusion of him being himself, and it sure looked like he was right. Dean didn’t even know alphas _could_ purr, but Sam was definitely purring, a hand resting limply on Dean’s hip, as the omega continued finger combing his hair and dropping kisses over his forehead, chin, and jawline. It was more than a bit uncomfortable laying pressed up against Sam with his little prick being a little prick and trying to convince him that he could just kind of grind his hips a bit and it would feel _so_ good ( _right up until he was stuck in a pair of wet underwear with Sam’s hand trapping him against the mattress_ ), even more so when he felt Not-So-Little-Sam stirring against his leg. Christ, they needed to figure out what the fairies had done to turn him into a kid and reverse it or he needed to get a boatload of lube to keep his dick from falling off, considering he’d only been up a couple of hours and this was his fourth erection of the day.

Sam actually slept all the way until Gwen showed up, which Dean considered to be a minor miracle. The omega was in a good deal of pain by then from not having done anything to relieve the pressure in his pants, telling Sam he was going to have to get the door when the alpha’s kaleidoscope eyes stuttered open at Gwen’s knocking to focus on Dean’s jade green ones framed in thick, dark lashes. Sam hadn’t figured out yet how someone as pale and freckled as Dean was didn’t have blond eyelashes and chalked it up to him just being the luckiest son of a bitch on the planet when it came to his mate. He felt loopy, like he’d just had a seriously good fuck instead of a seriously good nap, and snaked an arm around Dean’s back to pull him tight into his chest, a hand winding into the omega’s hair as Sam caught his lips for a deep kiss. The drag of fabric against his groin and the pressure of Sam’s abdomen had Dean gasping and clutching at the alpha’s tee shirt, the deep red blush starting at the tips of his ears and coloring his whole face as Sam pulled back and blinked at the way his back was arching and his hips stuttering, before glancing down at the wet spot on Dean’s pants that was seeping into his shirt.

“Sorry…” they said at the same time, but Dean shook his head rather violently and pushed himself back a little to try to regain some of his dignity as there was more knocking.

“Sam? Dean? You in there?” Gwen asked from the other side of the wooden barrier, and Dean managed a cracked, “Just a second!”

“I didn’t think…”

Sam felt both terrible and thrilled at having caused the omega to come just by kissing him. It made him feel all happy and possessive and like things were _right_ in his universe because even unpresented the spot on his tee shirt smelled faintly like Dean, but he knew how humiliating that kind of thing was, and it was undoubtedly worse because Dean was really twenty-seven and just stuck in a kid’s body that wouldn’t do what he wanted it to. Dean just shook his head again, even as he released a shuddering breath and was clearly battling to compose himself.

“No, it’s okay, just give me a minute to get in the bathroom,” Dean replied, though he didn’t - couldn’t - look at Sam as he pulled free and grabbed some clean clothes from the Walmart bag. “Put on my shirt that’s hanging over the chair so you can smell me while we’re separated.”

Sam didn’t argue with him or try to placate Dean as he fled into the bathroom, getting up to quickly change his shirt and let Gwen in. She recoiled at his physical state, then again when Dean came out of the bathroom and she saw how small he really was. They gave her a second to take it all in, then showed her what Dean had come up with online, the omega sitting on the alpha’s lap while she politely ignored the cuddling, thinking by the rough shape Sam was in he definitely needed it. She still thought the idea of fairies was a little far fetched, but was certain that between the three of them they’d figure it out, stop whatever was taking people, and get Dean back to normal. The room next to theirs was available so she’d already booked it, joking that she didn’t want to hear any happy noises through the wall, which made Dean blush and had Sam giving him a squeeze, his nose slotted behind the boy’s ear. Obviously they’d made the right call to bring her in, because Dean was right. Even knowing what had happened and that Dean was an adult, Gwen still couldn’t help the gut reaction telling her that Sam was being highly inappropriate with a child and as an alpha she needed to stop him.

They showed her the microwave as proof of the fairy once she was done reading, but all she could see was a microwave. After a few moments of arguing about it, she said, “Okay, let’s go with you see it and I don’t.” It was a statement she’d repeat ten minutes later when Sam and Dean were climbing into the Impala while Gwen got into her Range Rover and the man and boy wanted to know why the weird guy in the red had was just standing there staring at them from across the parking lot. Sam’s alpha bristled with aggression at the way the man was looking at Dean especially, and Gwen had to tell him three times that there was no one there before he would calm down. Not that any of them felt particularly calm when there were random selectively invisible people wandering around Elwood. Sam was clearly barely keeping it together and Dean was terrible in his current state at faking a cool head. Gwen still wasn’t sure it was fairies they were up against, but whatever it was they needed to figure it out, and fast, before her cousin and his mate both went off the deep end.


	119. All Right, Maybe It Is Fairy Tales

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time to work a case!

Enlightened Moods was the hippy dippy store Dean spotted on their drive through town, and it just so happened to be right across the street from Brennan’s Watchworks. Brennan’s Watchworks was indeed run by Patrick Brennan’s dad, according to Enlightened Moods’ owner - a pretty beta with long, dark auburn curls who smelled like patchouli. Her name was Sparrow, because obviously it was, and she spent far too much time looking Sam up and down if anyone cared to ask Dean his opinion. The store was a living stereotype of New Age eccentricities, filled with crystals and incense, essential oils, Tarot cards, and singing bowls. Dean was reminded of Henry explaining Astaroth’s rise to prominence again as being a result of Sparrow’s brand of idiot who didn’t have a clue what they were doing, rolling his eyes as she spouted off some nonsense about the many uses of essential oils for cleansing the spirit, especially through erotic massage, while _Marble Halls_ wafted through the overhead speakers. Of course she’d be listening to Enya. She probably had _Shepherd Moons_ playing on a loop. Gwen had to stifle a laugh when they were buying the rose oil that the shop did indeed carry and Sparrow asked if Sam wanted a tour of the back room only for Dean to snap, “He’s in mourning for his mate. Back off, Swallow.”

“Um, it’s Sparrow,” Gwen corrected him quietly, and he hissed, “I was referring to what she was gonna say she always does if he went back there,” before snatching the bag with the rose oil and stalking out of the store. Gwen laughed outright at that even as Sam blushed, grateful that Dean’s shirt was doing the trick for now to keep him on an even keel or else he might be sliding off the deep end with how the demon blood was pulsing and snarling and demanding he take Sparrow up on her offer, since he wasn’t actually mated anymore.  

“Your nephew seems to know a lot about sex for his age,” Sparrow said with a toss of her hair as she flashed a smile at Sam and licked her teeth. “It’s cool, though. He’s not wrong.”

Now the demon blood was _really_ pushing him, and Gwen was still laughing, which didn’t help the situation any. Sam was stuck there for a second, caught between the factions warring within him, until Dean’s very angry little face popped back through the door and barked, “Sam!” as much as he was able to bark, anyway. Sam’s alpha recognized the tone of pissed off omega, even if the pitch of the voice was wrong, and he hurried to follow Dean outside without giving Sparrow a second glance. Gwen managed a half-apology about her brother and their nephew through her laughter, asking about some of the various herbs she had for sale. They were legitimately useful for a number of wardings and protective hex bags, though she doubted the beta had any idea what she actually had based on how she got the proper usage of basically every essential oil in her shop wrong. It occurred to her that was probably because she didn't really care when Sparrow propositioned her as well. She declined somewhat more politely than the omega had on Sam’s behalf and headed out to round up Dean so they could go talk to this Marian person.

She was more than slightly confused to not see the couple anywhere when she exited the store, her confusion immediately changing to concern at the thought that the fairies - or whatever - had grabbed them again while she was still inside. A garbage can fell in the alley between Enlightened Moods and the bar next door, and she reached back into the waistband of her jeans to where she’d tucked her Ruger LC9s under her tee shirt, keeping her hand on the gun but waiting to draw it until she was around the corner and off the sidewalk. There was a dumpster about halfway down the alley that was almost as tall as her oversized cousin and had to serve all the businesses on this side of the street with how big it was, and she could definitely see movement coming from behind it. Raising her pistol she clicked off the safety and called, “Sam? Dean?”

The sound of something - maybe an elbow or a knee - hitting the dumpster preceded Sam saying, “Yeah, we’re...uh...give us a minute,” and she hastily retreated as the very top of his head appeared and she heard Sam and Dean discussing something but couldn’t make out anything other than, “M’fine.” She supposed she should be glad they were doing...something back there, after what Dean told her in the car about Sam and this illness that he seemed to have and how serious it was. Plus, she’d rather they work it out of their systems before the three of them were back in the room together, since just the thought of someone Dean’s current size and apparent age doing anything with Sam other than playing Nintendo really made her sick in spite of herself.

After a few more minutes the two of them stumbled out of the alley looking slightly rumpled, a furious blush high on Dean’s cheeks and Sam not quite walking straight. They all silently agreed to pretend that whatever had just happened in the alley hadn’t happened, and that Sam didn’t have a very prominent hickey forming on his neck. Dean smelled both of coffee and the rose oil now, which Gwen was willing to admit she’d always found attractive, even if she’d never been attracted to him, some part of her seeming to understand ever since he presented that he belonged to someone else. Sam told them to be careful not to sit in glitter and Dean responded for Sam to be careful, period, and then he and Gwen drove off as the alpha crossed the street to Brennan’s Watchworks.

Getting pulled down an alley by his very small, very angry, _very_ jealous omega had been a surprise, as had been the way Dean shoved him onto a garbage can so they were close to the same height and latched onto his neck like he was an algae eater and Sam was an aquarium until the alpha could feel the blood vessels breaking under his skin. That had been enough on its own to get Sam to forget all about Swan or Stork or Seagull - whatever the hell her name was. He didn’t begin to know how to process that Dean was willing to get down on his knees behind a dumpster, or that he would even attempt to fit Sam into his mouth, which he really _couldn’t_ do effectively, but what he _could_ do was impressive. If Sam had any doubt that twenty-seven-year-old Dean was inside that tiny body before they entered Enlightened Moods, he definitely didn’t anymore.

More than the shock of Dean being willing to give him a blowjob in broad daylight only maybe thirty feet away from public view was the shock that Dean was willing to give him a blowjob at all. Sam had specifically not requested anything like this because of what he’d seen Mark do to him. It was one of those things he would follow Dean’s lead on, and if Dean was never comfortable doing this Sam would have been okay with it, if somewhat disappointed. If his brain cells weren’t in the process of being sucked and stroked out of his dick, he probably would have worried about whether Dean was doing this because he really wanted to or because he felt he had to in order to keep the alpha happy, but Sam needed every remaining brain cell at the moment to keep from moaning obscenely and attracting attention to them. He would have been embarrassed about how quickly Dean had him biting his lower lip to keep from yelping as he came, not even caring that the omega had moved off to the side to avoid getting hit and had switched from his little mouth to his little hands to finish Sam off, but he was too busy clutching at Dean’s face and hair like he was the only thing keeping the alpha from falling over. Gwen’s timing was pretty awful as she called out, “Sam? Dean?” while Sam was trying to get feeling to return to his limbs.

“Yeah, we’re...uh...give us a minute,” he croaked in response, waiting for his heart rate to slow some before he tried to move. Dean was next to him, trying to wipe his hand off on the wall, his skin a telltale pink, and the thought he hadn’t been able to process in the middle of having Dean’s face in his crotch burst to the front of his brain. “Are you okay?”

“M’fine,” Dean said, though the fact that Little Dean seemed decidedly uninterested in their recent activities betrayed him.

“Dean…” Emotionally Sam was all floaty and happy and feeling like he could take down a giant if he had to, and he really hated the idea that his mate clearly wasn’t in the same space. His alpha was fully on board at the moment with the idea that Dean _was_ his mate, even if there was still the confusion of why their bond was gone, and it was much easier to worry about what was going on with the omega when he actually had the capacity to worry. “You know I didn’t need you to do that, right? That thing with the beta in the store - it’s not like you’re in a competition.”

“We’re splitting up for a while, Sammy,” Dean said flatly, seeming to have gotten his hand as clean as he thought he could. “Sure, we’re thinking it’ll be less than an hour, but I can’t overwhelm you with pheromones. I can with endorphins. Just making sure I send you off happy so you don’t die on me.”

He headed off down the alley towards the sidewalk, brushing off his knees and shoving his hands in his pockets to wipe off the last little bit of spunk against the lining. He was actually glad their bond was broken so he couldn’t sense Sam being all concerned for him when all he wanted to do was forget he’d just done that. He really thought after almost a year he’d be okay with the idea of someone’s dick in his mouth, and it _had_ been okay when he first started. The circumstances were completely different, hell, his _body_ was completely different, he was in total control of the situation despite Sam being so much larger than him, he was stone cold sober, yet he’d still started feeling sick about halfway through, and had to close his eyes and repeat the many differences between this and the basement in a running list just to finish. And even then, he knew Sam would have been okay if he’d just stopped and apologized, because Sam was just so fucking understanding about everything, and how could he possibly know that stopping wouldn’t make any difference? Dean already felt filthy, and not because he’d been on his knees behind a dumpster. What would have been the point of feeling just a tiny bit less filthy if he couldn’t even manage to get Sam off? Then Sam had to go and say that it wasn’t a competition between him and the beta when duh, it obviously was. Not because he really thought Sam would go for her as some kind of twisted rebound when _he wasn’t really fucking dead_ , but because she was at least fucking adult sized. It hadn’t escaped Dean’s attention that one of the packs of briefs Sam brought back from Walmart were Underoos, which he was sure hadn’t been intentional, and it had undoubtedly been a coincidence that they just happened to be the pack that fit.

Sam insisted on giving Dean a side hug before he headed off across the street, thankful he could read Dean’s face like a book and see how insecure he was. Whether it was about the alley, being a kid again, or just being separated when so much was going wrong with both of them, Dean’s confidence was completely shot at the moment. It reminded Sam of when he’d come back to school after hunting with John for the summer, and how much Sam had always wanted to just wrap him up and protect him, so by golly he was going to do the best he could under the circumstances. He even risked pressing a small kiss to the top of Dean’s head before finally breaking away, waving back at his mate and his cousin as they got into the Range Rover and pulled off up the street.

Mr. Brennan was alone in his shop as the little bell over the door tinkled to announce Sam’s arrival. An old building that had been well cared for, Brennan’s Watchworks definitely looked like something out of a fairy story, with a long glass display cabinet filled with hand crafted watches, a repair station, a build station, and an office space right out in the open, the only delineation between it and the store the raised platform upon which it sat. Mr. Brennan had a partner’s desk, double wide, one side lined with drawers and the other with shelves, and it was positively covered with papers. A large wooden file cabinet was behind it on one side, a freestanding safe on the other. Mr. Brennan himself sat at the repairing station, working on a pocket watch underneath a brass magnifying glass attached to a stand to free up both his hands.

“Mr. Brennan?” Sam said, earning an, “Mmm?” in response. For some reason the dismissive way this aging alpha, who smelled of stale bread, dust, and wood shavings, spoke without even looking had the demon blood starting to boil. It was like Dean had managed to soothe everything inside him into silence, giving the terrible darkness a chance to steer the ship. He tried to force it down, saying, “I went to school with Patrick, I was a couple of years ahead of him. I wanted to say how sorry...”

“Patrick is gone,” Mr. Brennan told him flatly, guilt and misery filling the room.

“Yes, I know he was the first one to go missing…” Sam said, bristling further when the man with the thinning grey hair cut him off with a huff.

“He was the first one to be taken,” he mumbled, looking up from his work and seeming to get lost within himself as he stared across the shop to a picture of him, Patrick, and a girl who looked to be a few years younger that was hanging behind the counter.

“Taken?” Sam asked as the watchmaker aimlessly moved to the picture to stare at it, running his fingertips along the image of his son’s face. “Mr. Brennan, who do you think took your son?”

“It doesn’t matter. He’s never coming back.”

“You seem awfully sure. Like you know more about it than you want to say.”

“Well, you know the odds they give you when someone disappears.” Brennan turned to him, his expression hard even as his eyes shone with moisture. “After seventy two hours the chances of finding a missing person drop to almost nothing. Patrick’s been gone a lot longer than that.”

“Well, every case is different.”

“It’s been a month.” Brennan’s chin trembled and he swiped at his eyes, and Sam knew he should be feeling something in response to this man’s pain but didn’t. _Couldn’t_. Which he knew should have bothered him as well and didn’t either. He tried to reach down to pull out some kind of emotion, but all that did was make him sink further into not caring about anything, like his attempt to remember how to feel was the equivalent of throwing himself into quicksand. “His younger sister won’t stop crying, the girl he was planning to mate calls the Sheriff every day - everyone’s being respectful of her right now because they know the two of them were...but it’s only a matter of time before the alphas start sniffing around her. I thank God his mother is dead and not going through this.”

“Mr. Brennan…”

“You’re too young to understand.”

“Try me.”

“Do you have children?” Brennan asked suddenly, which momentarily punched through the fog of indifference blanketing Sam and allowed him a flare of protectiveness.

“I do, actually,” he replied, the feeling sinking back into the blackness inside him as quickly as it had risen. “I have a son and a daughter.”

“Can you imagine one of them being just…gone? What that would do to you?” Sam thought about his question, imagining what he would feel like if either Elliott or Lizzie just up and vanished one day. He was positive he shouldn’t tell the watchmaker he would feel relieved, just as he was positive he shouldn’t think that’s how he would feel. Something was wrong. He needed to get back to Dean. “Please, leave.”

Sam stifled a growl - at what he didn’t even know, considering Brennan was just standing there staring at the picture of his family and trying not to cry. Granted, the man’s tone was a little harsh, but he wasn’t combative, just drained. Sam’s empathy should be firing up right about now and nothing was firing within him other than irritation and aggression. Even his eyesight was beginning to dim, as if his eyes were rolling over black, and what the hell was up with that? He was barely able to contain the urge to grab the man by the throat and strangle him until he gave up what he knew. If that didn’t work, it looked like there was a storeroom in the back of the shop. There had to be a bathroom back there. A little improvised waterboarding could work wonders. Quickly he gave the watchmaker a nod before heading back out to the Impala to stake out the store, fighting for control of his lack of emotions before he did something stupid.

He already had his phone out, keeping his head down to stare at the pavement as everything around him darkened slightly, thinking that maybe if he talked to Dean it would wake his alpha up enough to get a grip on whatever was going on with him and thankful to feel a stab of alarm when he checked himself out in the rearview mirror and saw that his eyes were fully black. A gleeful little voice was urging him to head back over to Enlightened Moods and take Sparrow up on her offer to show him the back room, purely for research purposes to see how her skills compared to Dean’s. He had just enough control to lock himself in the car and pull up Gwen’s number instead, even if he did have to press the heel of his hand down into the sudden bulge in his pants to maintain that control. The omega and his cousin had to be close to the bed and breakfast by now, so they should be able to meet up again soon and figure out their next move; at least Sam hoped so.

“ _Hey_.”

Sam hadn’t realized how tight his chest felt with all the uncalled-for anger brewing in his head distracting him, but upon hearing Dean’s voice he instantly became aware that he was having a hard time breathing. Maybe his alpha hadn’t been as soothed as he thought by the impromptu alley hummer, which he certainly didn’t want to mention when Dean had so clearly been uncomfortable afterwards. He plastered a smile to his face, hoping it would bleed into his voice and the omega wouldn’t think anything was up.

“Hey,” he said, his sight returning to normal and bringing with it an increased level of pressure on his lungs. “Talked to Brennan. I didn’t get much, but he’s definitely hiding something. He used the word ‘taken’ instead of ‘missing’ and seems to know for certain Patrick’s never coming back. How are you guys doing?”

“ _We just got here_.” Dean seemed to be doing the smiling trick as well, the tension evident in his voice despite his attempts to sound light. “ _Where are you_?”

“Sitting outside the guy’s store.”

“ _Okay, stay there and watch the watchmaker and we’ll call as soon as we’re done_.”

“Sounds good.”

There was a long, awkward pause as Sam listened to Gwen turn the engine off and get out of the car before Dean asked, “ _Anything else_?”

“No, I...uh, I guess that’s all.” A stab of pain accompanied the pressure and Sam figured it would be just his luck if he got the demon blood under control only to have a heart attack sitting in the Impala. “I love you.”

“ _I love you too_ ,” Dean murmured on the other end of the line. “ _Ya sap_.”

Sam huffed out a laugh before hanging up, distressed by how much laughing hurt, and turned back to keep his eyes trained on the window to the watchmaker’s shop.

Dean didn’t like the way Sam sounded on the other end of the phone. He couldn’t put his finger on what it was, other than the slightly labored way he was breathing, but it had him worried. As much as he could tell the alpha wanted to keep talking and would have liked to sit there trading sweet nothings, still feeling vulnerable after the alley incident, the longer they stayed on the phone the longer it would take him and Gwen to talk to this fairy expert. Plus, he didn’t really want Gwen to overhear their conversation. He was still working to maintain his reputation as something of a badass after all.

Gwen had already been trying her best to engage him in polite small talk on the way over to the Avalon Bed and Breakfast, apparently of the opinion that since Sam was her only surviving cousin and the only one who turned out to be truly decent she should put her best foot forward with his mate. It wasn’t necessarily that Dean couldn’t understand why she felt that way, it was more that he’d really had enough of Sam’s cousins, and while it might not be fair she kind of fell under the mantle of guilt by association. He had to give it to her, though, when she pointed out that there wasn’t much difference between them. Female alphas were as rare as male omegas, and though society afforded her all the privileges of an alpha she knew most male alphas were never going to see her as their equal; definitely not as long as she stayed in the hunting community, not after the way Samuel had made sure to keep her off of the most dangerous hunts for so many years, making her look like a coward. She had the option with her family’s fortune to do anything else she wanted, as there were numerous career paths where she would be respected, but she wasn’t really interested in being a doctor or a lawyer and besides, giving up on hunting would feel like she was letting all the knotheads who refused to hunt with her win. She didn’t tend to hunt in a wide range of the country because even though no one would think of putting their hands on her like they would a solitary omega, she knew most people in their line of work still considered her a freak, and thought it safer to keep to the few states where she was well known and liked.

Then there was the whole problem of her _only_ being attracted to male omegas and how she looked like even more of a freak when people - especially hunters - found out about that. Her mom on more than one occasion had tried to set her up with a nice female omega, only to end up crying about how she was never going to have grandchildren because Gwen was an alpha to whom gender mattered more than designation. She figured at this point she might as well carry around business cards explaining she wasn’t interested in anyone else’s boobs to get it out of the way up front so grateful civilians stopped trying to set her up with their sisters.

While Dean had to agree that a specific gender preference wasn’t what one could call common, as for the majority of alphas and omegas designation and scent were what determined attraction, he’d run across quite a few female omegas who were only interested in male alphas ( _which made their mating options pretty fucking easy comparatively speaking_ ), and at one time he’d even suspected Sam only liked the full breasted model of omegas, so he thought Gwen really just needed to find a male omega who was only into chicks. He was sure they were out there, especially when he’d met people with much more specific predilections, such as the beta who was only attracted to other betas that reminded him of himself, and that was on a whole other level of weird and narcissistic and pretty far removed from having some kind of hardwired gender preference. It’s not like she could choose who she was attracted to whereas that guy - that guy clearly needed some major therapy. She seemed to really appreciate the easy acceptance the omega had to offer, as well as his suggestion that she ping Kevin Tran to see how he swung since he was a great kid who was having a chain of tropical islands gifted to him someday soon, and she was full on laughing with him by the time Sam called. Dean was grateful that she’d done a pretty good job at getting him out of his own head for a little while without even trying, and he had to admit that it might not be bad to have Gwen as a cousin-in-law after all, so long as she was the only Campbell who got invited to Thanksgiving.

Marian was thrilled to have two reporters from _The Enchanted Times_ interviewing the locals for their perspectives on what was going on with the UFO sightings. She was especially thrilled to hear that they already theorized that it wasn’t aliens who were doing it, but something else entirely. They’d agreed not to bring up the fact that Dean was the omega who’d been in the day before in case it sent her into a panic, instead saying that he was shadowing Gwen as part of his advanced writing class in high school. She placed a sign on the front counter that said, “Back in 20 minutes,” and brought them into her office area in the back towards the kitchen so she could sit them down and make them some tea.

Dean wasn’t sure the kitchen was up to code for an establishment billed as a bed and _breakfast_ that presumably made food for the guests, considering all the tiny ceramic figurines adorning the place that were just begging to be knocked over into some pancake batter or a coffee carafe. He was actually glad he’d been turned into a teenager, because the cups she brought him and Gwen looked like they belonged to a child’s playset, or at the very least were meant purely for decorative purposes. There was always the possibility that she was just very stingy with her tea and didn’t want guests to catch on, and he was thoroughly lost in wondering if she had tiny little plates that matched the tiny little cups that she served the guests tiny little meals on when Gwen’s comment broke into his thoughts.

“So you’re saying it’s incorrect to think of boggarts, sprites, and spriggens as separate species, that they’re all technically fairies,” she said, gesturing to some of the many sculptures littering the space. “Kind of like how lions and Maine coons are both cats?”

“ _Yes_!” Marian replied in pure delight at having found someone who was on her special wavelength of crazy. “Many people believe incorrectly that they are unrelated, but brownies, garden gnomes, even goblins are all fairies.”

“What about ogres and trolls?” Dean asked, sipping his Orange Pekoe and having to admit it wasn’t bad. It wasn’t coffee, but it wasn’t bad.

“Oh yes! Though typically not categorized as such, they would be considered members of the Unseelie Court, along with hobgoblins and changelings.”

“What is the Unseelie Court?” Gwen inquired, earning a patient smile from Marian as she refilled their cups.

“There are two courts,” Marian explained. “The Seelie Court, which are the fairies of the light, and the Unseelie Court, which are the fairies of darkness. The Seelie Court are prone to help humans, though they are just as dangerous if offended. The Unseelie Court are tricksters and devils - not in the literal sense of course.”

Dean had spotted a statue of a small lady with blonde hair, white wings, and a skirt made of petals, trying not to blanch as he waited for her to spring to life and smack him in the forehead.

“What about her?” he asked, gesturing weakly. “Tinkerbell over there. Is she from the Seelie Court or the Unseelie Court?”

“She is from the Seelie Court and what we humans recognize as a fairy, though technically she’s a sprite.” Marian didn’t even seem to care that neither of her guests were taking notes. She was completely in her element. “Fairy comes in all shapes and sizes. Magical, mystical beings from the realm next door.”

“The realm next door?” Gwen echoed. “Like another dimension?”

“Something like that,” Marian said. “It isn’t a dimension as one might think of in science fiction, where a change to this dimension might sprout a whole new timeline over there. It’s another reality entirely; the fairy realm. Only those who have been to the fairy realm and returned can see the fairy here. Though returning from the fairy realm is rare.” She settled back in her chair, holding her tea cup in both hands despite the complete lack of need for doing so, her eyes sparkling as she was clearly gearing up to tell A Story. “You see, time works differently there than it does here. A year there might be a dozen years here - or a hundred, depending on which of the fae have taken the person. The most famous tale of this, of course, is Tir na nOg.”

Gwen and Dean shared a glance before Dean finally did take out his notebook, saying, “Let’s just pretend that neither of us know that story by heart. Can you refresh us on it?”

“It’s a tale of pure tragedy,” Marian told him, shaking her head and clicking her tongue. “Oisin, the son of the famous Fionn MacCumhaill, was out hunting one day when he met Niamh, daughter of the sea god. Men feared her because they knew her to be fairy, but not Oisin. The two fell deeply in love and he agreed to travel back with her to her realm in Tir na nOg, where she was bound to return. He jumped on her white horse and rode away with her, leaving behind everyone he knew. After a few months he started to miss those back in the earthly realm, and Niamh gave him her horse to travel back, warning that if he touched the ground he would never be able to return to her. He rode straight home to see his family, only to find the house empty, and searched for his friends but couldn’t find anyone he knew. Eventually he came upon three men moving a stone in the road and after talking to them learned he had been gone for centuries.”

“Well,” Dean huffed. “That’s a shi...crappy way to end a story.”

“Oh, that’s not the end,” Marian replied quickly. “Overcome with emotion that everyone he knew had long since died, he fell from the horse, shriveled up into an old man upon touching the ground, and died himself. The horse rode back to Tir na nOg and Niamh realized Oisin was never coming back to her.”

She smiled at them and sipped her tea as the two hunters stared at her and blinked. Fairy stories, it seemed, were fucked up.

“Right,” Gwen said finally. “So why do you think the fairies here are taking people?”

Marian hummed, considering the question, before replying, “Not much is known about the fae or their realm outside of Tir na nOg, which is a land of eternal youth and beauty. I think the people who have been abducted from our little town are taken to service Oberon, the King of the Fairies. He only takes firstborn sons, and anyone who partakes in his feast can never return.”

“What about someone who escapes?” Gwen asked.

“If someone escaped from Oberon, he would be relentless in bringing them back,” Marian told her. “Once the King of the Fairies has decided he wants someone he will find a way to return them to him as long as the door between the realms remains open.”

“So…if someone wanted to stop them from taking people, or close that door, how would they go about it?” Dean said.

“Well, if you want to win a fairy’s favor, leave a bowl of fresh cream. They love cream.”

“Okay, and what if you needed to be a little…more forceful?”

“Hmm…all fairy hate iron, and members of the Unseelie Court burn when touched with silver. Oh! You can spill sugar or salt in front of them and they must stoop to count each grain, no matter how powerful the fairy.”

“All righty,” Gwen said, closing her notebook and sliding it back into her pocket. “That’s some really fantastic information you’ve given us. This will make a great article, truly!”

“Ooo, can I get a copy when it’s published?” Marian asked, rising with them as they stood and set down their tea cups.

“Well, that will depend on if my editor chooses to run it, of course,” Gwen replied with a smile, and Dean added, “There is one more thing. When people come back from these realms, are they ever different?”

“Everyone who returns from the realm of the fae is different,” Marian said kindly, and he gave her a small smile.

“I mean are they ever physically different? Do they all come back like that Fionn guy, the same as when they left, or do they sometimes come back older or…younger maybe?”

A furrow creased her brow as she looked at him for a moment, murmuring, “What a strange question. I suppose it’s possible, but no, typically people who return are the same physically as when they left.”

“Okay, thank you very much for your time,” Gwen said with a smile, clapping Dean on the back to get them moving back out through the lobby, Marian following at a distance. She snagged a cookie from the basket on the way past the check-in counter while the omega grabbed one of the bed and breakfast’s brochures to stuff in his pocket, saying lowly to Dean, “Well, that didn’t make any sense.”

“What do you mean?” Dean asked. “That makes total sense. Granted, it doesn’t explain how I ended up like _this_ , but the rest of it falls right in line.”

“For you, maybe. Sam’s an only child.”

“No he’s not.”

Gwen looked openly confused at this statement, unlocking the Range Rover as she echoed, “He’s not?”

“No,” Dean replied as they climbed in and she paused to process this information and eat the cookie, which was surprisingly good for having sat out in a basket for who knows how long. “Back in Fort Wayne we had, like, a week before Valentine’s Day where I was on bed rest and literally nothing happened and we could actually just be normal people who talked and did dishes and watched TV and shit.”

“That sounds weird,” Gwen said around a mouthful of cookie.

“It was,” Dean agreed, breaking into a smile. “But it was also really just…fucking _great_. Anyway, one of the things we talked about was Sam’s sire, and how he mated again…”

“I...I thought Sam’s dad was dead.”

“Yeah, no, Samuel paid him off to leave and stay gone.”

“Wow. My uncle really was a piece of shit, wasn’t he?”

“I prefer the term fuckbucket. Anyway, his sire moved on with his life and Sam’s got a younger half-sister floating around out there somewhere.”

“No kidding!”

“I told him we should try to find her but I guess the guy was pretty adamant about not wanting Sam in her life. We haven’t talked about it since. I should call him, tell him what we found out.”

“’Kay.”

Gwen handed him her phone as she polished off the cookie and started the car, Dean scrolling through the recent calls to Sam’s number. She was pulling a U-turn in the middle of the street when the call went to voicemail, and though Dean didn’t want to be an overreacting omega - especially when he wasn’t one yet - he hung up and immediately hit “redial.” It went to voicemail again, as did the third, fourth, and fifth call. At that point Gwen had noticed he looked worried, and rather than press the issue she sped up slightly, relieved they were less than ten minutes from the center of town. Whatever the problem was, they’d be back to Sam soon and could figure it out.

Except of course that the problem turned out to be Sam slumped over across the front seat of the Impala, unresponsive to the sound of his mate pounding on the glass of the driver’s side door and screaming for him to wake up and unlock the car.


	120. Let Me Guess - Tooth Fairy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam's not doing too well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And at one point I figured this story would be about 40 chapters long. HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!

“I thought you said it was going to take weeks for him to get this bad,” Gwen snapped as she ran to the Rover to get her lock picking kit out and hoped it would work on the doors of a 1967 Impala. She was pretty sure a Slim Jim wouldn’t work even if she had one with her without stripping the chrome. It had been a long time since she tried to jimmy a lock on a car that old.

“I was just going by AlphaMD,” he told her, taking a reluctant step back as she knelt down to work on the lock as people wandering by started to notice something was amiss. “It’s not a site I read that much.” He considered grabbing the gun he saw tucked in the back of her pants and shooting through the back window to get in, but with the gathering crowd opted instead to pull his hair out. “Why the hell is he sitting here with the windows all rolled up when it’s eighty fucking degrees outside?!”

“It’s your car, right?” Gwen asked.

“So?”

“It probably smells like you in there.”

The lock popped and Gwen hauled the door open before getting out of the way of the teenage body that darted into the sweltering interior of the Impala and crawled over the unconscious alpha to make sure he was breathing. It was the first time Dean thought being this size could be useful, since it was a whole lot easier for the two of them to fit in the front seat and for him to reach across to roll down the passenger side window while Gwen rolled down the driver’s side window, then climb over into the back to open those too. Of all the stupid ways Sam could die, locked inside a black car with the windows rolled up in late summer because he didn’t want to let Dean’s scent out of the interior seemed to be at the top of the list as far as the omega was concerned. Sam’s skin was gleaming with sweat and the shirt he was wearing of Dean’s was soaked almost clean through as the teen crawled back into the front seat to check on him. The moron had probably passed out with how ill he was feeling in general and then just laid across the black leather bench seat baking. If this _didn’t_ kill the alpha, then Dean decided he certainly was going to after he managed to find Sam’s racing pulse and told Gwen to see if the bar next to Enlightened Moods would give her some ice.

People were staring now as Gwen ran to bang on the door of Sully’s Tavern, which didn’t open for another half hour, and Dean was pretty sure he heard people murmuring about how it was probably some kind of drug thing and wasn’t that a shame as he ran his hands through the alpha’s soaked hair, repeating “Sammy,” with increasing desperation. Sam’s skin was red and splotchy in some spots, very hot to the touch, and his breath was labored. On top of the bond breaking sickness he’d most likely given himself heat stroke, which was fine. It’s not like his mate, who would need to get him back to the motel, was stuck in a fourteen year old’s body or anything.

Gwen came back with two pint glasses full of ice to find that Dean had somehow managed to squeeze himself into the passenger side footwell and was doing his best to press Sam’s face to his neck without suffocating him, hoping that there was still enough coffee and rose oil on him for the alpha to scent. Sam didn’t stir until after Dean had melted three ice cubes across his forehead, two on his neck, and stuffed a handful up his shirt. The best he could manage in response to the omega’s, “Sam?” was “D’n,” though at least that was progress. Numerous people had stopped to ask if they should call an ambulance before Gwen got them dispersed, and both Mr. Brennan and Sparrow had peeped through the windows of their stores to see what the commotion was, so it was just as well it was taking Sam a while to wake up.

A second handful of ice got Sam conscious enough at least to move him to the back seat with Gwen’s help so Dean could hike the front seat forward to drive. He really hoped Sam was more awake by the time they got to the motel, since Gwen’s added strength as an alpha was basically the only reason they managed to get Sam up and moving. Sam nearly fell off the back bench seat when Dean slid forward, catching himself just in time as he grabbed at his chest to try to quell the throbbing pain that had him struggling to fill his lungs earlier until he’d passed out. Dean left Gwen to keep an eye on Brennan while he got Sam cooled off and hydrated, taking off for the motel with instructions to call if anything weird happened - the possibilities for what could fall under “weird” seemingly endless in Elwood, Missouri.

Dean remembered driving when he was underage and he was pretty sure he’d never been as nervous about getting pulled over as he was on the way back to the Stargazer. The combination of being in the wrong body, having limited control over his emotions, and the semi-conscious alpha in the back that he couldn’t easily explain away if a cop spotted him and wanted to be a dick ( _at least with John he could always say he was driving his drunk father home - often the truth_ ) had him going two miles under the speed limit and praying to a god he didn’t even believe in. The relatively slow drive back at least gave Sam enough time to really wake up, even if he was a complete disaster, and he was able to stagger out of the car and into the motel room with Dean steering him, his hand still pressed against his sternum.

Sam wanted to just lay down and pass out again on one of the beds but the omega urged him on to the bathroom, leaning him against the door frame while he turned on the shower and adjusted the knobs for a nice cool spray. He’d already been rubbing Sam down with ice and didn’t want to shock his system too badly with a completely cold shower, and once he was satisfied the water would lower his core temperature without being too much of a jolt he got Sam stripped out of his shorts and shirt and down in the tub. The alpha was still startled when the shower hit him, but Dean was quick to shush him, running fingers through his hair until he quieted against the back of the stall, Sam’s breathing eventually evening out before he finally opened his eyes to look at his mate.

“There you are,” Dean said with a strained smile, giving him a quick kiss much as he still wanted to slap Sam for putting him through that. “I thought I was gonna lose you for a second.”

“Told you I’m not dying on you,” Sam replied through chattering teeth. “Should’ve paid closer attention to those PSAs about not leaving your dog in the car.”

“You ever do that to Hannah and you'll need Kevin to make you a whole new identity so you can hide from me.” Sam closed his eyes again, leaning into Dean's touch and sighing deeply. “You wanna tell me what happened? Because if that was some kind of desperate cry for attention it was completely unnecessary.”

Sam chuckled even as he shivered, Dean taking that as his cue to turn off the water and towel dry the alpha’s hair. The overheated splotches that had marred his skin were starting to disappear, which, given how ill he’d been all day, wasn’t necessarily an improvement. His eyes looked even more sunken and his face seemed considerably thinner than it had just a few hours earlier.

“I think…” He leaned forward a little to try to catch a whiff of the rose oil on Dean’s skin, the coffee having long since worn off. It was still there, though Dean was going to need to reapply it shortly if they hoped to keep Sam’s hindbrain fooled. Dean picked up on what he was doing and moved in closer so Sam could tip his face behind Dean's ear and sigh again. “I’m doing this...I don’t know how to explain it. It’s like the sickness is giving the demon blood more control.”

“How do you mean?”

“The better I’m feeling, the better I can lock the demon blood down, but it comes back stronger as soon as I start to feel worse, and then it’s harder to push it back. It seems to know when to take advantage.”

“You’re talking about it like it has a brain, Sam.”

“That’s how it's starting to feel. It’s like having a parasite.”

“Well that’s a definite turn off.” Dean grimaced and draped a second towel around Sam’s shoulders, shuddering. “That’ll help me keep Mini-Me under control.”

“Hey…” Sam grabbed the omega’s wrists as he went back to drying the alpha’s hair, giving him the puppy dog eyes that let Dean know they were about to have a conversation he would rather avoid. “About the alley…”

“Really?” Dean arched an eyebrow at him, trying unsuccessfully to pull his hands free. “I find you half dead in my car and you want to talk about me giving you head?”

“You need to know I don’t expect you to do that if you’re not really into it,” Sam said firmly, going for authoritative even as he worried he was on the verge of throwing up. All this yo-yoing back and forth between being in control of himself and riding shotgun to the demon blood was taking a serious toll on him physically, and they still needed to stop the disappearances and get Dean changed back to himself. It was shaping up to be a rough night, and he didn’t want a replay of Dean on his knees when in the long run it hadn’t helped either of them. “I don’t _want_ you to do that if you’re not really into it, especially with the stuff you've been through. I’m sorry if you don’t want to talk about it, but I won’t just let things like that eat away at you.”

“Nothing’s eating away at me, Sam,” Dean retorted, getting to his feet and twisting free finally. As if to punctuate his statement, he leaned down to kiss his mate quickly and firmly. “Stay here and I’ll get you some dry clothes. I don't want you slipping and cracking your head open trying to get out of the tub.”

Sam sighed, not really in a position to argue as Dean headed out of the room. He felt like shit, his mind was jumbled by the war between the darkness growing stronger inside him and his happy but terribly confused alpha, and he really just wanted to sleep for several days curled up around Dean. He didn't have a clue where Gwen had gotten herself to, and he couldn't muster up enough energy to care. He just wanted all of this to be over and to go home.

It was a sentiment Dean shared. What had started out as scary and annoying was becoming a bona fide pain in his ass. He had no clue how he'd actually survived hunts with his dad when he was this small and useless, and it made him furious to think John had looked at him at this size and decided he'd be fine in the field. His dad probably didn't even realize how lucky he was that Dean was seventeen the first time John had been really hurt on a hunt. If that rugaru had taken a chunk out of John's leg when Dean was thirteen, his dad definitely would have bled out while Dean was trying to get them back to the car.

He got another one of his dirty shirts from his duffel and stopped on his way to Sam's to dig the rose oil out of his pocket, dabbing some behind his ears and along the neckline of the shirt before turning to grab the half full cup of cold coffee they'd left on the table. He certainly wasn’t expecting to see the guy in the red hat from the parking lot standing there when he turned around. He was about half a foot taller than Dean and looked like some kind of homeless person, his skin and hair grimy and his coat sporting holes at the elbows. When he smiled his teeth shone nearly black, and before Dean had a chance to do anything he pounced, pinning the omega down on the floor with one hand around his throat and the other over his mouth. Dean did his best to buck the man off, pushing against his shoulders and pounding on his chest as he squirmed, his vision blurring with the loss of oxygen, but it was useless. Kicking his legs did nothing to dislodge the stranger, who made no sound as he sneered down at the teenager, his eyes glowing green and face twisting into something decidedly not human. Dean used the last of his breath to try to scream for Sam as he thought back on what Marian said about Oberon not letting the two of them go.

Unconsciousness and an assured one way trip back to the fairy realm were seconds away when Dean saw the blur of something white fly over him and the microwave connected squarely with the man’s face. Dean lay gasping as Sam spang past him, grabbing the appliance he’d just thrown to smash the intruder’s head to a bloody pulp. The only problem was that the intruder’s head would not smash, and Sam ended up destroying the microwave instead. Once there was nothing really left of the thing but an outer shell and control board, the man grinned and shoved Sam with such force he flew across the motel room and ended up half in the kitchen, destroying the chair he landed on. The blood he coughed up was more than a little disconcerting, as was the ease with which the man got to his feet and started over towards him until Dean rasped, “Hey!” to get his attention.

The stranger turned on him where he was standing by the table, the smile still splitting his face, until Dean tore open the four packets of sugar Sam brought back with the coffee and dumped them on the table in a pile. The man growled, his smile turning into a glare, and pulled up a chair to start counting the grains. Dean took a few more seconds to catch his breath, before heading over to the kitchen to check on his mate.

“Y’okay Sammy?” he murmured into the alpha’s hair, not liking the sounds Sam was making when he breathed. There was a wet, rattling sound that had Dean worried he’d broken a rib and punctured a lung.

“M’okay,” Sam coughed in response. “You?”

“Just dandy. Stay here.”

Dean didn’t have to tell him twice, the pain in Sam’s ribs enough to keep him where he was without needing the extra order. Why the man had stopped attacking them and was just sitting at the table sorting through sugar he had no idea, though he was sure Dean would tell him at some point since whatever it was about the sugar had saved them and would clearly be a trick Sam should know, too. Dean was already in the bathroom and he returned a few moments later with the keys to the Impala and Sam’s cell phone, what looked to be a brochure in his hand as he dialed on his way to the main door.

“Hey, is this Marian?...This is Dan, I was there earlier with _The Enchanted Times_?...Yeah, the article is going great. Listen, I had a question about a type of fairy…” Sam couldn’t hear anything else as Dean headed outside to the car, trading glares with the man as he went. He was back with a duffel from the trunk shortly, closing the door to the motel room firmly behind him as he said, “No, that’s great. That’s all the information I needed. Thanks!” He stopped at the table, tossing the duffel into one of the chairs as he hung up, then digging through for a canister of Morton’s salt. The stranger’s face turned flaming red with anger as Dean looked him square in the eye and dumped the whole thing out, snapping, “Have fun counting _that_ , asshole.”

The man clearly wanted to kill both of them but could only continue to count the grains of sugar and now salt on the table as Dean swiped the laptop and headed over to toss it on the bed before going to help Sam up. He didn’t object to Sam wrapping him in a fierce hug and stroking his back for a few long minutes, despite the contact making him nearly break down. He got the alpha into the shirt he’d set out before the intruder showed up and a dry pair of boxers, helping him to lay down and explaining about fairies needing to stop to count spilled salt or sugar regardless of how strong they were. Sam definitely saw the value in knowing that little bit of information, even if he objected to taking a nap as Dean looked up how to get rid of a redcap ( _apparently what this guy was_ ). When it got right down to it he was too exhausted to do anything but give in to sleep, and besides, it would take the redcap at least a day to count that much salt.

The sound of his phone ringing woke Sam with a start to find his head was on Dean’s narrow chest and the redcap was gone. He still felt quite ill from everything that had happened throughout the day, though the smell of roses and coffee helped soothe him immediately upon waking. Dean was playing with Sam’s hair and watching a rerun of _Frasier_ with the volume on low, and noticing Sam was up he answered and put the phone on speaker.

“Hey Gwen,” he said, smoothing a lock of hair behind Sam’s ear. “You get the sugar?”

“ _I got a lot more than the sugar_ ,” she replied. “ _I just left the grocery store and who do you think I saw picking up a couple cartons of cream after closing down his shop for the night_?”

“One watchmaker whose kid vanished a month ago?”

“ _See, I knew Sam mated you for your brains. Speaking of, how is he_?”

“Tired,” Sam croaked, squeezing Dean’s hip. “And thirsty.”

“Well if you think you can drive us somewhere we can get some dinner,” Dean told him. “I think we’ll have a better chance of not getting pulled over if you’re behind the wheel.”

“ _You want me to stay on Brennan still_?”

“Yeah, we need to know where he’s summoning them and what they are,” Dean said, his fingers trailing down Sam’s neck to his shoulder. “Sam and I obviously can’t split up again, but we can meet you wherever. The two of us should be able to see what we’re dealing with.”

“ _Sounds good. I’ll call you in a bit_.”

“Thanks Gwen.” He hung up and tossed the phone onto the nightstand where the laptop was now residing. He scratched the alpha’s scalp, earning himself a sleepy, happy hum, asking, “So, dinner? Cuz I’ve been stuck under your gigantic head all day and I _am_ a growing boy.”

“Yeah, I don’t really think I can eat much,” Sam grunted, sitting up nonetheless. “But I at least need to drink some liquids so I’ll get some pants on. How’d you convince our guest to move on?”

“Recited a couple of psalms,” Dean replied, heading for the bathroom and trying to subtly adjust himself. “Redcaps don’t respond well to scripture, apparently. Give me five minutes, thinking of you with a parasite doesn’t work as well as I thought it would.”

Sam snickered as his mate disappeared and searched through his duffel for some clean shorts. Dean was back before long, grumbling about Sam and his stupid shampoo, even as he paused where the alpha was sitting at the salt covered table putting on his shoes to plop down in his lap and kiss him deeply. He passed Sam the keys with instructions to grab his phone before heading out to wait by the car.

Gwen called on their way into town to let them know Brennan had gone straight back to his shop and was now at Sully’s working on pickling his liver. It made their choice of where to have dinner pretty simple, not wanting to leave Gwen on her own any longer after what happened with the redcap. The main strip where Sully’s and the watch shop were located was also close enough to the Stargazer that Sam could make the drive with only a slight feeling of nausea, joining Gwen in a booth while Dean - despite his mate’s protestations - ran across the street to peep in the window and see what he could see.

What he saw was hard to believe, even after nuking the pixie and banishing the redcap. He cast a glance back to Sully’s, where Gwen and Sam were sitting at the table in the front window, giving them a thumb’s up before turning to the scene unfolding inside the shop. A group of little men were at the crafting station working on the various watches Brennan was completing for sale, every now and then running over to drink from a white bowl filled with fresh cream. They knew how to do everything: drill, weld, press, mold, compile, they did it all with ease. It was like watching _The Shoemaker and the Elves_ play out live in front of him, and he hurried across the street to the bar before he was spotted spying, feeling like they’d really dropped into an episode of _The Twilight Zone_.

Sam had already ordered him a soda and was on his second pint glass of water as Dean dropped into the chair next to him, tangling their fingers together under the table and pressing his leg against Sam’s at the sight of the thin line of sweat beaded along his hairline and the pallor of his skin. He quickly told both alphas what he’d just seen, following Gwen’s nod when he asked where Brennan was to the stool the man was perched on at the bar, following her lead when she signaled for them to wait and showed the box of Domino sugar tucked inside her jacket. She’d already passed a couple of the boxes Dean had requested she buy off to Sam, and since the two boys really did need food it was easy enough to let her take the lead.

Mr. Brennan was well into his liquid dinner as Gwen sidled up next to him and ordered a beer. He didn’t even notice her as she took a sip before fixing her eyes on him, her cousin’s mate watching intently from across the room. Her cousin was busy being lost in the menu, still very clearly off from the events of earlier in the day, while Dean subtly ran his hand along the small of Sam’s back.

“You’re Mr. Brennan, right?” she asked after a minute or so had passed, and he turned to her in shock at no longer being alone at the bar. “The one who owns the watch shop across the street?”

“Yes,” he stammered, clearly apprehensive. “That’s my shop.”

“Wow,” she said with an appreciative smile. “You know, I walked by a little earlier to take a look and your work is _really_ beautiful. I mean, what I could see of it. You were already closed.” He nodded and turned back to his bourbon, assuming incorrectly that she was done. “What shocked me though, besides just how _gorgeous_ your watches are, is how much product you manage to put out all by yourself. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you had a bunch of elves working for you.” That got his head whipping back around to her, a terrified look on his face as she leaned in and smiled at him. “Except I do know better, and you have a bunch of elves working for you. And apparently all you had to do was trade your first born son to get them.”

“Who the hell do you think you are?” Brennan snapped, his eyes flashing a weak red.

“I’m a hunter,” Gwen snapped back, her own eyes flaring in response. “And right now I’m your best shot for ending this thing without anyone else losing their son.”

“It wasn’t like that,” he choked, his eyes moist as he turned back to his glass. “If I’d known that’s what she meant I never would have made the deal.”

“She?” Gwen demanded. “Who exactly did you make a deal with?”

“My…” He blushed a deep crimson. “My fairy godmother.”

Well, that was just a whole other level of crazy, no matter what they’d learned about fairies earlier in the day. She managed not to laugh at the absurdity of the statement, casting a glance back and Sam and Dean and rolling her eyes.

“Your fairy godmother,” she echoed.

“Not mine. My family’s. My grandmother, she used to tell me stories about the fairies - said they were real, that they favored the Brennans. She had this book, told me it was a grimoire back when I was a kid, told me I could use it to summon them. I never thought it was real. But then my hands…” He held them up and Gwen watched as they trembled slightly before he ran one through his hair and grabbed his bourbon with the other to take a long pull. “Parkinson’s. Patrick wasn’t old enough to take over the shop - or interested. My daughter Margaret is only fifteen. The business has been in my family for generations. We were going to lose _everything_. So I figured, what the hell, right? What _else_ did I have to lose?”

“So you learned how to work a spell,” Gwen prompted.

He nodded, wiping a hand across his mouth, and said, “Grandma had earmarked the one she always told me about, the one she said would bring her fairy godmother to grant a wish. I didn’t expect it to work, you understand, but then there she was. And she offered to save my business, to save my family name, with a crew of workers who could run the shop until Margaret could take over for me. All she asked was that we give them a place to rest and let them take the fat and fruit of the land.”

“And of course you said yes, not realizing…”

“That she meant my first born son.” He swiped at his eyes, sniffing, and took another long pull. “Not just mine. There have been others. Those young men on those missing posters? That’s all because of me. And they’re not stopping. I’ve begged them - these other families, they didn’t make the deal - but they’re never going to stop. They’re never going to leave.”

“There must be a way to banish them.”

“There is. It’s on the same page as the summoning spell, but the book is locked in my safe in my shop. They won’t let me near it. It’s been a nightmare.”

“Well, it’s my job to get rid of nightmares,” Gwen told him. “My name’s Gwen, by the way. Those two over there -” She pointed to where her cousin was forcing himself to eat a salad while his mate was inhaling a burger. “- they’re two of the best hunters around. You say the word and we’ll go get that book.”

“That tall guy…” Brennan jolted at the sight of Sam. “He was in my shop earlier. And that kid’s a hunter?”

“He’s not...really a kid. It’s complicated. But we can cover you while you get the book and perform the spell.”

“We should wait a while,” Brennan said. “I pay the elves in my shop with fresh cream but I always leave out some tequila on weekends. They love the stuff, the lushes. In an hour or so they’ll all be passed out.”

“Sounds like a plan, then.” She grabbed her beer bottle, smiling at him, and suggested, “Come on over and we’ll figure out how to handle this.”

The watchmaker nodded, still looking a little skeptical, and picked up his tumbler to join the couple at the table. He had a hard time wrapping his mind around the idea that Dean had somehow been de-aged and was really twenty-seven, which the omega found ridiculous considering the man had caused all these problems in the first place by summoning a fucking fairy godmother. The way the very tall, obviously very sick alpha related to the teenager definitely spoke of the pair being mated, however, so Brennan decided it was easier to accept it as fact and maybe try to help them figure out how one of them was sent back from the fairy realm at a younger age while the other one wasn’t. His grandmother had certainly never mentioned anything about fairies reducing someone’s age; at least not without them requesting it in the first place.

It was well after dark by the time they snuck back over to the shop, Sam having stopped off to grab a shotgun with iron rounds out of the back of the Impala, both Gwen and Dean armed with the sugar boxes. Gwen definitely found it strange to be the only one breaking into the back of the shop who couldn’t see the sleeping elves strewn about the floor, startling each time one of the three men grabbed her to stop her from stepping on one. They made it to the safe easily - far too easily, Brennan said - but with three hunters there they figured they’d be ready for anything as he pulled the book out and flipped to the page with the banishing ritual. With Dean covering the back entrance, Gwen covering the front entrance, and Sam covering everything in between, it looked to be smooth sailing until halfway through the ritual when Brennan was impaled from behind by a long silver rod that glistened in the light and shot glittery sparks out of the end as it protruded from the watchmaker’s chest.

Before they could make a move, Dean and Gwen were both flung to opposite ends of the shop and fell to the floor, unconscious, while Brennan slumped forward to reveal the fairy in the silver ball gown standing behind him, blood dripping from her wand as her gossamer wings carried her closer to the hunter in the middle of the shop. Her long dark auburn hair was wound up elaborately on her head and pinned underneath a glistening tiara that added three full inches to her height, her dress shimmering like diamonds as she moved towards Sam, who momentarily froze. She looked drastically different than she had when suggesting she could show him the back of her shop across the street.

“You!” he exclaimed. “You’re his fairy godmother?”

“Guilty as charged,” she said, grinning at him and licking her teeth again. “You really should have taken me up on my offer earlier, Sam. Oberon wouldn’t have had to send the redcap after you, and you and Dean wouldn’t have run the risk of getting hurt.”

“Funny you worry about us getting hurt right after killing a man,” Sam snapped.

“Yes, well, poor Brennan went back on our deal. I told him there was a price. Once we come, we come to stay.”

“You weren’t very clear on what your price was.”

“Not my fault he didn’t ask for clarification. But you - I’m thinking you’ll want everything spelled out clearly, so how’s this?” She twirled her wand like a cheerleader with a baton, heading over to where Dean lay in a heap on the floor, Sam cocking the gun in warning and stopping her from getting too close. She threw a grin his way before fluffing her skirt. “You and Dean, you’re both marked, but I can fix that. This little thing where Dean’s a kid again - very powerful magic, not mine, and not much I can do to reverse it, but what I _can_ do is set you back as well. You’re true mates. I can smell it on you, how it’s literally killing you to have him like this. What is he - thirteen, fourteen years old? Wouldn’t it be nice to have all that time to grow up together, mate as soon as you both present, and live happily ever after? It would help take care of your little demon blood problem too. You’d be too young for any of the things that Prince has planned for you, and by the time you were old enough his window of opportunity would have passed.”

“So all my problems taken care of,” Sam said, edging closer to his mate, the dark thing in him furious that he hadn’t even tried to kill her yet when she wanted to take its power away. “What’s the trade?”

“Well, we would need two replacements for you. Though we typically only take sons, your cousin _is_ an alpha, and she doesn’t fit particularly well in this world. So you let me take her, and then, of course, your own first born.”

“I don’t think so,” Sam told her without hesitation, blasting her with the shotgun and racing to get to Dean and the sugar box.

“Iron,” she hissed, vanishing and then reappearing between him and the omega, swinging the wand and catching him in the cheek. “Painful, but not a deal breaker.”

“I’m not giving you my son!” Sam snarled, firing again but missing as she popped up behind him and bashed her wand against his knee, sweeping his leg out from under him and sending him crashing to the floor.

“But Sam,” she cooed, clipping him in the back of the head with the knobby end of the wand, which was considerably harder than it looked. “You can have other children. A dozen of them. Remember? The house in Vermont with the dog and the cat and all the babies in the world? You could have that if you just give up the first one.”

“Children mean that little where you come from, huh?” Sam said, struggling to his hands and knees as she hit him in the kidneys. It knocked the wind right out of him, aggravating his still tender ribs. “That you expect us to just give them away?”

“Quite the opposite, Sam. Human babies are the most precious thing to us. That’s why we bargain for them whenever we can.”

“Well, you’re not getting mine,” he told her, pulling a salt shaker he’d lifted from Sully’s out of his coat and slamming it on the floor so the top broke off, the salt scattering across the the wood.

“You bastard,” she hissed, flopping down so her skirt billowed around her to collect the salt into a pile and start counting the grains.

“You're lucky I almost forgot I had that,” he retorted, struggling his way over to the desk to do his best at reading the spell. It appeared to be written in German, which wasn’t his favorite language, though he was at least grateful the book wasn’t Celtic.

“You’re making a terrible mistake,” she snapped in between counting. “You don’t even know what’s wrong with Dean or if you _can_ change him back before you lose complete control - or die!”

“I’ll take my chances,” Sam said, finishing the ritual and watching as she disappeared in a blink of light, the elves around the shop vanishing in the same manner.

Dean and Gwen were just starting to stir as he found a tissue and dabbed at his cheek, tucking the grimoire under his arm and trying to decide what they were going to do with poor Mr. Brennan. Gwen said she’d call it in with the FDH the next day, though she wasn’t sure anyone was going to believe her, and Dean was more than a little upset to hear that whatever magic was involved with his age it wasn’t the fairy godmother’s. They’d have to go over everything they’d done and everyone they’d talked to the day before, but that could wait, because Sam was almost falling over on his feet and they needed to clean up their motel room. They both hoped whatever happened wasn’t some kind of fuck or die curse because of Tabs and Slots, and that it was something that would wear off on its own, and wished Gwen goodnight before she closed the door on her room next to theirs. Dean managed to get Sam to stay upright long enough to brush his teeth and then was happy to crawl under the covers and into his arms so the alpha could breathe against Dean’s shirt and skin and get some much needed rest.

The coffee and rose oil trick was working quite nicely, Sam huffing out gentle breaths against Dean’s hair and Dean snoring slightly into Sam’s neck, until they were both awakened by a blood curdling scream from Gwen’s room. They bolted awake, Dean only momentarily annoyed by the sticky wet spot on the front of his underwear, and grabbed their guns to stop whatever was happening to Sam’s cousin. She had quieted by the time they made it out to her door and didn’t answer their knocks, which led to Sam stepping back and kicking the door in. After the night they had they expected to find her dead, or that she had simply vanished, but what they were faced with was neither of those things. Flipping the light on they found Gwen in her room on the floor, safe and quite alive, though unconscious.

She also looked to be about fourteen years old.


	121. This Is Bizarre, Even For Us

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So...what the fudge is going on?

Gwen didn’t recall drinking enough the night before to warrant waking up with such a terrible headache. Sure, she’d had a couple of beers at Sully’s and yes, she’d been thrown into a wall by a hippie chick who was actually from “the realm,” as Marian had called it, but she was still several years off of thirty and shouldn’t feel like such utter shit. Her head hurt, her body hurt, she’d obviously had some kind of crazy sex dream judging by how uncomfortable she felt below the waist, and she was simply not ready to face the day. As long as she made it out of bed before noon to call the FDH she figured she’d be okay, rolling over and burying her face under the crappy comforter on the lumpy bed.

She was almost back to sleep when she heard quiet sobbing behind her and the sound of rustling sheets, followed by whispers of, “It’s okay,” and, “I’m here,” and, “Sammy, shh,” punctuated by the repeated press of lips against skin. What the hell Sam and Dean were doing in her room she wasn’t entirely sure, or why they were in the other bed, especially when it sounded like they were working their way into a more intimate encounter and appeared to have forgotten she was there. Sam was obviously the one crying, as the more Dean shushed him the quieter he got, and she really planned to just ignore them the best she could ( _she understood Sam needed to be close to his mate, maybe even more now that they didn’t know how to fix Dean_ ) until she heard what sounded like clothing coming off, at which point she sat up and exclaimed, “Okay, hold it right…”

She stopped in shock at the sound of her voice and the state of her motel room. The door had obviously been kicked open judging by the broken door jamb and the chair that was now wedged under the knob to keep it from swinging open. Another chair was laying on its side by the table, the laptop laying cracked next to it, which made a weird kind of sense because she remembered she was sitting down with her laptop to write up her notes on the case late last night when a sudden intense pain ripped through her and she fell over. Strangely, she didn’t remember how she got into bed after that, which also made a weird kind of sense when her voice was definitely _not_ her voice and Dean was peeking his head up over Sam’s naked shoulder to blush at her.

“Morning,” Dean said guiltily even as Sam’s arm was winding its way up to the omega’s head to pet his hair. “Didn’t mean to wake you. Sam was having a nightmare. You should...you should go check out your reflection and try not to panic.”

Gwen nodded at him numbly, fairly certain she already knew what she would see in the mirror. When she stood and looked down the length of her, noticing how small everything was, she almost forewent the trip to the bathroom entirely. She could hear the boys putting clothes back on behind her, closing her eyes against the panic she felt swelling in her chest ( _and that was definitely new; like all Actaeon graduates Gwen was trained in how to keep herself from panicking before she left school_ ), and wandered across to the bathroom to confirm her suspicions. Well, she thought as she stared at herself in the mirror, at least this time around she had fewer zits.

“So,” she called back to them in a voice she hadn’t used since she was about thirteen or fourteen. Closer to fourteen, she guessed, based on boob size. “You guys aren’t just exhibitionists, you probably heard me fall over.”

“Yeah.” She could hear Dean struggling to get Sam up as he answered her. “You’ve got a great monster movie scream, I’ll give you that. Sam kicked the door in and we found you like this and didn’t want to just leave you when you don’t have a lock now. Except we’ve only got the one bed, so…”

“No, I appreciate it.” She really did. She’d slept like the dead through the night, completely unaware of the two men ( _well, the man and the boy_ ) in her room. Anyone could have walked by and taken advantage of her like this if they hadn’t made use of her second bed. “Have we got any theories?”

“We do, but we’re gonna...go take care of some stuff and give you a chance to shower and adjust to your new situation,” Dean replied right before she heard the door open and quickly close. Gwen hurried to replace the chair under the knob and then headed back to the bathroom to turn on the water, thinking it would be good to have a way to drown out any sounds that might waft over from next door.

It was particularly galling to the omega that Sam wasn’t really lucid enough to share in his embarrassment at what Gwen _must_ have thought they were doing. It really sucked that Sam was so much bigger than him now, Dean basically vanished against him; and when he’d decided to make Sam an omega-scented pillow out of the shirt his mate wore to bed after he woke up crying - well, he had a pretty good idea of what that looked like to someone who couldn’t see Dean pressed up under Sam’s chin. Of course he couldn’t really blame Sam for falling to pieces, not when the dream that had awakened him had been of standing at a hunter’s funeral for the omega. The scent on the shirt he was wearing wasn’t strong enough on its own to keep him calm, and Dean had drifted to the edge of the bed unconsciously to escape the simple reality of Sam being a furnace. Dean knew he should have gotten Sam back up and over to their room to calm him down, but Sam said it was like Dean was haunting him, and he needed to make sure the alpha immediately knew he was real.

Sam was fine while they got Gwen into bed and talked about what she and Dean had done that Sam hadn’t, coming to the conclusion as they laid tangled up together on the spare bed in Gwen’s room that there must be something funny with Marian Jennings’ homemade cookies. He was fine when he drifted off to sleep before Dean, humming at the feel of his hair being combed by delicate fingers. Now he looked to have lost at least five to ten pounds while he slept, his skin clammy and his breathing uneven as Dean got him settled back down onto the king bed in their room. The alpha had finally stopped crying, but he still looked positively forlorn, and Dean was really starting to worry that all his attempts to make Sam feel better were actually making him feel worse. The idea that he felt haunted by the omega hurt deeply, especially when Dean was doing the only thing he could think of to keep Sam on a somewhat even keel. At the very least it was clear after the last twenty four hours that they’d need to risk someone calling the cops on Sam for looking like a pervert, because there was absolutely no way they could split up again, not even for a quick breakfast run.

That wasn’t just because of Sam, much as Dean would have liked to pretend it was, to protect what little remained of his tough guy image after crawling over his mate like a crazy person when he found him passed out in the Impala. It had taken some time for the shock of being a teenager again to set in before Dean began to feel the effects of not being able to scent Sam. They might not be as bad as withering disease, but there was nothing pleasant about them. Maybe it wouldn’t have bothered him so much if all his memories of the week before hadn’t come flooding back in one giant data dump of “awful,” or if he were in better control of his emotions and not feeling so out of sorts thanks to his raging hormones, but the “maybes” didn’t really matter when he felt so small and scared and utterly, utterly alone. He didn’t want to say anything about it when Sam was actually dying without him, but Dean definitely understood why an alpha’s death killed an omega. He was missing their bond in a different way from Sam; not as something he physically needed for survival, but as something he’d become accustomed to being there to help ground him, and not having it was becoming more and more distressing. Trying to deal with the memory of being attacked in the alley, of the doctor’s visit, hell, even waking up in the hospital to the casual mention of nurses applying his scar cream - it was so much harder to keep everything tamped down and refrain from just hiding in the motel room when the only thing he could smell on Sam was sage, like a beta, which he associated with his father from when he was a kid. Though Sam’s sage was slightly different, it brought him no comfort whatsoever, and if they weren’t actually touching, Sam might as well not even be in the room.

Sam was here now, though, and they were in their own space and his skin was slightly grey and his hair was still damp with sweat, tears staining his cheeks as soft little lips kissed their way up his neck to behind his ear. His alpha was even more confused than it had been the day before, waking up certain that his mate was gone, but also certain now that he wasn’t dreaming and recognizing the feel of Dean against him, of Dean’s mouth on his skin and his hands in his hair, Dean’s voice murmuring that they were supposed to be on a spontaneous honeymoon and Sam should relax, even if it all seemed just the tiniest bit off. The body pressed against him was little and light, but those were definitely Dean’s eyes locked on his in the dim light peeping through the motel room curtains, and it was definitely Dean’s heart pounding against Sam’s sternum as he sucked another hickey onto Sam’s throat. It didn’t really throw Sam that there were things he wanted to do that they couldn’t, because there had been things they couldn’t do before Dean stupidly took a cookie from a stranger, and they were basically the same things; and just because Dean was small it didn’t mean he’d forgotten the oh so many wonderful moves he’d learned somewhere along the line between Actaeon and Laramie.

That they were rapidly moving beyond Dean just soothing him took them both by surprise, though it really shouldn’t have, given Dean’s up, down, up again issue, especially when he had a reason to be up again. The omega might find it mortifying, but Sam loved the little pants and whines he could get out of his mate with very little effort as he lifted Dean’s shirt up to help him get it off and tossed it away, their underwear getting kicked down to the bottom of the bed as Dean attacked his ear. A part of Sam's brain kept trying to put the brakes on over the idea of doing these kinds of things with a kid, even a kid who was clearly driving the bus, he just…god, he couldn’t care less. Dean’s skin was so soft and he was so easy to lift and turn with one arm and the smell of him the first time he came just from Sam kissing him and urging his hips forward against Sam’s pelvis had the alpha feeling growly and aggressive and it was fantastic. His hindbrain was back on board the “Dean is alive” train, and Dean _wasn’t_ really fourteen, which wasn’t something he was just telling himself to feel better about the way Dean twirled a tongue around one of his nipples. It was the fucking truth, and Sam refused to be derailed when he was the one who said they should think of the trip back from Branson like a honeymoon. Just because Dean had temporarily been hexed or whatever didn’t change the fact that he was _Dean_ , a consenting adult, and in all likelihood when they got him changed back he was probably going to have the skull fractures and headaches and internal scarring again, so it only made sense that they should take advantage of him being one hundred percent healthy while they could. Who cared if they made a sticky mess of the sheets or Dean’s third orgasm had him clinging to Sam and close to passing out? It was decidedly less than they’d have to deal with the next time Dean went into heat, and the idea of Dean in heat - of being Dean’s _first_ when he was in heat, since Sam knew he had been quarantined by the nurses back at school and he’d been on suppressants right up until the vampire hunt - that sent Sam right over the edge, and they were going to have to leave the housekeeper ( _assuming this place had one_ ) a really big tip if they ever managed to get their limbs untangled from the bedding.

“No more bad dreams?” Dean murmured as Sam gasped against his throat, one of Sam’s hands covering the entirety of his lower back and half of his hips, really not sure he’d survive much longer if they didn’t get up and start the day. Sam shook his head, his nose nuzzling back and forth along Dean’s jaw, and after one more filthy, open-mouthed kiss, Dean wobbled away, ordering, “Shower and food. We gotta make sure no one broke in next door and kidnapped your cousin.”

“She’s a trained hunter, Dean,” Sam sighed into the pillow that somehow still had the omega’s shirt pooled on it beneath his head. “She can handle it if someone tries to grab her or something.”

“Still.” Dean had stopped in the doorway to the bathroom, chewing his lip as he fought back the urge to tell Sam how frightening it was being this small - especially now that it was both him and Gwen that Sam would need to protect, instead of Sam and Gwen being able to protect him. That he was pretty sure no matter how well Gwen had appeared to absorb her new situation, particularly after spending the day with Dean so the idea of suddenly being a teenager wasn’t right out of the blue, she was probably just as scared by the prospect that anyone could walk up to her and just _take_ whatever they wanted. “We shouldn’t leave her alone too long.”

“Are you saying you actually care about what happens to Gwen?” Sam asked, leaning up on one elbow, the sheet falling to his waist and having the effect of making him look like something that might have been chiseled by Michelangelo, if Michelangelo wasn’t obsessed with giving all his sculptures micropenises.

Dean gave a one shouldered shrug in response, the thought of micropenises making him very self conscious, and casually hid his lower torso in the bathroom. He had enough well disguised insecurities as an adult. He didn’t need this added layer of teenage self doubt on top of it.

“I’m not sayin’ I want her babysitting the kids, but we _do_ need people to invite to dinner in St. Louis,” he replied as Sam finally got out of bed.

“You want to go back to St. Louis after everything that happened there?” Sam said incredulously, twining his fingers with Dean’s.

The omega shrugged again and said with a wink, “St. Louis wasn’t _all_ bad. I kinda liked the first night.”

Sam enjoyed the yelp he got out of Dean - and how easily he could lift him under one arm - entirely too much, but his alpha was happy and sated for the moment and he was determined to savor his time with his mate for however long he had both his hindbrain and the demon blood under control. They had clearly timed their shower poorly though, as even sharing they barely had enough hot water for both of them to thoroughly wash and rinse, and certainly not enough for them to do anything fun. That was probably better, since they both really were hungry now that they were getting into a normal morning routine, having expended some calories already.

Gwen was _so_ ready to go when they headed to her room that they didn’t even have to knock. She heard them coming and flung the door open, having managed to turn a tunic into a dress with considerably more ease than Dean had been able to do anything with his clothes, looking surprisingly put together due in no small part to having some tank tops with her that had built in shelf bras. Her shoes, however, were a different story entirely. She’d completely butchered her lone pair of sandals in an attempt to make them into flip flops, reminding both her cousin and his mate that they’d never gone back to Walmart the day before to get Dean proper footwear. She'd been busy while the two were off doing whatever they were doing ( _and no, she didn't want details_ ), having looked up a shoe store that was somewhere in Elwood that they could stop at to get them both something sturdier, and after a minor squabble about how she seriously did not look old enough to drive herself, she gruffly agree to riding in the back of the Impala. She tried not to let on just how upset she was not to be able to drive her own vehicle, but Sam had to admit she looked more than a little on edge at her current state - more so than he would have expected from someone as seasoned as her.

Heading back downtown when Brennan’s shop had blood all over the place wasn’t the best idea they could think of, so they headed for the outskirts down Route 266, where there was apparently a separate, smaller business district on the way out of town where various boutiques were located, including the shoe store Gwen found. All three of them had to admit that Shoe La La was a pretty genius name, even if it ended up catering only to women. They had a terrible time convincing Dean to just buy a pair of girl’s Chuck Taylors, since they were basically the same as the boy’s, and later they’d get him actual manly footwear, his growling stomach doing a good job of convincing him this was not the hill to die on today. From Shoe La La they headed to The North Star at the end of the main strip, expecting a neat, constellation themed restaurant and ending up with a fairly run-of-the-mill diner. It’s main attraction seemed to be that it was the only place to eat this side of Elwood, which accounted for how crowded it was and the twenty minute wait to be seated. None of them really liked the look of the menu, but none of them wanted to drive to the other side of town to undoubtedly wait another twenty minutes to be seated, so instead they took up a spot on the waiting area bench, Sam and Dean sitting entirely too close together should anyone choose to look their way. In hushed tones they told Gwen about their cookie theory, which definitely made sense to her, even if they hadn’t noticed anything in particular that would mark Marian as a witch. Though they hadn’t had a chance to really do any research on what might have been in them it was at least a starting point, and that was a lot more than they had the day before when Dean was the only one who had been changed.

“I’ll be an organ grinder’s monkey,” said the owner of the feet standing in front of them as they were discussing their best course of action against a witch with an unknown motive. Looking up in alarm they noticed the UFO guy from Out of This World grinning down at them, a stack of printouts tucked in his arm. “It’s Mr. Honeymoon himself! On your way out to see us at our RV encampment? We saw some great activity last night. Say, where’s your mate?”

Shit. It would be just their luck to run into one of the few people in town who had seen Sam and Dean together before this whole mess started. And it _would_ have to be the wacko UFO guy.

“Sick,” Sam blurted out. “He’s back sick at the hotel. Real bad stomach thing.”

“Well that’s a darned shame.” He smiled at Dean and Gwen. “And who are these two fine young figures?”

“Cousins,” Gwen said without hesitation.

“We’ve always been into UFOs,” Dean added quickly. “And when cousin Sam here said he was stopping at the UFO capital of the country…”

“We live right in Springfield but mom and dad say this is all fake,” Gwen finished, and they both looked to Sam to help sell it.

“Yeah, I mean, I’m on my honeymoon but this has been their dream since…”

He was faltering a bit, and Dean exclaimed, “ _Forever_!”

“ _Totally_ ,” Gwen said with a smile.

“Well, I’m Wayne Whittaker, Jr. and you two young‘uns have come to the right place, I’ll tell you what,” Wayne Whittaker, Jr. told them with a huge grin splitting his face before he turned to Sam. “Did you and your mate at least manage to make it out to the crop circles before he got sick? There was quite a show a couple of nights ago.”

“We did,” Sam said. “But we must have missed it.”

“You’ll just have to stick around a while then! You know what they say about UFOs. They’re the opposite of lightning. You can always count on ‘em to strike twice!”

“I had no idea that they said that,” Sam stammered.

“So you’re an expert?” Gwen asked, and he nodded enthusiastically.

“I am indeed, young lady. UFOs are real and the truth is out there!”

“How do you get them?” she continued.

“Come again?” Wayne said, looking perplexed by the question.

“Well, you hunt UFOs, right?” He nodded a second time but still clearly wasn’t sure what Gwen was driving at. Sam and Dean weren’t either. “So how do you get them?”

“I’m glad you asked that, yes siree!” He seemed to have rebounded and handed her one of the packets he was holding, which consisted of about six piece of paper, printed on both sides and stapled together. “What you’re holding in your hand is 30 years of eyewitness accounts that speak for themselves as incontrovertible proof...”

Gwen was rifling through the packet and cut in, demanding, “This is it? This is all you’ve got?”

“I think it’s pretty convincing…” Wayne replied unconvincingly.

“You’ve been hunting UFOs for twice as long as I’ve been alive and you basically have no concrete data and zero workable leads?”

Wayne looked positively shellshocked.

“Well, I…”

“Have you considered the possibility that you suck at hunting UFO’s?” Gwen said sweetly, and after staring at her for a few seconds, mouth agape, he snatched the packet back and exited the diner in a huff. Sam and Dean looked as confused as Wayne had at the whole exchange, and she told them flatly, “We needed him gone, and now he won’t be interrupting us again. Never underestimate the power of a bitchy teenage girl.”

Dean laughed outright, slapping her on the back as the hostess came over to take them to their booth, where the alpha and omega snuggled up closely together on one side with Gwen on the other. She politely ignored the total lack of space between them and how Dean was leaning heavily on Sam’s shoulder, choosing instead to fire off an email to the FDH about the mess in Brennan’s shop and the encounter with the fairy godmother. She was pretty sure whoever opened it first would have a good laugh at her expense, but at least their asses would be covered once someone discovered the watchmaker’s body, and anyway she had bigger things to worry about at the moment, like what size underwear and bra she needed when they made the agreed upon Walmart run to Springfield after breakfast so she could concentrate on something else besides whether her undies were going to fall down on the way to the bathroom.

The waitress gave Sam and Dean a pointed glare when she came over to tell them her name was Sandra and she’d be taking care of them this morning, which they supposed was to be expected when they were sharing a menu and Dean said a little too loudly that Sam shouldn’t get used to him sitting in his lap. The confident way Dean ordered breakfast for both of them despite Sandra’s snootiness seemed to go a long way towards her rethinking her presumption that he was underage, and instead of looking disgusted when she walked away she seemed much more confused. Dean finger combing Sam’s hair and steering the conversation with Gwen when their food arrived while the obviously large, dominant alpha remained largely quiet, further confused Sandra, and she shrugged in the direction of the hostess - a middle aged beta who had been scowling since they walked in - before refilling Sam’s coffee and heading away. With Sandra finally appeased and giving them their privacy, the hunters made a list of everything they could remember between the three of them about the Avalon Bed and Breakfast over their pancakes, waffles, and sausage, noting that nothing really stood out about the place besides the obvious obsession with the fae. It was possible that in itself was a clue, just as it was possible that someone else made Marian’s “homemade cookies” and she was an unwilling dupe, but they certainly weren’t going to figure it out eating greasy diner food and drinking subpar coffee.

The hostess didn’t seem as convinced that Dean was any older than he looked or that Sam wasn’t some kind of creeper, waylaying the alpha when he went to pay for breakfast after running to the bathroom while Dean and Gwen headed out to wait in the car. She wanted to know exactly how old that “boy” with him was, and whether he was aware there were strict laws in place against soliciting unpresented teenagers in Missouri. Sam did his best to ignore the voice in his head snarling that he should show the beta the proper way to address the King of Hell, but by the time she’d run his card and was holding back the receipt so she could give him a further tongue lashing he wasn’t able to suppress a growl or the desire to lean in and loom over her just a bit until she passed him the receipt, his card, and a pen with shaking hands. He had no way of knowing the evil showing plainly on his face as he glared at her, or how she was trying to remember the name of that government agency that dealt with monsters so she could call and report him, because whatever he was it definitely wasn’t human. Once he’d signed, he snatched his card from the counter and stuffed it into his wallet, turning to head outside in time to see Dean and Gwen wandering around the side of the building.

“Dean?” he called as he exited to the parking lot, an elderly alpha and omega in front of him blocking his way down the stairs. His alpha was insisting that he race after his mate, and once he could get past the couple and their matching canes he didn’t fight it, tearing off in the direction Dean and Gwen had gone. “ _Dean_?”

He could hear something that sounded like a flute as he neared the corner of the diner, spotting the two before they headed past the dumpster out by the entrance to the kitchen and he couldn’t see them anymore. He grew increasingly alarmed when their small frames vanished, and then even more alarmed when there was a blinding light as he was racing after them and he felt the same pain shoot through him as he had two days before. His breath caught as an agony so intense that it took him to his knees spread from the center of his chest out to his shoulders and radiated down his arms. It occurred to him as he dragged himself back to his feet and staggered to the dumpster that he might be having a heart attack, but he couldn’t be bothered with that. He knew before he even turned the corner that Dean was gone, and a strangled roar escaped him before he collapsed in a heap next to the garbage.

The bright white light snapped Dean and Gwen out of the stupor they’d found themselves in the minute they heard a flute playing while comparing notes about what had happened to them. Gwen had been far more aware of what was going on with her physically than Dean, what with not being blinded by the King of the Fairies at the time, and the more she really thought about it the more she’d felt a little off before the pain that knocked her out of her chair flooded her body. Mostly it was her sense of smell, which had been waning throughout the evening, though she didn’t think anything of it at the time. Sam was working to suppress his scent so everyone within a five mile radius wouldn’t be able to smell how very sick he was, and Dean’s scent was gone due to the situation they were now both in.

Dean didn’t recall Sam’s scent being less noticeable, but they’d been pretty wrapped up in each other for most of the day and even if Sam had smelled less Sam-like he probably would have chalked it up to his head injury, since it was still messing with his vision. That was as far as they'd gotten in trying to use each other to research what the hell was going on when the music had started and they couldn’t pay attention to anything else - not even who was playing it. That would have been helpful when whatever spell they were under broke and they found themselves on a wide cobblestone path in the middle of a dense forest, the sunlight overhead barely breaking through the trees despite it clearly still being midday. They were in the middle of trying to decide which way to go on the path when Gwen saw a figure moving out of the trees behind the omega and had just enough time to shout, “Dean!” before whatever it was struck him across the back of the head, following up immediately with a hit to Gwen’s face and they both fell semi-conscious to the ground. The thing that had them was strong enough to grab each of them by the collar and drag them along with minimal effort, something that was not at all comforting to either as they locked eyes and tried to assess the other’s state.

“Sam…” Gwen mumbled, not needing to say more for Dean to know she was worried about where he was. Dean was, too, though he was too dizzy to really be able to become frantic about it. He supposed that was a good thing, as Gwen had already passed out, and he was pretty sure that soon he’d be waking up yet again having no clue where the hell he was. It was becoming a pattern he’d very much like to break, though as he lost consciousness he was certain this wouldn’t be the day he’d do it.


	122. What the Hell?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things are getting weird.

Dean hated the smell of moss. Of course, he wasn’t a fan of the great outdoors to begin with, so that shouldn’t have come as a huge surprise to anyone who knew him well. He could rough it with the best of them, had spent plenty of time doing just that, tracking some monster or other through the woods, but when you got right down to it he’d take the dingiest motel with the worst water pressure on the planet over having to hack it out in nature. Between the bugs, the dirt, the lack of modern plumbing, and the inability to regulate the temperature there was just nothing about sleeping under the stars that appealed to him. Therefore, the groan he emitted upon waking up with his face pressed to a mossy rock was due mostly to the unwelcome odor and only slightly to the crick in his neck from sleeping with one arm under him and the other flung across his back, his legs half on whatever was behind him so he was on a downward incline.

The moss turned out to be only the first of a bunch of very bad things he found himself facing as he took in his surroundings by the moonlight streaming in through the barred window about ten feet up. He was in a stone room that by the temperature of it was probably underground, the walls curved like a tower, with a thick door made of some heavy wood ( _oak, maybe_?) with more thick bars set in the window about six inches above his head and a slot in the bottom just large enough for a plate of food to be pushed through. For several long, terrible moments he fixated on the idea that he was in a basement and froze completely, his mind so stuck on the thought of having no way to escape this room that he had almost passed out before he remembered to breathe. It certainly wouldn’t do for him to faint right after waking up, since he’d obviously lost at least a few hours when he could have been trying to get out of here, and he pressed his shaking hands to his thighs as he purposely took in the room so he could compile a list of what was different.

He had two buckets that retained the smells of the last occupant of this cell, so it was pretty clear what each one was for; a straw bed with a thin blanket in the corner; and a table and chair, which was what his legs had been on when he woke up with his face on the floor. It looked like a dungeon out of a fantasy novel, which he would have scoffed at if he hadn’t already slain a dragon, an ogre, a troll and just spent the day before getting up close and personal confirmation that fairies were real ( _and assholes_ ). It was good, though, because he’d be able to repeat to himself on a running loop that this was a _dungeon_ , not a _basement_ , and that alone had a chance of helping him stay calm enough to work this shit out. What he needed to figure out immediately, beyond how he was going to get out of this _dungeon_ , was whether the fairies grabbed him or it was something else. Sending the fairy godmother back to her realm should have protected him and Sam from being snatched by Oberon’s minions, but that didn’t mean much when he’d remembered hearing some kind of other worldly music and then a blinding light before waking up here.

As the cobwebs slowly cleared from his head, he gradually recalled that he’d been with Gwen outside the diner and then suddenly in a forest and both of them were knocked out, dragging the chair over to the door to look through the barred window for her. There was another door directly across from his, behind which he heard someone whimpering, though it certainly didn’t sound like Gwen. A long hallway ran in either direction, lined with torches that provided dim lighting and did nothing to reduce the chill seeping into his bones, and he was rapidly deciding that he was definitely either in another fairy realm or someone had dropped him into _The Man in the Iron Mask_.

“Gwen!” he called as loudly as he dared, hoping wherever he was they hadn’t been split up.

“Shhh!!!” came a furious reply from the cell across from him, the whimpering subsiding. “You don’t want him to know you’re awake!”

“Who?” Dean demanded, the sound of a heavy door opening somewhere down the hall sending him scrambling over to the straw bed and throwing himself under the blanket. Sure, it was a cowardly thing to do, but he needed a lot more information than he currently had before he made a move or let whatever was now out in the hallway know he was alert.

He would have preferred the moss to the straw, as a mouse ran out from what sufficed for bedding and disappeared through a hole in the wall opposite him as footsteps and whistling approached his door and a plate piled high with meat, potatoes, and bread was pushed through the slot at the bottom. Dean remembered what Marian said about not eating food from Oberon’s table or he’d never be able to return to his reality, but he was clearly not at Oberon’s table and he was starving. Still, he didn’t dare move until after he’d heard the door across the hall open and whoever was sequestered inside it began screaming, “No!” He listened as the voice moved from the interior of the cell into the hall and then the hysterical shrieking faded off down the hallway until the heavy door at the end - presumably the dungeon’s entrance - opened and swung closed with a “thud.”

The mouse was back, drawn out by the smell of the food, when Dean finally thought it would be safe to get up and check the door. He kicked at it and grabbed the plate up off the floor as it scurried away, squeaking, and after moving the food to the table he climbed back up on the chair, calling, “Gwen!” There was no response, so he called several more times, and when he was sufficiently convinced she wasn’t in the dungeon with him, he hauled the table over to the window, plunked the chair on top of it, and climbed up to figure out where the hell he’d been taken and how the hell he was going to get out of there.

The window was at ground level, allowing Dean to see a plush lawn of clover and wildflowers extending off towards a forest in the distance, the full moon giving the landscape a pale blue glow, as if everything between him and the trees was enchanted. One of the bars looked to be loose at the bottom, like it had been chipped away at over time - whether by the elements or previous inhabitants of the cell it wasn’t clear. The amount of moss covering the floor and walls indicated a relatively steady flow of water into the room, so it was likely a combination of both. He stepped down onto the table and grabbed the spoon that had accompanied his food, disappointed it was wood instead of metal but not in a position to be picky. The wooden spoon was probably why the bars were still intact, despite the structure being ancient, and Dean was immensely grateful for all of the prisoners who had been there before him for not having simply sat around waiting to die. If someone hadn’t already worked to loosen the mortar it would probably take years for him to make any kind of progress, and he felt reasonably sure that he didn’t have years until whatever took the person across the hall was back for him.

He tried not to focus on how frustrating it was to be trying to break himself out of a dungeon with a fourteen year old’s body, or how much easier it would be to dig away the ancient mortar with the muscles he’d built up knocking down a concrete wall. He tried not to focus on what was happening with Sam, not knowing where he was or how long they’d been separated but quite certain he was not coping well with the omega’s absence. He tried not to focus on Gwen either, accepting he’d just have to hope for the time being that she was able to handle whatever was happening to her, no matter how strongly it ran against everything he believed when it came to leaving someone behind. And he really tried not to focus on the realization that it hadn’t been a mouse he scared out of the straw bed; it was a rat, and it had friends, who were now scurrying around the plate of food like they owned the place. Well, they could have it as far as Dean was concerned. His only objective at this point was to get the hell out of Dodge before whatever had taken his neighbor came back to drag him away screaming as well.

Gwen woke with considerably less annoyance, though no less confusion as to where she was, finding herself on a bed in a locked room that was decidedly more inviting than Dean’s accommodations but no less difficult to escape. Instead of being housed underground, she discovered she was about thirty feet up when she peered through her barred window, and the circular wall of her room led her to conclude she was either in a turret or a straight-up tower. Without being able to see more of the building from where she was it was impossible to tell which, but the room was comfortable, the bed was comfortable, and the dress she’d been changed into was comfortable, though somewhat impractical with the floor-length skirt. Besides the bed there was a vanity in the room with a stool and large mirror - a rather stupid thing to put in a prisoner’s chamber, given what a good slashing implement broken glass tended to be. Gas lamps were affixed near the ceiling to provide light to the room and there was an adjacent bathroom, though it didn’t have modern plumbing but a toilet that worked by gravity and a Victorian wash stand with a water pitcher and basin in place of a sink.

At the sound of the door opening behind her she grabbed said water pitcher, ready to clock whoever it was with it, only to discover a little girl with long wheat blonde hair and brown eyes who couldn’t have been more than six or seven. She wore a red top and a long white skirt, her feet bare on the stone floor. She gasped at the sight of the hunter getting ready to take her out and immediately started babbling in a language Gwen had never encountered, obviously frightened. Some words that came out of her sounded like German, but she was not speaking German; or at the very least, not modern German. Gwen hastened to put the pitcher down and did her best to soothe the child, even as she was aware this could be some kind of trick. Still, her instincts were kicking in fiercely, demanding that she protect whoever this little girl was from whatever had brought them here.

The girl was in the process of collecting herself when the lights dimmed all on their own and a faint gold glow began to emanate from the mirror. The child ran over to the stool and waited impatiently for whatever was about to happen, and Gwen just about fell over when the mirror flashed and Marian appeared inside it, smiling sweetly at the child and greeting her in the same strange language, dabbing at her eyes as the little girl chattered away about something or other and occasionally drawing laughs from the hotel owner. Gwen observed them for some time, trying to determine what they were saying and how they were related, before she finally moved fully into view of the mirror and said, “Nice cookies you’ve got there, Marian. I don’t think we’ll be publishing that article.”

Marian froze at the sight of the teenage version of the woman who had come to interview her for _The Enchanted Times_ and drew in a sharp breath before turning her attention back to the little girl, who - based purely on tone and inflection - was asking her some kind of question. The hotel owner did her best to ignore Gwen completely, and after a few moments they finished their conversation and the mirror went dark. The little girl turned to Gwen and smiled at her hesitantly before going to the wash basin to clean off her face and hands, then returned to take hold of Gwen’s fingers. She said something that of course the alpha couldn’t understand, but the way she tugged her back towards the bed was unmistakable. Gwen glanced around as she followed, looking for any threats, and eventually allowed the girl to pull her under the covers and snuggle in close. It felt weird and inappropriate and she had no way to communicate that to the child, which apparently wouldn’t have mattered anyway because the girl was asleep in less than a minute, taking advantage of the teenager’s body heat. Gwen sure wished she knew where the hell Dean was and if he was alive, because as far as she could tell they’d just fallen face first into some kind of alternate reality complete with maidens in a tower and magic mirrors and she had no clue how they were going to get themselves out.

The sight of the reporter behind her granddaughter had Marian panicking as she ended their nightly visit, unsure of how she was going to explain away this huge of a lapse in judgement. Now there were two preventable problems to deal with, and that was going to come back on her in spades. She hadn’t noticed the woman take a cookie from the basket on the way out or she would have stopped her - told her they were stale or some other such diversion - and the magazine she worked for was undoubtedly going to wonder where she went and send someone looking. She was surprised that the alpha who had been there looking for a room hadn’t been back yet, even if just to ask if she’d seen his mate, so she could convince him to sit down and have some tea and a cookie as well.

The hotelier was luckier than she realized, for when Sam woke it was to the smell of antiseptic cleaner and the sound of a heart monitor beeping, his chest still clenched with a sorrow that cut him so deeply he just wanted to close his eyes and never open them again. Dean was dead - again, or for real this time, it didn’t actually matter - and he’d taken Sam’s ability to breathe with him. And if he wasn’t dead, wherever he was he might as well be, because Sam felt nothing but emptiness, not even enough left of him for the demon blood to hold onto and take control. There was no telling how long Dean had been gone, Sam had no sense of time anymore, nor did he understand why someone called an ambulance to bring him to whatever hospital this was when they should have just left him to rot behind The North Star with any lingering, fake scent there was of his mate to ease his way into nothingness.

“Yeah, I’m gonna need you not to just lay there and cry,” Adam said from the bedside chair, looking pretty wrecked as Sam forced his eyes open and tried to stop hiccupping. “It’s not going to help the situation and Bobby sure as hell won’t put up with it once he gets here.”

“Hey Adam,” Sam choked. It was the best he could do before breaking down again completely. He probably _should_ try to get himself under control, he just didn’t have the energy to devote to the effort. It was so much easier to simply give into the heartache than to fight it.

“I’ve been sitting here all night waiting for you to wake up. You’re lucky they started at the top of your contact list when they couldn’t get your mate to answer his phone.” Adam’s voice cracked, and he pinched the bridge of his nose to keep himself under control. Getting a call from the hospital saying Sam had been found unconscious behind a diner and Dean was nowhere around and he should get there as soon as possible because they didn’t figure Sam had more than a couple of days to live had been a kick in the balls. “Speaking of, they say you’ve got something called withering disease and that only happens to an alpha when their omega has died and I don’t think I need to tell you how fucked up it is to have a doctor imply your older brother is dead and they just can’t find the body. Where’s Dean?”

“I don’t know,” Sam said, completely beside himself, watching a blurry Adam furiously shake his head.

“See, that’s really not the answer I’m looking for, Sam,” he snapped, standing up to loom over his brother-in-law. “I just made an eight hour drive here in six so we could hash this out face to face, and I’ve had to twiddle my thumbs while your blood pressure plummets every couple of hours and someone has to come running in here to check on you to get you stabilized again so that stupid monitor stops freaking out. Dean’s gone, you’re _dying_ , and I was pretty sure you guys were just taking your time getting back to the bunker because of his headaches. _What happened_?”

“Fairies,” Sam choked.

“Fairies,” Adam echoed. “Fairies don’t exist, Sam.”

“Yeah…” He laughed at how absurd this whole thing was, how again it was all his fault, how he seemed to get everyone killed who cared for him. First Jess and now Dean. “They do. And…uh…pretty sure there’s a witch in town.”

“Fairies _and_ a witch?” Sam nodded, the energy it took to do so exhausting him, and Adam grabbed the controller to raise up his bed. “You didn’t call the FDH and keep driving because…?”

Sam explained the situation as best he could while having to stop to sob every couple of sentences. That they had planned to spend the night in town anyway because of Dean’s head and thought they’d just check out the crop circles before calling the disappearances in. That they had no idea about Marian when Dean took the cookie she offered, and that it had all happened before they even looked into the fairies. That they’d only been able to glean what had changed him because the same thing happened to Gwen the next day, and the only thing they had in common were the cookies. That they hadn’t gone back to see Marian after Gwen was suddenly back in a training bra so none of them thought she was onto them or that they wouldn’t be safe by the car when Sam was just a few yards away inside. That there had been strange music and a flash of light and now Dean really _was_ gone and Sam had no idea where or what had taken him, and obviously he wasn’t in any state now to hunt Marian down, all while Adam sat and calmly took the whole thing in. When Sam had finished, completely spent, Adam smacked him twice on the back of the head and pulled his cell phone out of his pocket to bring up Bobby’s number.

“That first one is for you being dumb enough to let Dean wander around on his own, and the second one is for my idiot brother for taking cookies from strangers,” he snapped, when Sam murmured, “Ow,” as he waited for Bobby to pick up. “You can pass Dean’s along when we find him, because no matter what your ridiculous hindbrain thinks, he’s not dead. I would know if he was.” The call connected and he put it on speaker phone, saying, “Hey, where are you?”

“ _About an hour past the bunker_ ,” the old hunter groused. “ _Should be in Elwood by nightfall. How’s Sam_?”

“Sam’s a fucking moron,” Adam snapped, casting a glare at the alpha. “But at least he’s not dead yet. Listen, don’t come out here, head back to the bunker and sit by the phone. We’re dealing with some kind of witch and I need you on speed dial for research.”

“ _A witch_? _How the hell do those two idjits keep getting themselves mixed up in all this crap when they’re_ **_supposed_ ** _to be retiring_?”

“Being mated must kill a lot of brain cells.”

“ _How bad is he_?”

“I’ll live,” Sam croaked, his voice thick.

“Yeah, _maybe_ through the end of the week if we can’t find Dean before then,” Adam said, not really trying to hide the worry that was driving his anger towards Sam at the moment. “Call us when you get to the bunker and we’ll tell you what we know. I’m going to try to get Sam signed out but I may need to sneak him out through the morgue or something.”

“ _All right. Don’t_ **_you_ ** _be too stupid_.”

“ _I_ never am,” Adam snarked, and hung up the phone as he headed for the door. “Do whatever it takes to get a grip. I need you on your game. You’ve got two full days on me for fixing this and I’m not gonna be able to do it without you.”

“Okay,” Sam blubbered, sucking in a sharp breath as Adam came back to pull him into a tight hug.

“We’re going to find him,” he said firmly, feeling his friend nod against his chest even as his shirt grew damp. “We will. I already told Dean I’m not raising your two kids, so don’t make me, okay?”

“Okay,” Sam blubbered again, and Adam was gone.

It took him an hour or so to convince the doctors that Sam was leaving the hospital no matter what they advised, which resulted in a lot of extra forms to fill out that basically said they wouldn’t sue the hospital if Sam dropped dead in the parking lot. Sam had only broken down two more times telling Adam where they’d been staying so they could get all their packed up and agreeing that they should see if they could book a room at the Avalon. The alpha clearly was in no position to be running back and forth from his crappy motel to town to grill Marian about what exactly she was up to or sit in a car for hours staking the place out, and anyway the photos on their website looked like the place was a lot more comfortable than the Stargazer, even with every room indeed having a canopy bed as far as they could tell.

Marian was grateful she had centuries of practice at functioning like a normal person after a sleepless night, and was able to appear to be her bright, cheery self when the alpha returned in the afternoon after she realized what a terrible mistake she’d made with the reporter. He looked like he was at death’s door and had a handsome young beta with him who resembled the omega enough to obviously be a family member. She spotted them through the full length windows on either side of the front door, wandering around the grounds in a way the alpha and his mate hadn’t a few days ago, raising her suspicions that they might be onto her. That didn’t make any sense, though. The young couple were here looking for UFOs, and only hunters might suspect she was using magic. Hunters rarely took mates, while those two were clearly mated - a real matehood, not something just for show - and furthermore, omegas simply didn’t hunt. She scurried from the window to behind the cherry reception desk as she saw them heading up to the front porch after looking at the landscaping surrounding the house. When they opened the door she said brightly, “Hail fellow well met! Well, if it isn’t the young alien enthusiast and a new friend! How may I help you gentlemen?”

“Hi,” the beta replied agreeably, though his smile was tight. He was helping the alpha move as they crossed to the reception desk, clearly the way he had their arms linked together being the only reason the tall young man was staying upright. “I was hoping you had a room with two beds? My brother-in-law said you’re the best place in town but only had kings. He really needs better accommodations than the crappy motel he was staying in.”

“Well, we’re expecting a mating party with their guests to arrive later today and they’ve booked most of the rooms,” she told him, trying to dissuade them without being rude. The alpha swayed suddenly, however, leaning on the reception desk and looking like he might collapse any second, and despite her best attempts to be resolute she felt herself soften. He was far too young to be so ill. “But I do have one room with two full sized beds, though it’s all the way at the back of the hall and doesn’t have an attached bath.” She lifted the basket and extended it towards them, saying, “Would you like a cookie? They’re homemade.”

“No, thank you,” the beta said, the alpha still leaning heavily on the counter. “I’m a diabetic and the hospital has him on a restricted diet.”

“The hospital?” Adam thought she was either an excellent actress or was genuinely concerned as she shifted her eyes over to Sam’s pallid face. “Oh dear, has something happened to you since you and your omega were here?”

“My brother’s gone,” Adam told her, gripping Sam’s forearm as he dragged in a shuddering breath. “His mate - Dean. The big guy here’s suffering from withering disease. Just trying to figure out what happened.”

“Oh. Oh I am terribly sorry.”

“Yeah.” Sam swallowed and glanced up at her with watery eyes, looking away almost immediately. “Yeah, I uh…I definitely believe in UFOs now. We were out by the crop circles and there was a bright white light and then nothing. He was just...gone.”

“Oh my.” She managed to keep the relief out of her face that he thought it was a straightforward alien abduction due in no small part to how dreadful she felt for her part in the young man’s illness. She could tell the two were deeply attached to each other but wouldn’t have suspected they were true mates. It had been so long since she’d met any of those. After a moment lost inside her own head, she turned the registry around so the beta could sign them in. “Well the room may not have an attached bath, but the beds _are_ very comfortable and none of the other guests are down that far, so the bathroom should be all yours. Let’s get you checked in and he can go lie down.”

“Thank you. My name’s Adam, by the way. Adam Smith. And this is Sam.”

He gave her his best smile, the one that wasn’t quite as good as Dean’s, but close, and she smiled back.

“Marian Jennings. Owner of the Avalon. It’s very nice to meet you, Adam and Sam.”

“Are you sure Jo is going to be able to handle Lizzie and Elliott on her own?” Sam asked not quite quietly enough for Marian to fail to overhear them as Adam filled in all the pertinent information the registry required and pulled out his wallet.

“Dude, they’re babies,” Adam shot back. “They’ll be fine.”

“Lizzie and Elliott?” Marian said, unable to hide her shock as Adam told her, “Their kids.”

“Maybe she should bring them, though,” Sam muttered as he swayed slightly, the blonde woman in front of them legitimately dismayed as Adam caught his arm and slung it over his shoulders. “I know it’s a long drive but if what the doctors said is true…”

“We’re going to find Dean, and you’re going to be fine,” Adam snapped, forcing a smile in Marian’s direction as he signed the receipt and took the key to the room from her. “Thank you.”

“It’s…it’s up the stairs to the left, all the way at the end,” she said quietly, clutching her throat as she watched Adam help Sam stagger away and vanish, taking the steps very slowly and pausing every couple of seconds. She wouldn’t have expected such a young couple to have children, especially not _two_ of them. It had been a long time since she’d felt this much guilt over what she was doing, even knowing it was the only way she’d be able to continue to see her Emma and keep her alive, and hurried off to the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea with a little bit of bourbon in it.

“I think we sold that fairly well,” Adam said softly as they reached room nineteen at the end of the very long hallway, leaning Sam up against the pale blue wallpaper with gnomes all over it to keep him from falling over. “You did a great job as the dying alpha.”

“Yeah,” Sam huffed. “They should give me an Oscar for that one.”

“Did you see the way she reacted to finding out you had kids?” Sam nodded while the beta swung the door open and came back to get up against his side and help him struggle his way inside, Adam reaching over and finding the light switch on the wall as they went. “I don’t know about you, but I’m not convinced she’s the witch we’re looking for. Maybe a helper. She doesn’t set off my spidey senses like those weirdos across the street did in Fort Wayne.”

“Your spidey senses do seem fairly attuned to sniffing out witches,” Sam rasped, sinking down onto the bed nearest the door and trying to swing his legs up as Adam dropped his bag down over by the heavy ebony dresser across from the matching beds. Their room at least was less flowery than the rest of the B and B so far, with pale blue walls that sported a slightly darker Fleur de Lis pattern and a thick cream carpet to make the space look larger than it was.

“Hang on there, tough guy,” Adam ordered as he hurried back over and lifted Sam’s legs for him, pulling off his shoes and getting a throw from the foot of the bed over his feet. “Can’t have you exhausting yourself trying to take a nap. It would totally defeat the purpose.” Sam sniffed in response, and the beta added, “And no bursting into tears, either. I mean it. We literally don’t have time for that.”

“I don’t know anymore as checking in here to keep an eye on Marian was such a good idea,” Sam said weakly. “That trip upstairs took all I’ve got. Unless you need me to stagger to the bathroom to pee I’m not going to be much help.”

“ _You’re_ here so we can gauge the fairy lady’s moral compass, and she definitely has one. _I’m_ here to figure out what the hell she did to Dean and Gwen with those cookies. I’m gonna go poke around this place, see if I can convince her to bring you up some tea or soup. You stay here and look like you’re dying without your mate.”

“I think I’ve got that covered.”

Sam gave Adam a feeble thumb’s up and Adam responded with a weak smile before grabbing his cell phone so he could take pictures of anything that looked suspicious. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so grateful to be a beta and not have to worry about whether or not anyone could actually smell his emotions, because at the moment he was pretty fucking terrified that Sam was actually going to die on him and he certainly didn’t need to be leaking that out into a room. He was also legitimately worried about whether or not they were ever going to be able find Dean and whether he’d still be alive. If there was one hunter he trusted to stay alive no matter what it was his brother, but aside from the alien abduction thing they had no real idea of where he might be. He could have been sucked into an alternate dimension made entirely of lava for all Adam and Sam knew.

It seemed strange to Adam that there didn’t appear to be anyone working in the hotel besides Marian, especially when there was a large party checking in later in the day. There were no workers maintaining the grounds, no staff cleaning the interior, not even so much as a bellhop to bring in guests’ luggage and haul it upstairs so they wouldn’t have to. For a house that large he would have thought she’d need at least one other person helping run the place, which definitely pinged his “this is odd” meter as he headed out to wander around the lawn and look for any inscriptions, sigils, or wardings casually carved into the place that might look like ordinary decorations to the untrained eye. There was nothing. The flowers around the porch hadn’t looked unusual, though it was possible there were varieties mixed in that were common in spellwork and he just didn’t know it, so he planned to snap some photos to send to Bobby to see if anything jumped out at him. The old hunter had already called to say he was back at the bunker and was pretty sure Henry would be glad to help as well, given the shine he seemed to have taken to the brothers, but Henry was not nearly technologically advanced enough to be able to figure out opening attachments to text messages and emails and would need Bobby’s help for that alone. There had to be something in the massive library back in Lebanon that would help them solve this, they just needed to find some actual clues beyond those damn cookies.

As if the house was answering a prayer, Adam rounded a corner right past the reception area in his search for Marian or anyone else living and breathing in the building and ended up in a large sitting room that appeared to be fairy tale themed and not just fairy themed. Lining the walls were fine art prints of various vintage illustrations for a series of stories that were easy to recognize. _Snow White_ , _Little Red Riding Hood_ , _Rapunzel_ , _Hansel and Gretel_ , and _The Shoemaker and the Elves_ greeted him, a set of figurines lining the mantel to the fireplace in the center of the far wall showing Cinderella in her pumpkin coach racing from the palace with the Prince’s men in pursuit, and several copies of different fairy tale anthologies spread around the room on side tables. Adam took photos of each of the images, feeling like there was something connecting them but unable to put his finger on it, then stopped to really look at the one hanging over the fireplace.

Whereas all the other pictures looked like something out of a book, and in fact he was pretty sure he’d seen the book with the image from _Hansel and Gretel_ because it just looked so damned familiar, a tapestry hung over the fireplace, but it was a tapestry woven to look like a stained glass window. It was old, too; much older and cruder than the illustrations, with writing that looked maybe like German, though undoubtedly an ancient from of German. There was a mountain and a walled town with a river, all labeled in this old German that Adam certainly couldn’t read, and at the top was a paragraph that probably outlined the story. A man in a multi-colored suit and hat that made him almost look like a jester was holding a long flute, and he was prominent in the foreground with everything else reflected in miniature in relation to him. It was the only image of its style or with writing, and its prominence in the room seemed purposeful. Whatever story corresponded to this image was the most important. He recognized a case cracking clue when he saw one, and just needed to figure out what the hell it was before Sam had a stroke, longing for the days when that thought would have been figurative instead of literal.


	123. Sometimes Real Life is Darker Than Fiction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Having a bunker full of lore is helpful. Also, GARTH!!!

“All settled in?”

Marian’s voice startled Adam as he was snapping a picture of the tapestry, and he schooled his features quickly into a pleasant smile before turning to look at her. She seemed a little looser than earlier, her hair a bit disheveled, and her eyes were somewhat hazily focused on him as she swayed into the room. She joined him in looking up at the tapestry and for a fraction of a second seemed desperately sad before grinning up at him.

“Kind of,” he replied, surprised to smell liquor on her breath when she hiccupped. She really _did_ have a conscience, it seemed. He decided immediately to see if he could use that to his advantage. “I was just admiring your sitting room. The pictures are really beautiful. That one is different, though.”

“Yes. It was the inspiration for the room, actually.”

“It’s your favorite then?”

“It...it was here when I purchased the establishment. I designed the room around it.”

So, Marian was a terrible liar when her emotions were involved, though why the tapestry made her emotional Adam would need to find out. It was at the very least his first real clue as to who this Ms. Jennings was and what mattered to her. Given her reaction to finding out about Lizzie and Elliott, the beta decided to play the doting uncle angle again.

“It probably sounds weird, but I’ve really been getting into old school fairy tales now that I’ve got a niece and nephew to read bedtime stories to.”

It worked.

“You watch them often?” she asked, her eyes glued to the tapestry as her cheeks flushed pink. “Your niece and nephew. For your brother, I mean.”

“Yeah, he went through a real rough patch earlier this year, and Sam was traveling a lot for work and couldn’t be with him,” he said, watching the flush spread to her hairline. “They were really looking forward to this vacation, to have a little time to themselves, and then Dean just...disappeared.”

“That’s a shame.” Marian pursed her lips together, seeming on the verge of saying something before thinking better of it. “You said your brother-in-law has withering disease?”

Adam shrugged a shoulder at her, the moisture in her eyes not lost on him, as he told her, “That’s what the hospital told me. Alphas and omegas always talk about true mates but they don’t know that mating is _really_ for life for both of them. I mean, I’m just a stupid beta. I had no idea. If we can’t find Dean by the end of the week...” She looked away from him quickly, wiping at a cheek, and he hastened to add, “Sorry, don’t mean to be depressing. Could he maybe have some tea, though? He’s supposed to stay hydrated but he doesn’t really want to eat or drink anything.”

“Oh, of course! Of course, I can bring some right up to him! Don’t you worry about it one bit!”

It seemed a huge relief to her to be able to exit the conversation, and she hurried from the room, presumably in the direction of the kitchen. Adam gave her a few minutes to clear out before heading back to the entryway and then outside, using his need to get the rest of their bags out of the car as a cover for calling Bobby just in case there was anyone paying attention to what he or Sam were up to. It didn't seem likely when the only people in the hotel were him, Sam, and Marian, but he’d rather be safe than sorry.

Bobby must have been sitting right by the phone because he answered on the first ring, eager to hear what they’d found out. He’d been researching withering disease and had worked himself into a tizzy over how serious it was, and as he’d told Adam had already roped Henry into helping out with whatever he could. Henry advised Adam to grab one of the cookies in case Sam took a turn for the worse. Whatever had taken Dean and Gwen hadn’t taken them immediately, after all, and as long as Adam stayed glued to his side and didn’t let him wander off into a parking lot, turning Sam back into an unpresented alpha could buy them time to find the omega.

Adam wished he had more to go on at the moment besides just the cookies and pictures and his relative certainty that Marian wasn’t a witch, but it was enough to get Bobby and Henry started with the promise they’d touch base as soon as they found something. He got a quick update on Lizzie and Elliott and dodged Bobby’s question about when Jo was going to come clean with her mom about the two of them shacking up together, since obviously Ellen had already figured it out and was just waiting for her daughter to admit it. Ellen liked Adam and was fine with the idea of him dating her daughter, but she was _not_ fine with being kept in the dark about it, and Bobby was getting real tired of running interference.

Adam gave him a halfhearted promise to talk to Jo about talking to her mom, wanting nothing less than to get between the two of them, before hanging up and then heading back up to check on Sam. He didn’t particularly like the idea of de-aging Sam as well, though he did have to admit with the way the alpha looked when they finally made it up to the room that it might be their only option if they couldn’t find Dean soon. Sam was even paler, which Adam frankly wouldn’t have thought possible, and was shivering slightly despite being fully tucked in bed, a tray with tea and cookies on his nightstand, courtesy of the B and B’s proprietor. He really didn’t look like he was going to last the night without Dean, never mind lasting the week.

After the way Marian had clucked over him and helped him get under the covers, telling him not to hesitate to call downstairs if he needed something, Sam was definitely left thinking she behaved more like someone’s doting mother than someone’s evil henchmen and that didn’t help clarify anything. Adam showed him the pictures and Sam immediately pointed out that all of the stories were among those compiled by the Brothers Grimm, which the alpha found very interesting since they were from Germany and Brennan’s grandmother’s grimoire was in German. It didn’t necessarily mean the incidents were related when the fairy godmother claimed she couldn’t fix Dean, but if whatever they were after was German there might be something in there they could use - except neither of them spoke German.

“Garth does,” Adam said simply, getting Sam’s credit card out of his wallet while pulling up his old roommate’s number on his cell so Garth wouldn’t have to pay for the flight down to Missouri once he stopped wetting himself over the idea of getting to translate a German grimoire that could summon actual fairies.

The mating party arrived shortly after Adam got off the phone with Garth, who - as he suspected - said he’d be on the next flight out of Milwaukee without them needing to ask, and that made it difficult for Sam to take the nap he desperately needed. Between the noise in the hallway as everyone got moved in and the anxiety of waiting for Garth to arrive to start going through the grimoire in case there was anything that could help them, the alpha just couldn’t settle. It was terrible, he felt about ninety years old and completely useless, and found himself growing increasingly irritable as the day wore on. The darkness coiled in his stomach had finally acclimated to the physical toll losing Dean had taken on Sam, and trying to push back against the awakening parasite and its insistence that he could compel Marian to tell them everything she knew in a matter of minutes was utterly exhausting.

It would be easier, of course. Sam didn’t need to be desperate to find Dean to realize how much easier it would be to just stare at Marian and think that she should tell them everything she was hiding; about the cookies, about the de-aging spell, about where Dean and Gwen were. Without the omega with him, though, he also realized it would be very difficult, maybe impossible, for him to put that genie back in the bottle once he let it out. He had to trust wherever Dean and Gwen were they had things well in hand and could survive on their own. That became considerably harder when Bobby called shortly after Adam snuck Garth into their room to tell them he and Henry had tracked down the tapestry and it looked like they were dealing with a trickster.

“That picture you sent is based off of a stained glass window from the town of Hamelin’s Market Church,” Bobby explained on speakerphone to the alpha and two betas on the other end of the line as Garth poured through the grimoire reviewing the various spells and squeaking with joy every now and then.

“Hamelin?” Adam echoed. “As in…”

“The Pied Piper,” Henry replied. “Possibly the most widely known German trickster thanks to the fairy tale, though your average man on the street has no idea that’s what he is. Most people hear the story and think there’s nothing more to it, but there’s long been tangible evidence it was based on something that actually happened to the townspeople. An entry in the town chronicle from 1384 says, ‘It is one hundred years since our children left,’ with nothing further on why or how they left. The Brothers Grimm story is set in 1284, so the date is correct. Then of course there’s your tapestry, and there’s a gate in the wall built around the town in the 16th century that reads, ‘In the year 1556, 272 years after the magician led 130 children out of the town, this portal was erected.’ Not much is known about what really took the children, but there is quite a lot of speculation - everything from a plague to drowning in the river, a landslide, a mass immigration to Eastern Europe - which all line up with the the story of the rats, the children being led away, and the mountain swallowing them, with the Piper being symbolic of Death.”

“That’s the sanitized version for the civilians,” Bobby added. “There’s a ton of lore on the story if you’re in the know on these things, and according to it the Piper _was_ an actual trickster - as real as any vampire or ghoul, though with a lot more power to restructure the universe. He centered in on Hamelin because the mayor was a pompous ass, known and despised throughout Lower Saxony. He refused to pay the masons who built the original wall around the town because he claimed they’d used the wrong kind of brick; wouldn’t pay the carpenters who rebuilt the town hall because they used the wrong kind of wood; that sort of thing. People like that are just the kind tricksters like to knock down a peg or two, so the Piper sent the rats, and then offered to get rid of them, knowing at the end of the day the town wouldn’t pay. When they didn’t, he took the children.”

“All but one,” Garth spoke up from where he was sitting on the sofa next to the dresser, looking up from the grimoire for the very first time. “There are different versions of the story, but in all of them there’s one kid left behind. One says the kid was blind and couldn’t see the way, another says the kid was deaf and couldn’t hear the music, another says the kid was lame and couldn’t keep up.”

“How do you know that?” Adam asked, and his friend shrugged.

“Fairy tales are a hobby of mine,” he replied casually. “Plus Disney did an animated short on it back in the 1930s as part of their _Silly Symphony_ series.”

“He pops up again all over Europe, but in legends that never really got the same kind of traction,” Bobby continued. “For centuries people believed any time children went missing or someone in a powerful position got tricked it was the Piper who did the deed.”

“It’s generally accepted in the lore that he was the tailor who humiliated the king in _The Emperor’s New Clothes_. Some even suspect that _Hansel and Gretel_ is based on actual events and the witch was the Piper in disguise,” Henry added. “And that he was the wolf in _Little Red Riding Hood_.”

“So what is this thing?” Sam asked. “They didn’t teach us about him at Actaeon. Is it a spirit or a demon? A witch?”

“More like a demigod,” Bobby replied. “I’m not surprised they avoided him. Number one, it’s my understanding they didn’t go around teaching the Brothers Grimm as fact, and number two they’re the sort of thing you run from unless they’re really causing problems and hurting people. They can make things out of thin air - things as real as you and me. We’re talking entire worlds, time loops, you name it. They could stick you in your own personal _Groundhog’s Day_ and make you live the same day over and over again until the end of time. Then they can make anything they built vanish with a snap of their fingers. Also they're immortal, and very tough to kill.”

“Actaeon probably taught you about them under their proper names,” Henry said. “There are examples of tricksters are in all different cultures. You’ve got Loki, Anansi, Hermes, Veles, Lugh…”

“Fun fact, Lugh is where some people think the idea of leprechauns come from,” Garth added excitedly.

“Why it’s been going after drifters, or why it would go after Dean and Gwen doesn’t make much sense, though,” Bobby finished.

“Or why it’s making them kids again,” Garth said.

“Maybe this one only takes kids,” Adam suggested. “If all the lore centers around children, or most of it anyway, maybe he simply doesn’t bother with adults. But it’s a lot harder to just snatch a kid than it used to be. Look at the trouble we had when we ran with Lizzie. If you take a kid, that kid’s face is going to be plastered everywhere. If you take an adult, especially one you don’t think anyone will miss, _and_ if you’re in the UFO capital of the country people are going to forget about it pretty quickly.”

“Dean is missed, though,” Sam said quietly. “She had to know he’d be missed.”

“You said she offered both of you a cookie?” Adam asked, and he nodded, feeling dizzy. It was exhausting him staying awake for this conversation, and both betas could see it. “Maybe she hoped you’d both take them and she wouldn’t have to worry about anyone looking for either of you. Then Dean took one and you didn’t, and what was she going to say to get it back that wouldn’t have looked suspicious?”

“If this is a trickster, your only chance to kill it is with a wooden stake dipped in the blood of one of its victims,” Henry told them. “I’d recommend talking to Ms. Jennings again, and sooner rather than later.”

“But be careful,” Bobby ordered. “These things typically look like men, but they can take any form they want. Your cookie lady may not be as innocent as she seems.”

“Will do,” Adam said. “Thanks guys.”

Garth was already talking about something to do with the grimoire as Adam was hanging up the phone, and Sam tried to pay attention but just couldn’t. He was struggling not to let either beta see how badly he was fighting to breathe, his stomach trying to force him to run to the bathroom to empty what little of Marian’s tea he’d managed to drink like his legs were actually going to support him for the trip across the hall, and he felt pain radiating down his left arm in exactly the way all those PSAs warned heart attacks started. There was a dull roaring in his ears that he was pretty sure was his blood pressure, making it even harder for him stay engaged in Adam and Garth’s conversation as the room started to spin on him and he had to grip the mattress to keep from tumbling out of bed. He was fairly certain either Adam or Garth was saying his name, possibly both of them, and as he caught their blurry outlines moving from the couch in his direction he grabbed one of the cookies Marian put on the tray and shoved it into his mouth.

The whole tray tipped and toppled to the floor, Sam going right along with it, tea spilling all over the cream colored rug as the pot and cup shattered, a couple of the other cookies ending up somewhere under one of the beds. Adam and Garth were there immediately, trying to help him up as he forced himself to finish chewing and hoped like hell he didn’t end up choking when he swallowed. Adam was calling him an idiot as they got him back under the covers, but there was no real anger behind his words as he checked Sam’s pulse and felt his forehead and realized if they had any sense whatsoever they’d call an ambulance to get him back to the hospital. Not that they could when the moron had just eaten a magic cookie and they didn’t know when it was going to take effect, though Sam mentioned something earlier about the change seeming to take place in the middle of the night. It made sense and kept with the whole fairy tale environment in which they were now clearly ensnared, given how frequently midnight was the limit for various magic spells. The flipside of a spell ending at midnight was a spell starting at midnight. The kicker was that they’d need to keep Sam alive that long to see if their theory was correct, and he didn’t look like he was going to last the next hour, never mind the next three until the clock struck twelve.

Any tiny lingering doubts any of them might have had about the cookies being magic vanished within about five minutes of Sam choking one down. He didn’t finally find himself with acne and a cracking voice, but he did feel decidedly less like he was about to die in the next thirty minutes. Getting out of bed to dance the jig wasn’t exactly in the cards, though after about a quarter of an hour he suggested they head out to find something to eat. His color was returning and his breathing becoming steady, the heat of his skin dissipating even as Adam was touching the back of his neck while he put on his shoes. They could hear the mating party in the hall on their way out for one last night of fun before the ceremony, and a night of fun sounded like an awfully good idea to the alpha.

Adam couldn’t pretend the sudden switch in gears didn’t have him worried. The alpha hadn’t mentioned Dean or Gwen acting strangely before they turned into teenagers, and Sam was definitely acting strangely. Even if having a Sam who suddenly wanted to go out and get drunk was better than having a Sam who might stop breathing at any moment, still - something about his behavior was terribly wrong.

There was a little buzzing noise at the back of Sam’s brain that also knew something about his behavior was terribly wrong, yet he swatted it away like a mosquito as he felt the demon blood really awakening and a surge of power rushed through his limbs. He wondered vaguely if Dean and Gwen had felt anything like this and decided probably not. After all, they were just average people with nothing special about them at all. He realized as he dug through his bag for a nicer shirt with the two silly betas watching him that his troublesome alpha had gone completely dormant already, which made sense. Whatever the cookie did would have to suppress someone’s designation, and Sam’s alpha was already in a weakened condition due to the ridiculous withering disease. It would be easy enough to lull it into submission, and thank god it had, because now Sam could really enjoy himself without all the worry and guilt and - ugh - devotion that came with being mated to Dean.

Although honestly, being mated to Dean wasn’t half as bad as having Dumb and Dumber trailing after him to Sully’s, killing his game. The gorgeous dark haired beta at the bar who introduced herself as Cara, the County Coroner who had been called out about a death across the street, certainly was very interested in getting to know Sam _much_ better, and he was quite positive he could have gotten her outside in the alley behind that dumpster after just a couple of drinks if Adam and Garth hadn’t been sitting right there cockblocking him every step of the way. The bartender was similarly interested, as were two of the waitresses, each one of them backing away quickly when Adam and Garth began to talk loudly about Sam’s mate. Neither beta had any clue what was going on with the alpha, whose mood visibly darkened each time they made sure he got shot down, as he continued to pound back shots and try to pound anything with a cute, tight ass that walked by him.

By quarter after eleven they’d had enough of his antics and physically removed him from the bar with apologies to the latest woman he’d promised wouldn’t regret heading out back with him, a growl rumbling in his chest to warn the stupid betas to back off. It had been a long time since he’d sunk into someone warm and willing, and there were turning out to be lots of warm and willing bodies in Elwood, Missouri. Just because Adam was with Jo, and Garth - as far as Sam could tell - didn’t actually _have_ anything below the waist that functioned, didn’t give them the right to spoil his fun.

Sam refused to get in the truck to ride back to the bed and breakfast, leaving Adam walking behind him as he stormed down the sidewalk in a wavering line, Garth driving along at a crawl as he attempted to convince the alpha to just hop in. Sam considered ordering them to go away, or to shoot each other, or themselves, but thought that would be too messy, even if it meant he might get to see that gorgeous coroner again. It didn’t really matter anyway. Even as drunk as he was, he was completely wired and ready to go. He just needed to wait for Adam and Garth to fall asleep and he’d be back out looking for a willing hole for his knot. There had to be at least one mating maiden thinking she’d never get her turn at the altar and looking for someone to make her feel wanted. Hell, there was probably more than one, which was better, _and_ they were staying in the same place. Forget Sparrow and her back room, no matter how much he’d like to know what fucking a fairy was like; he wanted to see if the king sized canopy beds Marian boasted about were more comfortable than the single in his room.

Adam was starting to think they were going to have to knock Sam out and drag him into the truck to get him back to the Avalon without incident, especially when Sam started rambling about having Garth and Adam shoot each other. He was quite certain the alpha had no idea that whatever was going on with him in terms of an inner monologue was not so inner, and the more Sam mumbled about finding one or three of the mating ceremony guests to fuck the more obvious it became that he was not at all in his right mind. Adam couldn’t even be angry about the way he was casually planning to cheat on Dean. He was too worried that his friend was on the verge of a stroke or a complete mental breakdown and that they wouldn’t be able to stop either from happening before the cookie took complete effect.

That seemed increasingly likely when they reached the edge of town and saw the bed and breakfast and Sam broke into a full-on run, laughing like an honest to god crazy person. It was a damn good thing he was hammered, since he had almost four inches on Adam and the beta did not have his brother’s speed. Garth driving the truck should have helped, but after the first time Sam darted out into the middle of the road it became apparent he was just going to have to sit back and wait for Adam to catch him so he didn’t run him over accidentally. What had started out as weird and then inappropriate behavior was quickly turning dangerous and frightening, and both betas were hugely relieved when Sam ran for the front of the B and B instead of continuing whatever crazy game of tag he’d been playing.

Once Adam made it inside the Avalon, Garth not too far behind him, he thought that the crazy game of tag might have been better. Sam had Marian pinned up against the reception desk and everything that _could_ float in the room _was_. The registry, the cups and saucers on the tea tray still clutched in one of her hands, the grandfather clock at the end of the hall; even the wall decorations were hanging horizontally as they tried to break for freedom from their various wires and hooks. Adam stopped just inside the door as Sam turned to him, his eyes red with a heavy black rim, a sick, lopsided grin on his face.

“Hey Adam,” he slurred as Marian whimpered. “I was just thanking Marian for doing whatever it was she did to Dean.” He turned back to the blonde woman with tears streaming down her face and leaned in intently. “What was that, again?”

“Holy shit…”

Adam hadn’t realized Garth was behind him until he heard his former roommate’s quiet declaration, and held out a hand to stop him from continuing. The room crackled like an open circuit was letting electricity bleed into the air, and there was clearly the potential for things to go very, very badly if they couldn’t get Sam calmed down.

“Sam,” Adam said as evenly as he could given the circumstances. “Can you let Marian go?”

“Ha!” He gave Adam the grin again, adding, “No, no I could not. I really am _very_ thankful that she turned Dean into a kid and then sent him off to…you know, I don’t even give a fuck where she sent him off to, now that I’m not weighted down by all that _emotion_ he had me all that wrapped up in.” He planted a sloppy kiss on Marian’s mouth before pulling back to look her square in the eye. “Thank you. Really.”

“What’s wrong with him?” she whispered to Adam as Sam looked at all the objects that were floating because of him and laughed.

“He needs his mate,” Adam told her, and Sam whirled on him with a glare, his canines on display and his eyes rolling full over black.

“My _mate_?” he demanded, releasing Marian physically while still keeping her where she was with the tiniest sliver of his brain. “You mean the guy I couldn’t touch for _months_ without him pissing himself, who favors someone else’s kid over his own, who won’t listen to me until after some other alpha has smacked him around, who I can’t even properly fuck because his insides are all messed up? _That_ guy? You think I need to have that kind of drama in my life, to waste my time trying to fix all that damage when I’m not even sure he wants to be fixed? Thanks, Adam, but I’ll pass.”

“This isn’t you talking, Sam,” Adam said firmly as Garth whispered, “I’m just gonna forget I heard all that about Dean…”

“It _is_ me talking, though,” Sam assured him. “This is the core of who I am under all that simpering empathy and quite frankly _exhausting_ need to be _patient_ and _understanding_. I don’t _want_ to be patient anymore! I’ve fucking held out for him for almost a _year_ while he worked through all of his shit and refused to go to therapy and talk to anyone besides Jody and I’m fucking _tired_ of waiting for him, Adam. It’s a good thing Marian here sent him wherever she sent him or I’d have him properly mated by now whether it hurt him or not and you’d be sleeping in the car!”

The lights in the entry had begun to flicker as everything currently midair started vibrating while Sam stared at the betas in the doorway, a growl rumbling in his throat, and Adam ordered, “Marian, I really need you to tell me what you did to my brother.”

“It’s an old spell!” she cried. “I have the counter spell that will reverse it if you can get him back…”

Sam’s growl built to a roar, the light bulbs exploding and windows shattering as he screamed, “ _I don’t want him back_!” the instant before the grandfather clock began to chime twelve times. Sam screamed again for a different reason, collapsing on himself in pain, all of the floating objects crashing to the floor. A blinding white light surrounded the alpha, who cried out before he was completely enveloped, and when the light burst like a bubble, lanky, gangly, pimply fourteen year old Sam lay unconscious on the floor, swimming in his clothes.

The three betas stood in shock staring down at him as a handful of guests were filling the stairway to see what was going on. Marian exclaimed, “It’s after midnight!” and ran for the back of the hotel, Adam and Garth sprinting after her and pausing to grab Sam on the way. Adam got him into an easy fireman’s carry as Garth stayed in hot pursuit, wedging a foot in the door to the pantry as she tried to slam it shut before swinging around the far wall of shelves to reveal a vanity with a mirror that showed a little girl sitting on the other side of the glass. She was completely distraught, Gwen standing with her trying to calm her down, and as Marian was saying something rapidly to the child, Gwen exclaimed, “Adam!” a second before they vanished.

“What was that?” Adam demanded as Marian sobbed, scrambling to bring the mirror back to life. “What the hell was that? Is that where my brother is?!”

“Yes,” she choked, mixing various herbs and flowers from the bottles on the vanity. “Please, I have to try to get get through to her again…”

“You have to tell us what’s going on,” Garth insisted, moving in to grab the bowl from her. “Starting with who that kid was and why you can speak Middle High German.”

“My granddaughter,” Marian wept, reaching out to the skinny beta in front of her imploringly. “Please, I only get to see her at midnight, it’s the only time I can confirm that she’s safe…”

“Gwen’s with her,” Adam snapped. “She’s safe. What is that place?”

“It’s where he took the children,” she stammered, wiping the tears from her cheeks as she attempted to compose herself and didn’t have a ton of luck. “Back when he came to get rid of the rats.”

“You were in Hamelin?” Garth asked, his face lighting up before he managed to school his features into something more appropriate under the circumstances. “Is your granddaughter one of the children?”

“No. He took her while she was on her way to bring me some cakes when I was feeling ill. I told her mother not to send her, that she was too young to walk through the woods alone...”

“Is she...is she Little Red Riding Hood?” Marian nodded and Garth nearly whooped in delight before again getting himself under control. “Obviously the wolf eating you was more symbolic than literal.”

She nodded miserably, pulling a handkerchief out of her cuff to dab at her eyes as she said, “There was no woodsman who saved us. The Brothers tacked that on for a happy ending.”

“All right, you were in Hamelin but your granddaughter wasn’t. Why would he go after her?”

“He always hated that he hadn’t gotten me along with the others. Finding some way to make me his became an obsession, but I was always so careful. As long as he has her, he has me as well.”

“You were the child who stayed behind,” Adam said quietly.

“I’d sprained my ankle,” she told him. “I could barely walk when he came. I still remember how beautiful the music was.”

“So the Pied Piper really happened, and Little Red Riding Hood is real,” Adam said, Garth hastening to ask, “What about _Hansel and Gretel_?”

She nodded again, and Adam felt the desperate need to sit down as she told them, “That’s when he realized he liked eating them.”

“Eating…” Garth’s eyes went wide as he looked at Adam to see if he’d heard the same thing. “He’s been eating the people he’s taken?”

“He says boys have less fat and more meat, and no one cares as much about men going missing as women. He must be so angry about the reporter who took one of the cookies. He hasn’t told me to send him a woman in decades. I’ve never wanted to help him, but he says strangers will trust someone who looks like their mother offering them a cookie, and if I don’t he’ll stop resetting the days…”

“What do you mean?”

“Emma has lived the same day, over and over, for almost seven hundred years. Every morning when she wakes she thinks it’s the day before she came to see me and doesn’t remember anything else - not even the people he’s...eaten. She thinks he’s just a kind man watching her while her mother is at the market.”

“Where is ‘there,’ exactly?”

“I don’t know.” She broke down crying again, waving a hand at the two young men. “It’s always been his own world, not connected to this one. He comes and goes through the fireplace in the parlor when he wants to check in on me. He’ll be coming soon now that your friend has eaten one of the cookies.”

“Marian.” Garth had approached her as gently as he could, which given his general disposition was with the relative softness of a baby bunny. “How can we get our friends and your granddaughter back from his world?”

“You’d have to kill him,” she said. “But I don’t know how.”

“And that would turn Dean, Gwen, and Sam back to themselves?” Adam asked.

“No, but reversing the spell is simple. The works like a glamor, the way any potion would, just in a cookie. It's meant to be temporary, a party trick. The counter spell is in the form of a tea. I have it in my kitchen just in case Rattenfanger ever sends someone back. He never has.”

“Rattenfanger?” Adam echoed, and Garth said, “Rat catcher, literally.”

“Can you help?” Marian’s eyes were overflowing again as she looked at the young men. “I’ve waited so long for someone to save us from him.”

“Of course we can help, ma’am,” Garth promised, even as Adam wanted to kick him. “We’re hunters. We’ve trained for this.”

“Oh, thank God,” she sobbed, clinging to Garth’s arm. “Thank God!”

They managed somehow to get Marian calmed down and off to bed, not entirely sure they could trust her but not having a whole lot of options now that Sam had a target on his back and a trickster who would be coming for him. Besides, even though he was just a kid now, Sam _was_ still unconscious and he was starting to get really heavy for Adam to keep slung over his shoulder. Garth was still trying to squelch his inappropriate happiness at a slew of fairy tales being _real_ and them being in the middle of giving one of them a happy ending, scoffing at Adam’s concerns that they might be in over their heads. That German grimoire had some fantastic spells in it that he was pretty sure could help, and they had Bobby and Henry on speed dial for back-up.

“You’re worrying too much,” he finally said as he took the first shift to watch for any trouble while Adam got Sam into one of the single beds and he slid into the other.

“You’re not worrying enough,” Adam shot back. “This is a trickster. I’ve never hunted one, and I’m pretty sure you haven’t either, so how exactly are we going to catch this thing?”

“Simple.” Garth smiled at him, strapping a headlamp on so he could keep reading as Adam killed the overhead light. “We just build a better mousetrap.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Henry's spiel about the town of Hamelin - 100% true. By all accounts their children went "poof" in 1284 and there's no record of why. Also, The Pied Piper is one of three legitimate tricksters in German folklore.


	124. We'll Have to Fatten You Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone *is* aware that the original version of most fairy tales were gruesome, right?

If Gwen and Dean were in some kind of fairy tale, it was officially the single most fucked up fairy tale the alpha had ever heard of. For the second day in a row the little girl who snuggled up against her at night, clearly happy for the company and body heat, had panicked at having Gwen in her room, screaming and crying hysterically until Gwen went through the routine of showing she wasn’t a threat and getting down to introducing herself and convincing the child to tell her her name, even though Gwen knew it by now. The girl - Emma - then went through the exact same routine, down to the slightest twitch of her fingers, as if this day were a rerun of the day before. Gwen wasn’t sure, and she hoped she wasn’t there long enough to confirm her suspicions, but it seemed awfully like once Emma fell asleep her day was completely reset, while time progressed normally for Gwen. She didn’t know what kind of being possessed the power to do that, and she doubted she’d figure it out stuck in this place.

Her first day had been truly enlightening, as once Emma had calmed down and they’d managed to learn each other’s names the little girl went about washing her face and her hands and was then off to the rest of the building, which Gwen suspected was a castle based on the way it was built and the materials involved in its construction. Gwen tried to follow and quickly found she couldn’t. Only Emma could pass through the door, so the thing that had dragged them out of the woods was able to restrain her movement while allowing Emma to freely roam around. That would definitely make it much harder to find Dean, if he was even still alive at this point. She didn’t want to think about what would happen to her cousin if he wasn’t.

Left to her own devices, she washed her face and hands the same way Emma had and changed into a dress hanging on the back of the door that was decidedly more ragged than the one she’d awakened in, a tag pinned to it that read, “Wear me.” Much as she would have liked to rebel against the order she was pretty damn sure that was a bad idea, switching out of the fine dress she currently wore to something that looked more like a servant’s outfit. She wasn’t sure she liked the implications of that.

The instant she’d finished tying the dirty apron around her waist, a huge, bearded alpha appeared at the door, his dark hair shaggy and hanging in his eyes and his skin about as filthy as her new set of clothes. He was easily Sam's height, if not an inch or two taller, and far broader through the shoulders with a thick barrel chest. She managed to hold back a scream, though just barely, as he lumbered into the room and laid a gigantic hand on her shoulder. Were she her full size she might have had a chance at getting free from him with all the hand-to-hand combat training she had and the advantage of a smaller frame making her faster, but in her fourteen-year-old, unpresented form she had no choice but to go with him as he ground out, “Come,” and half dragged her into the hallway.

She’d been right about being in a castle, which struck her as more than a little ridiculous in spite of everything she’d been through so far. The more she saw of the place the more she felt like whatever was in charge here was really overcompensating for something, and had to stifle a snicker at the absurdity of it all. There were heavy carpets on the floor, candle lanterns lining the walls, tapestries hanging everywhere depicting various elements of European myths and legends. She recognized some elements of _Beowulf_ , _The Canterbury Tales_ , Dante’s _Inferno_ , _The Malleus Maleficarum_ ; St. George slaying the great red dragon, William Tell, Robin Hood, the Green Knight, Sigfreid; it was like a who’s who of medieval stories and heroes. Whoever built the place definitely had a hard on for European folklore. They also a taste for some modern conveniences, since the building was obviously climate controlled despite the many wide open windows and the hard stone floors. She wondered why they hadn’t bothered to put in an elevator as the huge, smelly alpha urged her down a flight of seemingly endless spiral stairs until they finally ended up in a large, open kitchen with a fire pit on one end that had a massive, bubbling cauldron suspended over it and a wood fired oven right beside it with a heavy iron door. In the center of the room was a long table lined with various vegetables and raw meats, pots hanging down overhead and knives stuck directly into the tabletop in place of an actual knife block. Over opposite the stairs and underneath a window was a large double sink with a water pump on one side, stacked high with dirty dishes needing to be washed, and beyond that another door that had a latch on it, reminding her of a modern day meat freezer. She wondered exactly how many people lived in this castle to have that many dirty dishes, and why the heavy set omega with the frizzy blonde hair in the center was focused on chopping carrots instead of doing anything to actually clean. Given that she was almost as dirty as the alpha, Gwen wasn’t entirely sure she should be handling food.

“Wash,” the alpha commanded, shoving her towards the sink as the omega looked up at her and growled. “Then chop.”

The omega's growl turned into a smile, her mouth full of half rotten teeth, then she cackled before turning back to the pile of vegetables, and Gwen really didn’t have much of a choice but to do what they said. Maybe if she acted like a good little kitchen servant they’d ignore her and she could get her hands on one of those knives. It seemed like her best option at the moment, even if the likelihood of success decreased considerably when the alpha moved to the other side of the table to help with the chopping.

For a long while the only sound in the entire kitchen was the crackling fire, the “shuck” of the knives the two were using, and the occasional burst of water from the pump as Gwen cleaned all the damn dishes in the sink. Every few minutes the two would talk in the same language Emma used, which Gwen was now positive was a very old form of German, laughing together about something or other. The alpha grunted his approval in her direction when she was down to the last few dishes, then rose from where he’d been sitting on a bench to go to the door near the sink with the latch, a large meat cleaver in his hand. As Gwen watched, he undid the latch and swung the door wide, allowing her to see and smell the room beyond. It was indeed some sort of cooler, though it was obvious nothing inside was frozen solid, and as she watched with growing horror he moved past the hanging pig and cow carcasses to the nearly naked dead teenage boy who was strung up by his wrists, his throat slit, and already missing a leg. Without even blinking, the alpha took the cleaver and began to hack away at his other hip, the bone crunching with every swing as he held it out to the side by the knee with one hand to give himself better leverage. Quickly she turned back to the sink, immensely glad she’d had nothing for breakfast, and once she heard the bone snap all the way through he trudged back out to throw his prize on the table. Gwen could hear the omega start to work on skinning it as the alpha wandered over to the sink, grabbed the hem of Gwen’s apron, and used it to clean off the cleaver while he leered at her, before going back into the cooler and starting to cut up one of the pigs.

Christ. She needed to find Dean, grab that kid, and get out of there fast.

The rest of day offered her no opportunity to do so, however. She was stuck in the kitchen from sunup until sundown, helping with cutting up the vegetables as the other two worked on the meat, and only slightly relieved when she saw the meal they made for her pulled from the cauldron, which had the pork in it, instead of from the oven currently roasting the teenager’s leg. She did manage to learn that the omega only had one leg, the other one replaced by a crude peg leg as if she’d been a pirate at some point, so obviously she was the weak link. The alpha rarely left her side, though, and she always had a knife in her hand, which made getting the drop on her a challenge. Hopefully by the next day Gwen would have a little more information to be able to formulate an actual plan of escape.

By the time the alpha took her upstairs the sun had set and she was utterly exhausted, but her mind was working on overdrive. It occurred to her on the long climb back to the room she was apparently meant to share with Emma that she hadn’t seen a single other person in the castle all day long. No one had come into the kitchen to talk with the alpha and omega, no one had sent down instructions on what to prepare for dinner, no one had even checked to make sure they’d put Gwen to work. What’s more, she hadn’t even _heard_ anyone moving around the castle. It was like they were the only servants, or quasi-servants, and outside of Emma and that poor kid in the meat locker they might as well be alone in the world. Surely there were others staying here. Why else would all those dishes have been dirty? She really wished Emma spoke even a little bit of English so she could find out more about what the hell was going on. She certainly wasn’t in a position to ask the alpha as he ordered, “Sleep,” and closed the door on her after depositing her in her room.

Emma reappeared shortly after Gwen had changed into the nightdress hanging on the back of the door now that had the same, “Wear me” tag pinned to it, seeming delighted that Gwen was still there and babbling at her about god only knows what. The little girl carried a book of fairy tales with her, forcing Gwen into a large arm chair and pointing at the pages with the obvious expectation that the teen was going to read to her, even though the writing was very clearly in German and she’d done everything she could to get Emma to understand she only spoke English. Emma didn’t seem inclined to take “No” for an answer in any language, and after a very frustrating argument Gwen gave in, plunking herself down on the cushions while Emma sat on the floor and leaned against her leg. Luckily the book was illustrated, and Gwen recognized quite a few of the pictures, managing to fake her way through the actual stories of _Rapunzel_ , _Sleeping Beauty_ , and _Beauty and the Beast_ by memory. Emma didn’t seem to care that she couldn’t understand exactly what Gwen was saying, simply content in the knowledge that Gwen was familiar with the fairy tales, and the alpha was a bit shocked when she heard something in the distance chiming twelve times and Emma rushed excitedly to the mirror, fixing her hair and sitting expectantly while she waited for the same flash Gwen had seen the night before.

It didn’t come. Gwen had never realized how long seconds took, but Emma seemed keenly aware of each one that passed. As time ticked on, the little girl grew increasingly distressed at nothing happening, until at last the mirror flashed for just a moment and Marian was on the other side, Adam standing behind her with what looked to be her cousin in teenage form slung over his shoulder as well as a scrawny guy that she kind of recognized but couldn’t really place. Marian was already talking to Emma, trying to calm her down and ask her questions as Gwen exclaimed, “Adam!” right before the mirror blinked off, at which point Gwen found herself with a lapful of upset little girl who eventually ended up crying herself to sleep. The older girl was only slightly more prepared the next morning for when Emma woke up, screamed at finding a stranger in her room, and the whole process started all over again.

The good thing about the second day was Gwen now knew that Adam was aware of Marian and the mirror, and though she didn’t have any direct experience with the kid as a hunter, he was Dean’s brother so he had to at least be competent. She also now knew that Sam was de-aged, which meant he was probably going to end up wherever they were, hopefully with some kind of plan to get them out. She did see one other person in the castle talking with Emma as she made her way down the spiral staircase with the dirty alpha, though they were almost completely hidden behind a door frame so she couldn’t make out who or what they were. They didn’t seem to be frightening Emma, however, which was at least something, even if Gwen was now reasonably sure there was no way the little girl could have any idea what was happening here. Her main goal for the day was to get her hands on one of those knives and find out where Dean was.

Both of those objectives turned out to be relatively easy to accomplish, as once she’d been set in front of a sink somehow completely filled with dishes again the alpha was off to the spiral staircase, this time continuing down instead of going back up. After a few moments the omega got up from the table and limped over to the cauldron, her back completely to Gwen, to sample the day’s stew. As quickly as she could, Gwen grabbed a paring knife from the side of the table nearest her and tucked it into the pocket of her apron. It wasn’t a long knife, but it didn’t have to be in the hands of someone who knew what they were doing, and Gwen definitely knew what she was doing. It was a good thing she took the chance to arm herself when she did, because not long after she could hear screaming and swearing from the bottom of the stairwell in a voice she’d gotten very used to a few days ago.

“Sonofabitch, _let me go_!” Dean was shouting, kicking and thrashing as the alpha pulled him into the kitchen by the back of his pants and shirt, practically lifting him off the floor. He was covered in dust and straw, his cheeks sunken and eyes shining as he tried to take out the alpha’s knee to no avail. “Get your fucking hands _off me_!”

With seemingly no effort the alpha plunked him down on the bench at the table farthest from the knives, backhanding him when he tried to spring up and run, then placing a bowl of the stew in front of him and ordering him to eat. Dean batted the bowl away and spit on him, the alpha hissing as the stew hit him and scalded his arm. The alpha grabbed the collar of his shirt and punched him twice, the second blow knocking Dean out cold and sending him tumbling to the floor, the bench going with him. The alpha paid no heed to the line of blood dripping from the corner of the omega’s mouth, grabbing the back of his shirt again to drag him to the meat locker, open the door, and toss him in. Gwen managed to tear her eyes away from the proceedings an instant before the alpha turned back to see what she was up to, and seconds later he had her by the back of the neck and was tossing her down by the spilled stew.

“Clean,” he demanded, throwing her a rag, and she didn’t hesitate to start wiping it up, finding that no matter what mental tricks she used from Actaeon her hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

It was while she was down on the floor that someone else walked into the room wearing a pair of shoes she recognized from two days ago at the diner, which didn’t keep her from being so shocked her jaw almost hit the floor when Wayne Whittaker, Jr. asked the alpha, “Did you manage to get him to eat?”

“No,” the alpha said. “Stubborn, that one. Tried to stab me with his spoon. Almost got that loose bar free. I tell you to fix it.”

“But I _do_ so like to give them hope that there’s a way out!” Wayne replied, rocking back on his heels as Gwen turned her entire focus to the floor just in case he came over. “It’s almost as much fun as dirtying all the dishes every night. You _must_ get him to eat, though. I want a little meat on those bones before I have him for dinner. Unpresented omega is one of the most succulent meals there is. It’s like the muscle stores up all that sweetness before it has somewhere else to go.”

“I get him to eat.”

“You’d better, Hansel. I don’t want to have to take your sister’s other leg.” The omega, who was keenly focused on her work, stilled her knife and whimpered until Wayne laughed, proclaiming, “I’m just kidding! After all this time Gretel, you still have no sense of humor. Once you’ve gotten him to eat, I want him washed and strung back up while you fix the bar in that cell. Not too well, though. We need to keep hope alive after all! Where’s our other guest?” Gwen heard Hansel grunt, and the feet moved around until she was looking up at the man from The North Star, whose face bore a twisted grin. “Well now. You seem to be doing an excellent job down there, my dear. What's wrong, nothing to say about my incompetence in catching UFOs?" Gwen hastily looked to the floor and went back to cleaning as he chuckled. "Oh don’t worry, I don’t have a taste for girls. Too fatty. I’ve long preferred Jack Sprat to his wife. You shouldn’t even be here right now! That was a mistake on Marian’s part, and she’s going to have to pay for it eventually. But you - I think you’re going to fit right in around here. And don't you worry. I can keep you alive and well forever if I want.” He spun away from her to look at his other two servants, saying, “Back to work now. Chop chop!”

He laughed at his own joke, Hansel joining in enthusiastically and Gretel with a bit more trepidation, then strode out of the room monologuing to himself about how witty he was. Hansel came back around to check on her progress, huffing out, “Good. Clean dishes now.” She hastened to comply, trying to figure out how the hell she was going to get Dean out of the meat locker. It wasn’t a proper freezer, but it was still cold in there and he was wearing summer clothes. Hypothermia was an inevitability if she left him too long.

Hansel seemed keenly aware of Dean’s situation though, as after a few hours had passed he went to the meat locker and pulled the omega out. The boy was visibly shivering, hunched in on himself with purple lips and fingertips, but the defiance still burned bright in his eyes even with the one entire side of his face black and blue as he was hauled to the bench seat like a sack of potatoes and set down again, his hands tucked high under his armpits to try to preserve some body warmth. Gwen was done with the dishes by that point and had been moved to vegetable duty while Hansel grabbed the cleaver to head back into the meat locker, but not before putting another bowl of stew down in front of Dean and barking, “Eat.”

Dean shot a glare at him, his teeth chattering, though he did reach forward to wrap his hands around the bowl so his fingers would thaw some. Hansel turned away as Gretel glared down at him and spat, “Eat!” Dean flipped her the bird, which had her grabbing his wrist to drag his hand forward across the table and lay it flat in front of her, raising the knife in her hand high above his fingers.

“Stop!” Gwen cried, well aware that Dean was about to lost a couple of digits, adding quickly, “It’s pork stew, Dean. I had it yesterday, it’s fine.”

“These freaks are f-fucking c-cannibals,” Dean growled out to her, struggling to pull his wrist free as Gwen tried to ignore the rhythmic “thwacks” coming from the meat locker. “Someone c-carved a message in my cell under the b-bed…”

“Yeah, they are, but this is _pork_ ,” Gwen assured him, getting him to break his stare with Gretel and look at her. “I swear, I watched them make it.”

“They just wanna f-fatten me up to eat me, Gwen,” Dean whispered, and she could feel the fear rolling off of him despite the tough guy act he was putting on.

“Just...it’ll be okay,” she whispered back, no less afraid. “Just eat it. We’ll figure something out.”

She didn't sound very convincing, and her certainty was further undermined by the arm Hansel flung down on the table in front of Gretel. She released Dean as he and Gwen recoiled, grabbing the arm to pull it over in front of her and lop off the hand with one strong chop. As they sat there, horrified, Hansel walked over to Gwen again to wipe the cleaver on her apron, and she barely had enough time to react to keep him from finding the paring knife. She was extremely lucky he interpreted her jerking away as simple fear, and she was even luckier he found that funny. He and Gretel roared with laughter for several long minutes, and Dean decided it was not the time to continue his hunger strike. He’d spent the last two days chipping away at the mortar in the window with his spoon, barely pausing to sleep, and realizing with mounting frustration that every time he stopped some of the mortar seemed to grow back all on its own. It was insane, but there wasn’t much about this place that made any sense. His stomach had been growling since they brought him the second bowl of stew, and he was still chilled from his stint in the meat locker. He blocked out the sight of the arm and forced himself to stay focused on Gwen cubing potatoes as he dug into his food, hoping they hadn’t switched out the meat for the day when she wasn’t looking.

Hansel continued to work in the meat locker while Dean was inhaling his food, returning with a rack of ribs that he threw down on the table for Gretel and Gwen to take care of before grabbing Dean by the shoulder and heading back to the stairs with him. Dean didn’t really want to go back in the cell, the number of rats wanting to be his roommate having increased considerably since he arrived, but with the meat locker as the only other apparent option he’d gladly take it. He didn’t know quite what to think when instead of going down the stairs Hansel pulled him up to the second floor and down a hallway lined with doors and tapestries. It was warm in this part of the - there was no other word for it - castle, and he wasn’t above admitting that if he had to be locked in a castle with a bunch of cannibals, he’d much rather be locked up here. They’d made it almost all the way to the end of the hall before the alpha practically threw him into a room with a large tub full of steaming, soapy water, and declared, “Wash.”

The omega really didn’t like the idea of disrobing anywhere in this alpha’s presence, which didn’t matter to Hansel, who gave him about three seconds to start undressing before grabbing Dean’s shirt to yank it off himself. That was all it took for Dean to get with the program, stripping quickly with his back to Hansel and then climbing into the water to clean off the grime from his cell as he tried not to think about why someone wanted him to bathe. The process would have been much easier to tolerate if Hansel had at least turned his back on the tub, though Dean supposed he should be happy the man was watching him with a clinical kind of disinterest. He supposed the alpha had seen enough kids pass through here that he was detached to whatever they went through, and was just glad he hadn’t presented yet so his babysitter would feel no instinctive drive to claim him. While everything else about this situation might be completely fucked up, he supposed that was something to cling to. Sure, he was too small to effectively fight anyone off, and he was being dragged around from room to room with no way to get his hands on a weapon, but he didn’t seem to be in any danger of being assaulted; just eaten.

When the alpha decided he was clean enough, he grabbed Dean by the arm and yanked him out of the tub, throwing a cloth at him to dry off along with his underwear. Hansel bundled the rest of his clothes and his shoes up under his arm to toss into a basket in the corner, the obvious intent being that Dean should get used to standing around in his briefs from here on out, unless they intended to give him the kind of rags Gwen was wearing; a prospect that seemed highly unlikely. A thought flashed through Dean’s head that he might be wrong about the potential for someone assaulting him and he shoved it away as quickly as he could, since that was a one-way ticket to a full fledged panic attack and he clearly couldn’t afford one at the moment. The alpha was still looking at him with complete disinterest, which was only slightly reassuring when as soon as he had his underwear on, his arm was clenched in one of the man’s meaty paws and he was being pulled back down the hallway to the stairs.

“Another one in the forest,” the omega adding more wood under the oven said simply when they reappeared, and with a grunt of understanding the alpha dragged a protesting Dean to the locker, grabbing a length of rope from a hook just inside the door, and began to quickly bind his wrists together.

“Hey, I’m flattered and all, but I’m not into this kinky shit,” he choked, shooting a frantic look to Gwen, who was frozen by the table with a knife in one hand and an onion in the other as she watched Hansel yank Dean inside by the wrists, then haul his arms up to hang him from a meat hook. He was just tall enough that he could stand on his tiptoes to help support his weight, but couldn’t do much to turn himself away from the hacked up corpse of the teenage boy hanging next to him. “This is gonna make my arms all tough and gamey, you know!” Hansel merely smiled at him, heading for the door as Dean shouted, “Too many stress hormones ruin the flavor of the meat!”

Gwen was in the process of calculating the risk-reward ratio of slicing open Gretel’s throat with her chef’s knife and then trying to stab Hansel with the paring knife and decided she needed to hold out for a one-on-one fight as Hansel said, “Wait,” to his sister and lurched off into the interior of the castle, grabbing a log from the woodpile as he went. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out he was headed to the forest to collect another adult-turned-teenager, as it had been clear as soon as she saw the way he moved the day before that he was the one who dragged her and Dean there. She might have been on her way to passing out, but Hansel’s halting gait wasn’t something she was going to forget anytime soon.

Gwen gave Hansel a good fifteen minutes to get out into the forest to collect whoever had just arrived ( _she hoped like hell it was Sam_ ) before springing across the table to slash at Gretel’s abdomen with the chef’s knife. She would have expected the omega to be better at handling a knife in a fight, quite honestly, and wondered if it was a trap as she drove the paring knife deep into her neck while she was distracted by the initial cut with almost no resistance from the omega. It occurred to Gwen somewhat wildly that the two of them might be witches instead of humans, and she prayed for that not to be the case because if it was, she and Dean were screwed. When Gretel barely fought back, doing little more than flailing her arms in an attempt to ward off the blows, then didn’t rise up from the floor after a few seconds of her carotid spurting out a thick line of warm, red liquid, Gwen figured that the Fates had decided to smile on her. No way was she going to second-guess the win, though she didn’t mind taking a few extra minutes with the meat cleaver to make sure the omega was thoroughly decapitated, just in case, before wiping herself off with the apron as best she could and hurrying to the locker to get Dean out.

“You okay?” she asked as she dragged over a wooden crate for him to stand on to get his hands up high enough to remove from the hook, realizing the interior of the room was even colder than the air that had blown out while she worked at the sink the past two days. His lips were starting to turn slightly purple and his fingers were white from having the circulation cut off to them in the cold, but he looked better than the first time he'd been thrown in there.

“Never better,” he replied, his teeth chattering slightly as he rolled his shoulders to try to loosen them up a bit, limping to the table to grab something to cut himself free as his feet protested at being made to work when they were cold and bare. “We gotta figure out where the hell we are and how the hell to get back to Elwood.”

“I don’t think we’re anywhere real,” she said, handing him a fillet knife once his hands were free and heading for the stairs with him right behind. He nearly slipped in all the blood on the far side of the table, his stomach roiling at the sight of the dead woman on the floor. “There’s too much about this place that screams ‘storybook.’ First there was the weird music that led us here and now there’s Hansel and Gretel in the kitchen cooking up kids…”

“Hang on,” Dean cut in as they made it to the second floor. “What do you mean Hansel and Gretel?”

“I mean those two are Hansel and fucking Gretel. And that UFO guy, he seems to be the one in charge. I don’t know what the hell he is, but apparently he’s why Gretel only had one leg since he ate the other one.”

“Then why aren’t we headed for a door? What, do we need to find the magic harp to return prosperity to the fucking valley or somethin’?! Cuz I've had enough fee fie fo fum for a lifetime.”

“There’s a kid in here somewhere. We can't leave her behind. Emma!”

“A _kid_?”

“Yeah, she’s about six years old. I don’t think she knows where she is. She only speaks a weird kind of German. At least, I think it’s German. It wasn’t my strongest language back in school. Marian knows her somehow, there’s a magic mirror they use to talk to each other.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I’m really not.”

“Well shit. I guess you miss a lot when you’re locked in a fucking dungeon.”

Gwen was very glad Emma didn’t speak any English, because at Dean’s declaration they found themselves staring her in the face by the stairwell on the third floor. She smiled brightly at Gwen and started telling her excitedly about something or other, then blushed deeply at the sight of Dean in his Underoos. It was clear she found his mode of dress highly inappropriate based on the tone of her voice, and Gwen really wished she could explain what was happening so Emma wouldn’t look so frightened when Dean picked her up without preamble and they started running back down the stairs. Gretel might be taken care of but Hansel was still around and Wayne Whittaker, Jr. was in the wind.

The omega was shocked at how much louder a six year old girl could shriek than an eleven month old girl, hoping this was not a sneak peek of what he had to look forward to with Lizzie in a couple of years. Gwen had a hand over her mouth as they ran awkwardly out of the kitchen and to the nearest window to climb out, Dean passing Emma off to Gwen to climb out first, then dragging a struggling six year old into his arms again so Gwen could follow him. Sunset was approaching as they ran for the woods, not sure how they were going to avoid Hansel or get back home, but fairly positive their odds would be better outside the castle than inside, even if it was starting to get colder, they had a hysterical child to look after, and Dean was barefoot and nearly naked. Emma was sobbing as they broke the tree line while Gwen sang _Itsy Bitsy Spider_ to try to calm her down, Dean wondering absently if this is what it was like for Adam and Jo back in Michigan and wishing in vain that they were just dealing with inbred pig farmers. He could only hope that Sam was on his way to rescue them as well, and couldn’t give a shit if that made him look like a helpless little omega. Princes came to rescue damsels all the time in kid’s stories, and from what he could tell the kid’s story they were currently in had smoked some really bad pot. The sooner his prince came running to the rescue, the better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So Andrew Dabb has officially killed Supernatural. I didn't think he could actually do it, but apparently he did. I promise the boys will at least get a happy ending in this fic, since I have no hope now that Season 15 will even be decent, let alone a worthy send-off for Jensen and Jared, if Dabb stays on as show runner for the final season.
> 
> Posts might slow down a little until I've absorbed the shock of utter incompetence killing my favorite show. As a writer and an actor, this is especially painful, though I have a ton of respect for the Js in recognizing it's not going to get better and walking away before Sam and Dean have been even more thoroughly destroyed by the writers.


	125. There's Nothing Worse Than Adventure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time to hunt a trickster!

Waking up with a wet spot on the pair of ill-fitting briefs he was now wearing from the pile of the ones that hadn’t fit Dean three days ago was Sam’s first indication that eating the cookie had worked. The second was how easy he found it to breathe, followed quickly by the lack of pain in his chest and the deep sense of calm he had, letting him know the demon blood was completely dormant for the moment. The clincher was realizing he actually fit in the full sized bed he was sleeping in, plenty of room on either side of him and his feet several inches from the footboard. His head was pounding from the overabundance of alcohol he’d consumed the night before, but he’d take that any day to being on the verge of death. Then of course he started to remember bits and pieces from the night before and thought maybe death would be preferable after all.

Adam was sleeping in the other bed while Garth was passed out on the couch with the grimoire over his face and he was thankful for small miracles as he stumbled out of the room to the bathroom to throw up, not sure what he’d do if he saw any of the other guests but not really caring either. He recalled enough of what happened at the bar to be relieved he was a teenager again, despite having to adjust for his gangly limbs and general lack of coordination a second time, because he wasn’t sure he’d survive the embarrassment if he ran into one of the _many_ men or women he’d hit on the night before, and they definitely wouldn’t recognize him like this. As it was he had no idea what he could possibly tell Adam to make up for what he said about Dean; not that he recalled every word, just enough to know he’d been particularly callous and vulgar and had not in any way respected his mate’s privacy. He hoped the beta would know he hadn’t been in his right mind and they could just ignore the whole thing, though he wouldn’t blame his friend if he punched Sam right in the face. And that didn’t even take into account his total lack of control over the demon blood that had led to levitating everything not nailed down in the entryway, how he’d blown out the lights and windows, and how casually he’d held Marian in place without having to concentrate in the slightest.

Right now, however, it seemed best to focus on maintaining control of his limbs so he didn’t accidentally knock over everything within a three foot radius. His inability to judge just how large he was getting had been the worst thing about going through puberty the first time ( _well, second worst - the nightly wet dreams had been pretty awful_ ), and he could only hope that having spent years well over six feet tall now that he would be better at keeping his arms and legs inside the ride at all times. It didn’t look good when he knocked over the soap dispenser while trying to rinse out his mouth after he’d finally stopped puking, and between that, his gross underwear, and the constellation of zits sprayed across his forehead under his unruly hair he was already sick of this spell.

Adam and Garth were just starting to stir by the time he returned to the room, and to his great relief did not appear to be interested in rehashing the events of the night before. Adam asked if he remembered what happened after he ate the cookie, and when Sam blushed crimson and said quietly, “Most of it,” the betas let the matter drop. They filled him in quickly on what transpired after he passed out while he went through the size sixteens he’d bought for Dean and found some clothes that came close to fitting him so he wouldn’t have to walk around in an oversized tee shirt and stiff, sticky briefs. He wished he had actual shoes, having to settle for one of the many pairs of flip flops they hadn’t yet returned as Garth assured him he and Adam had put together a solid plan; they just didn’t want to tell him too much about it in case he was compelled to talk when the trickster came for him.

That the trickster _would_ come for him wasn’t even in question, and there was nothing reassuring about going into this hunt without knowing everything the other hunters planned to do. Marian thought the Piper was likely to come before the end of the day, since he’d had Dean for two days now and he would be able to tell Sam was his mate. She was positive the idea of having a mated pair for dinner would be just too much to pass up, meaning it was only a matter of time before Sam ran into him. He was powerful enough that he could compel Sam to talk if he suspected hunters were onto him and all their plans would be for naught. It was hard to argue with their logic, even if Sam didn’t like knowing he’d be facing the guy armed only with a wooden stake and would have to find one of the trickster’s victims on his own to coat it in their blood if what the betas had planned didn’t work. He was a little confused by how actively worried and frightened it left him knowing he’d just have to trust that Garth and Adam could catch and kill a nearly all powerful immortal demigod, and how hard of a time he was having getting those feelings under control so he’d stop sweating. Whether it was because he didn’t have the demon blood working in his favor to calm his nerves or just a facet of him being a teenager again he didn’t know, but he certainly didn’t like it.

Sam spent almost the entire day roaming around outside, hoping to entice the Piper into showing himself and spiriting him away. The mating ceremony taking place on the grounds undoubtedly kept him at bay through most of the morning and well into the afternoon, as it simply wouldn’t do for any of the guests to see a teenage boy being kidnapped. Marian had offered to refund all their money and book them in another one of the town’s hotels after what happened with the lights and windows the night before and all the repairs that would take place throughout the day, but the couple hadn’t planned to take any pictures in the front of the building anyway, so the hunting party had little they could do besides wait. Marian started working on mixing the tea that would change them all back as soon as they returned once she had the caterers up and running for the reception, and a little before dark Sam finally heard the flute that would lead him out of Elwood and into the trickster’s realm.

The music was the most beautiful thing he’d ever heard. Garth told him it would be, that centuries later Marian still remembered it clear as a bell, but he still wasn’t prepared for how it stole his breath away and compelled him to follow. Bombs could have been falling around him and he wouldn’t have known or cared. The entirety of his being needed to find the source of the music and make sure it never left him. As he wandered across the lawn and ended up behind the large oak out in front of the Avalon he was momentarily stunned by a bright flash but continued onward nonetheless, until finally the music stopped all on its own. It took a moment for the spell to wear off, and he had just come to his senses on a cobblestone road when he heard screaming. He started to run towards the sound, which by pure, dumb luck was the same direction Hansel was coming from, and after about ten minutes they came face to face.

Sam was utterly shocked by the terror that flooded him at the sight of a large, charging alpha, a log raised over his head as he prepared to knock out the unpresented teen to better drag him back to the castle. Equally shocking was that his immediate instinct was to turn and sprint back, screaming for help, the way he came; flight instead of fight. That was followed swiftly by a sense of how ludicrous such an impulse was, and then a thought of whether Dean and Gwen had been dealing with these kinds of ridiculous overreactions ever since they woke up needing an entirely new wardrobe. He managed to get his brain to stop thinking of seven things all at once and focus with just enough time to dodge the gigantic man swinging for his head, and then plunge the stake into his back when the alpha lost his balance from the overuse of force and pitched forward past the teenager.

Hansel tried to cry out, but the stake was through one of his lungs and the best he could manage was a strangled gasp, thrashing with the log to try to get in a lucky hit as Sam sprang back from him along the path and waited until the man had fallen onto his stomach. He lunged forward then to push the stake farther in, pressing down until Hansel stopped gurgling in the dying sunlight streaming through the trees. For several long minutes afterward he found himself completely unable to move as he fought against the guilt rushing through him at having just killed someone. Despite it being quite clear his actions were in self defense, he didn’t seem able to push aside a deep sense of regret and stay focused on the task at hand. It was like Actaeon had never trained him to deal with his emotions at all. He almost wished the demon blood weren’t completely dormant, if only so it could help him get back on track and find the source of the screaming.

Once he’d come back to his senses somewhat, he discovered that every fiber of his being now wanted to run away from the screaming instead of towards it. He had to actively squelch his instinct towards flight instead of fight again as he forced himself to yank the stake out of the dead man and move into the forest, despite the dying light, to find the source of the sound. After a few moments the screaming changed to crying, which was a step in the right direction he supposed, so long as whoever had stopped screaming was calming down some as opposed to bleeding to death and running out of energy to scream, and when had he ever let such dark thoughts derail him to the point where he found he’d stopped moving and was standing frozen in place? He couldn’t understand what was happening to him, since he seemed to be processing everything like he really _was_ fourteen instead of an adult, and that was not going to help him at all when there was a demigod after him who could very literally be anywhere, considering he’d built this world.

Either the trickster was manipulating time and space in Sam’s favor or he had a guardian angel sitting on his shoulder, because when he finally got moving again in the direction of the crying it was only a matter of twenty or so minutes before he found himself running smack dab into Dean, Gwen, and the little girl who was the source of all the noise. He was sure they looked like the worst cliched movie scene of lovers reuniting and running to each other across a meadow or down a driveway or something equally tooth rotting in its sweetness, but he was too busy clutching his mate to him to give a damn. Dean clearly didn’t care either, if the way he pressed his face into Sam’s neck and clung to his shirt was anything to go by. Gwen came over to take the little girl Dean was carrying on one hip and Sam slung an arm around her to pull her into a side hug before leaving her to her attempts to get the kid to stop crying while he wrapped Dean back up against his chest and finally found a reason to be happy for his overly long arms.

“Are you okay?” he kept repeating between the kisses he pressed all over the omega’s face and hair, his hands sweeping ceaselessly over his spine and shoulder blades as he checked Dean’s skin for wounds. “What happened to your face? Why are you in your underwear? Did someone touch you?”

“No,” Dean murmured, discovering with some alarm that he’d started to shake and not knowing how to make himself stop. He was cold and terrified and now that Sam was here, stripping his shirt off to pull down over the shorter boy’s head, the adrenaline that was holding him together was falling off a cliff. “It’s completely not fair that you’re still taller than me.”

“Guys, I’m all for heartfelt reunions, but we’ve got to keep moving,” Gwen said, getting a nod of agreement from her cousin just as a gasp escaped her and she staggered forward, slumping against them with a knife plunged between her shoulder and spine.

Emma shrieked as the couple turned together to catch her, and Dean reached out to grab the child’s arm and yank her behind him and away from the UFO guy, who he certainly wasn’t expecting to find suddenly standing in the middle of these obviously magical woods. Gwen was making some terrible gagging sounds, but wasn’t losing consciousness, and Sam did his best to get her behind them as well, even as she sank to her knees. He raised the wooden stake, covered in Hansel’s blood, as the trickster shook his head.

“And here I thought she was going to be a nice fit with Hansel and Gretel,” he sighed, watching as Gwen wrapped herself around one of Sam’s legs to stay upright. “Oh don’t worry, I didn’t hit anything vital. She’ll bleed out eventually, but it’ll be nice, slow, and painful. It’s even more of a shame since my helpers are dead now. I suppose I _could_ just bring them back, but quite honestly, the fifteenth century hygiene habits were a bit much to put up with. I tried installing indoor plumbing in the castle once but they didn’t trust the running water so I took it out. I’m pretty sure they thought they were going to get sucked down the toilets. I have the same problem with little Emma here, though I suppose wiping her memory every day doesn’t exactly help her acclimate to the changing times. Are you two enjoying your honeymoon?”

“It’s definitely been memorable, I’ll give you that,” Dean replied. “We could have done without all the kidnapping and cannibalism though.”

“Yes, well, it seems Marian jumped the gun a bit when you started asking about the disappearances. She thought you were looking into my livestock, not those poor first born sons that are now off servicing Oberon. At first I thought I wasn’t going to have a shot at sampling you two. Couldn’t risk pissing off someone as powerful as the King of the Fairies.”

“You knew all about that?” Sam asked, and the trickster laughed outright.

“I’m a demigod, kid!” he said with a wide grin. “There’s not a whole lot going on in Elwood, Missouri that I don’t know about. Now come on, put the stake down. Don’t make me do this the hard way.” Sam made no move to relinquish the only weapon they had against the monster, instead looking defiantly at their captor and drawing a sigh out of him. “You know, this is the problem with de-aging adults. No one misses them like they do children, but they’re nowhere near as willing to do what they’re told. Emma there - she’s scared to death right now, but tomorrow when I’ve made her forget all of this she’ll do anything I ask because I’m an adult and she’s just a child. I would strongly recommend you follow her lead. I’m going to eat you either way. You can either spend your last moments in agony or in bliss. It’s really all up to you.”

“I plan to spend my last moments in bed with my mate sixty years from now, both of us chugging Viagra,” Dean snapped, moving Emma farther behind him. “I’ve seen the alternative and I’ll definitely pass.”

“That’s just disappointing,” Wayne sighed, discovering with some confusion that he couldn’t move towards them when he tried. It took several seconds for him to realize what was happening, a scowl darkening his face. “Motherfu…”

In a blink of white light he was gone, leaving the three teenagers and little girl alone in the fading light, Gwen wheezing on the forest floor. Wayne was highly displeased to find himself in front of the mantle at the Avalon instead of catching his dinner, a fire roaring behind him and a sigil on the floor holding him firmly in place as he stared at Adam, Garth, and Marian. Marian’s arm was bandaged, a bowl of her blood held between her hands, while Adam had a wooden stake of his own and Garth sat behind a coffee table that had been moved to the center of the room, the grimoire and his own bowl of ingredients placed on an altar between him and the mantle. The mating party could be heard outside, but with the lights dimmed to hardly anything other than the candles on either side of the altar no one was likely to come looking for them.

“Holy crap, that actually worked,” Garth breathed when faced with the trapped demigod in front of them.

“You weren’t sure it would?” Adam demanded, earning a shrug from his friend. “What happened to just having to build a better mousetrap?!”

“The power of positive thinking,” Garth said simply. “I’m a glass half full kind of guy.”

“This is all very charming, but can we get on with this, please?” the trickster insisted. “I’m having a mated pair for dinner and I’ve worked up quite the appetite.”

“Yeah, your days of playing Albert Fish are over, buddy,” Garth snapped, adding a bit of cactus to the bowl so that the small flame in it burned in a high burst for several seconds as he flinched at the spines caught in his thumb.

“Do you boys think this is my first spin around the dance floor?” Wayne asked, sounding like he couldn’t possibly be more bored. “You’re hardly the first hunters who’ve managed to figure out my little scheme, and you won’t be the last. You all make the same mistake, too. You trust Marian.”

The hotel owner looked sheepish as she turned to the two betas, the bowl of blood shaking in her hands as she said, “I’m sorry. He’s kept me alive for centuries. Without me, my granddaughter will have no one.”

The trickster laughed as she moved towards him, angling the bowl over the sigil as if she intended to pour the blood out and break the seal that was binding him. Adam looked panicked for a brief moment until it became clear that Marian _couldn’t_ do anything with the bowl besides hold it steady, and that she was now bound within the radius of the sigil as well. The hotelier and trickster stared at each other in complete shock at their current situation, and it was the younger Winchester brother’s turn to laugh.

“It worked!” he exclaimed as Garth nodded.

“Told you it would,” the scrawny beta said, before tossing some more cactus into the bowl. “See, Mr. Rattenfanger - I’m guessing that’s what you prefer to go by - we _didn’t_ trust Marian. Not as far as we could throw her. Not after I checked out that tea she was making to turn our friends back to their normal selves and discovered it was just Earl Grey with some rose hips thrown in. She should have tried to stall us another day so she wouldn’t be distracted by the mating party that’s here; made it very easy to get into her office when she wasn’t looking and check up on her. And _then_ I found her recipe book for the cookies and discovered that the actual way to reverse the spell was to just eat another cookie. I’m sure she wasn’t thinking I could read Middle High German as well as recognize it when I heard it spoken, or she might have hid the papers a little better. That’s when we knew she was probably going to double cross us, so I made sure I added a little something extra to that bowl she’s holding. The minute she picked it up it was bound to her, and whoever is bound to the bowl has to do what I want. And I kind of just want her to stand there so Adam can dip that stake into her blood and then stab you through the heart. She is one of your victims after all.”

“No…” Marian gasped as Adam strode over and thoroughly coated the tip of the stake in her blood. “Please! He’s the only thing keeping me alive! Emma will have no one without me!”

“Emma has no one _now_ ,” Adam shot back. “You could have gotten her back here when the first hunter came for him, but you were too selfish to let another person take care of her. How long ago did you make the decision to leave her with a monster rather than letting someone else raise her? How many innocent people have you helped him murder and _eat_ using the excuse that you were just trying to protect her?”

“Come on now boys,” the trickster said as Marian sobbed. “You have no idea the kind of power I have. Tell me what you want and I can make it happen!”

“I want my brother back,” Adam snapped, driving the stake clean through the center of him until he was completely impaled and the tip was sticking out his back.  

The trickster was obviously stunned by this turn of events, which made sense considering he was a demigod who was probably several millennia old. Adam thought he’d probably feel the same way if he’d spent countless centuries thinking nothing could ever kill him, though he was also pretty sure that he wouldn’t spend countless centuries eating children. He gasped and shook and twitched, eventually turning into a pile of dust from his feet upwards. At the end of it, the Piper’s death was relatively anticlimactic, with nothing really noteworthy happening. For a creature who had caused such misery and destruction he certainly went out with a whimper instead of a bang.

Marian, on the other hand, turned into something out of a horror story. She shrieked and cursed and wailed as she very rapidly aged, her hair growing out long, turning silver and then white as her skin wrinkled and sagged and eventually shrunk in on her stooping frame. Her lips pulled back to expose her teeth as her eyes swelled and then began to shrink to nothing, her fingernails seeming to grow as the flesh on her hands receded, the skin eventually splitting and falling away as she began to decompose. Adam hurried back to Garth just in case her internal organs exploded or something, but instead she just kind of liquified and dried up at the same time until there was nothing left of her but a pile of bones, her shrieking never dying away until they salted the remains after tossing them into the fireplace. Garth was still trying to get the cactus spikes out of his thumb when Adam’s cell phone rang, causing them both to jump and scream, their blood still pounding from watching Marian disintegrate.

“Sweet mother of mercy,” Garth breathed as Adam dug quickly into his pocket to pull out the phone and check the caller ID.

“It’s Sam,” he said, grinning as he hit the call button to pick up. “Dude, please tell me you have my brother and you’re both in one piece - literally.”

“ _I have him. We’re by the crop circles at the edge of town._ ” Adam could hear crying in the background, which he guessed was the little girl, since he could also hear Dean trying to soothe her. Sam sounded frantic. “ _Gwen’s been stabbed, we need to get her to a hospital and Dean lost his clothes. We’ve got Marian’s granddaughter, so bring her with you. We can’t get her to understand what we’re saying and she’s pretty freaked out_.”

“Uh...okay, yeah, we’ll be right there,” Adam replied, deciding they could tell him in person what had happened with Marian. “Don’t let Gwen die.”

“Why would Gwen die?” Garth asked, already in the process of hiding the altar as Adam hung up.

“She’s been stabbed,” Adam said, grabbing his sleeve and yanking him towards the stairs to get some clothes for Dean out of their room. “Come on, I need your translation skills.”

Garth readily agreed to whatever Adam needed, trying not to show how giddy he was at their plan actually working and Henry and Bobby’s supposition being correct that killing the trickster would bring anyone alive in his alternate reality back. He hadn’t expected them to be returned in such close proximity, so that was just icing on the cake for him. He made sure not to mention any of that to Adam, though, as his friend grabbed the entire duffel that had Dean’s clothes in it and the keys to the truck, laying an arc of salt inside the door and lining both windows before they headed out just in case Marian wasn’t quite gone yet.

Sam and Dean were trying not to fall apart in the cornfields of Missouri as they watched for headlights coming from town and hoped no one was on their way out to look for UFOs tonight. Gwen was in terrible shape, having finally passed out, her breath shallow and her skin pale, and though Emma had stopped crying it was because she’d gone into a semi-catatonic state. That was probably better, since they hadn’t yet encountered anything she would find unusual, counting their blessings at having been deposited in the middle of the crop circles when the forest vanished. Once the trickster disappeared Sam had filled Dean in quickly on what they were up against and that he wasn’t exactly sure what Adam and Garth planned to do, but they were confident it would work.

Now that it had, they needed to come up with a story of what happened to Gwen that would keep the police from asking too many questions and Dean was starting to unravel from the stress of the last few days, much as he was fighting to keep his badass hunter mask in place. After all, Sam was the one who’d gone through withering disease. Dean had only come close to being a demigod’s meal, and from where he sat it shouldn’t be that big of a deal, considering all the other things he’d encountered that wanted to eat him. He should be able to push back against the feelings of helplessness that were flooding him, whether he was stuck in a kid’s body or not, and just wanted to get into some clean clothes and reverse this spell so he could get a goddamned grip.

Sam could tell something was off with his mate but wasn’t going to push him until they’d gotten Gwen to a hospital, Emma to her grandmother, and Dean some clothes. He was too fucking happy to have him back to bring down the mood any further than it already was by trying to get Dean to open up when he was wound so tight, and he was too worried that Gwen wasn’t going to make it to have the bandwidth for any kind of deep conversation with Dean anyway. They may have had some bumps in their relationship, especially at the beginning of the year when Samuel had kept her in the dark about his plans for Dean and Elliott, but she’d introduced them to Kevin, who had proven invaluable, and he sincerely did not want her to die.

Within fifteen minutes Adam and Garth were pulling up to get them piled into the truck, which was the first instance of the wheels starting to come off the cart. Emma came to enough to see the vehicle approaching and must have thought it was some kind of demon chariot come to take her to Hell, based on the way she reacted to it. She bucked and kicked and screamed and fought not to get in the vehicle, her tantrum something they simply didn’t have time for with the way Gwen was rapidly declining. Sam and Dean weren’t particularly happy to find out that Marian was dead, though based on Adam’s quick explanation of what happened and both of them knowing neither he nor Garth would just go around killing a human unless they _really_ needed to be killed it had undoubtedly been necessary, even if it did screw them over when it came to what the fuck they were going to do with Emma. Finally Garth decided he would stay with her in the cornfield and try to explain to her what was going on while Adam, Sam, and Dean took Gwen to the hospital.

How Gwen survived until they made it to the ER none of the men actually knew, and chalked it up to her being absolutely unwilling to die. There was no other reason she should still be breathing, or that they should be able to get her to wake up when they were five minutes from St. Jude’s in Springfield to let her know they planned to drop her with Adam at the emergency room doors, as there was no way they could explain away Gwen being stabbed, Dean being beaten, and Sam being pretty well covered in Hansel’s blood. Adam could claim to have found her in the crop circles and not have any idea what happened to her, and Sam could call once he was himself again trying to find his “missing” cousin. How much of it she understood they weren’t entirely sure, even as she nodded at them. Adam was careful to carry her so as not to push the knife farther in as Sam slid into the driver’s seat to head back for Garth and Emma, praying they'd kept clear of all the security cameras. Dean stayed in the back getting dressed now that he wasn’t trying to keep Gwen from dying on them, finding that he couldn’t stop shaking despite having pants on. Adam showed them where the cookies were stashed in the glove compartment as they pulled up to the hospital, and they both ate one as they swung back to the cornfield to pick up Garth, along with a still very frightened but no longer melting down Emma.

It was shortly before eleven when they finally made it back to the Avalon, Garth behind the wheel with Emma sleeping in the passenger seat and Dean and Sam pressed together in the back, the bases for the kids' car seats kicked to the floor. Once inside, Sam popped behind the reception desk to check for any leftover rooms and found one set of room keys on the opposite end of the hall from where he, Adam, and Garth were booked, snagging them since he figured Marian definitely owed them a free room for the night. Not that she was going to care anymore. He told Garth to come wake them up around one o’clock so he could call the hospital and to remember to bring them clothes because hopefully what they were wearing wasn’t going to fit past midnight. The beta nodded to the two of them as he carried the little girl down the hall, and for a second Dean thought he saw something close to worry ghost across Garth’s face before he shot the couple a shaky smile and disappeared. Dean said something about canopy beds, his voice quaking, so Sam assured him they weren’t going to turn the lights on and he would be too distracted to notice anything beyond the thread count of the bedding. That got Little Dean’s attention and successfully took the omega’s mind off of the horror of the last few days at last.

Sam had fibbed a bit when he said they wouldn’t turn the lights on. He did flip a lamp by the door on quickly to figure out the layout of the room, but he was in the process of backing Dean in through the doorway with their lips locked together and as soon as he saw which direction they needed to go to make it to the bed he kicked the door shut and clicked the light off again. Moonlight was streaming in through the window so they could still kind of see each other and where they were going, making it easy to peel away various items of clothing in a clumsy tangle of hands and feet without actually falling over. Dean was surprisingly willing to let Sam manhandle him despite the alpha having all the coordination of a newborn giraffe, and while he considered making a joke about his mate’s teenage game, he was having to pull up mental images of werewolf victims just to keep from wrecking his underwear as they tripped across the room towards the promised king sized mattress.

Dean had to admit that despite his discomfort at the idea of sleeping under a canopy, he couldn’t really pay any attention to what type of bed they were in when he needed to get used to the feeling of a whole new Sam. It was strange the way they still seemed to fit together on a reduced scale. Sam was several inches taller than him, Sam’s scrawny shoulders wider than his, Little Sam even outsized Little Dean, which seemed especially unfair for the whole two and one third seconds he was able to process thought between kicking out of his underwear and Sam rutting against him, his arms keeping Dean tightly to him and one hand gripping his ass, both of them wishing like hell they had some lube. It made sense now why Sam had such a hard time with the idea that Dean wasn’t actually a teenager as the omega dug his fingernails into his mate’s completely flat chest, Sam at this age having shot up in height too quickly to put on any kind of muscle before he presented and as a result feeling decidedly child-like against him. Every inch of him was smooth and hairless still, though at least this time when Dean came after barely five minutes of groping and grinding and Sam’s mouth seemingly everywhere all at once, the alpha only lasted about four seconds longer.

“I thought I lost you for good,” Sam panted into his mate’s hair as Dean became slightly obsessed with the long expanses of Sam’s baby soft skin void of scarring. He was certain Dean must be exhausted by whatever happened over in the trickster’s universe, and he fully intended to ask about it later, but right now he was glad they were both fourteen and would be ready to go again in a ridiculously short amount of time because he desperately needed to feel all of Dean against him, warm and very much alive. “Don’t ever do that again. Who I am without you scares me.”

“Slowly dying wasn’t scary enough?” Dean asked, nuzzling his way up Sam’s neck until he found an earlobe he could suck on. He might not like being on the receiving end of this move, but he sure did enjoy the sounds he got out of Sam when he was the one doing the suckling.

“Slowly dying means I have time to become something less than human,” Sam murmured, a set of green eyes fixing themselves on him in the dark as Dean relinquished his ear in favor of brushing their noses together. “You either need to let me die first or we have to die together sixty years from now chugging Viagra. Which - I’m not going to lie, is probably the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard you say.”

Dean snorted, dipping his face down into Sam’s neck to breathe against him, even if he couldn’t scent him yet. They had to be getting close to midnight, because he was beginning to feel an instinctive need to curl up against the alpha’s chest and blurt out all of the bizarre, horrible, fucked up things he’d been through since walking out of The North Star so Sam could make it all better, plus there was a new, pressing urgency to get home to their kids. He was also starting to find it easier to squash the glut of uncomfortable feelings that wanted to paralyze him, and he really appreciated that since he could already feel Little Sam twitching with renewed interest against his thigh.

“What are the odds I’m gonna get re-aged and find myself magically fixed?” he said quietly as Sam’s bony hands swept the length of him, from his soft blond locks down his slightly knobby spine to the gentle rise of his ass to haul him in closer.

“Probably not great,” the alpha admitted, yelping as he found himself flipped on his back with Dean’s knees planted firmly on either side of his thighs, one of the omega’s hands reaching between them to press their growing lengths together and drawing a gasp out of Sam.

“Well then,” he purred, finding an earlobe again, “we should take advantage of not needing Viagra while we can.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Figured I'd close out this arc so everyone is in a happy place while I work myself up to re-watching a couple of early episodes for reference to the current arc I'm on without blubbering so much I miss the points I'm looking for. This work will NOT fall off the face of the earth by any stretch, but ya'll might have to wait a week-ish before I pick up again at my regular pace.


	126. Hold Me Sam

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam and Dean are all grown up again.

Sunrise the next morning brought with it the agonizing reality that Sam had guessed correctly and Dean was not magically fixed. The image of the hacked up boy in the meat locker had the omega jolting awake and stifling a scream, his eyes snapping open straight into the daylight filtering in through the sheer curtains on the window. For a few seconds he was able to take in the room, avoiding looking towards the ceiling or at the bed in general, and he had to admit that the Avalon had some lovely accommodations. The room overall was done in variations of white, with french doors leading presumably onto a balcony beyond the sheers, wallpaper that looked to have slightly iridescent alternating white and cream stripes, a walnut desk and chair set, the latter upholstered with the same cream velveteen cloth as the settee across the room, and a matching walnut night stand and dresser. The wooden floors were polished to a high shine, reflecting the light bouncing off of something behind him ( _he didn’t have the energy to move to see what it was_ ) and sending his thoughts back to the previous few days spent fighting the fairies. Regardless of the unwelcome memories, it was a very nice room.

Then a spike of pain shot through his head from the nape of his neck to his forehead, a whimper breaking out of his throat as he felt huge, familiar hands turning him away from the light, a plume of worried _mySam_ smell enveloping and immediately relaxing him. It nearly took his breath away, how _good_ Sam smelled, like when Dean pulled up to Adam’s graduation party and the reality of the alpha almost broke his brain. Instantly he became aware of how much he’d missed being able to lose himself in Sam’s books and leather, how being able to feel him on a level that wasn’t just physical made his skin hum and his heart skip beats and filled him with a general sense that all would be right with the world because Sam existed. He never wanted to be without this feeling again.

“You okay?” Sam whispered, and Dean nodded, glad to have his face tucked in between Sam’s throat and the pillow so he could hide his rapidly pinking cheeks at his hindbrain shoving its way into the driver’s seat and insisting he do things like bare his neck and mewl and present, and all kinds of other decidedly omega things that Dean Winchester simply did _not_ do.

Sam was having no such qualms at unleashing his alpha after having gone days without their bond and the smell of his mate. He nibbled his way along the omega’s jaw to bury his nose in the smaller man’s scent gland, hands roaming meticulously over Dean’s skin to ensure that every scar was back where it should be. Once he had confirmed the lines he’d memorized on Dean’s back were all there, Sam was hovering over him, ghosting fingers along his neck, shoulders, and arms, trailing kisses after them until he’d latched onto the hollow of the omega’s throat. There was a deep, possessive rumble echoing from his chest, and combined with the growls he kept breathing against Dean’s neck and collarbone it was a wonder the bed wasn’t vibrating. He seemed intent on re-marking his mate, nipping along both shoulders and all over his throat to leave little red bites in his wake until he closed his teeth on their mating scar and had Dean arching into him and gasping. Between the fingers deftly combing his hair, the arm pressed the entire length of his back, the legs twined with his, and the utterly shameless way he was being scented the omega almost forgot where he was and what had happened recently, reveling in the feeling of being worshiped unabashedly by his mate. He was starting to soak the sheets with the amount of slick leaking out of him, the snarls coming from the alpha as he disappeared under the covers to kiss his way down Dean’s chest and stomach to his inner thigh resulting in the omega responding with a _very_ unmanly whine, and just as they were getting to the really good stuff the sound of their next door neighbors resonated through the wall, along with a lot of thumping, and a very loud exclamation of, “ _Oh Jesus, Todd_!”

Both men froze, and when the same voice cried, “ _Right there, right there_!” Sam had to stop what he was doing to throw back the sheet and look up at Dean. Dean was putting everything he had into not laughing out loud as Todd cried, “ _Fuck, Stacy, fuck_ ,” the thumping growing louder, eventually clamping both hands over his mouth to hold in his giggles as Sam snorted against his leg. Todd and Stacy just kept at it, their volume and speed increasing, as Sam crawled up over his mate, cocooning them under the covers and whispering, “Shhh,” through his laughter while Dean snickered and snorted, turning bright red with glee as he whispered back, “I can’t…I can’t help it…” before burying his face against the alpha’s chest to attempt to reel himself in.

“They just…” Sam could barely speak as he tried to restrain himself. “A mating party bought out most of the rooms…”

“Oh, so they’re traumatizing all their guests as well?” Dean suggested as there was a drastic increase in pounding and squeaking and screaming from the other side of the wall, culminating in Stacy babbling out a long string of curses while Todd simply shouted, “ _Fuuuuuuuck_ ” for a solid thirty seconds at least.

Tears were leaking out of Sam’s eyes as he struggled to hold everything in as he hovered over Dean, who gave it a minute before shouting, “Well done, Todd!”

“ _Thanks_!” Todd responded after a few seconds as Sam cackled, wrapping himself around his mate like a sloth on a branch, clingy and unwilling to move in equal parts.

“It’s too bad I’m broken, we could’ve taken them,” Dean said, throwing Sam into another fit of laughter and scenting and filling the room with a blissfully happy alpha smell. “I thought Garth was gonna get us up so we could go sit with Gwen?”

“Garth knocked on the door around one to drop of our stuff. Adam had already called from the hospital,” Sam told him, finally getting himself under control. “Gwen was still in surgery and the police were done questioning him. Garth was going to call him back in a couple of hours and wake us up if we needed to know something, but said otherwise we should sleep off the spell or they’d probably think we were on drugs. Now that we’re up I’ll call saying I’m her cousin and she went missing and I’ve been looking for her since last night.”

“You still think that’s a good idea - that they’re going to buy it? I mean, she’s just a kid now and you’re very much not a kid. _And_ she came into the hospital with a knife in her back. Some random guy showing up for her seems kind of suspicious.”

“So what are you suggesting? We can’t just leave her there.”

“God no. I don’t want to leave her there. I feel bad enough as it is that we had to drop her and Adam outside. But I’m not sure you getting involved is going to help anyone.”

Sam pondered that for quite a while, rubbing circles onto Dean’s temples as he sensed the omega’s head starting to ache again now that an early morning replay of St. Louis had ground to a halt. Being able to feel Dean again through their bond was almost overwhelming after being without it for days, and even though he wanted to focus on the problem of Gwen, eventually Sam returned to nuzzling and caressing his mate as his main occupation. Frankly, drowning himself in Dean’s scent and presence was the only thing he had any interest in doing for the foreseeable future.

“I could call Kevin,” he finally said as he felt Dean’s pain starting to melt away under all the attention he was getting. “Tell him about the case we were working, have him throw it up on the board with me and Gwen working it. That way I can tell the hospital she’s been hit with a spell and I need to get in to reverse it. That’ll be tough without proof she’s with the FDH.”

“I’m not...real comfortable with this going up on the FDH site so other hunters know about it,” Dean breathed, finding himself less interested in this conversation with every passing second.

“I’ll tell Kevin to list it open for only an hour or so and then close it out. I just need to have a way to get in officially to see her, and get Adam off the hook with the cops. No one knows he’s your brother. He’s been saying his last name is Smith since he got here.”

“I mean...if you think it’s a good idea.”

“I do. Five more minutes and we’ll get up and shower.”

That seemed reasonable to the smaller man, especially when Sam was already fitting their mouths together and letting his hands roam all over Dean’s skin. Five minutes came and went and they were rounding second towards third base when the thumping and gasping started again and they had to stop to look at each other in awe of Todd’s impressive recovery time, once more trying to stifle their laughter at Stacy’s little whines and curses. Finally the alpha composed himself enough to help his mate scoot towards the edge of the bed, the fact that he was using his body to block the overhead canopy largely from Dean’s view not lost on the omega, then steadying him as they made their way to the bathroom to clean off the remnants of their hormone overdrive from the night before. The relatively small claw foot tub with hand shower froze them both in the door to the black and white bathroom for a moment, anxiety pulsing off of Dean as Sam ran a hand along his lower back to help calm him, and finally the alpha clicked the light off, deciding the bleed through the frosted windows would just have to be enough before murmuring, “Close your eyes,” into his mate’s ear.

Dean did as he was told, fighting back against the tightness building in his chest and how stupid he felt every time something like this happened. It was like the stupid alley incident ( _and the fact he was referring to it in his head as “the stupid alley incident” just made it stupider as far as he was concerned_ ), which he should have been fine with after all this fucking time. He didn’t even fully remember Adam washing him off, it had always just kind of been something he was vaguely aware of having happened before the sound on the video put it into context for him. He just fucking hated how much power Christian and Mark were still exerting over his life.

“Are you going to be okay?” Sam murmured, his hands moving in long, gentle strokes over Dean’s arms as he waited for his mate to decide what he wanted to do.

“Mmhmm,” Dean replied with a nod, focusing on breathing evenly in and out through his nose.

“Are you going to tell me if you’re not?”

“Mmhmm.”

He was rewarded for his efforts to lock all his shit down by the feather-light touch of lips to his forehead and a strong arm around his waist pulling him very gently across the room. He followed Sam’s instructions to climb into the tub and to hold still, flinching slightly when the alpha pulled the shower curtain closed and then again at the first spray of water before insisting he was fine. It was definitely a strange experience showering like this with his eyes closed, though he was at least not slipping and dying as Sam turned him to wash his back, the whole thing feeling quite a bit like rinsing off outside with a garden hose. He found it much easier to stay calm thinking of it like that until he felt Sam’s hand moving over his chest with the bar of soap provided by the Avalon and held his breath.

“If you’re not going to breathe we should at least get out and rinse off in the sink,” Sam said softly. “It’ll be a lot easier for me to catch you when you eventually pass out from lack of oxygen.”

Much as Dean appreciated the sentiment, the idea that two men their size would use a sink to finish showering was ridiculous, which he was eventually able to express once he’d gotten his breathing back under control. Sam gave him a gentle squeeze before handing off the soap so Dean could finish washing himself while the alpha snaked his freed up arm behind his mate to lazily run fingers up and down the omega’s spine. After a few minutes of focusing on keeping his breathing steady he risked opening his eyes and switching from washing himself to washing Sam, whose anxiety he could tell was spiking from this experience as well, and they were only half clean. Well, screw anxiety, the omega decided. He’d will himself to make a better claw foot tub memory for both of them if he had to, especially when Sam had just been working so hard at making a better canopy bed memory for him, and he tilted his face up just a little to plant a kiss on his mate’s jaw.

“I don’t know who came up with the idea of hand showers for these vintage tubs, but it’s kinda crap,” he said, determined that the best thing to get them moving forward without any more awkwardness was to just power through it as he reached to take the sprayer from Sam despite the tremor in his hands.

“Yeah?” Sam asked, relaxing when he felt some of Dean’s tension ease.

“Yeah, I mean, I don’t know about you, but I’m freezing my ass off over here,” Dean replied with forced bravado as he rinsed them both, reminding himself it was okay to fake it ‘til you make it. “It’s not like a regular shower where the water kind of hits you everywhere, so anywhere you’re _not_ directly rinsing gets cold in two seconds. Then you can’t even do anything fun if you’re trying to conserve water and share with someone, because one of you has to have a hand on the sprayer at all times to make sure you don’t end up with water all over the floor, and you have to pay constant attention to where you’ve got it pointed. Either that or you have to turn the thing off to set it down and hope you can get the temperature right when you turn it back on. It’s just a stupid design all the way around.”

Sam very obviously appreciated Dean’s efforts to just be Dean, shooting him a dimpled grin and wrapping both arms around his back to trap the sprayer between them as he murmured, “I’m not freezing.”

“That’s because you absorbed my boy gene back at Laramie. Which, by the way, is not cool. Never steal another man’s boy gene.”

“What if it’s part of my dastardly plan to reduce you to asking for cuddles in order to stay warm?”

“Then it’s a terrible dastardly plan. You’ve seen how many fleece throws I own.”

The alpha laughed outright, leaning past his mate to turn the water off and immediately hearing Todd and Stacy nearing the end of round two. Dean raised an eyebrow at him, incredulous that they were still at it and neither of them appeared to have blown out their voice yet, and after a moment Sam suggested, “Maybe they timed the ceremony for when her heat hit?”

“If that’s what heat sex sounds like, we are locking ourselves in a soundproof room,” Dean told him, deadly serious as Sam grabbed a towel to dry off his mate.

“Since when do you care about someone hearing us?” Sam demanded, his dimples working overtime as he used the towel around Dean’s lower back to pin the omega to him.

“Since Todd and Stacy started trying to break through the wall with their bed,” Dean replied flatly, the hammering against their shared wall increasing in speed and strength as if to make his point, the noise beginning to send little spikes of pain jolting through his head. “Come on, we gotta start acting like we care about what happens to your cousin and my brother. And I’m pretty sure that kid is scared out of her mind, especially if she can hear _that_.”

Sam had to wonder if the newly mated couple next door could hear their conversation as Stacy cried out with perfect timing, “ _OhfuckJesusgodrightheredon’tstopToddfuck_ ” and got an obscene grunt from Todd in response, and he dropped a kiss to the tip of Dean’s nose before getting out of the tub to grab their duffels and clothes. Once Dean was in the process of dressing, the muscles in his back flexing under his pale, freckled skin as he pulled on a tee shirt, the allure of walking him back to the bed to show Todd how taking care of your mate was really done made it hard for Sam to stay on track, even though he knew the omega was right and they needed to get moving. It was clear Dean’s head was starting to bother him again and they never did manage to get his prescription filled or replace his phone, plus they had two babies at home with only Jo and Bobby to watch them, and they couldn’t just keep imposing on the betas. Even so, he was still in his boxers, flagrantly staring when Dean perched on the chair by the door to put his shoes on, doing his best not to look directly at the canopy bed.

“What?” the omega half laughed, trying to finger comb his hair into something presentable without benefit of a mirror. “Did I miss somethin’ on my face?” Sam was about to risk a genuine chick flick moment when the thumping and squeaking started a third time and Dean turned to stare at the wall, declaring, “That’s just not natural. We’re getting out of here before we find out Todd’s an incubus. Come on Sammy.”

Sam signaled his agreement by hurriedly pulling on his clothes, not missing the way Dean’s eyes lingered on his abs as he was dragging his shirt over his head, the thumping from next door making the omega wince a few seconds later. The alpha shoved his feet into his shoes and grabbed both duffels to sling over his shoulder as he helped his mate stand and find his balance, Dean more shocked than Sam by his sudden lack of equilibrium. Stacy and Todd were clearly not letting up anytime soon, so the taller man got his omega out and down the hall towards the room he and Adam had booked as quickly as possible, passing more than one set of guests who were red faced on their way to checking out and trying pointedly to ignore the sounds coming from the happy couple.

Garth was already up and ready to go despite it being nowhere near eight o’clock yet. He gave Dean an unsolicited and unexpected hug, still looking like he was slightly worried, before turning to hug Sam as well. They could see the little girl huddled in the far corner of the room, her eyes wide and frightened as she twisted her long skirt in her hands and darted glances between the three men in the doorway. Dean dug into his duffel quickly to get a couple of the pain pills and swallow them dry as Garth explained that the night had been pretty rough with the kid, who barely understood what was going on since he could understand Middle High German better than he could speak it - a revelation that was not reassuring, because for at least the time being they were stuck with her. Obviously Marian didn’t have any living relatives and they couldn’t just dump her with social services, something Dean wouldn’t have allowed even if she weren’t from another century and unable to speak English.

The beta had managed to get through to her that all the modern devices and conveniences weren’t the result of magic, that the place she’d been living was, and that they were going to make sure she was taken care of. She really didn’t seem to believe it even as she came forward at Dean’s gentle prodding and he managed to introduce himself and Sam, getting her to thump on her chest and say, “Emma,” in return. Garth mentioned something about needing to catch a flight to get back to his guinea pigs, and that Henry helped him translate some of Marian’s recipes so he could be a resource in communicating with Emma, waiting until Sam had grabbed Gwen’s bags to take everything down to the truck before pulling Dean farther into his room and quietly asking, “When you asked about the Devil’s Gate and Azazel, it was because of Sam, wasn’t it?”

It certainly wasn’t a question Dean was expecting, and he had to laugh for a second just to give himself time to figure out how to put Garth off the scent. He was a good guy who’d saved their asses on this from everything Adam told them in the car the night before, and he wasn’t eager to pull anyone else into this mess.

“Why would you think that?” was the best deflection he could come up with, wishing he were better at lying.

“Because after he ate the cookie he started acting weird,” Garth whispered, checking the hall to make sure Sam wasn’t coming back yet.

“Define weird.”

“Well, he went to a bar to get completely wasted, hit on everything with two legs - and I mean _everything_ \- then came back here and started making things float before his eyes turned black and he blew out the windows.” Garth was pleased to see he had Dean’s full attention, even if the omega had paled considerably and looked like he might be sick, casting another glance down the hallway for the alpha and spotting him coming up the stairs. “Look man, I don’t know what’s goin’ on with either of you, but you need to know the timeline for when the Devil’s Gate can be opened is comin’ up. It starts on Mabon - the autumn equinox - and goes all the way through Samhain. Whatever’s going on with Sam, you need to make sure he keeps that shit locked down, because Azazel’s got a whole month where he’s gonna be tryin’ to get Sam to be his date to the prom.”

“Okay,” Dean murmured a few seconds before Sam was sliding past him and trailing fingers up his side as he went.

“We need to get going,” he told them, his voice low and concern evident as he went to grab Adam’s things. “The party guests are trying to figure out where Marian is so they can check out.”

“Yeah, we don’t want to be here if they look in the fireplace,” Garth agreed, slinging his own duffel over his shoulder and explaining to Emma as best he could that they needed to leave and getting her moving out of the room between him and Dean, Sam hurrying to get in front of them.

Todd and Stacy were still enjoying each other as they passed the room, Dean quickly pulling Emma in front of him so he could cover her ears and feeling her shake violently in response. There was an expanding group of guests downstairs growing increasingly irritated at not being able to find Marian, and their bickering and raised voices as they stormed around the hotel did nothing to calm the child, despite Garth’s best efforts to assure her that everything was fine. Dean couldn’t blame her for her reaction, the number of angry strangers between them and the door making his own anxiety spike since he was still adjusting to being himself again and large enough to fend off anyone that tried to hurt him. How they were going to make it with her back to the bunker without the poor kid having a nervous breakdown the omega wasn’t really sure, but they did successfully get her into the truck and then transferred to the Impala when they stopped at the Stargazer to pick it up, the alpha immensely glad Adam had slipped the manager some cash to keep it and Gwen’s car from being towed. It would not have done at all for them to rescue Dean only to discover his precious Baby was impounded when all any of them wanted to do was get out of Elwood as quickly as possible.

Sam was really uneasy about the idea of keeping Emma with them as they caravanned with Garth for the hospital, wanting to know what exactly they were going to do with her, but Dean felt like he had enough experience being freaked out by anything and everything, up to which direction the wind blew, that he could really help her. It hadn’t been that long ago that he wouldn’t leave the bunker because he was sure someone would recognize him and he’d be plunged back into his own personal Hell with the OPS. If he could move past all that and get back to being functional, he could handle a six year old who needed to adjust to the twenty first century and learn English, right? He didn’t really further his cause when he dove for the glove box of the Impala as soon as they parked and dug out his sunglasses to slam on his face against the sunlight trying to melt his brain, and insisting he’d sit in the back with Emma outside of his alpha’s direct line of sight in no way made Sam feel like his obviously still very sick omega was up to taking on a third child, especially when that child was deeply traumatized. Sam decided to table that fight for later, however, as he needed to call Kevin and Dean was busy pointing out the window at the scenery and saying the names of everything from corn to billboards so Emma would know what they were on their way to pick up Adam and see Gwen.

Sam’s view on taking Emma in soured even further when she panicked at the site of the hospital and all the sirens and Dean declared that they were going to find somewhere quiet the two of them could have breakfast and then he was going to replace his cell phone and then he planned to find a clothing store where they could get her something that didn’t look so much like a Halloween costume to wear. Garth had to step in to keep their argument from getting too loud in the parking lot as Sam insisted Dean’s skull fractures had left him mentally unstable, since he wasn’t supposed to be driving when he was taking his pain pills and he sure as hell shouldn’t be driving with a kid in the car and he _had_ to be crazy if he thought Sam was just going to let him go off on his own. On another day that pronouncement would have had the omega bristling and storming off with a couple of birds flipped back in Sam’s direction. Instead he asked Garth to give them a minute, sending him off with the little girl to look at the different kinds of cars in the lot and teach her words like, “tire,” “truck,” and “bad parking job,” and once they were alone he pressed in close to the alpha, tipping his face in to scent him and rubbing his cheek along Sam’s jaw while he slid his hands up under the back of his mate’s shirt to caress his skin.

“I get why you don’t want me off on my own,” he said quietly, the taller man fuming down at him, complete with flaring nostrils as he tried to will himself to stay angry despite the thrill of Dean's fingers tracing the long scar by his shoulder blade.  “But…getting turned into a kid…it was really fuckin’ scary, Sam. Not that it wasn’t for you, it just… _anyone_ could’ve grabbed me and shoved me in a trunk and I wouldn’t have been able to do a damn thing to stop them. I’m not talkin’ about the redcap or the trickster, I mean just anyone off the street. I was scared every fucking second, and I’m still scared. That thing had me strung up like a piece of meat and I was…so _small_ I…And I’m not gonna lie, I really want to glue myself to you so you can make me feel safe but if I do that I’m going to get stuck inside my head and it’s taken me so fucking long to get _out_ of my head that I just…I need to do this, Sammy. Yeah, I know I shouldn’t be drivin’ anywhere with skull fractures and a kid who only speaks a weird German, but I’ve at least gotta get some food in her before she passes out. Maybe see if she knows how to use a bathroom. I dunno, I feel like this could all kind of go really bad with her and I think it will be worse if we force her inside with all the beeping and the alerts and crap they have in hospitals. She may be a couple of centuries behind but she’s gotta at least understand the concept of a diner. People have been paying other people to make them food for forever.”

“I hear you, I do, but Dean…” Sam’s huff of frustration eventually turned into grim laughter as he found he couldn’t keep up any real anger at his mate wanting to go off on his own when he knew Dean wouldn't have opened up about the last few days unless he really needed this, carding his fingers gently through the omega’s hair as he breathed in his coffee and cloves. “We’ve just got a really crappy track record when it comes to splitting up. On this vacation especially.”

“I did fine at Walmart,” Dean countered immediately, sensing Sam’s resolve breaking and really pushing him into the Impala’s driver’s side to surround him in the scent Sam hadn’t been able to smell for days. “And while you were at Elliott’s appointment, and Home Depot. Besides, kids are amazing asshole repellent - you have no idea. I promise I won't eat any random desserts. I’ll wear one of the Bowie knives. I’ll even bring you back waffles.”

“You’re really the only thing I want you to bring back,” Sam muttered, earning himself a raised eyebrow that had him eventually admitting, “Okay, that might have been a little much.”

“A little? You could write for Hallmark and we could make a fortune if you keep cranking out lines like that. Or Harlequin. Oh! You could grow your hair out and be a cover model for them.”

“I think I’ll pass. Besides, I already have a fortune, and I plan on being retired with you in multiple positions in every room of the bunker for at _least_ a year once you’re all healed. No way will I have time to write greeting card sentiments or pose for romance novels.”

“You guys all done?” Garth asked as he headed slowly back over with Emma holding tightly to him, the sun bouncing off her hair and making it light up gold. “Lovers spat resolved and whatnot? Cuz we gotta get in there and I need to head to the airport…”

“Yeah, we’re good,” Dean replied, tilting his head back to give Sam a peck at the hinge of his jaw before reaching a hand out towards the little girl and saying. “Come on Emma.”

She stared at him wide-eyed, looking between him and Garth, and when Dean repeated the instruction he waved his arm towards himself, gifting her with his best smile when she walked over and carefully took his hand. Sam stopped him to hand over his cell phone so he could at least call Adam if something happened, getting a chaste press of lips and several long moments of scenting before Dean headed with Emma to the Impala. Sam couldn't fail to notice that his mate seemed to be building a rapport with her as Dean had her scoot into the front passenger’s side, buckled her in, and said as he pointed to it, “Seat belt.”

He repeated it twice as she tested the tightness of it across her body, finally parroting back, “Seat belt,” in an accent so heavy it would have been impossible to understand what she was saying if Dean hadn’t said the words first. The omega merely smiled at her again, saying, “Right, seat belt,” before heading back to the other side of the car. He pretended he hadn’t been dizzy for a few seconds when he straightened up, just as he pretended that Sam wasn’t drilling a hole through the back of his skull with his big, concerned puppy dog eyes, and climbed in to start up the car.

“Always wear that,” he instructed her as he pulled his own belt across his body to buckle it in, then reached for the knob on the radio to switch it on. They both flinched when it blared out _We Built This City_ , Emma covering her ears as Dean hurried to turn it down and pressed his palm to his forehead against a stab of pain. She searched the interior of the car for the sound of the strange noise, eventually staring at the omega as she tried to make herself as small as possible against the door. When he felt steady enough to drive, he told her, “Jefferson Starship. Just an awful group. Honestly, I'm not convinced their members aren't monsters because the band is horrible and hard to kill. Let’s find something else.” He flipped through the channels, noticing how closely she was watching what he was doing but not making a big deal out of it other than indicating the dial and saying, “Radio” a couple of times until she repeated it. Finally he found _We Belong_ and decided a female artist might be the best way to introduce her to more modern music. “Okay, so this is Pat Benatar, and she’s actually pretty cool, though Joan Jett’s cooler, hands down. But really, I hear either of them comin’ out of your room once you actually understand what the hell they’re sayin’ and I’ll be happy, cuz they’re a helluva lot better than most of what’s out there today. Capiche?”

“Capiche?” she echoed back as they pulled very carefully out of the lot, Dean stopping to pay the toll and catch his breath.

“I’ll make sure you know all the good stuff, don’t worry.”

He threw her a quick grin, the movement of his head instantly making him queasy, and turned back to make sure he didn’t drive them into another car or run someone over. She seemed to relax some as _You Might Think_ started up, turning eventually to look out the window at the outskirts of the city while Dean was trying to find his way back to a diner they’d passed on the way to the hospital. His head was beginning to throb and he needed food easily as much as Emma did. As they pulled into the parking lot for The Sunshine Grill he considered dimly the idea of teaching the girl how to say “help” and to memorize Adam’s number just in case she needed to use it, fighting to stay upright as he got her out of the car. He was fairly certain he must look drunk to anyone watching them weave their way across the parking lot just as he was fairly certain leaving his mate’s side might have been as bad of an idea as Sam thought it was.


	127. You Seem Like a Great Kid

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things go great with Emma, until they don't.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy crap. 700,000 words. I didn't mean to do that...

The Sunshine Grill was just about the perfect place to take a German child displaced by several centuries for breakfast as far as Dean was concerned. It was entirely nondescript, with no wacky themes, uniforms, or background music; just pleasant pale yellow walls with a simple mural of orange lines like the horizon leading to a half circle clearly meant to be the sun in the middle, a Formica counter with red upholstered stools to match the red upholstered chairs and booths, and a line of windows facing to the east and west to catch both the sunrise and the sunset. There was likewise nothing fancy about the menu, making it easy for the omega to order Emma orange juice, pancakes, and scrambled eggs while he got himself waffles, home fries, and sausage links with the largest cup of coffee their waitress ( _Nadine_ ) could find him. The place was busy, which made the girl nervous, but the hostess noticed Dean’s discomfort and after a quick explanation of his head injury ( _he left it at a concussion_ ) it wasn’t any trouble to get them seated in a quiet corner booth away from most of the diners. Though she was initially suspicious when the food arrived, once Dean took a couple of bites of her pancakes and eggs to prove no one was trying to poison her ( _or whatever she thought might be wrong with the food_ ), Emma attacked the plate with gusto, giving the omega the first smile to grace her face since they grabbed her in the castle and ran for the forest.

As the meal went on, Dean decided he really liked Emma. Sure, she didn't speak English, and a lot of random things scared her, and he was genuinely afraid she was going to soil herself before she realized what he was doing as he mimed using a toilet in the family bathroom at The Sunshine Grill, but she was young enough that he thought she could adapt eventually. Kids were supposed to be sponges and the best time to teach them a second language was when they were young, so it seemed reasonable to assume that it would only be a matter of time before she'd start to pick up English if he just kept up a running commentary about everything that came into his head. In spite of his normally guarded nature, he quickly found that Emma was very easy to talk to, because she didn't understand a word coming out of his mouth so he could say pretty much anything without the fear of looking weak or vulnerable or like he wasn't able to protect her. He'd never realized how heavy that weight he carried around was, until eating with Emma lifted it.

He knew it was silly and largely counterproductive to act like nothing got to him when he was around Sam with all the shit weighing on his psyche at any given time. Old habits died hard though, and it was easier to talk about being stuck in a dungeon that really was basically a rudimentary basement, and how that seriously undermined his attempts to escape because he kept having to stop digging at the bar to suppress the panic that continually locked up his limbs, if he was talking to someone who didn’t know what the word “raped” meant. Intellectually he was fully aware that he could talk to Jody about this stuff, or Sam, or probably even Adam, but it was just easier hashing through it with a little kid incapable of understanding him, who wouldn’t as a result of his vocal diarrhea think she needed to give him sympathetic looks or, worse yet, her pity.

Plus, she _loved_ pancakes and syrup, which meant they’d at least have one topic they could discuss when she finally did start to learn English.

When you got right down to it she wasn't much different than a kid from a third world country might be if they were taken out of their home and plunked down in the American Heartland having never used indoor plumbing or seen a television. Dean didn’t know why that made him feel so at ease with her, but it did. If he had to think about it, he’d probably decide on not having to work at all to impress upon her his ability to take care of her despite _only_ being an omega. She’d clearly decided by the second plate of pancakes that she could trust his judgement, and she came from a time when it was accepted that omegas could take care of children without needing to be second guessed or told how to do it. It was was very freeing. As far as she was concerned he was the expert in all things twenty-first century - or at least in diner food - so the fact that he was having trouble staying upright and silently cursing not being able to take more pain medication for another two hours didn’t matter to her in the slightest. She just listened to him blathering on about his scarring, Sam’s demon blood, Lizzie’s broken leg, that he’d barely bonded with Elliott, and how he felt like he just _really_ sucked at the whole matehood and motherhood thing, so she shouldn’t get too comfortable with the idea that he knew what the hell he was doing because she’d only end up disappointed, and took another long drink of orange juice before responding in a long string of Middle High German and smiling again with syrup on her chin.

Sam called as they were getting the check, scaring the smile right off her face even as Dean said, “Phone. _Phone_. You use it to talk to...never mind, I’ll explain it later.” A quick conversation with his mate confirmed Kevin’s post to the FDH job board had worked to get Sam in to see Gwen, who was doing surprisingly well considering she’d been dropped off the night before with a knife in her back. Following Actaeon protocol to never remove an object with which someone had been stabbed had gone a long way towards helping her survive the attack. She was surprisingly lucid despite being hopped up on pain meds, understanding she needed to eat the cookie in order to return to her actual age, though no one was sure what would happen if she ate it while she was healing so it might be better if she waited at least until she was released. That was the good news. The not really good news was that her father had an alert set up in the system for any hunt Gwen was on where she was injured, and William and Colleen had called the hospital to relay that they were coming out to arrange moving her to Kansas City where they lived. They’d already started the two and a half hour drive, so as far as Gwen was concerned the sooner Sam, Dean, and Adam got on the road the better; she’d be okay on her own for an hour or so. Once she was healed and back to herself, she was definitely getting invited to dinner in St. Louis.

Sam didn’t like the way Dean sounded as he made that declaration, picking up on the exhaustion underlying the omega’s voice, and Dean could feel the alpha bristling when he said they weren’t coming back to the hospital just yet. He wasn’t quite sure, but he thought Sam was suppressing a growl when he explained he wanted to get Emma better clothes for the six and a half hour drive back to the bunker, and it made him shiver slightly in spite of himself. It wasn’t the bad kind of shivering, either. Apparently going without their bond for a few days was reducing Dean to a pearl clutching maiden ready to swoon at the first sign of his mate’s aggression, even as the idea that Sam wanted him back at his side _now_ thrilled him. He was tempted to chalk it up to leftover teenage hormones from the night before, though he wasn’t exactly complaining about the burst of heat he felt coursing through him at the added huskiness to Sam’s voice as he asked, “Where are you planning to go shopping then so Adam can drop me off?”

The more his mate tried to refrain from coming across as a clingy, possessive knothead, the more Dean was finding it difficult not to grab a napkin to write an ode to Sam’s manly vocalization techniques, emotional sensitivity, and fabulous hair, and he didn’t even try to put the alpha off from meeting them at the clothing store they were headed to. Nadine, in her never ending quest to prove she was the best waitress he’d ever had and secure herself a huge tip, overheard Dean saying something about wanting to stop off to get Emma clothes to travel in while refilling his coffee and checking to see if the girl wanted more pancakes, and with a smile full of large white teeth and bright red lipstick told him about a second hand shop that sold gently used kids’ clothing only two blocks away. The Brave Little Tailor’s Consignment had genuine brand names at bargain basement prices and they only took in clothes to resell that were in excellent condition. While not exactly thrilled at heading somewhere specifically fairy tale themed when he could still smell the hanged boy in the meat locker, it seemed a much better option to Dean than Walmart.

The food and coffee had helped quell the pain in Dean’s skull considerably by the time he paid for breakfast ( _leaving Nadine her well-earned tip_ ), but he still couldn’t take the sunglasses off without the overhead lights making him dizzy and queasy, and he was glad Sam was meeting them at the clothing shop because he wasn’t sure how much longer he’d last before he needed to just lay down in the back of the Impala. Emma seemed to be catching on to his relatively ill health, moving to his side without prompting to take his hand as they headed back through the diner for the parking lot, Nadine telling them to come back any time. She bounced into the passenger’s side, obviously growing accustomed to the bench seats and causing Dean to marvel at the resiliency of children. Barely twelve hours removed from being trapped in a time loop and she was already starting to have fun; though he was willing to accept she might be having a sugar rush from all the syrup he let her pour on her pancakes.

“Seat belt!” she declared as she attempted to strap herself in and didn’t really manage it.

Dean smiled, the sunlight splitting his head open like an axe despite his shades, and leaned across to help her, saying, “Right. Seat belt. Always wear one.”

“Seat belt!” she repeated, clearly pleased as the car started up and they were met with the opening drums and guitars of _Regret_. “Radio!”

“That’s right, radio. This is more Sam’s music than mine,” he told her, even though he was tapping along to the drums with his fingers on the steering wheel and just barely holding himself back from humming. “New Order. They’re good, if you’re into British new wave. It was never really my thing, but Sammy likes this kinda stuff, so if you decide you like this you’ll have to talk to him. Not that I’d recommend it, his taste in music _pales_ in comparison to mine. I’m just sayin’.”

“Radio,” she agreed firmly before watching out the window at the various people walking by as Dean did his best to keep his eyes on the road and stay upright. It was a good thing they were only going two blocks, because his vision was starting to double as they found a spot in the half empty parking lot near the store.

Emma obviously didn’t know what to make of the brightly colored store fronts as she sat frozen in the front seat, staring through the windshield at the displays in The Brave Little Tailor’s Consignment, Around We Go ( _some kind of vintage record shop by the looks of it_ ), The Dollar Tree, and CVS, a tiny Subway tucked at the very end of the little strip mall. Dean wondered if this is what he looked like when they stopped at the men’s store in Nebraska to get their Fed suits and gave her a few minutes to just take everything in before reaching over to unclip her seat belt. She flinched at the sound, shaking visibly as she looked across the car at Dean with eyes like saucers, an expression he’d always found a bit exaggerated up to now, when it clearly fit the moment.

“Come on,” he said quietly, and after another few minutes she slid across the bench seat to follow him out the driver’s side, molding herself to his side as he led her towards the store and gave her shoulder a little squeeze, the tinkling of the bell on the door making her jump.

“Hi there!” declared a cheery beta in her mid-twenties the second the door closed behind them. “Welcome to Brave Little Tailor’s. Just so you know, anything with a red slash on the tag is seventy-five percent off. Let us know if we can help you find something!”

“Sure thing,” Dean replied, and he couldn’t blame Emma for clinging to him the way she was. Every single car in the parking lot must belong to someone in this store, which had aisles of clothing running on either side for both boys and girls, with sizes broken out from newborn to three months all the way up to size fourteen - one he’d be happy not to see again for a long time. It also clearly sold gently used kids’ gear, toys, and shoes, as the whole back section of the store was a row of shelves lined with stuffed animals, action figures, vehicles, dolls, playsets, and so forth, while another wall held bins of shoes in different sizes. Lining the front windows were bigger items, like bouncers and bikes, and off to the side of the bank of registers were new items that couldn’t be sold second hand ( _and that no one would want to buy second hand_ ), like underwear, pacifiers, and socks. It would have been nice to know a place like this existed so he could have skipped the overpriced aisles of Babies ‘R Us, even if at the moment the place was positively overrun by moms and their kids - mostly babies and toddlers - looking for tags with a red slash.

It was clear the longer they stayed in the store the closer Emma was going to get to a breakdown, which Dean could definitely sympathize with given how much there was to take in all at once and how many kids were here shrieking with delight or wailing for a diaper change. The overhead sound system was playing some kind of kid’s music, probably Gary the Happy Pirate or The Wiggles, and Dean refused to feel ashamed for knowing those two artists existed when he had two infants at home and it was almost impossible to avoid the mind numbing crap that came with having kids. At least Barney seemed to be falling out of fashion, though apparently there was some fresh hell out there in children’s television called “Teletubbies” that he was going to make damn sure his kids never saw. Old school Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers were good enough for him and Adam; they’d just have to be good enough for Lizzie and Elliott.

Now, though, his focus was on Emma and trying to get them both out of the store as quickly as possible with something appropriate for her to wear before she panicked and hid in one of the clothing racks or he passed out from the pain all the screaming was sending rocketing through his head. He’d guessed correctly on how sizes for kids worked when he’d been de-aged, so he got a hand around the girl’s shoulder again to pull her in close and headed for the aisle labeled “6” in the hopes the clothes were somewhere close to her size. She relaxed somewhat when they’d ducked down between the double rows of pants, shirts, shorts, and dresses, her eyes shining with a mixture of excitement and surprise at all the strange garments on display. Dean decided pretty quickly that there was no point in trying to get her pants at this stage of the game, not only because they were obviously confusing her, but because they seemed pretty clearly to be skin tight in a way that was frankly inappropriate for a little girl as far as he was concerned. Not only that, most of the clothes that had the red slashes on the tag were the summer items, and there was just no reason for a six year old to have shorts _that_ short or a selection of spaghetti strap shirts or crop tops, and wow he could not care less that those thoughts made him feel like a prude. He appreciated women’s lib and the female form as much as the next guy. That didn’t mean he was going to have a six year old walking around with her tummy hanging out where anyone could ogle her or make suggestive comments or rub her shoulders when she didn’t want them touching her and couldn’t do anything to stop it.

When exactly he’d stopped breathing and started shaking he really couldn’t have told anyone, even with a gun pressed to his head, though he supposed it was probably a good thing Emma was learning right off the bat that she shouldn’t rely on him to provide any sort of stability when he was prone to having panic attacks in the middle of consignment shops. He at least kept enough of his wits about him to sit and put his head between his knees before he ended up taking out a full rack of clothes. It was humiliating enough as it was to be having a flashback of that stupid harlequin party so vivid he could feel the damn collar around his neck, choking him, without attracting any further attention to himself. Emma was on the ground next to him, babbling away in Middle High German, and great, now he’d scared the poor kid out of her mind and couldn’t pull enough air into his lungs to let her know he’d be okay. Between the lack of oxygen, the roaring in his head, and the way the room was spinning he was pretty sure he was going to throw up in the middle of The Brave Little Tailor and get them banned from the store forthwith, grabbing onto Emma’s arm to try to reassure her that it would all be okay even as he had to lay down on the cold off-white linoleum to lessen the feeling that he was going to be flung off the planet’s surface into outer space any minute now.

The drops of moisture he felt on his face after he’d been laying down for - minutes? Hours? He didn’t really know - brought him around a bit, though they were terribly confusing since it hadn’t looked like it was going to rain when they came into the store and besides, he was pretty sure they were still inside. There was the possibility he was wrong about that, though. He’d been wrong about being able to take Emma out for breakfast and clothes shopping by himself, after all. It took years of reality slowly sliding past him like a spilled milkshake before he was able to grab a piece of it and figure out that he was correct, they were inside; Emma was just crying over him now and that - that was fantastic. He’d made an already freaked out kid freak out even more, and someone was touching him, some strange beta ( _probably one of the store associates - great_ ) but he had neither the strength nor vocal ability to make them stop, so he just kind of grunted, except to his horror it came out sounding distinctly like a whine, and tried to scoot himself backwards away from whoever it was that he couldn’t get to come into focus as they took off his sunglasses and the overhead light straight up blinded him.

Jesus, he hated his life sometimes.

Distantly he heard the bell on the door jingle as he was trying to bury his face in the floor, which was perfect since he couldn’t think of anything better right now than having a larger audience to watch him fall to pieces over crop tops, then the beta was getting shoved away and a hand that covered almost the whole of his bicep was pulling him up off the floor into a cloud of terrified Sam scent. It worked better than smelling salts, shocking the omega back to enough awareness to notice Emma sobbing a few feet away, practically hidden among the size six jackets and sweaters, her face tear stained and covered in snot while Sam was apologizing to whatever clerk he’d pushed. Dean took several large breaths, gasping against Sam’s neck and trying to get his hands to do something besides hang limply at his sides that would let his mate know he wasn’t going to die ( _at least, he didn’t_ **_think_ ** _he was going to die_ ), eventually managing to tangle one set of fingers into the hem of the alpha’s shirt while extending the other arm towards Emma. The child hesitated before finally bolting into his side and burying her face against his ribs as Sam moved from stroking his back to tipping his face up so he could assess his mate’s level of consciousness and make sure he didn’t have any injuries. Dean wasn’t sure if the frantic scenting it threw the alpha into meant he passed or failed muster, and he didn’t actually care when he was too busy being happy he could breathe again.

Sam was having a terrible time keeping it together, having been dropped off by Adam in front of the store and walking straight into a cloud of his omega’s anxiety and distress. It had been hard enough to let Dean go off by himself this morning. His skin had itched nonstop since they separated, like something had burrowed into his muscles and wouldn’t stop crawling around until he was back with Dean. Gwen was grateful to see him when she woke up after they’d been there close to an hour waiting, but promptly kicked him out with the assurance she’d be fine once they explained about the cookie and that the doctors said her parents were on their way. Adam had to get Garth to the airport anyway; it was just silly for Sam to babysit her instead of meeting up with Dean, especially after the toll the withering disease had taken on him. Finding a gaggle of beta moms and their kids crowded around the size six aisle while someone was saying, “Sir, is there someone I can call?” and only getting breathy whines in response nearly gave him heart failure; not much of an exaggeration now that he knew what heart failure felt like.

He really did feel bad about practically throwing the beta sales associate off of his mate. She was just a tiny little thing and she was obviously trying to help, but anything between him and Dean at the moment was unacceptable and had to go. He must have asked what happened, though he wasn’t aware of speaking, because she said, “I don’t know, he was just there on the ground. Should I call an ambulance?”

Sam’s gut reaction was to have her call the ambulance, the fire department, the police so he could take a look at any security footage they might have to make sure no one had done this to Dean, _anything_ that would help him figure out what was wrong since that stupid kid was over on the far end of the aisle bawling her eyes out and couldn’t even speak fucking English. Instead he said, “Give me a minute. I’m sorry I pushed you, just…please everyone back up.” The betas clustered around very wisely did as he asked, since he could feel his alpha trying to take over and things were going to go south very quickly if they didn’t give him some privacy with his omega right the fuck now.

Getting Dean up against his neck so he could scent Sam startled him out of whatever was happening to him, and as he tipped Dean’s face to really look at him and saw his eyes begin to focus he started to think maybe it was just a panic attack and not an aneurysm or something equally life threatening. Why he would be having a panic attack in the middle of a little girl clothing section didn't make any sense, but his mate had already signaled for the kid to come back over to him and his breathing was getting steadier. Dean leaned heavily into Sam as the alpha rubbed himself all over his omega as much as could be deemed appropriate in this kind of store. Feeling Dean’s fingers clutching at his shirt had the alpha sighing deeply and wanting to drag his mate into one of the dressing rooms so he could properly scent him to let him know he was safe, and it took every ounce of self restraint he had not to just scoop Dean up and carry him out of the store.

“S’m,” Dean finally slurred, dropping his face into the crook of the alpha’s neck and inhaling like they were underwater and Sam was the only one who brought any SCUBA gear.

“I’ve got you baby,” Sam murmured, finger combing Dean’s hair back away from his forehead and massaging the nape of his neck to relieve some of the tension flooding through the bond. It was shocking how feeling Dean’s emotions again were calming him even when nothing about Dean’s emotions was calm. “You want to stay here or go to the car?”

“H’re,” Dean mumbled against his skin, getting caught up in the happy _myalpha_ loop that was encouraging him to just sit there for days slotted up against his mate feeling warm and safe. Emma was gradually calming down against him now that he was upright, and she felt like she might shake apart if he tried to dislodge her to stand up so it was just as well they were staying put for the time being.

“What happened?”

“Shorts.” Dean’s tongue felt thick and heavy, and getting it to work was like trying to form words with a lead weight in his mouth. “Too short. For p’blic.”

The alpha had no idea what that could possibly mean, so he took a second as he continued to knead the muscles in his mate’s neck and shoulders to look around at the clothing racks. He’d never given much thought to children’s clothing, having no reason to before he had children, but now that he was really looking he was shocked at just how tiny some of the items were. There was a whole row in front of him of little skirts that didn’t look like they’d make it much past Emma’s bottom, even though she was a pretty small kid, and above the row of little skirts was a line of little sleeveless tops, some of them clearly not long enough to cover her torso completely. Apparently kids’ clothing designers just took skimpy adult clothes and shrunk them down for little girls instead of actually taking the time to design something that could be worn climbing trees or riding bikes without flashing the world their underwear. Not that anyone was likely to touch a child Emma’s age, but it definitely seemed inappropriate to send a little girl out into the world showing so much skin. He knew in an instant why he’d found his mate on the ground semi conscious as he bristled at the thought of Lizzie just a few years from now in a skirt so short she couldn't bend over, images of Dean sitting on Roman’s lap in nothing but a pair of tiny cutoffs flooding his brain. He pulled the omega in tighter, wishing he could just fold Dean up and tuck him away in his back pocket where no one could get near him without Sam knowing about it.

“Just so we’re clear, you’re not going anywhere without someone along until your fractures are healed,” he said quietly, pleasantly surprised when Dean brokered no argument and merely nodded against him. “We’ll grab her some boy clothes so she’s actually covered up decently, and then we’ll get out of here.”

“No.” Dean shook his head insistently, pulling away from Sam a little and keeping his eyes trained on the floor away from the lights. “Dresses.”

He gestured weakly down the aisle, and after making sure his mate wasn’t going to fall over, Sam hurried the eight feet or so to where the dresses were hanging, flipped through them quickly, and grabbed two that were short sleeved and looked like they’d at least hit Emma around the knees. The little girl hadn’t moved from Dean’s side, and that helped Sam squash his continued anger at the omega being in this situation because he wanted to get this random child some clothing. He knew none of this was her fault, supposing he should be grateful they sprung this booby trap before Lizzie was this age and Dean was even farther removed from panic attacks to remember what they felt like and how to deal with them, but at the moment she was a stark reminder of Sam almost losing Dean to a demigod who had spawned a good number of the stories in the Brother’s Grimm catalogue. He wanted to get home to his _own_ children and didn’t exactly like the idea of taking in a stray who was clearly becoming very attached to his omega. It would just make it harder when they finally figured out who they could get to take care of her to separate her from Dean.

“All right, got a couple options,” he breathed against Dean’s scent gland, getting his arms around his mate to haul him to his feet. Dean’s knees buckled almost as soon as he was upright, and after a few moments of clinging to Sam he managed to get himself righted around like an unsteady foal. Emma went right along with him, clutching Dean’s shirt and waistband with an iron grip, and Sam hoped the omega was too out of it to notice the flare of irritation he barely suppressed at the little girl’s presence. “Let’s get you to the car.”

“Underwear,” Dean prompted as they headed towards the registers, leaning heavily into Sam’s side and trying not to pant too loudly. “And a booster. They’re up front.”

The alpha growled low in his chest, getting the smaller man situated up against one of the closed registers while he headed over to the section of new items and grabbed a pack of size six underwear and a simple booster seat with a cup holder for the car that didn’t need to be anchored in. It was only twenty bucks and they could use it for Elliott or Lizzie eventually, so he figured it wasn’t a big deal, as much as he didn’t want to get Dean into the habit of them providing for this child. She wasn’t theirs, and she wasn’t staying.

Dean slung an arm over Sam’s shoulders as soon as the alpha came back to get him around the waist, and for a minute the younger man had to wonder if the omega had developed his own psychic powers or if Sam was just telegraphing his irritation at this whole situation that loudly. Or maybe Dean felt the need to be close to his mate as strongly as Sam did at the moment, because before Sam could move them towards the cashier at the open register the omega pressed the tenderest of kisses to the alpha’s cheekbone and nuzzled against him, sighing contentedly despite still being in obvious pain. Emma was still stuck to Dean like they were two halves of a strip of Velcro, which didn’t stop Dean from sliding his face along Sam’s jaw to mark him, stopping finally to peek up from underneath his lashes and catch the alpha’s mouth delicately with his own. The faint flavor of syrup still clinging to Dean’s lips had an instant soothing effect on Sam, acting like aloe to his burning anger over having inherited a random little girl who would be much better off with someone who could deal with the kind of adjustment issues she was undoubtedly going to have.

For now, though, he’d take Dean’s whispered, “Thanks Sammy,” as enough of a reason to bring her home with them, and helped the smaller man over to the register and then out into the Impala. He hated the idea of Dean riding in the back seat out of his reach all the way to Kansas ( _no way in hell were they stopping until they got to Lebanon, not unless someone_ **_really_ ** _had to pee_ ), particularly when Dean leaned over towards Emma, like the growing attachment was mutual or something; a possibility Sam really didn’t like one bit. That discussion could wait until Dean’s skin wasn’t green and he wasn’t all sweaty, though. It was probably just because he missed their children anyway, his instincts having nowhere to go at the moment besides taking care of an orphan. It was silly to think Dean would even consider expanding their family to accommodate Emma when he was ill and already had two children to take care of. His mate was just being his typical caretaker self. Sam decided he was definitely overreacting to a problem they didn’t really have as he pulled out of the parking lot, and once Dean was back safe in his den with their babies, he’d make the omega see the logic in wanting to find another family who could take her in. The way Dean talked to her for half an hour about the various songs on the radio while she parroted back interesting words to him until he finally fell asleep didn’t mean they were keeping her. Sam was sure of it.


	128. It's Different Now

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Home again, home again, jiggity jig.

Dean slept most of the way back to Lebanon, except for lunch, when - despite Sam’s insistence they weren’t stopping - they pulled into a McDonald’s to grab something to eat and get Emma changed out of her fourteenth century dress. After only one day of not having her life reset it was starting to look dingy, her hair needed to be brushed, and she should probably have a bath. Getting her into fresh clothing and washing her off in a fast food restaurant sink certainly couldn’t hurt in getting Sam to stop fixating on her connection to the last few days at any rate, which had the potential to make the remaining three hours they were going to be on the road considerably less awkward. She’d chattered at him some after Dean fell asleep until she realized he wasn’t going to chatter back, then decided he would rather she be seen and not heard and stared out the window at the passing scenery while Sam focused on his mate’s scent. It was the only thing he had to go by to tell how Dean was faring, and he more than resented the omega deciding to ride in the back seat to make Emma feel more comfortable.

McDonald’s went better than Sam had expected. Emma couldn’t stop giggling at how comparatively short her dress was once Dean got her changed, her cheeks pinking as she hid behind the omega’s legs to keep other people from seeing her. Dean was down to his last four pain pills and skipped them, regardless of the thundering inside his brain or how nauseated he was, instead balling himself up against Sam’s side with a Dr. Pepper to stay hydrated while he kept up a slightly slurred running commentary of the various food Emma was eating, as well as the different fast food chains throughout the country and where each one tended to be dominant. Sam barely caught his mate telling Emma something about how they’d stop somewhere else on their next trip, completely preoccupied with trying to figure out what Dean was fingerspelling on his chest as the surrounding betas cast arched eyebrows in their direction, since apparently there wasn’t a beta on the planet who didn’t have preconceived notions about alpha-omega relationships, and none of them involved anything less than public claiming sessions.

Sam was willing to allow the other patrons that his main thought at the moment _was_ smothering Dean with kisses and pheromones until he was feeling too much pleasure to notice the pain he was in. Of course, he could hardly be faulted for that with the whispery puffs of air Dean was panting against his throat, a rash of goosebumps breaking out across his flesh at the casual intimacy of it. It probably wasn’t a bad thing Emma was there, much as he wished she weren’t, as it kept him from pursuing his theory that a flood of endorphins might make Dean’s headache go away, and they stayed planted in the booth rather than Sam hurrying them back outside to see what kind of contortions were needed to make them both fit in the back of the Impala.

For her part, Emma took the two of them twined together like a pair of swans in stride. Sam supposed that was an upside to having a kid around from seven centuries ago, when alpha and omega mates would have outnumbered beta mates and alpha-beta relationships were almost unheard of. There also wasn’t a lot of privacy when homes tended to have curtained areas instead of actual rooms, and while he certainly had no plans to expose her to anything more than cuddling it was something of a relief that she was too preoccupied with her food to care what they were doing or find it noteworthy. The texture of the chicken nuggets confused her, and the carbonation in Dean’s soda when he let her have a sip had her jumping in a way that reminded Sam of one of those cat videos where a kitten just figured out there was water in a dish, plus she seemed to find Ronald McDonald pretty creepy - an impulse Sam couldn’t fault her for ( _he_ **_was_ ** _a clown after all_ ) - but by and large she seemed to be enjoying herself, occasionally repeating words Dean said and trying to decide how the toy in her Happy Meal worked.

After some blatant scenting in the parking lot done right in front of the main window for the benefit of the nosy betas, they were back on the road, Dean falling asleep after only being in the car for about fifteen minutes and Emma prattling on for a bit before conking out herself. They beat Adam back home but Bobby was there to greet them, having just come back from a walk with the dog, Hannah’s barking jolting Dean out of a dream that had him whimpering to the point that Emma reached out to pet his hair. Why that simple act set Sam to growling he didn’t really know, but something violently possessive welled up in the pit of his stomach when he saw her touching his mate, and she quickly drew back and into herself despite Bobby rapidly approaching the passenger door. Sam was too busy reining himself in to notice that Dean’s sunglasses had lifted up about two inches off the front bench seat where they’d been resting since the consignment shop, or that they slowly lowered as he squashed the uncalled for and unwanted fury at a child soothing his mate.

“Well, glad to see you’re back and both of driving age,” Bobby said as Sam was helping Dean stumble out of the car on the driver’s side, pulling the passenger door open as he squatted down to get a look at the newest addition to the bunker’s population. “Emma?”

She nodded as the frantic “wooWOO”ing coming from the Pyr, barely being restrained by the grizzled hunter as Dean made his way carefully over to her, sent the child rocketing back to the middle of the bench, her booster seat flipping and ending up in the footwell as she hovered on the verge of screaming. The nice, skinny man from the cornfield said they would take her to her grandmother - or at least, that’s what she thought he said, he didn’t seem to speak her language fluently - but now they were in the middle of a forest with a metal door leading into the side of a hill. Though she liked the omega named Dean and he’d shown her some wondrous things throughout the day, her mother warned her that devils came in pleasing forms and would use trickery and deceit to lead her into Hell. Now they’d arrived after hours of travel in a self-propelled carriage where yet another strange man was greeting her by name, and a giant dog obviously belonging to the sole person she trusted guarded an entry that certainly looked at the very least to be the home of goblins or trolls, and might very well lead into the bowels of the earth where she would encounter Satan himself to be punished for so readily trusting strange men.

“Dean, I think you better get on over here and do some kid whisperin’ before she pees all over your seat,” Bobby ordered quietly, trying to keep her from overhearing and taking offense before realizing how stupid that was when the girl didn’t speak any English. “Your granddad’s downstairs waitin’ to explain everything to her, but I don’t think she’s gonna climb out of here for me.”

“Yeah, okay,” Dean replied wearily, the late afternoon light spilling through the foliage around them and somehow managing to find his face as he turned back to the car. He held a hand up against the offending sun as the ground beneath him tipped slightly and Hannah rose up on her hind legs to latch onto his arm, completely unsatisfied with the short duration of scratches she’d received after so long without him roaming around the bunker. Sam growled as he reached a single freakishly long arm forward to catch Dean around the waist, his other hand snatching Hannah’s leash away from his mate, and with a quick pull had the toppling omega held safely to his chest. “Thanks Sammy.”

“Bobby, just grab her and pull her out,” the alpha ordered, a cold anger settling deep into his bones at the idea that Dean should have to coddle Emma when he could barely stand up straight.

“Don’t be silly,” Dean scoffed, using the Impala to balance himself as he headed for the passenger door, the breeze picking up around them and swirling the leaves littering the drive in little mini cyclones that centered around Sam’s feet. “You don’t make a scared kid _less_ scared by scaring her _more_.” He ducked down to peer into the back seat with visible difficulty and forced himself to smile as a shiver ran through him from the increasingly strong wind. “Emma, this is Bobby.” He placed a heavy hand on the beta as much to center himself as to identify his adopted uncle. “Bobby.”

He had to say the man’s name three more times before she repeated tentatively, “Bob-by,” and he nodded, instantly regretting it as what little of the Dr. Pepper that remained in his stomach threatened to make a reappearance. Sam was at his side with a happy Hannah, the sky darkening suddenly overhead as he pulled Dean into his side and turned them away from the car. The kid could follow them or stay in the car until she got hungry or cold - the alpha didn’t really have a preference one way or the other. He wanted to get Dean into their home to be with their children regardless of whether Emma was scared. A fluttering somewhere at the back of his consciousness was protesting his irrational dislike for the child and the resulting way he was treating her, but it had no more energy to break into his thoughts than a butterfly trapped under glass and as he led Dean to the bunker door it ceased all together.

Bobby managed to get Emma out of the car and into the bunker, the clouds parting as Sam and Dean disappeared inside and filling the old hunter with a sense of dread. Something ominous was hanging in the air, giving him the feeling of someone walking over his grave as the hair on his arms and the back of his neck stood on end. It crossed his mind that maybe the girl hadn’t come back from the trickster’s realm one hundred percent human, deciding that was a topic he’d want to get on with Henry as soon as possible. The girl was still shaking as the heavy metal door swung closed behind them and the mechanized lock clicked loudly into place, though she calmed some at the warm lighting flooding the entry hall from the war room as the alpha and omega turned the corner for the stairs.

The war room was a flurry of activity by the time Bobby coaxed Emma to the doorway, where she discovered she’d not been led down into Hell but into a magnificent cavern lined with books and shining crystal lanterns casting a sun kissed glow on the fine, heavy furniture decorating the room. Dean was sitting in one of the leather arm chairs that surely must belong to royalty as he held an infant with a pink leg tightly to his chest and cried, while a dark haired man with light eyes passed another infant off to Sam. The large dog was sitting at Dean’s feet and panting as she pawed at his knee, yet another man standing off in the corner eying the scene with disdain. His slicked back hair and narrowed eyes reminded her of a weasel, and she instantly decided she hated him even as the first man was looking up to where she and Bobby had stopped on the balcony and greeted her in her native tongue.

“You must be Emma,” he said pleasantly, delighting her down to her toes at his exquisite pronunciation. It was much better than the other man’s had been. “My name is Henry. It’s very nice to meet you.”

“Is my grandmother here yet?” she asked, leaving Bobby’s side to beam up at him.

Henry cast a worried glance at Bobby, before saying, “Who told you your grandmother would be here?”

“The skinny man,” she replied, her eyes as bright as her smile.

“I see. Well, why don’t we get you something to eat and we can talk about that?”

“All right!”

She eagerly took the hand he held out for her and followed him down the stairs, practically skipping across the war room and stopping to babble at Dean before vanishing with Henry down the hallway towards the kitchen, prattling away at him and clearly overjoyed at his responses. Dean was starting to reel in his guilt over Lizzie’s broken leg, due in equal parts to how genuinely fine she seemed to be aside from the cast and how badly he needed to take some pain medication and lay back down. Bobby was already headed down to take both kids and get them in the double stroller in the corner they'd been using to move the kids around the bunker so Sam could help the omega however he needed it. Dean plainly needed _some_ form of help if the sweat glistening at his hairline and slightly grey skin was to be believed.

They were all pointedly ignoring the remaining Man of Letters, who had been anxiously awaiting their return along with Henry. The moment Cuthbert saw the group entering the bunker he knew his patience would be sorely tried, though. It had been enough of an irritant for Henry to insist on helping care for his two great grandchildren while the young betas invading the space were at work. The clucking and coddling as Sam helped his omega to his feet, no matter how strenuously Dean protested he was fine, was frankly sickening. What’s more, Sam actually looked at him with open annoyance when he noticed Sinclair was in the bunker, as if _Sam_ weren’t the one who had trekked off in the middle of his studies and returned a week late. The very nerve of him! It would have served Sam right for Cuthbert to give him a piece of his mind, but fortunately for the young alpha his mate was dangerously close to losing his stomach contents all over the floor of the war room, so the man said simply, “Welcome back, Sam. Dean.”

“Cuthbert,” Sam bit out before turning his back fully on the alpha, Dean’s arm slung across his shoulder and the younger man openly considering lifting him entirely to carry back to their room. To do what, Sinclair didn’t want to imagine, but he would find it was the only thing Sam said to him for the next few days as Sam seethed at the intrusion into their home when his mate was ill.

“Cuthbert,” Bobby scoffed, having only been introduced to the man by last name, as he swung the stroller around to follow the young couple. “Your parents sure hated you, huh?”

The impertinence of the beta had Sinclair strongly pondering whether he could chant an ancient spell he'd often used with the other Men of Letters to silence Bobby's voice without anyone suspecting he’d done something, and decided it was unlikely. Henry knew him too well for him to try playing the innocent act, and in Sam’s current mood it certainly didn’t seem he’d easily forgive such an action, even if Sinclair tried to play it off as a harmless joke. When no one returned within a few moments besides the dog, who likewise he was sure he couldn’t maim without repercussions, he decided to head back to his lair, have a nice, stiff drink, and sulk.

Having to sit around twiddling his thumbs waiting for Sam to recommit to his training was especially torturous for Sinclair after they'd lost an additional week when he could have been worming his way into the young alpha's confidence. Now that the mated couple had returned from their vacation at long last, the situation with Henry’s grandchildren was becoming untenable. It had been dreadful enough for an omega to take up residence in the bunker, bringing along with him a large dog whose only purpose in life seemed to be leaving gigantic balls of fur everywhere it went. Then there came the two squalling infants, one of which wasn’t even theirs, and a pair of betas who seemed to have made it a mission to defile every room of the bunker with their hormone frenzied copulating. Then one of the two squalling infants - the one at least that the young alpha had sired and the omega had born ( _with some difficulty_ ) - needed medical care, requiring all four of them to leave the bunker for a week and put any Men of Letters work on hold, only for the omega to be severely injured and then kidnapped, or something, requiring their absence from the bunker to extend another full week. Worst of all, now that they'd returned they had _another_ child with them; some random little girl who had been part of whatever case they’d just finished and who, apparently, was going to be living there as well. It was infuriating that they hadn’t seemed to spare a thought for how that might impact Sam’s studies, and made Cuthbert wonder if this was going to be a _thing_ they did from now on - going on vacation and bringing back a child, like collecting souvenir spoons.

For another week after their return Sinclair couldn't even interest Sam in their work together, their trip apparently having inspired the mated pair into a coupling competition with the betas. Cuthbert wondered absently if Henry had hexed him, since he was now incapable of checking in on them when they weren't wrapped around each other in some state of undress. Henry had mentioned something about Sam suffering from withering disease for several days, and that Cuthbert would simply have to accept Sam’s need to reaffirm not only his bond with his mate, but that his mate was alive and well and would continue to be so if Sam let Dean out of his sight for more than two minutes. Many other alphas in the same circumstance would likely spend a week behind a locked bedroom door with their omega, emerging only when they couldn’t get someone else to bring them food or water.

In truth Sam never wanted to let Dean out of his sight at all, and it was so difficult for him to hold back the need to touch, taste, and smell him that for days Sam barely even tried. To his hindbrain his mate had literally been resurrected, in spite of never having died. It would take a while for his forebrain to regain some control, and unfortunately he hadn't managed it before the omega grew uncomfortable with the constant attention. As often as Sam gently prodded to try to get Dean to tell him about the trickster’s world, his mate remained obstinate, trying to forget as quickly as he could about being punched to unconsciousness and forced to strip and bathe, then strung up next to a partially dismembered teenager. It confused the alpha as the omega began to run hot and cold; one minute insisting they shower together, or pushing his way into the larger man’s arms as soon as they were even momentarily alone, and the next purposely avoiding him or finding some excuse to leave the room as soon as Sam got too close. He wanted to simply demand to know what the hell was going on with him, but with Jo and Adam around and now dealing with Emma and Henry’s increased presence – since he was the only one who could clearly communicate with her if she was upset ( _and it seemed a moment hardly went by when she wasn’t upset_ ) - trying to get Dean alone for a private conversation before they laid down to go to sleep was proving to be almost impossible.

Dean, not being an idiot, knew how dangerously close they were to having to “talk” about things, and was pulling out all the stops in avoiding it. He understood Sam's need for proof of life, as it were, but the constant cuddling and necking and sex in every form they could manage without actual penetration was starting to remind the shorter man just a bit too much of being with Dick Roman. The first few days it had really been wonderful, reveling in the smell of Sam and all the affection flooding through their bond. Then slowly and confusingly the affection had begun to fade, their encounters becoming more emotionally detached as he felt Sam’s feelings retreating to somewhere Dean couldn't reach. Sam's decreasing warmth towards Dean seemed to be in direct correlation to his increasing iciness with Emma, which Dean didn't understand either. She was just a child, after all, and while it was true she wasn't theirs, she was sweet and sad and obviously needed them. Yet, on more than one occasion he'd caught Sam growling at her as she played with Elliott, and he wouldn't talk to her unless practically forced into it, and when they were in the same room he did his best to act as if she didn't exist. It was just so un-Sam-like that Dean didn't know what to do. Sam had always been so good with Lizzie, who wasn't theirs either, with the exception of right after Dean saw the Om-OB/GYN and was openly favoring the little girl. As much as it had upset him to have Sam imply he somehow loved Elliott less, Dean never doubted Sam's devotion to Lizzie just because Dean was momentarily playing favorites.

And Sam had always been so in tune with when Dean needed to be the one initiating intimacy between them. Now he seemed completely unable to pick up on any signals that the omega was uncomfortable or just not in the mood. Before the week was out it felt to Dean like he had become just a body to rub off against to his mate, rather than a person who was loved. He dared not breathe a word of this when no amount of playing “How is this different” helped, and he found very quickly he was throwing himself into caring for the three children in their home, shrinking away from his alpha whenever possible in the name of changing diapers or teaching Emma English. He really thought he was putting the whole thing with Roman behind him before they left for St. Louis. The panic attack in the kid’s store had been the first indication that he definitely wasn’t. Those days of being helpless, of being trapped and vulnerable and literally naked at one point had apparently jump-started all the terrible things he’d been through recently, and Sam’s near constant presence and silent demands for affection were making his chest clench and breath catch whenever he heard his mate approaching, before he would hastily suppress his dread and the urge to flee to keep it from leaking through their bond.

Of course he knew he should just tell Sam what the problem was. They couldn’t continue this way, for one thing, and for another it wasn’t like they could just take a break from each other when they’d just been put through a crash course of what that would do to the other emotionally. The warning Garth had given him about Azazel’s time to open the Gate drawing near was fresh in his mind as well, making a break or sending Sam off on some easy hunts or demanding he take up a hobby outside the bunker out of the question. Dean simply had no idea how to make Sam understand he was triggering a sense memory thing and it was nothing personal when Sam seemed more and more detached from him by the hour. Dean couldn't imagine an alpha taking anything more personally than his mate saying, “I need you to touch me a whole lot less often,” regardless of what Jody drilled into him about being open and honest with Sam. There was simply no universe in which Dean pictured that conversation going well.

Instead, he avoided and dodged and claimed he was “too tired” until Sam finally returned, snarling, to his studies with Sinclair. Despite his insistence he was ready to return to work, Sam was decidedly unfocused on his lessons with Cuthbert, his mind wandering more often than not and leaving him gazing out the library doors while he counted down the minutes until lunch time when either Dean would appear or Sam would go off to find him. Sinclair was lucky as it was that Sam had been willing to resume their routine after only a week home once they finally had Dean’s pain prescription refilled, given the omega’s medical condition and the apparent new addition to their family, but to have him present without paying attention was nearly as frustrating as sitting on his hands waiting for the mounting tension in the bunker to boil over. He was pleased to have bided his time, however, as the dynamic between the alpha and the omega was again shifting in Sinclair’s favor.

The new child in the bunker brought with her two benefits that Cuthbert was able to seize on both immediately, and then later once Sam had returned to his tutelage. From the very beginning he was blessed with the simple reality that she spoke no English, and Henry happened to speak Middle High German, so he was spending an awful lot of time with her even before Sinclair began in earnest to try getting Sam to focus on their training sessions. The second was how Sam clearly felt about this child ( _negatively in the extreme_ ), and that he increasingly saw her as an obstacle between him and his perfect family with two children, a house, and a dog. Dean may be content to add a third child to the mix ( _and one who, from what Henry said, was having some trouble adjusting to her new circumstances_ ), but Sam had no interest in starting an orphanage. Sinclair realized quickly he could use Emma to drive a wedge between the young alpha and his mate so long as he went about it in just the right way.

It was a delicate business, given the blatant increase in their level of intimacy that Sam wore like too much cologne nearly every morning, but it no longer seemed impossible to turn Sam away from Dean - at least enough to fulfill his needs. Everything seemed to be roses and sunshine initially, that was absolutely true. Even recovering from skull fractures and dealing with an infant in a cast and another crawling all over the place it was clear the omega had grown more comfortable in their home, though he was back to being somewhat housebound unless he was going somewhere with his mate. Still, the farther removed they were from the vacation, the more it became obvious the couple was moving out of the honeymoon stage and Sam was roughly as thrilled about the new child in the bunker as Sinclair. Indeed, he might be even more put out, grumbling when the Man of Letters casually asked about his family that it was almost October and Dean hadn’t made a single move towards finding someone else who could look after the little German girl.

“I’ve tried bringing it up with him but he shuts the conversation down immediately,” Sam groused, poring over a tome on hedge witches and ways to determine the makings of their often highly individualized spells and then reverse them. “He keeps reminding me of how upset she was when she got here and Henry explained her grandmother was dead. Like it’s our fault Garth screwed up and she thought we were bringing her to Marian. Now she’s all attached to the kids, the dog loves her, Jo thinks she’s great - keeps bringing her home clothes and other crap - and no one cares what _I_ think about it.”

“I can see why you’re frustrated,” Sinclair said carefully in the sympathetic tone he’d heard Henry use on more than one occasion. He hoped he had the inflection right, as he didn’t actually think he was capable of feeling sympathy himself; at least he never had in all his years on the planet. “But Dean _is_ an omega. It’s in his nature to care for children.”

“ _Our_ children,” Sam snapped, the lamp in the center of the table flickering in time with the growl rumbling from his chest. “Not every random kid we come across who happens to be orphaned by a case where we almost died!”

“Well, I would certainly hope not.” He chuckled slightly, unable to suppress it in time, though it didn’t seem to deter Sam now that he felt like someone was listening. “If you did, this place would be overrun in no time.”

“Right?” Sam sighed, digging his fingers into his hair as the flickering increased. He was sure there wasn’t much he could say on this topic that wouldn’t leave him sounding like a heartless asshole, but it occurred to him if anyone was going to understand him being a heartless asshole, it was probably Cuthbert. “It’s not like I don’t feel bad for the kid. I do. She was held in an alternate dimension - or reality, or whatever - for centuries, but _we_ didn’t do that to her. We didn’t do _anything_ to her besides get her out and kill the thing that was keeping her there.”

“She must be a constant reminder for you of such an awful time.” He definitely knew he’d struck on the right chord for sympathy by the way Sam nodded and the flickering lights stilled. That had been happening more frequently; something to do with Sam’s demon blood, he surmised. He’d have to be very careful not to turn its attention to him, particularly when he was quite sure Sam had no idea it was constantly active within him now. “Surely she makes Dean uncomfortable as well. To survive an encounter with a trickster is no small matter. They are capable of creating things of great wonder, but by their very natures they tend to run more towards the sadistic. I wonder how he can even stand to look at her.”

“You’d think it would be a problem,” Sam griped, slouching over his book sullenly, looking every bit the young, impetuous alpha Cuthbert hoped he would prove to be. “I wouldn’t know. He hasn’t even talked about it. I only know parts of what happened from my cousin.”

“That’s right. Your cousin was taken too, wasn’t she?”

“She almost died. _And_ she’s the only reason he survived! She said they had him strung up in a meat locker, all ready to be the trickster’s main course. Traipsed him around in his underwear, tried to cut off his fingers…I don’t know how he can have her around and not…just… _hate_ her.”

The way the young man dropped his hands from his hair and clenched his fists on the table made it quite clear to the older alpha exactly who it was that harbored hatred towards the child. It was encouraging to see such intense anger directed towards a child. If he could stoke those embers into a fire before the end of the lesson, it might well burn a crater between the alpha and the omega that would be difficult to bridge once the flames had died down some.

“Perhaps he’s reluctant to find her other accommodations because he doesn’t want to be seen as having failed,” Cuthbert suggested, cowing slightly at the warning red that flashed in Sam’s eyes. It sickened him to appear submissive in any way, but he finally seemed to be getting somewhere and knew he was treading an incredibly fine line. “While I’ve not gotten to know him very well, most omegas - at least the ones of my generation - would rather cut out an eye than admit to being a bad mother; even to a foster child. He may need you to make the decision to move her to another family for him.”

“You’re right,” Sam grumbled. “You don’t know Dean. He’s possibly the most stubborn person I’ve ever met. Thinking he would just go along with something I wanted to do without putting up a fight - that’s just not going to happen. Especially about this kid. It’s like he thinks we’re obligated to her or something just because her grandmother died when we killed the trickster. Like it isn’t her grandmother’s own damn fault that she’s dead!”

“Have you discussed this with him at all?”

“He won’t talk about it!”

“Sam.” Sinclair looked at him with an expression that was a relative approximation of kindness, laying a hand lightly on his forearm. “You’re the alpha in this relationship. _Make_ him talk about it.”

Regardless of his general distaste for the man, something deep in Sam’s gut told him Sinclair was right. He _was_ the alpha in the relationship. He _should_ make Dean talk about it. He’d been more than lenient in their time together, staying by the omega’s side and moving forward on his timetable as he became more comfortable with the idea of being mated. They seemed to have taken a giant leap towards behaving like any other mated couple when they returned from Elwood, and it had been wonderful for a time, until suddenly the omega was pulling away again and withdrawing into himself. It stood to reason that allowing him _not_ to talk about the things that clearly plagued his mind wasn’t helping very much in moving him past…well, Sam didn’t even know what the issue was this time. He’d been able to deduce the skimpy clothing in the children’s store made Dean think of his time with Fox and Roman, but lately he didn’t have any idea why his mate had begun to cool to him and their growing bond. Continuing on with Dean setting the pace might not be the way to go about it this time after all.  

“Let’s…let’s get back to translating this text,” he said as he mulled over when and how to bring the subject up with his omega. Dinner would be out of the question with Henry and Emma right there, and lately Dean had been spending at least an hour in Emma’s room reading to her after putting Lizzie and Elliott to bed in the name of immersing her in her new language. Then he’d go out to tinker with the cars or clean some of the guns before having a glass or two of whiskey and then finally coming to bed after Sam had fallen asleep. He’d just have to stay up tonight so they could discuss it and have the matter settled before morning.

First, though, he’d have to change the light bulbs in the library, as the room grew dimmer while he reviewed the text of the book in front of him, Sinclair perched at his shoulder. Reading such small print when he seemed to be wearing sunglasses would inevitably lead to eyestrain. Cuthbert didn’t seem to mind, though, if the smile he wore when the young alpha glanced up at him was anything to go by. Perhaps he’d misjudged the Man of Letters after all. His counsel on this matter had truly been invaluable. Sam just might have to listen to him more.

For his part, Sinclair was merely content in the knowledge that Sam had no idea his hazel eyes had gone black.


	129. Deep Down You Know Something Nasty's Coming Down the Road

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things. They aren't going well.

Adam was starting to feel like he sort of understood the importance of scent to alphas and omegas. While it was true Jo’s scent gland emitted the same clean, soapy smell his did, he loved the way her pillow smelled like the flowery shampoo she used ( _lilacs and cherry blossoms_ ) when she still wasn’t home from work by the time he went to bed. He loved the way her perfume lingered on her dirty clothes before she did laundry, the bubble gum toothpaste she used before bed because she was a fucking adult who could use bubble gum toothpaste if she wanted, and the way the scent of both of them clung to the sheets the morning after they’d made a mess of them. He might not understand the way Sam and Dean’s bonding link worked, but after two months waking up with Jo there to press his face to her neck and breathe in her vanilla and almond body wash that never quite got rid of the underlying aroma of beer and fried food ( _he was starting to suspect she complained so much about the smell of the bar having seeped into her pores just so he’d tell her again that she smelled good enough to eat and then proceed to nibble_ ), Adam definitely thought he had a better handle on alpha-omega relationships and how they related to each other.

That was until a couple of days before his twenty-first birthday when he was looking over the paperwork required to re-enter Duke with the spring semester ( _if they’d still take him back_ ) while waiting for Jo to get home from her early shift. He was pretty sure that even in his worst fights with Claire they’d never shouted as loudly as his brother and brother-in-law were down the hall. It was shocking not only because it was well past the time they put the kids to bed, but because it sounded so much like when Dean tried to break Sam’s nose over the scent blockers back in Windom, and he was pretty sure the two of them were past thinking throwing fists was ever an acceptable form of communication to show someone you cared. Hannah was even barking - really barking - and Emma was out in the hallway looking terrified as Adam hurried down the hall to see what the hell had them at each other’s throats.

He supposed he should be glad they were at least in the war room and not screaming over the kids’ cribs, though the fact that there were numerous books already tossed around the room wasn’t exactly a good sign, nor was the way the two men were squared off on either side of one of the long tables; clearly the only thing keeping them from coming to blows.

“What exactly is it you want us to do, Sam?!” Dean demanded, oblivious to his brother’s appearance as he flung another book across the room at his mate. Sam’s eyes were gleaming red, the rumble echoing in his chest filling the space like an approaching thunderstorm as he batted it away. “I don’t know a lot of families looking to take in a six year old who’s still learning how to flush a toilet without panicking, do you?”

“So we should keep her here indefinitely instead?” Sam retorted, gripping the back of the chair in front of him with such force that Adam was surprised the wood wasn’t splitting.

“What’s the alternative? Drop her off at a fucking fire hall with a note pinned to her saying ‘My name is Emma. Please take care of me’?””

“There are people that deal with these kinds of cases _all the time_.”

“ _Really_? They deal with kids who’ve been shoved forward seven hundred years and speak a dead language?”

“They deal with kids who don’t speak English, yeah! And of course we’re not going to just drop her at a fire hall! They have foster agencies that take care of displaced children, even ones that have special needs!”

“ _Agencies_?! I think you mean ‘services,’ don’t you? _Protective_ services?”

“Dean…”

“I told you I none of my kids were ever going into a government system, Sam.”

“ _She’s not one of our kids_!”

It looked like Sam didn’t even realize the chair that flew across the room and smashed against one of the bookcases did so without him actually moving his hands to throw it, not even when Dean took a step backwards and Hannah really went nuts, putting herself between her master and his mate. Adam had the same impulse, moving quickly into the room and stepping in front of his brother just enough to get Sam’s attention on him instead of the omega. The black rim around the alpha’s eyes in no way reassured the beta that he’d be able to de-escalate this argument before they were in a replay of the Avalon lobby.

“Does someone want to tell me why you’re trying to see who can wake up Lizzie and Elliott first?” he asked calmly, Sam’s eyes flicking over to him as his nostrils flared like a bull preparing to charge.

“Sam wants us to dump Emma with Pup and Child Protective Services since they didn’t screw him over when he needed to claim Elliott, so obviously we can trust them even though they’re a government entity and we know Azazel’s special children or whatever the fuck he’s calling them are all through the government,” Dean replied, the sarcasm underlying his statement in no way lost on either his brother or his mate.

“Dean thinks that every kid who ends up orphaned because of a case that we wouldn’t have even been involved with in the first place if it weren’t for the kid’s grandmother should be our responsibility to feed, house, and clothe indefinitely if grandma ends up dead because she was socializing with a fucking demigod we had to gank so that he wouldn’t eat us,” Sam shot back.

“She’s got _no one_ , Sam!” Adam didn’t think progressing from sarcasm to shouting was the best direction for the conversation and turned to his brother to try to ease him back out of the room. Dean would not be budged. “Everyone she knows has been dead for _centuries_ , her grandma died when we killed the Piper - regardless of whether she brought it on herself or not - and we’ve got one of a handful of people in the country who probably can speak her language fluently, but sure, we should just dump her with an _agency_ because obviously she’ll be just fine!”

“What is it with you and this kid?” Sam snapped. “Lizzie’s broken leg isn’t enough of a reason for you to ignore Elliott, you need to add some random little girl into the mix as well?”

“I am not ignoring Elliott.”

“Really? Guess there’s a first for everything.”

“You _really_ hate her, don’t you?”

“What if I do? Why is that such a big deal to you, Dean?”

“Because she’s a _kid_ , Sam! A kid who hasn’t done anything to you!”

“ _You_ see a kid! _I_ see a nice old lady who looked us square in the face, _knowing_ we were mates, and _still_ tried to feed you to a cannibal! Maybe you can just look past the fact that Marian saw the claim mark on your neck and was aware you were my omega and didn’t move a muscle to get you to not put that cookie in your mouth, even after she knew we weren’t interested in the other innocent people she sent off to be _eaten_ , but the only thing I see when I look at that kid is you running at me through the woods in your fucking _underwear_ with half of your face black and blue!”

“Emma was as much of a victim of his as Gwen and I were.”

“ _And I don’t care_! I’m sorry if that upsets you, but I don’t! I came _this close_ to dying without you, Dean! You came _this close_ to being someone’s dinner! All because her grandmother jumped the gun when we walked through her front door and then was too stupid to figure out you were the kid who came back asking questions about the fairies so she could just give you another damn cookie and fix her fucking mistake!”

“None of that is the kid’s fault!”

“ _I_! _Don’t_! _Care_!” The bulbs in the lamps lining the table burst in succession, followed by the lamps on the side tables, and then the overheads began to flicker. Sam remained oblivious, even as the color was draining from Dean and Adam in near perfect synchronization. The black rim around the outer edge of Sam’s eyes was decidedly more pronounced as he slammed a fist into the table and cracked the glass to the halfway point of the map in the center, glaring at the two Winchesters. “I’m going to make this really simple, Dean. She leaves, or I do.”

“That’s kind of drastic, don’t you think?” Adam asked so his brother could focus on his breathing and suppressing the panic flooding his system at the thought that Sam might actually leave over this stupid fight. It wasn’t something he would normally believe was anything other than an idle threat, but he could smell the contempt bursting into his mate’s scent and souring the air in the room.

“Apparently drastic is the only thing that gets your brother’s attention these days,” Sam snarled, turning on his heels to stalk off to the library to spend the night on one of the too-short leather couches as the lights overhead exploded and plunged the war room into darkness.

As they stood in the light bleeding from the hallway behind them, Adam was very aware that he should be saying something to reassure his older sibling that everything would be all right, except he was pretty sure that everything was not going to be all right, and that the sentiment wouldn’t be appreciated at the moment even if it were. The sound of the bulbs popping behind Sam as he stormed deeper into the bunker bounced off the walls even as there were footsteps echoing in the upper entryway and the inner door creaked open. Adam barely heard Jo ask, “Did we forget to pay the electric?” as he was honed in on his brother’s shallow breathing and the tension he could feel filling the room, whether he was just a beta or not.

Dean knew the best thing to do would be to pack up the kids and find a hotel until Sam got over whatever was wrong with him, but he just couldn’t make his limbs move. It was hard to ignore the fact that they were essentially in a multi-level basement when they were in near blackness and an icy rage was flooding his system through the bond. His conversation with Crowley and the warning from Garth were warring for space in his brain to play on a loop. At the end of it neither won and he ended up with their voices overlapping like a radio caught between stations. He knew he could ask Adam about what happened at the Avalon, just not with Jo there, a dog still going ballistic, and three children who could plainly be heard crying from the the bedrooms.

“Do you think Bobby would take her?” he said softly in the approximate direction his brother had taken to help Jo get down the stairs by the light of her phone display.

“Maybe,” Adam replied, though he really wanted to tell Dean to stand his ground, because she _was_ just a little kid, and it wasn’t her fault who she was related to.

“Take who?” Jo asked. “You better not even be thinking of getting rid of Hannah.”

“No.” Adam gave her a quick kiss as she raised her eyebrows at him in the blue glow of her cell phone. “Go take your shower, I’ll tell you later.”

She certainly hoped the Winchesters didn’t think she wasn’t going to notice something was seriously wrong, or expect they could keep it from her for very long. They were just lucky her feet hurt and she’d had three separate assholes spill their drinks on her so she not only smelled gross but was sticky, and she headed for the showers without argument. She nearly forewent the shower, regardless of the knots in her back that desperately needed the bunker’s pressure to loosen them a little until Adam had a chance to go to work on them, when she spotted Emma huddled at the far end of the hall, her face a tear-stained mess. Before she could move to comfort her, the little girl ran off towards her room, crying, which sadly wasn’t out of the ordinary ( _she hadn’t taken her grandmother’s death well; who could blame her?_ ). Elliott and Lizzie crying around the corner struck her as very out of place, given how quick Sam and Dean usually were to soothe them, though she supposed it was possible they’d hit the stage of development where the men were willing to let them cry it out. She’d been thinking of getting her own place for a while now, and if that’s what was going on she definitely needed to pick up a paper in Lincoln to start the search for an apartment. She was grateful to the guys for letting her crash there, but if crying babies were going to be added to the awkwardness of walking in on Sam with his hand down Dean’s pants ( _which was traumatizing both because she_ **_never_ ** _needed to see that and it gave her a whole new perspective of how she and Adam must look_ ), she needed to start asking her boss to save her liquor boxes when their supply orders came in so she could pack.

It piqued her interest further to know what was going on and thinking it was something fairly serious when Adam didn’t join her in the shower ( _they’d messed around some before she left and she promised to finish what she started when she got home_ ), and she had to go look for him after she’d laid in bed naked a full forty-five minutes waiting for him to show up. After pulling clean clothes on in case he was still up with his brother, she indeed found him in the war room with Dean and the two babies, the bulbs replaced in the table lamps to give them light to see by without being so bright it kept the children awake. Adam had the phone pressed to his ear as he paced and slowly wound and unwound the cord around his fingers. Dean sat at the table with Elliott in the crook of one arm, Lizzie sleeping across his lap, a bottle of whiskey in front of him and two fingers already poured into the crystal tumbler raised to his lips.

“I don’t really know when he’d want her to come out…” Adam said, stepping over Hannah on the floor to stand beside his brother, who stared through his glass, seeing something far away.

“Tomorrow, if we can,” Dean told him dully. “If Henry can get her to understand what’s happening.”

“That soon?” Adam lowered his voice to ask, covering the receiver with one hand and entirely unaware that Jo had stopped to watch them. “Are you sure?”

Dean nodded, setting down his glass and scrubbing a hand over his face as Elliott stirred and needed to be jostled back to sleep.

“I don’t think she’s safe here.”

“He wouldn’t hurt a kid, Dean.”

“He wouldn’t _purposely_ hurt a kid, but I’m pretty sure the lights around here agree he _could_.”

“What are you guys talking about?” Jo demanded, the brothers whirling in sync to where she stood with her hands on her hips. Hannah raised her head at the beta’s voice, her tail thumping happily for a few moments until she finally groaned, sighed, and went back to sleep. “And who’s on the phone?”

“Emma’s gonna go live with Bobby and your mom,” Dean said, draining his glass and pouring himself another drink. It was a bad enough idea for him to have one drink with his head and his pain meds, but he'd known Jo a long time and this discussion necessitated a two drink minimum. “Adam’s just setting it up with him.”

“What?” Jo might not know what to do with the little girl when she was really upset, but she liked her very much, and definitely wouldn't have expected this. For what she’d been through, Emma was bright and cheerful most of the time she was with Jo, and though it’d taken a while she was now adjusting well to her new reality; definitely better than a lot of adults would. She didn’t mind helping to take care of the two babies and she liked going out with Jo to walk the dog, as long as they stayed towards the edge of the forest and didn’t go in - something the beta certainly didn’t blame her for - and she had become very obviously attached to both Dean and Henry. “Why?”

“Sam doesn’t want her here,” Adam said, hastening to add as her face grew red and she pursed her lips, “Honey, I'll explain when I'm done talking to Bobby.”

“What is there to explain?” she snapped. “Sam wants to dump a vulnerable little girl with a borderline alcoholic almost six hours away like that’s a good idea. That’s pretty straightforward.”

“Bobby can handle it.”

“Sure he _can_. That doesn’t mean he _should_. Don't get me wrong, I love Bobby, but let's be realistic about asking him to take on a little kid at his age.”

The old hunter barked something on the other end of the phone loudly enough for the three to hear him talking, and Adam put the phone back to his ear quickly.

“Huh?...Uh, yeah, I'll tell her.” Adam turned to his girlfriend, his cheeks bright pink, and cleared his throat. He wished he knew what deity he'd pissed off that kept putting him in the middle of everything and how he could apologize to it. “Bobby says he has Ellen’s permission to turn you over his knee if you start sassing him…”

“ _Sassing_ him?!”

“You’re...it’s...I'm just the messenger!”

“Jo, can you help me get the kids to bed?” Dean asked as he screwed the lid back on the bottle and threw back his remaining whiskey. “I won't even tell you not to be pissed.”

The assurance that she wouldn't have to put up with Dean trying to excuse his mate's asshole behavior seemed enough for Jo to leave Adam staring helplessly after her as she lifted Lizzie up against her shoulder and whisked her away towards her parents’ bedroom. Dean rose somewhat shakily with Elliott still tucked in his arm and gave his brother a watery smile. Hopefully Adam could convince her that it really was best to let the matter drop. She'd all but forgotten her revenge quest for finding the demon that torched the Roadhouse, having only read one book on demonology so far despite the numerous volumes the bunker contained. The last thing either Winchester wanted was to set her on the warpath again with the revelation that Sam was dealing with a serious demon blood problem.

And hadn’t _that_ been a kick in the pants to learn about? Adam had suspected whatever was happening to Sam was demonic, especially with the times the beta had seen his eyes go black and how out of control his psychic powers were, but to find out the alpha had demon blood in him, and there was a Prince of Hell after him, and Dean had been keeping it a secret from him for _months_ while Bobby, their dad, and even Garth knew? Adam was going to have a long talk with his older brother once they figured out how to deal with Sam about holding back a bombshell that big in the name of protecting him.

Jo at least saved most of her anger for Adam after putting Lizzie down, snapping that Dean had mated himself a real piece of work but otherwise not pressing the issue. He thanked her for her help once Elliott was sighing in is sleep, then headed off to check on Emma and do what he could to mitigate the blow of leaving them just as she was starting to settle in. It hadn't computed for him that Sam showed no feeling towards her whatsoever. He had never known the alpha to be so cold. He'd have thought Sam would easily empathize with the idea of being abandoned by a grandparent, but it was true Dean really hadn't considered how having a constant reminder of the events in Elwood might make Sam feel. He honestly expected Sam would deal with it like any other hunt, and he was blindsided by the alpha’s anger; though not quite as much as him bursting all the light bulbs without seeming to be aware of it. That had been a real eye opener to just how far from normal his mate actually was.

Emma was snuffling under her covers pretending to be asleep when the omega went in to check on her. Jo could hear him apologizing to her about having to move her again, because he knew how much it sucked having to move all the time, but she was lucky because she was going to get to stay with Bobby so she shouldn’t be upset. Bobby was awesome, and Dean wished he and Adam had been able to live with him when they were kids, and he was really kind of jealous that she’d get to run around and play in all the junked cars every day. Plus she could have his room if she wanted, as long as she took care of all the throw pillows. The little girl didn't need to know English to understand how upset the omega was. Jo hurried back down to her room before he could spot her, pretty positive he wouldn’t want her to see him crying over a kid that had only been there a couple of weeks.

Adam was changing into his pajamas, looking far older than his almost twenty-one years as he moved the papers from Duke to the nightstand and sank down on the bed.

“So?” Jo asked, watching her boyfriend run a hand through his hair to rest wearily on the back of his neck as he worked at a knot that had managed to form along the side.

“Emma reminds Sam of everything that happened in Missouri and he doesn’t want her around,” Adam replied, already braced for her anger. “And yes, my gut reaction to that is she’s a helpless kid and he’s a gigantic douchebag…”

“Which would be correct.”

“Except  -” The two of them really didn’t fight. They bickered, sure, but they hadn’t yet gotten into any kind of knock down, drag out, not even when Adam suspected that’s what Jo wanted. The fact that they were still a new couple certainly helped with both of them wanting to keep the peace, and he wasn’t eager for tonight to potentially be when they ended that. He’d seen her and her mom go at each other on two separate occasions and as pissed as it left her, she seemed to enjoy the challenge. This was simply not the time for their first _real_ argument and he hoped she wouldn’t push once he’d had his say. “- Elwood was _bad_. Not because he almost died. It’s not like the possibility of dying doesn’t come with the job. He _lost_ Dean. I know that doesn’t sound earth shattering, with how many times Dean landed in the hospital this year, and the crap with the court case, but it really was. And it sucks, cuz I know that Emma didn’t do anything to him, and she’s starting to get used to the place, and he went about this like a jerk, but this case was...not good. In a lot of ways. I can’t tell him he has to keep a kid in his house that makes him remember how it felt when Dean was effectively dead to him.”

“She’s still just a kid.”

“And I thought Sam was going to have a literal heart attack no less than three times before we figured out how to make him a teenager again. Do you really think Dean of all people would cave on this if he didn’t think Sam had a point?”

“I’m not sure either of you see Sam clearly,” she said, arms crossed over her chest to deflect the verbal blows she clearly expected to come hurtling at her any second. “Since I’m apparently the only one who remembers when you almost had to shoot him back in Fort Wayne.”

“You have to let that go,” Adam insisted. He was already feeling sick to his stomach at having played this off as just Sam not wanting a reminder of Elwood around. If she pressed further he’d blurt out the newly revealed truth about Sam’s demon blood and how worried Dean was that he’d fallen under its influence. He wasn't as good at bottling things up as his brother, not by a long shot. “That wasn’t Sam.”

“What was it then? A shapeshifter? You killed it while I was sleeping or something?” The way Adam’s mouth set made it clear to her he didn’t intend to clarify the vague declaration that something else had attacked Dean in the bathroom at Benny and Lisa’s house, and she moved to grab her pajamas and change as well. “Fine. I’ll call my boss tomorrow and let her know I need a couple of days off.”

“Wait, what?” he asked, watching her efficiently strip out of her clothes and bra and wondering how she managed to use bare breasts to communicate so effectively that there was absolutely no chance he was getting to play with them tonight - possibly not even this week.

“Someone needs to drive Emma to Bobby’s, right?” she shot back, covering up the creamy skin he was clearly not allowed to touch. “The loaner mom left behind the last time she was here so I didn’t need to keep taking Dean’s truck needs an oil change anyway. I figure I’ll drive her up, Bobby can check the car over for any problems, and I’ll hang out a few days to make sure she gets settled.”

“Uh...okay…” he said as she moved past him to climb into bed. He was fairly certain something serious had just happened between them but had no idea what it was. “Figure you’ll be back in time for my birthday?”

“Sure,” she replied curtly before turning off the lamp on the nightstand and presenting her back to him.

She was already gone with the little girl by the time Sam stumbled into the kitchen the next morning, looking for coffee and hopefully breakfast. If he could only be assured of the coffee, he’d take it. The sofas in the library were not built with the idea that someone his height would be sleeping on them, or that _anyone_ would be sleeping on them. The way his back was stiff and his shoulders full of knots, he wasn't quite sure they'd even been designed with the expectation people would be sitting on them and were instead intended only for show.

On top of that, the climate control was also not conducive to getting a good night's rest. He woke with a splitting headache and had the remnants of a bloody nose smeared across his face. Whatever they did to the air in that room obviously didn't agree with him, and he decided he'd have to find another place to storm off to sleep whenever he needed to send a message to Dean that he meant business.

The coffee he'd prayed for was staying warm in the pot as his omega stood at the stove making pancakes, home fries, and eggs for Henry and Adam, who were sitting at the table looking grim. Dean was decidedly worse for the wear, like he hadn't slept at all, or if he had, he'd slept poorly. Sam bristled at the notion that even though Dean had the luxury of the memory foam he hadn't taken advantage of it, but he swatted the thought away before it could take root and went to check on the kids. Lizzie was feeding herself Cheerios, peaches, and pears, making a sticky mess of her fingers and face, while Elliott had a bottle clutched in his pudgy little fingers. Adam and Henry were obviously helping when they needed it, but for the most part they were letting the kids work on their coordination.

“Morning,” he said simply, getting quiet greetings in return from the three men. He gave both kids a perfunctory kiss on the tops of their heads, deciding they needed baths by the smell of them, and headed to the cupboard to grab himself a mug. “I think we need to replace some of the wiring around here,” he continued as he poured his coffee and went to get the cream and sugar from the pantry, trying not to be irritated at Dean's pettiness in not getting it out; typical passive aggressive omega. “All the lights are blown between the library and the war room.”

He was already inside the pantry, so he couldn't see the Winchesters exchange worried looks, before Dean said, “Oh?”

“Yeah. I woke up in the dark and there are glass shards all over the floor. Must've been a power surge.”

Dean had already turned back to the stove top to monitor the pancakes, while Adam focused on the kids and Henry observed Sam's body language. There was a rigidity to the way he held himself that he'd never seen before when Sam and his grandson were together. Typically Sam was very soft in his approach when it came to his mate - gentle caresses and kisses that were barely a whisper of a touch. Now he was hard edges and tense muscles as he loomed next to the smaller man and stirred his coffee. Even the way he swirled the spoon through the lightening liquid carried a cold, militaristic precision. The Man of Letters had rarely felt such a strong urge to step in front of an omega to fling another alpha across the room, and he squelched it quickly before it leaked into his scent.

“That's strange,” Henry told him casually. “We've never had wiring problems before.”

“Well, no offense Henry,” Sam countered with a smile that didn't reach his eyes. “But ‘before’ was sixty years ago, so…”

“So we should get an electrician in here,” Dean said, spooning home fries onto plates for him, Adam, and Henry, then grabbing a plate for Sam. “What's the protocol on that, Gramps? I need some people to finish the bedroom and bathroom expansion anyway. It's gonna be a while before I can get back to it with my head.”

“There’s a simple incantation I can teach you that will make the bunker look like any other older home that might need wiring or plumbing upgrades,” Henry replied. “What is it you need someone to do?”

“The wall’s almost all the way down, but I didn’t get to do much with the bathroom. I want a tub in there before winter for Lizzie and Elliott.”

“And Emma, of course,” Sam snarled, clenching his mug in his fist.

“No, Jo's taking Emma to live with Bobby and Ellen,” Dean replied, mechanically filling the plates with pancakes as well and then taking them to the table in a pair of quick trips.

“Really?”

“They left about an hour ago,” Adam said, and Henry added, “She was heartbroken at first when I explained we’d decided she should live somewhere that she could go outside more, and where she'd be able to go to school eventually. She’d begun to feel safe here. But she likes Jo very much, so the fact that Jo's mother lives with Bobby helped.”

“Really?” Sam repeated, coming over behind the omega to rub his shoulders, oblivious to how stiff his mate went. “Well. That's good! See Dean, you were worried for no reason. And you can still visit her…”

“No, I can't,” Dean said, focusing intently on cutting up his pancakes and rolling his shoulders until Sam got the hint and removed his hands with a huff. “Not until we’re sure Kevin’s program has wiped us completely from the OPS’ system. You remember the OPS. I’m sure there’s a BOLO up there on me, the truck, the Impala, maybe even you since South Dakota started the case.”

“Oh. Right.”

For the briefest of moments Sam felt that something was horribly, fundamentally wrong with him and he was terrified. How could he have forgotten the OPS case after everything Dean went through, after how daunting it had been to get him back? They’d just begun to have some kind of normal relationship after everything that happened. Even a few weeks ago Dean had that flashback in the store. What was Sam thinking, suggesting his mate could just drive up to Bobby’s house? As quickly as the feeling surfaced, however, it was gone, and he reached out again to massage Dean’s neck.

“Jo’s going to stay with her a few days to get her settled in,” Adam said as he slid his hand under the table to squeeze his brother’s arm. He wasn’t surprised to find it trembled slightly.

“Then she’ll be fine.” The smile was there again, genuine but without any warmth; almost reptilian. “I know you wanted her to stay here, baby, but this really is better. And I’ll make it up to you.”

“Sure Sam,” Dean murmured as the alpha moved away finally, taking his plate with him and sliding it into the oven. “Whatever you say.”

“Now don’t pout.” Sam gave him a quick peck on the cheek, striding towards the doorway. “I’ll have breakfast later, I’m going to take Hannah for a run. Clear away some of the fog before my session with Sinclair.”

He was gone seconds later, heading down the hall and whistling as he went to collect the dog. Dean suspected that wouldn’t go particularly well. His appetite left as quickly as Sam, and he pushed his plate away.

“So do you think the demon cell will hold him?” he asked his grandfather, who was eating his food meticulously as he considered Sam’s very unusual behavior and what it might mean based on his conversation earlier with his grandsons about Sam’s demon blood. He knew about the poison in Sam’s system of course, but still didn’t like the conclusions he was coming to.    

“I think so,” Henry responded after some time. “He’s not a full demon. He’d smell of sulfur if he were. But the sigils should contain whatever psychic energy he has, and the lock can only be opened from the outside. It should buy us time to determine why the blood inside him is suddenly so active, and why he doesn’t realize it.”

“We’ll need to come up with a reason to get him down there that doesn’t make him suspicious,” Adam said as Hannah, practically on cue, began barking and growling and they heard Sam snap, “Fine! Stay here! Damn dog,” as he was storming back into the kitchen.

“Problem, Sammy?” Dean asked mildly, not too surprised to see Sam’s eyes glowing red.

“Besides your stupid mutt losing her mind?” He growled at the dog still barking at him from down the hall, before turning to Dean to hiss, “Get her under control or she’s going to Bobby’s, too.”

“Sure Sam,” Dean said, rising to collect Hannah and take her back to close in their bedroom. How long it would remain “their” bedroom he wasn’t sure, but he’d prefer to have Sam locked in the demon cell by the evening. For not the first time he was glad Sam would be spending the day working with Sinclair, because they had a lot to plan and they needed to be sure Sam didn’t suspect a thing.


	130. You’ve Been Strolling a Kind of Dark Road Lately

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things. They are still not going well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It is possible there is triggery stuff in here.

Sinclair couldn’t have been more pleased to hear that Sam had put his foot down, showed Dean who the alpha was in their relationship, and Emma was already on her way to live with that irritating beta who always wore the - what _was_ it called? - trucker’s cap and smelled faintly of cheap beer. Sam sounded not only pleased, but proud of himself for bending Dean to his will without having to use his alpha voice, something he hoped to keep in reserve only for those occasions when it was truly necessary to use it to compel his mate to do what he wanted. A brief thought that it was wrong to want to use threats or biology to get his way with the omega flashed through Sam’s mind and was gone too quickly to take root, and he was simply in too good of a mood to wonder what that might mean.

Cuthbert fully expected that Henry would return to the library to hover at his elbow and hinder his progress in gaining Sam’s trust now that the girl who needed a translator was gone, but much to his surprise Henry announced to them both that he was going to pop in to see Bobby and wait for Jo and Emma to arrive so he could help her settle in. The alpha knew he should be tightening Henry’s leash, as he was coming and going from their lair and the bunker far too frequently for Sinclair’s liking, though he supposed he could make an exception just this once. With Henry in South Dakota, Dean would need to spend the day playing the dutiful housemate and taking care of the children by himself while Adam was at work, which would just make Sam feel even more in charge and like Sinclair’s advice had been sound. Besides, Henry’s absence gave Sinclair a wonderful idea; something that he hoped would give him Sam’s ear even more; something he was sure he could convince the young alpha was a secret just between the two of them.

“You know, Sam,” he said as his student was practicing a spell that acted as an antivenom to a basilisk’s bite. “There’s something I’ve been wanting to show you, but haven’t been able to while Henry was around.”

“Oh?”

It was amazing the difference he saw in the young man within only a day’s time - the interest written plainly on his face and the gleam in his eye as he looked up from the text at a smiling Cuthbert.

“Yes. It’s a collection that I keep. A menagerie, if you will.” He gave a humble shrug for effect as Sam closed the book in front of him. “I’ve kept it a secret from Henry for many years, so you can’t tell him. He wouldn’t approve of my methods of study.”

“What’s in it?” Sam asked, seized by an overwhelming, morbid curiosity. He just _had_ to know what secret Cuthbert was keeping.

“Monsters,” Cuthbert replied, suppressing his glee quite successfully at how eager Sam was to hear more. “The alphas of many species, in fact. I began to collect them to learn more about their progeny and how to kill them. Being a trained hunter, I thought it was something that might interest you.”

It did. It did indeed. Sam couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so intrigued by something having to do with the supernatural. Mostly he just wanted to know what they were hunting and whether it actually needed to be killed. He’d never understood the desire to kill everything that wasn’t human if it wasn’t hurting anyone, unlike most of the hunters at the FDH who seemed to have a particular thirst for killing anything that wasn’t human. Then again, perhaps his feeling of being unclean because of the demon blood in him explained some of that. He’d felt less than human for quite some time; at least until recently, when he’d discovered that unclean feeling had faded about a week after they reversed Marian’s spell. Either that or he still felt unclean but it just didn’t bother him anymore. He thought that realization should probably bother him, but it didn’t, which didn’t bother him either. How could it when Sinclair had a secret collection of alpha monsters he was willing to show off?

“I should tell Dean we’re leaving the bunker,” Sam said, feeling the thrill of going on a kind of field trip with Sinclair.

“Do you really think that’s a good idea?” Cuthbert asked, arching an eyebrow. “He has his hands full with your pups today, and isn’t his head still healing from that terrible injury? I’m sure he’ll need to rest when he can. Better not to worry him.”

“Yeah…” Sam was beginning to understand why Henry took the older alpha on as a mentor in the first place. Sinclair really did look at things sensibly. “You’re right. We’ll leave him alone. When can we go?”

“Right now, if you like.”

Sam’s face lit up like a child on Christmas morning expecting Santa to have gifted him with a Red Ryder BB gun. Were they not using the travel spell, Sinclair was fairly certain Sam would have skipped all the way to his zoo to review his permanent guests. He slammed his book closed without even bothering to fold down the corner of the page he was on to hold his place and bounced on the balls of his feet while he waited for Sinclair to pull the ingredients from his briefcase to pour into the copper bowl he’d already laid on the table. Sam’s enthusiasm had the Man of Letters smiling broadly, as did the awareness that the books in the library were starting to vibrate out of their shelves and Sam was oblivious to it. The demon blood was awake now and would suit his needs nicely, so long as he gave the young alpha no reason to suspect he wanted anything more than to educate him.

It was strange now that he’d begun to turn Sam’s head in his direction, how he wanted to show off and preen for him, to supplant Dean as the most important person in his life. He wondered if this was how alphas felt when they were courting a mate, though his interest in Sam was decidedly nonsexual. Still, when they stepped through the slip in time and space he reveled in Sam’s awed expression at the mansion he’d so carefully built. The polished panels of the walls, the expanse of his sitting room with the twin leather couches, the armor and weapons he’d so carefully chosen from the bunker’s armory to decorate the space, the tapestries and portraits on the walls - all felt as if something he’d instinctively chosen decades ago for just this moment and the look on Sam’s face. Henry had never appreciated the fine things he’d so purposefully placed around their home, always complaining that it was ostentatious and made him feel like he was living in a museum. Sam very clearly did not feel the same as he ran his hands along the backs of the sofas and over the edges of the tables holding the artifacts, clearly speechless as he took it all in. This was the home of an intellectual, and the young alpha appreciated every inch of it.

Much as Sinclair would have liked to lounge around all day smoking cigars and drinking brandy ( _he thought it would probably be quite easy to hook Sam on both in his current state_ ), he had a point to this little excursion, and polite conversation wasn’t it. After giving Sam time to absorb the splendor of his home, he led the young man down a long, wide hallway just as finely decorated and past a series of doors to a portrait of the original Men of Letters ( _according to the plaque at the base of the frame_ ) that was easily seven feet tall. Sinclair threw Sam a smile and ran his hand along the side of the frame until it swung inward, revealing a spiral staircase lined with sconces winding down beneath the building. Sam thought momentarily that Dean would never be able to see Sinclair’s collection, and he basked in the knowledge that he and his mentor would share something separate from his mate. Dean would likely not see the value in studying the alphas anyway; he was more of a brainless grunt like John. It was better all around for Sam to start deciding what Dean needed to know and what he didn’t. Omegas were delicate and easily stressed as it was - no reason to add to anything his mate might be dealing with by letting him know Cuthbert was housing some particularly dangerous monsters.

The design of Sinclair’s zoo was like something he pulled from an early science fiction movie. The walls at the back were metal, polished to a high shine, like chrome, and broken into equal sized cells made entirely of enchanted glass so the specimens could view each other even as they were being viewed. Each cell had a simple metal platform at the back built directly into the wall in one solid, seamless piece, the overhead lights harsh and unforgiving. The walkway between the rows was unlit, allowing the men to peer at the exhibits from the darkness, which is what Sam was doing as he read the name plates screwed next to each window telling him what each creature was. He stopped beside a Great Dane that peered through the glass at him and whined, cocking its head to the side before whining again and scurrying back to climb up on the platform and lay down.

“You know about skinwalkers, of course,” Cuthbert said to turn Sam’s attention away from the dog and hopefully stop him from growling. The cells would hold, of course, but he didn’t need any of the alphas agitated.

“Of course,” Sam replied, stepping into the single circular overhead light directly in front of the window. It cast most of his face into shadow, and set the dog to whining and yelping. “They can change form at will, infect with a single bite. Basically they’re cousins of werewolves - the family dog in need of a serious neuter. We all sprang from the same line, but skinwalkers and werewolves became cannibals and as a result retained the ability to shift, while we evolved and lost it. Silver drops them.”

“Very good.” The Man of Letters smiled as he joined him under the light. “Not that I expected any less of you. Actaeon, while specializing in shaping its students into hammers, does manage to turn out very intelligent hammers. I managed to corral this fellow after he’d placed thirty newly turned skinwalkers into homes all around Oklahoma. He planned to create an army; to do what exactly I’ve never gotten him to tell me. One thing I have learned is that their deductive reasoning skills are more canine than human. He’s smarter than the others, though he’ll still take a heart from a stranger without ever considering that it might be poisoned.” He laughed as he looked at the creature curled up on the cold bench. “They snapped them right up like sausages. Didn’t think twice about it. I was surprised he wasn’t killed along with the others, though honestly I shouldn’t have been. He was the very first alpha I caught, and the reason I thought it would be beneficial to study as many alphas as I could trap. It made me appreciate what you hunters must feel whenever you’re out in the field. That thrill of taking something deadly out of the world.” He wandered down the row, looking at each of the monsters in turn, some glaring while others tried to hide, ending up finally in front of an empty cell at the end. “I’m still looking for the alpha vampire. I’ll catch him one day. In the meantime, however -” He turned to the cell across from the empty one, throwing a smile back at Sam as he waved the younger man over to him. “- this is the pride and joy of my collection.”

Sam followed to where he stood and looked properly into the cell that he could only partly see from where he'd been before, the occupant obscured partially by the alphas between him and whatever sat there quietly. It looked from down the row by the skinwalker that the cell was on fire, or at least partly on fire, and that whatever was in there might have wings. With mounting excitement Sam wondered if Sinclair had somehow managed to catch and contain a phoenix, finding himself confused to discover that a woman with dark hair and a loose-fitting beige dress sat on the floor in the center of the cell, the fire surrounding her in a circle. Whatever it was seemed entirely disinterested in the Man of Letters, but when Sam came into full view its eyes snapped to him and flashed a brilliant blue.

Immediately Sam’s mind began to spin through the various creatures that used consciousness manipulation on their victims, because the thing seemed to be staring into his very core. The instant the creature looked at him he was flooded with a sense of panic, his thoughts focusing with a singular purpose on Dean. Something with his mate had been off for over a week; something he couldn’t put his finger on, that he wasn’t paying attention to, and it alarmed him terribly. Dean was clearly floundering and Sam hadn’t even noticed, let alone cared. Not just that, he also realized quite suddenly that he had obviously hurt Dean deeply by simply demanding he find somewhere else for Emma to live. And why had he done that again? He was vaguely aware that having her around made him think of her grandmother, but she wasn’t her grandmother and she hadn’t asked for her grandmother to do any of the things she’d done to the omega. Emma wasn’t even aware of what the Piper was, that she’d been trapped by him, or that there was ever anyone else in the castle - never mind that he was eating them. Yes, she made him think of Marian and what the woman had done to Dean, but Emma was an innocent little girl. Sam should have at least explained why felt the way he did. He should call Bobby and have him send her back. Jo said she’d stay with her a couple of days so she could help Emma adjust. He’d just tell Jo to pack her back up and turn the car around.

That would make Dean happy.

He was supposed to be making Dean happy.

He hadn’t been making Dean happy.

His stomach lurched and he backed all the way up to the empty cell waiting for the vampire, heat radiating out to the tips of his fingers and toes so intensely he felt like he was on fire, his limbs throbbing in agony, as if he’d been frozen and was now being thawed via blowtorch, and he gasped, “What is that thing?”

“That is Castiel,” Sinclair replied smugly, and the woman stood, moving to the edge of the ring of fire.

“I am an angel of the Lord,” it told him, its voice reverberating in Sam’s ears until he was afraid his brain would explode. “And you are Sam Campbell. The boy with the demon blood.”

The condemnation was so harsh in the angel’s voice that Sam felt it physically. He’d never been overly religious, but he’d always believed in God, expecting that if angels existed ( _and he’d never felt strongly one way or the other about the topic - he was more of an agnostic when it came to angels_ ) they would be tasked with watching over and caring for humanity, understanding of the inherent weaknesses of mankind. That clearly was not the case. It was of course true that Sam had demon blood in him, though it was through no fault of his own. He had no choice in the matter, hadn’t asked for it, and had spent the better part of the last six months fighting tooth and nail not to fall under its influence. To be so openly judged and found wanting by a celestial being he would have expected to be sympathetic to his plight had the alpha’s cheeks turning red with shame.

Sam wanted to say something smart in response, thinking his mate would undoubtedly have the perfect snarky retort in this situation, and instead was only able to turn on his heel and walk quickly towards the stairs at the far end of the room. The alphas seemed to sense his sudden weakness, moving en masse against the glass of their cages to taunt him as he tried not to break into a run. He felt like a little kid who’d just had his pants pulled down in front of the entire class, and ignored Sinclair’s voice calling after him as he hurried out of the area as quickly as he could. The farther he got from the zoo the calmer he felt, the worry and heat and embarrassment that had been consuming him slowly ebbing away, until he couldn’t remember why he had been so worried about his mate, or why he wanted to bring that random little girl back into their lives, or why he’d been so unnerved by a silly angel of the Lord. As he thought about it, waiting for Sinclair to catch up with him, he was sure the thing was lying anyway. An angel of the Lord? Surely a being of such power couldn’t be contained by a mere Man of Letters, no matter how learned he might be. Then again, if Sinclair _was_ able to trap and imprison an angel of the Lord, he obviously had an incredible wealth of knowledge, and Sam would have only scratched the surface. He’d have to spend more time with his mentor if he had any hope of learning everything Cuthbert had to teach.

“That was an abrupt ending to our tour,” Sinclair said as he finally emerged from the lower level to the hallway where Sam was staring at one of the many paintings, mulling over what had just happened to him and deciding he felt much better without the overwhelming concern for his omega. It made things clearer. “The angel seemed to upset you. I’m sorry for that.”

“Not upset,” Sam told him calmly. “Unnerved, maybe. Is it really an angel?”

“It really is.”

“And how did it end up in your collection?”

“It fell into my lap. Quite literally.” He smiled, sliding the portrait back into place to lock down the basement. “Shall we continue with our lesson?”

“Sure.” Sam allowed the older alpha to lead him back to the parlor, watching as he began to redo the travel spell without really paying attention. “You didn’t seem shocked to hear I have demon blood in me.”

“Well Sam…” Sinclair smiled at him again, aiming for kindness and managing a relative approximation - at least enough to fool Sam in his current state. “I have suspected there was something special about you since we first met. Something…extra.”

“I see.” Sam paid attention to him now, a humming in his brain trying to warn him not to trust the man but unable to pin down any reason he should be having those thoughts. “And that doesn’t bother you? Most people who hear the words ‘demon blood’ don’t exactly take it well.”

“You have it under control, don’t you?”

Did he? He thought so. He hadn’t felt it struggling to take control of him for over a week now. In fact, the only thing he felt these days was a kind of rational detachment to everything, like he was floating in calm, soothing, dark waters that nothing could cause to ripple. He supposed that meant it had gone dormant.

“Yes,” he finally said.

“Well, good then!” Cuthbert lit the ingredients and spoke the incantation to take them back to the bunker. “Shall we continue or have you had enough adventure for the day?”

“It’s still early,” Sam replied sensibly, stepping through the tear into the bunker library and resuming his seat at the table. “I don’t see a reason to stop working, do you?”

“None at all,” Sinclair responded, hiding a grin as he followed and put out the bowl.

The rest of the afternoon went exceedingly well. Sam was, as always, an exceptional pupil, and it was becoming clearer by the minute that Sinclair had gained his trust. He wouldn’t have thought that to be so simple with Sam’s abilities, and counted himself lucky that the young man hadn’t yet developed the ability to read someone’s thoughts. It was well past time for dinner before they finally closed up the books they’d been reviewing. Even then it was only because Henry returned, announcing to a room that wasn’t interested that Emma had arrived safely at Bobby’s and he’d gotten the child set up in Dean’s room. While he couldn’t have cared less whether Emma made it to Bobby’s or burned to death in a fiery plane crash, it did make Sam remember that he had a mate who may have been waiting on him to eat ( _irritating as that thought was_ ). Sinclair bade him goodnight and headed back to his mansion, scowling only slightly when Henry didn’t immediately follow. It had been a very productive day, and he was in a good enough mood that he supposed it wouldn’t matter if Henry spent some time with his family.

Much to Sam’s annoyance, Dean had prepared and finished dinner before he ever made it to the kitchen, two sets of dishes in the sink and a note for Sam that his plate was in the oven staying warm if he wanted it. Sam felt a flare of jealousy at the second plate waiting to be washed, assuming Dean had gone out and brought someone into the bunker while Sam was off doing important things with Sinclair, until he remembered that Adam was probably home from work by now. He wouldn’t put it past his mate to go out looking for companionship, of course, given how promiscuous he’d been before they mated. What was it his grandfather had called Dean? The village bicycle. He chuckled now at the thought. His grandfather had definitely been right about that. Obviously he wouldn’t bring home another alpha, not with his internal scarring ( _Sam was going to have to see for himself, very soon, how bad it still was - Dean had started applying his own scar cream again and that was frustrating_ ), but Dean had always been very popular with beta females, and his dick definitely still worked. Sam would have to make sure Dean didn’t start heading out on his own with the intention of picking up someone else for some fun, especially if Sam was going to be having longer sessions with Sinclair. His mentor _must_ know some spells he could use that would bind Dean to the bunker so he couldn’t leave without permission and ensure he remained faithful.

He was so absorbed in his thoughts over the dishes and the potential for Dean to stray he didn’t notice how carefully Henry was watching every move he made. The rigidity in his back was even more pronounced, as was the way he appeared to be on autopilot without any real awareness of what he was doing. He clearly had no knowledge that he was emitting some kind of low level psychic energy, if the way he ignored how the pots and pans hanging on the wall vibrated as he passed by to microwave his pot roast and mashed potatoes was anything to go by. It was plain to see that Sam had no awareness of anything he was physically causing to happen in his proximity, and the disconnect between what his mind was telling him was going on and what was _actually_ going on was terrifying. Dean told Henry his mate had said the demon blood made him feel like he had a parasite inside of him. No one watching Sam could possibly believe anything other than the parasite was now in total control.

“How were your lessons today?” Henry asked as Sam mentally set the reheat cycle, his fingers hovering in front of the buttons but never touching them.

“They were good,” Sam replied, wondering what it might feel like to stab Henry through the neck and how quickly it would take him to die - whether humans bled out at the same rate as monsters. It probably depended on the monster and whether their heart beat slower or faster than a human. He’d have to test that idea at some point. “We got a lot done without you today.”

“Good. And how was Dean? Any headaches?”

Of course he would bring up the omega. It really was irritating that Henry had turned out to be a family man after all; clearly more attentive than John had ever been. And he certainly couldn’t blame John for wanting to get away from his clingy, needy omega son. It was an impulse Sam definitely shared, especially when everyone knew omegas weren’t good for anything other than breeding.

“I haven’t seen Dean today.”   

“He didn’t bring you lunch?”

“Magnus and I were busy.”

“Magnus? I thought you weren’t one for honorifics.”

“Typically I’m not, but the man is brilliant. I should have come here when you first offered. If you don’t mind, I’d like to eat my dinner in peace.”

The black rimmed, glowing red eyes fixed on him as Sam stood by the kitchen island with his plate hovering in front of him had Henry agreeing pleasantly to whatever he wanted before turning to stroll away down the hall, pushing down every impulse he felt to try to force Sam into the demon cell himself without involving Dean any further. He knew Sinclair needed Sam’s blood for the Werther Box, but today’s lesson had so drastically sped up whatever was happening to him that the Winchester patriarch didn’t think it was a good idea at all for his grandson to be in the same building with his mate, let alone the same room. He knew Dean was perfectly capable of handling himself under normal circumstances, but these circumstances were far from normal.

Dean somehow knew the situation with Sam was far worse than it had been the day before, or even that morning when Sam left on a run. Whether it was because he could sense it through their bond or he picked up on it when he hadn’t seen his mate at lunch, he had already moved the children’s cribs into Adam’s room and he and his brother were in the process of warding the interior to keep Sam out if he went looking for Lizzie and Elliott. They had no way of knowing if the devil’s traps would work against the demon blood but it was their best shot to keep the babies safe if Dean’s plan failed. When his grandfather found them, the blatant concern on his face had the brothers pausing in their painting to ask what was wrong, Hannah looking up from the floor to “wuf” at him in boredom.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer Adam and I handle getting Sam into the demon cell?” Henry said quietly, keeping an eye on the hallway. “He’s declined quite a bit since this morning.”

“I appreciate it but uh...you can’t exactly get as close to him as I can,” Dean replied, his stomach churning and sending bile rocketing to the back of his throat. He swallowed it quickly, passing the paint off to his grandfather. “Where’d you see him?”

“He’s in the kitchen eating dinner.”

“Guess it’s time to wash those dishes then.”

“Dean…” Adam started, of the same mind as their grandfather that his brother would not be safe alone with the alpha.

“It’s okay, Runt.”

Dean gave his brother a pat on the shoulder as he passed, ignoring the uncertain look Adam shot him and the way Hannah “wooWOO”ed to protest his leaving. He pulled the door closed behind him and waited to hear the lock click before heading off down the hall, pushing away a swell of fear as he made for the kitchen. He hoped Sam wouldn’t be able to tell how he was feeling through their bond, though if he were honest, he hadn’t felt a pull from his mate since shortly after they got home. The alpha clearly had no interest these days in how Dean was feeling, which would definitely work in the omega’s favor.

Sam was still at the table, his plate nearly clean as Dean wandered into the kitchen and over to the sink, casual as could be. He cast a quick look in his mate’s direction, noting he’d finished the potatoes and left only a tiny portion of the pot roast, then turned back to begin humming and scraping off what little excess food remained on his and Adam’s plates into the dog dish by his feet. If his plan was going to succeed, he’d need to play the dutiful housemate and lull Sam into thinking he was in charge. He doubted it would be difficult after the way the alpha had acted that morning; like a king expecting his subjects would obey him without question. It only took a few minutes of Dean sudsing up the flatware like a good little omega before he heard Sam approaching and felt the alpha’s heat pressed up against his back, trapping him where he stood with his hands in the water, a sponge in one and a knife in the other. His chest tightened and his airway constricted as he counted to twenty seven, waiting for Sam to do whatever he planned on doing, which turned out to be leaning in to set his plate on the counter by the sink and even more effectively caging the omega in.

“You shouldn’t give a dog table scraps,” he said as Dean forced his hands to move, placing the cleaned items into the empty basin to be rinsed. Despite his discomfort, Dean had to give the alpha credit for managing to make reaching around him to turn on the tap feel so threatening. “I’m sure you don’t want Hannah to end up with pancreatitis.”

“I never give her much. And it gets her to eat her dog food. She’s finicky.” He kept his voice light and threw the alpha his flirtiest smile. “Like someone else I know. I’m surprised you didn’t complain about the potatoes and how there wasn’t anything green on the plate.”

“Well, I was hungry since I missed lunch.”

The flirty smile obviously worked, if the way Sam’s hands traveled up Dean’s arms to land at his shoulders was anything to go by. The omega relaxed as best he could when his mate began to knead his muscles and leaned in to kiss Dean’s neck. Even giving his best effort, Dean couldn’t help but stiffen slightly when he felt Sam’s lips behind his ear, and the alpha’s fingers tightened to a painful degree.

“Are you all right?” Sam asked, his voice betraying how little he cared.

“You missed lunch and I missed you,” Dean replied, praying that once Sam was back in his right mind he wouldn’t remember any of this. He was never going to live down a line as corny as that.

He was surprised at just how easy Sam was to manipulate like this, as the younger man began to kiss his shoulder and jaw, saying, “I could make it up to you.”

“You don’t say?” The second smile he tossed back at Sam had the alpha’s eyes flashing red. “Well, it’s a good thing I moved the kids into Adam’s room for the night.”

That’s all it took to get the taller man moving them out of the kitchen, and in short order he was under Dean on their bed, his hands raking over the omega’s back and chest as Dean straddled him and peeled off Sam’s shirt. Sam’s shorts went next as he toed off his shoes, lifting his hips to help the omega strip him efficiently and quickly down to his boxers, Dean bare chested and in a pair of sweatpants. Sam felt tingly and giggly as Dean kissed and licked down his chest and across his nipples, finally ghosting his way down the alpha’s happy trail to palm him through his underwear. Sam’s hips leaped off the bed as his mate continued to kiss his way down, the fabric still a barrier between them that the omega didn’t seem in any rush to remove.

“Dean, please…” Sam gasped, a hand finding Dean’s hair to push him closer to the tent in his boxers. He couldn’t think about anything other than having Dean’s mouth on him, how amazing it would feel when he already seemed to be floating up off the bed. “Please…”

“Sam, I…” Dean peeked up at him from under his lashes, his cheeks flushed and his lips puffy and pink, struggling against the way Sam was continuing to press his face into his groin. “I think maybe I’ll like it if…”

“If what?” Sam breathed, the room spinning slightly.

“Can I...tie you up?” He fluttered his eyes at his mate’s expression, which made it clear Sam wasn’t convinced this was a good idea. “I think it’ll help me feel like I’m really in charge, and then I can make it good for you, Sammy. Not rushed like the alley.”

Sam’s pupils went wide with lust at the thought of Dean choking on his dick, and he whispered, “Yeah?”

“I’ll make it so good for you,” Dean growled, putting the promise of the wonderful, filthy things he planned to do with his mouth into his tone, and Sam nodded so vigorously the omega was momentarily concerned his head was going to fall off.

He got the alpha to let go of his hair and climbed up the length of him to plunder Sam’s mouth with his tongue, rolling off when Sam really began to pant to retrieve some neckties from the dresser. Sam felt more relaxed than he had all week, his limbs heavy and dick a hard line as he watched Dean bind one wrist tight with a solid navy tie, then binding the other with one that was striped green. The smile on his face was wide and lopsided as he let Dean raise his arms above his head and slide the ties through the narrow slats of the headboard, securing them together with a double fisherman’s knot. Sam gave an experimental tug, grinning at his mate in anticipation of the amazing blowjob he was about to get, moaning obscenely as Dean climbed on top of him again to dive in for another open-mouthed kiss. The omega’s hands roamed up his sides and his arms, finally twisting into Sam’s hair as the alpha bucked up into him, desperate to gain some friction as Dean’s hands began to move again, over his cheeks and down his throat and shoulders until the smaller man had hooked his arms under his mate’s to slide under the pillow.

“Jesus, please…” Sam whined, and Dean withdrew his hands and raised up slightly, saying, “Okay Sammy,” before sealing their mouths together again with a murmured, “I love you.”

Sam was fully prepared to die and go to Heaven as soon as Dean started using his mouth properly, so it was with some confusion that he felt something cold and metallic on each wrist and heard a distinctive pair of “click”s before Dean rocketed off the bed and moved to huddle in the corner near the door, looking like he was going to be ill. Sam tried to raise his head to look over at him, but his head felt even heavier than his limbs, and when he tipped it back to see the pair of demon cuffs Dean had snapped on him he couldn’t find the anger to keep from laughing. He felt too wobbly and giddy and was glad he was laying down so he wouldn’t fall over.

“You bitch,” he said through the laughter that wouldn’t stop as he pulled fruitlessly against the cuffs. “You fucking bitch. I’m going to kill you when I get these off. Fucking cunt. What’d you do to me, anyway?”

“Henry brought back some sleeping pills Bobby keeps on hand,” Dean told him dully, which just made Sam laugh harder until he was almost hyperventilating. “I crushed them up in your potatoes. Surprised you didn’t taste them.”

“I just thought that was your fucking awful cooking,” Sam giggled, leaning back on the pillows and enjoying the feel of the rotating bed. “I don’t know what your endgame is, but you can’t think these are gonna hold me long. I just need to break my thumbs and slip ‘em.”

“Those aren’t what I’m counting on to hold you,” Dean said, moving forward to grab his tee shirt and pull it over his head, his hands shaking so badly he had to focus intently to get it up off the floor. “I don’t know why you stopped fighting it, Sam, or if it just took over without you knowing, but we’re getting the demon blood back under control and then we’ll figure out our next move, okay?”

“What if I don’t want it under control?” Sam demanded, suddenly sober for all of ten seconds before he started laughing again.

“That’s not you talking.”

“Sure it is!” Sam turned his head, his eyes black, to look at his mate, whose hands were balled into fists at his sides so he wouldn’t hug his arms to his chest and look weaker than he already felt. “I really am going to kill you, Dean.”

At that the omega couldn’t take it anymore, hurrying from the room to the one next door so he could throw up without Sam seeing, the alpha’s laughter still echoing in the hallway. His head was throbbing, and he was glad he’d been able to get through his plan to cuff Sam before the alpha realized how ill he felt and used it against him. The laughter was dying down as Dean rinsed his mouth and splashed water on his face, wondering how many showers he was going to need to take to start feeling clean again. They just had to wait for Sam to fall asleep, then Henry and Adam could get him into the holding cell while Dean went through every book on demons and demon blood they had in the joint. Until then, he was going to start in on those showers.


	131. I'm a Whole New Level of Freak

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam is on lockdown.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have two very important proposals due this week so posting schedule may be just a little off.

It had been a long time since Dean took a bottle of something into the shower with him to help numb his brain. He was fairly certain it was a bad idea, since he’d taken some more pain killers and his stomach was still lurching at the phantom sensation of Sam’s hand in his hair, pushing him down, but killing his liver seemed worth the risk given the circumstances. He’d been in there an hour already, sitting under the spray in his sweatpants and tee shirt. The water was still hot and he didn’t feel any less filthy, either because he couldn’t force himself to take his clothes off to scrub at his skin or because he was just never going to feel clean again. It didn’t really matter; not at this point, not with how impossibly fucked things were. At least he’d managed to get his sobs under control after only twenty or thirty minutes and was only breaking down in little spurts instead of long ones now. That was something.

Adam and Henry were obviously giving him space, which he appreciated even if he really needed to just pull his shit together and tackle the problem of his mate being way the hell off the reservation, literally, and how they were going to get the demon blood back under control. Presuming they could. He didn’t want to think about what would happen if they couldn’t. He was physically and emotionally bound to Sam. He wasn’t sure he could live with the alpha being this way - deranged and detached, something far less than human, the kind of thing other hunters would want to kill. It had been his first fear when Sam told him, that others could find out about him, like Gordon had, but it had never occurred to him that Sam might become someone worthy of being hunted. Not _Sam_. Now that he had, Dean didn’t know where to begin processing their new, hopefully temporary reality, and longed for the bottom of the whiskey bottle to provide him with some advice.

And even if they did manage to push the demon blood back and give Sam control over himself, find some spell or whatever else there might be to do it, who knew how long it would last? How was Dean ever going to feel like he would be safe with Sam again? That he wouldn’t wake up one morning to find his larger, stronger mate with inky black eyes, shoving the omega’s face into his crotch, or pinning him down to the bed? If the way he’d been acting since a week or so ago was anything to go by ( _and Dean realized now that’s when Sam started to lose control, and how could he have been so stupid not to notice_?), Sam was certainly capable of much more than just trying to force Dean to blow him. This was like the bathroom incident with ‘roid rage, and he knew now that he’d been an idiot then to think he’d be enough to help Sam keep it at bay. When had he ever been enough for anyone, besides maybe his kid brother? Shit, he needed more alcohol.

His kid brother appeared then in the doorway, peering at Dean’s soaked lower pant legs and bare feet, the only part of him he could see around the partition between the sinks and bank of showers where the omega had taken up residence. Adam gave Dean a minute to react to his presence, hearing the bottle clink against the tiled floor and wondering if Dean was going to empty the whole thing. He decided that his brother probably would if no one stopped him, knowing he _should_ go over and take however much whiskey remained away from Dean but hesitating in doing so. He hadn’t pressed Dean on how he intended to get Sam to drop his defenses but he could guess the route his brother chose based on the fact that Sam had been in his underwear when they went to get him, a couple of fresh purple hickeys on his lower abdomen and hip bones, and how long Dean sat under the water pretending his brother and grandfather didn’t hear him crying. Adam knew life wasn’t fair. He just didn’t get why it had to be _so_ unfair to Dean.

“How long are you thinking you’ll stay in here?” he asked finally, watching as Dean pulled his knees in up to his chest and his feet disappeared from view. “I already saw that your toes are all pruney. Hiding them now isn’t really going to get me off your back.”

There was a pause and Dean burped and sounded like he swallowed down the whiskey’s attempt to come back up before he slurred, “You get Sam into the cell?”

“Yeah. He’s fucking heavy, dude. The guy's built like a mountain.”

Dean snickered, and after several long minutes had passed the shower turned off and he straightened slowly to his full height, using the partition for balance. He looked at Adam blearily, tipping the liquor bottle back against his lips only to find there was barely a sip left. He burped again and lowered his arm, the bottle slipping from his grasp and rolling down the slight incline towards the floor drain. The way it echoed off the walls made the communal stall sound cavernous, as did the heavy sigh the omega heaved as he stumbled towards his brother.

“That’s part of the appeal,” he said, reaching for the stack of towels by the sink and missing by a good half foot. He swiped for a towel again and almost faceplanted, saved only by Adam’s quick reflexes and total sobriety. “I think you should lead the way.”

“I kinda planned on that.” He got a towel around Dean’s shoulders and his arm around his waist, walking him slowly towards the door while the omega tried to make his feet work and very nearly succeeded. “Just so we’re clear, I am _not_ carrying you after what moving Sam down two flights of stairs did to my back, so you’re going to have to do better than this.”

“Henry didn’t have some kinda magic floating spell?” Dean asked well enough for Adam to get the gist of what he was asking.

“He didn’t want to risk anything in case it woke him up. We headed to your room or…”

“No.” The response was instantaneous and completely clear before Dean drew in a shaky breath. “No, I...uh...I think I need my own room. Me and the kids need our own room.”

“Okay. We’ll set that up tomorrow. You can stay in my room tonight. I promise no cuddling. I know how you feel about cuddling.”

Dean half snorted, half choked as his eyes burned and his vision blurred, but he managed to hold off the waterworks as Adam got him into his and Jo’s bedroom and set down in a chair over by the cribs, which took up half the room. The beta made sure he wasn’t going to pass out and choke on his own vomit or fall over and take the cribs with him, then headed down the hall to Dean and Sam’s room to get his brother some dry boxers, a tee shirt, and pajama pants. Dean was peeing, almost asleep on the toilet when his brother got back, a feat Adam couldn’t help but find impressive. His knock on the door caused his older brother to jerk awake and nearly fall off the commode, catching himself before he slipped and sprayed the immediate surrounding area, grunting his thanks at the clothes Adam placed on the sink.

The full sized bed was really too small for the two of them to fit comfortably, though at least it wasn’t as bad as Sam and Dean trying to fit together, and Dean hugged the edge anyway in the event he needed to grab the trash can Adam gave him just in case the contents of his stomach made a return overnight. Going from vertical to horizontal was an interesting experience with the way his head was beginning to pound, and he genuinely prayed he’d had enough to drink that he could just pass out if he laid still long enough. The kids were both sleeping soundly, breathing almost in an alternating rhythm like they wanted to provide their mother with white noise to help soothe him, but the mattress wasn’t his memory foam and the sheets were a lower thread count, and the body weighing down the other side of the bed wasn’t his mate. It was a good thing he was too drunk to stand up straight or he might have dragged a blanket down to the lower level where the demon cell was to sleep outside the door and wait for Sam to wake up. Christ, he was pathetic.

Waiting for Sam to wake up would have been a fruitless endeavor even if the alpha weren’t at the mercy of the demon blood’s whims, because Bobby hadn’t fooled around when deciding which sleeping pills to send back with Henry. He’d guessed how many it would take to knock out someone as large as Sam and then suggested they give him one extra to deal with the demon blood but no more than that unless they wanted to call an ambulance to get his stomach pumped. Henry opted to stay with Sam until they could be reasonably sure he wasn’t going to suddenly stop breathing, and Sam was completely unaware of his presence or where he was. In fact, he was so thoroughly drugged he bordered on delirium, his brain convincing him he was locked in Bobby’s panic room for reasons he couldn’t understand, and as Henry sat outside the massive Key of Solomon carved into the floor, watching Sam’s chest rise and fall evenly, Sam was banging against the door in his dream and screaming to be let out.

“You know there’s no one out there, right?” asked a voice behind him, somewhere in the direction of the bed in the center of the room. Sam recognized it as having come from him just a few weeks ago when he was asking Dean why he didn’t have any clothes, and turned to see his fourteen year old self staring at him petulantly. “That's right, it's me. Or I mean, it's you.”

“I'm must be dreaming,” Sam said, more to himself than...well, himself.

“You think?” snarked his younger version, arms folded angrily across his chest. “That’s what happens when your mate drugs the shit out of you because you’ve lost your fucking mind.”

“Dean…”

“Yeah, _Dean_!” Fourteen year old Sam was pissed, moving into his space and looking like it was physically paining him not to punch the alpha’s lights out. “Dean _Winchester_! The guy I’ve been dreaming about for the last two years, that I can’t get to look at me when he comes back to visit because he’s some kind of...I don’t even know...matinee idol, and the stupid acne on my forehead refuses to clear up for more than a day! The guy that _you_ managed to _somehow_ get to fall for us just so you could say things to him like he’s garbage!”

“What do you want?” Sam snapped. He didn’t need to be reminded of how horribly he’d treated Dean. He could already feel the guilt rising up to consume him. “An apology?”

“An explanation,” the kid snapped back. “How could you do this to me? How could you do this to _him_? Don’t you remember how we felt about him?”

“I still feel that way about him!” Sam growled. “You have no idea what this _thing_ inside us is like to hold back! I tried. I did. It snuck up on me and took control. Sorry, kid.”

His younger self fumed and shoved against the immovable wall of muscle that made up Sam’s chest.

“‘Sorry, kid?’ That's all you have to say? He's all we ever wanted! He's our _true mate_! Do you have any idea how rare that is? How many alphas don't have one? And we _found_ ours! Dean _Winchester_! We’re bonded! We have a son! You even convinced him to quit hunting. You were going to build him a house in Vermont and have enough kids to fill out a hockey team. You had it all under control when those other alphas had him - Fox and Roman. And now you give in? When everything is going great?!”

“Look,” Sam snarled, “I'm sorry. I am. But life doesn't turn out the way you thought when you were fourteen years old.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” the kid exclaimed. “It _literally_ did! We were _literally_ building our dream life with our dream omega and now it’s falling apart because...what, you weren’t paying attention to what was going on inside your head? Too pissed off about some random kid’s grandmother to notice what that kind of anger was leaving you open to?”

“We were never gonna be normal,” Sam said finally. “We were never gonna beat this thing. Grow up.”

“Maybe you're right,” the kid retorted, his face a mask of bitterness far beyond his years. “Maybe there's no getting away from it. After all, how can you run from what's inside you?”

The boy’s eyes turned crimson with a heavy black ring around the iris, his face and body twisting and morphing until Sam found himself staring at the creature brought forth by the Dream Root, the flaming crown flickering atop his head. It laughed as Sam recoiled in horror, following him as he backed away from the door.

“Come on, Sam,” the thing purred as it allowed him to move across the room. “Don’t play hard to get. Not when you have to admit I was right about how much easier things are when you just... _make_ Dean do what you want him to do.”

“You think this is _easier_?” Sam demanded, watching it move to sit on the bed and smile up at him.

“I think we’ll know better next time.”

“ _Next time_? You think there's going to be a next time? You think Dean's ever going to let me out of here? Is ever going to trust me again? How stupid do you think he is?”

“It's not a matter of being stupid or smart,” the Hell him sighed. “He loves you. Even at the expense of himself. Sure, he _should_ walk away from you, but he won't. John did a great job teaching him to be a doormat. You can wipe your feet all over him and he'll still never leave you. It's not in him to walk away.”

“You sure about that?” Dean asked from the corner of the room.

As he turned, Sam discovered he was no longer in Bobby’s panic room, but the demon cell in the bunker. He’d only seen the room once, but recognized the Key of Solomon on both the floor and the ceiling meant to keep demons in the center of the room. Dean stood well outside the perimeter of the sigil, dressed in the clothes he typically wore hunting; jeans, steel toed boots, two tee shirts with a flannel, and a Carhart, clearly trying to cover as much skin as possible. Though Sam was often shocked by Dean’s ability to wall off how he was feeling to the outside world, he still wouldn’t have thought the omega could so expertly keep any hint of emotion out of his eyes. Even when his expression was unreadable, there was usually a hint of something in the green depths to give Sam a clue into what was going on in Dean’s head. Now the mask he was wearing had shut Sam out completely. He had a knife strapped on each hip and his Colt held casually in his hand, even as his arms were crossed over his chest to close himself off even further from the alpha.

“Hey baby,” Sam said quietly, taking a few hesitant steps across the room.

“Baby?” Dean arched an accusatory eyebrow at him, the only insight Sam seemed poised to get into his mate’s feelings. That is, until Dean continued. “I thought my name was cunt. Cuz that’s what I am, right? Just a hole for your knot?”

“I didn’t…” Sam felt like he’d been slapped. It was all right, though. He definitely deserved it. Still, it stung. “I didn’t mean that. I was just upset that you handcuffed me to the bed.”

“I had to,” Dean told him flatly. “The demon blood’s had a hold of you for a while. I couldn’t trust you around the kids - or me. Not after what happened with Emma. It’s not my fault you fell for the oldest trick in the book.”

“I can get it under control again, Dean,” Sam implored, taking a few more steps towards his mate and finding himself staring down the barrel of Dean’s gun. The omega’s jaw was set in a hard line, his eyes flashing gold, and Sam wisely took a few steps back with his hands raised. “I can.”

“You’ll forgive me for not takin’ you at your word,” Dean growled, lowering the gun only when Sam had reached a safe distance from him again. “Tell me something, Sam. Why’d you stop fighting it?”

“I didn’t. I didn’t know it was happening.”

“Right. Because you haven’t spent months dealing with it to know what it feels like when it wants to be in the driver's seat. You know what I think?”

“I’m sure you’ll tell me.”

“You're just like any other alpha. You like the idea of all that power. That whole King of Hell thing makes you feel strong. Important. A big bad wolf in a world of little pigs.”

“No. You're wrong, Dean.”

“I am? Your whole life, you felt different. No real family, all that money making you stick out from the rest of kids at school…”

“Stop.”

“Oh, I hit a little close to home, huh? Never mind that poison running through your veins, you’d _still_ be different from everyone else without it. Weird. A freak. You think other hunters can waltz their way into Stanford without having to sell both kidneys to pay for it? Or walk off a car lot with a brand new Cadillac? That they have apartments on the top floor of high rises in big cities? That they even _have_ five thousand dollars to their name, never mind just laying around to throw away on baby stuff? But you’re not different because you were some lonely kid or because of your rich asshole family.”

“Stop it!”

“You’re different because you're a monster.”

“Dean, no.”

Sam risked approaching him again, stopping at the cock of Dean’s gun yet refusing to retreat this time. Even in a dream he couldn’t bear to hear these things from the omega. Because what if he was getting a glimpse into his mate’s head? What if the demon blood was letting him see how Dean really felt?

“I tried so hard to pretend that you were normal,” Dean continued, his face a mask of indifference. Sam would have preferred to see hatred there. “That you weren't one of the filthy things that we hunt. But Gordon was right. We're not even the same species. We might be mated, but you're nothing to me.”

“Don't say that to me.” For a dream, the way Sam’s heart seemed to be breaking certainly felt real. “Don't you say that to me!”

“Sam.”

The alpha tore his eyes from his mate still standing in the corner, his veins burning like lava was being pumped through them instead of blood as he met the glowing blue eyes of the angel from Sinclair’s zoo.

“Fantastic,” he laughed, even as his heart began to race under the angel’s stare. “Even God’s sending someone to pile on. That’s just great.”

“I am glad it pleases you that I’m here,” the angel said calmly.

“It doesn’t please me,” Sam said.

“But...” It cocked its head to the side and stared at him. “You said it was great that God sent me. Something ‘great’ is genuinely viewed as a reason for happiness.”

It was Sam’s turn to stare before asking, “You don’t really get the concept of sarcasm, do you?”

“I am aware sarcasm exists, while I admit its nuances elude me.”

This dream just kept getting better and better.

“What is it you want?” the alpha demanded. “Castiel, right?”

“Yes. I came to warn you away from the anger I see burning within you. The pridefulness and arrogance that comes with such rage will bring you only misery. Do not be like Icarus, flying too close to the sun.”

“Could you be more cryptic?” Sam asked.

“Yes, though as I learned while trying to speak with the Oracle of Delphi, being more cryptic is rarely helpful when dealing with humans,” the angel replied. “You must remember, demons lie. As do men.”

“And angels?” Sam said.

“Usually trustworthy. Of course my opinion may be somewhat biased.” There was no trace of humor or irony in the angel’s declaration, which was just...weird. Not that this dream overall hadn’t been, but angels definitely were not turning out to be what Sam expected. “True mates are rare, and divinely created. Always fight for Dean, no matter what comes.”

“I’d planned on it,” Sam snapped, resentful of the way Castiel spoke as if he were too stupid to understand what he and Dean had. Then again, that did seem to be the running theme of this dream.

“You say that because you can’t imagine the trials that lie ahead of you,” Castiel replied coolly.

“Why do I feel like the next thing you’re going to say is why is a raven like a writing desk?” Sam asked, jerking awake at the sound of fluttering wings.

While he supposed it was possible he was still dreaming, it seemed unlikely that Adam would show up inside his head to berate him with Hannah sitting next to his chair by the door to the demon holding cell, and at no point in his dream had Sam been restrained. Now he found he was chained by his ankle to the bed in the middle of the Key of Solomon, one of only two pieces of furniture the room contained. The other was a heavy wooden chair with built in demon cuffs like the one currently binding him to the solidly welded leg of the bed - which was really closer to a gurney - just above where it was bolted firmly into the floor.

He also became aware of how dulled his emotions were compared to how he’d felt in the dream ( _or hallucination, or whatever it was, besides just fucked up_ ), though he actually was _feeling_ things now. It surprised him how instantaneous the realization was that he _hadn’t_ been feeling things for at least the last week, maybe longer. Internally it was like he was dragging himself through mud, his senses weighted down and sluggish, but he knew with certainty there were things that he _could_ feel, and _wanted_ to, but _wasn’t_. Like shame for his behavior the night before, concern for his children, love for Dean. It all hummed like something separated from him by a thick glass wall; things he saw and knew were real but couldn’t touch; things he wanted to set free, not knowing how to break the glass.

“Are you my babysitter?” he asked, his voice as flat as his thoughts as he swung his legs over the side of the bed and the room tipped. That was another good indicator this wasn’t a dream anymore. He wouldn’t be dreaming about the after-effects of a bunch of sleeping pills.

“Just making sure you wake up,” Adam said curtly. “No one wants you dying on us. Hungry?”

“Is Dean going to drug my food again?” Sam snarled before he could stop himself, noticing the familiar swell of darkness and rage in the pit of his stomach. That was something he’d also stopped feeling, and he struggled to suppress it.

“I don’t really think you should be asking about my brother right now,” Adam snapped, standing and grabbing Hannah’s collar. “I’ll bring you down some cereal.”

“Adam…” Sam started, but the beta was gone, the lock on the door clicking behind him.

Dean was still asleep as Adam made his way into the kitchen, snoring loudly on his stomach with his face half hanging off the bed over the garbage can. Adam had already taken Hannah for a walk before waiting for his brother-in-law to wake up, and he dropped the Pyr off with her master as he passed. She didn‘t need any more encouragement than an, “Up” to jump onto the foot of the bed and lay down on one of Dean’s feet with a groan, panting slightly and giving Adam a “wuf” as he headed off down the hall.

Henry had both children with him in the war room with an assortment of books laid out over one of the tables, finishing up the eggs and toast he’d made for him and Adam by the time the beta found him. He’d called Bobby already to see if he’d come across anything in his own library since their conversation the day before, when Henry had popped in to get the sleeping pills at Dean’s request and explained what they thought was happening with Sam. Bobby had immediately offered his help, though it was going to be difficult to keep Ellen and Jo from catching on. Jo in particular was already fit to be tied about Sam’s behavior, and was openly talking about not going back to the bunker; to Bobby and her mother anyway. Both suggested she might want to share that tidbit of information with Adam, as he’d probably have an opinion on that, though while they’d given Henry a head’s up about it the elders had all agreed to keep it under their collective hat. No reason to upset the other Winchester brother over something that probably wouldn’t happen when they all needed to stay focused on fixing Sam.

The question remained, of course, as to whether or not Sam could be fixed. The days rolled by, Adam’s birthday coming and going, with no real progress made on the subject, and Dean’s increasing anxiety filling the bunker until it was stifling even for his beta brother. He’d only gone down to see the alpha a couple of times, finding that being in the same room with Sam - who was better, but still not himself - while needing to keep a safe distance from him only made him feel worse. They had little to say to each other since Sam still teemed with bitterness at having been tricked by his mate, no matter how he tried to suppress his anger. Dean’s inner omega responded to Sam’s irritation by wanting to calm and soothe, which of course he couldn’t do when Sam’s emotions weren’t really his. To smell the alpha’s scent and not be able to bury himself in Sam’s neck or his chest or his hair left Dean dangerously close to breaching the sigil, which was clearly working with the other traps and wardings to subdue Sam’s darker urges and return some semblance of control to him, just so he could taste his mate’s skin. That logically he knew this was a spectacularly bad idea didn’t seem to matter to his hindbrain; not when he was drinking himself to sleep most nights to avoid thinking about the empty spot next to him where his mate should be.

Henry’s mentor managed to make the omega more restless by constantly hovering after the first day Sam missed their lessons, invading Dean’s den at a time when his instincts were screaming that he needed his mate to protect him and their children, despite his mate being the very thing Dean and their children needed protection from. Sinclair had been highly displeased to learn his prized pupil was locked in the demon cell, demanding to know whether Henry was wavering on their plan as if that were the most important thing happening at the moment. His temper cooled significantly at Henry’s insistence that Sam had been wildly out of control, that being unable in the grip of the demon blood wasn’t good for anyone, and would in the end make it more difficult to convince the young alpha to open the Werther Box. He knew Cuthbert’s ego was massive enough it wouldn’t have occurred to him that an alpha pegged by a Prince of Hell to help run Hell itself might not be easy for the Man of Letters to influence if he had already succumbed to Azazel’s power, though it still took quite the argument to make him see sense and agree to stay away from the cell. Even then, Henry made sure to set a warding on the door that would alert him if someone other than him, Adam, or Dean tried to open it and immobilize them. 

As for Azazel, Garth was clearly right that there was something major on the horizon, as reports of cattle mutilations, demonic possessions, spontaneous combustions, and clusters of lightning strikes increased significantly across the Midwest, starting at the vernal equinox. The FDH feed was going wild with cases that were blatant omens, and hunters were dropping like flies. The Winchester trio couldn’t help but feel the Yellow Eyed Demon was trying to draw them out; to unleash so many terrible things in their vicinity that they’d come out from their hiding place and he’d have access to Sam. It reminded Dean of when the hellhound wanted to get at John in Benny’s house, only on a grander scale. Azazel seemed to be trying to dig up the entire American Bread Basket instead of just the front lawn, and the longer they went without making any progress on freeing Sam from the demon blood’s control, the harder it was to convince the omega that they shouldn’t grab the Colt their father left in their care and take the fight directly to the Prince of Hell.

It really wasn’t like anyone could blame Dean for getting antsy. He was terrible anyway at sitting around doing nothing but research, and it was taking so long for his head to heal that his feelings of uselessness, of helplessness, were bound to leave an itch for a hunt under his skin, just so he could prove he was still good for something besides changing poopy diapers. Coupled with how desperately he missed his mate ( _no matter how he tried to hide it_ ), it was a wonder he hadn’t vanished in the middle of the night with a road atlas and list of the most recent omens to try putting an end to Azazel’s hold over Sam once and for all.

Making matters worse was the younger Winchester brother, who was having some of the same reckless urges as the omega. Jo hadn’t returned yet, had been making excuses about how Emma still wasn’t settled in very well, was filling in at a local watering hole in Sioux Falls, and seemed to be waiting either for Adam to move up to South Dakota with her or get the hint that they were done. They were talking less frequently than when she first went with the little girl, she hadn’t called him until the day after his birthday ( _granted, it was one in the morning, but still - she missed the actual date_ ), and lately when Adam called Jo was always “at work,” which might have been true or might have been an avoidance tactic. He wasn’t the sort to panic over a girl not returning his calls, but this felt very different with how angry she’d been over the situation with Sam, and Adam hadn’t been able to shake his guilt over having lied to her about the real reason they sent Emma away. Things would be much simpler if Azazel was out of the picture and he could trust that Dean would be safe if Adam moved several hours away to another state, even if it was one that his brother needed to stay away from like the plague for the time being.

In his demon cell, chained to a bed, Sam felt the same itch as his mate and his brother-in-law, making sure to voice his opinion on the subject of Azazel whenever Henry or Adam brought him food. Even while his mood gradually softened as the parasite was continually pushed down by the Key of Solomon, his dreams had been erratic; none as vivid as the first night, but they had a growing theme of glowing yellow eyes and John making a very bad decision. Though the sigil on the floor seemed to be keeping his more obviously dangerous psychic powers in check, it didn’t appear to be stopping Sam’s visions completely. Either that or the one way Azazel could still reach him was through dreams. Regardless of what was causing them, those dreams had Sam insisting they let him out so he could hunt down the yellow eyed demon before it was too late. The suggestion was ludicrous, of course, but it was simultaneously reassuring and troubling that even with one of them in a warded cell, everyone in the bunker agreed that the Prince of Hell was becoming too large of a problem to ignore.

The impending sense of doom and frustration hanging over them all made it far too easy for Adam and Dean to pick up the phone when John called a week before Lizzie’s first birthday, telling them to bring him the Colt, and even easier for them to ask for his location without question. They knew it was a bad idea to coordinate leaving the kids and the dog with Bobby just in case something happened with Sam at the bunker, mostly because Henry told them repeatedly that it was a bad idea. He might have had a chance of swaying them, particularly with how level headed Adam usually was, if they were getting anywhere with fixing the alpha locked up in the sub-basement or if Dean was still having issues with light sensitivity or headaches that couldn’t be quelled by a couple of Advil. Instead, he was still telling his grandsons how bad of an idea it was as they pulled out in the truck after sunset for the five hour drive to Bobby’s, where they’d switch out their vehicle with one of the old hunter’s junkers in case there was a BOLO out on the Ford’s plates, then meet up with their father in Last Chance, Idaho. They all hoped the name of the town wouldn’t turn out to be prophetic, since running from this fight was no longer a choice.  


	132. This Is Never the Life I Wanted for You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John should have thought this through.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm about to get *swamped.* Have this week's second chapter a day early.

John hated what he was doing - what he was being forced to do by circumstances beyond his control - in the name of keeping his eldest child safe. He should have paid more attention to what was going on when Omega Protective Services took Dean; shouldn’t have decided it was probably for the best, that Dean would be better off without his interference. Shouldn’t have let Sam run back to Fort Wayne by himself to try to save Dean when they knew he’d been moved out of state; shouldn’t have let Sam near his son at all. When he’d shown up at that bunker in Lebanon and seen the claim on Dean’s neck that meant he was Sam’s now, his mistake had been obvious. He knew they were headed in that direction, but he thought he’d have more time to try to talk Dean out of it, and when he realized it was too late he did what he did best: turned and ran and didn’t call his children for months.

Because what could he say? He’d abandoned Dean over and over again, given the omega no reason to trust him, not even bothered to discuss what they both knew was wrong with Sam, or his dealings with Crowley, or any of it - not really. How could he come back now and tell Dean what he’d learned about Sam since they split up in Duluth? That even with Azazel dead, the demon’s blood would always influence Sam, always try to sway him to darkness, that there was no way for him to ever be rid of it? Why would his son believe a word of it?

It wasn’t as if John hadn’t tried to find something to help his new-son-in-law. He hadn’t spent the last four or so months only traversing the country hunting and looking for Yellow Eyes. He’d also been looking for a way to cure Sam of the illness that had lived in him since he was six months old. Even before knowing Sam and Dean had mated, he’d looked for some way to help the young alpha, if for no other reason than Sam was Elliott’s father. Sam might not be his favorite person - they were just too damn much alike - but he’d gotten past the anger over the incident in the hospital once he had a chance to think about it soberly and away from Sam. He ultimately couldn’t blame the young man for wanting to protect his newborn child and the omega that he loved. It was something John understood acutely, and he would never consider taking Dean’s mate from him, his grandson’s sire for Christ’s sake, unless he had no other choice.

And it was plain to see now that he didn’t. He’d turned to psychics, witches, clergymen, even a voodoo priestess, countless books and researchers, and there was nothing to be found about cleansing the kind of darkness that had been brewing in Sam nearly his entire life. Everything John had come across said the same thing. Demon blood corrupted the soul. Once it had been introduced it could never be removed, only fought, until eventually the afflicted person wouldn’t be able to fight any longer. Sam, at his core, was evil. It wasn’t his fault, any more than it would have been a newly turned vampire or werewolf’s fault, but just like a vamp or a were, Sam needed to be put down before he could hurt anyone.

Killing Sam now meant killing Dean, though. His eldest son might be tough as nails, might be stronger than John had ever given him credit for, but a mating bond was a mating bond was a mating bond. He’d watched how Dean suffered when the incomplete bond from Sam’s asshole cousin was breaking, saw the lengths the hospital had to go to just to keep him alive in those first few hours. Found out later the damage it had done to his body, landing him on bed rest. There was no way he’d survive Sam’s death if their bond wasn’t somehow severed first and their bodies reset. Biology was a cold hearted bitch like that. So he’d turned from trying to cure Sam to finding a way to keep his son alive after losing his alpha, and that hadn’t proven any more fruitful than his initial task. His father probably had some insight into breaking a mating bond without killing an omega. He had any number of grimoires in the Men of Letters’ library, but John obviously couldn’t reach out to Henry without risking Dean finding out what he was up to, and Dean couldn’t know about any of this. He’d understandably try to stop John, would think it wasn’t too late to help Sam, would say his dad was just overreacting, and almost certainly warn Sam about what the older alpha had planned. No, he couldn’t ask Henry for help about this, which was why he was setting up an altar in this cold, dark, musty basement of an old sawmill in Last Chance, Idaho, waiting for a call from Dean and Adam on their ETA now that they’d dropped the kids off at Bobby’s and were on their way.

He knew he could just call Crowley’s cell phone without going through the whole rigmarole of summoning him, but he needed the demon’s honesty and the best way to get that seemed to be the devil’s trap he’d drawn on the floor. While he didn’t want to get in any deeper than he already was, having shirked his end of the bargains they’d already made in terms of getting Crowley what he wanted out of the bunker where his son now lived ( _and where he could almost certainly come and go as he pleased_ ), and he hadn’t made any attempt to get Sinclair to pop his head out of wherever he’d hidden himself for decades, it hadn’t escaped his notice that the demon seemed to have a genuine soft spot for Dean. What that meant John didn’t have the luxury of worrying about at the moment, and he lit the candles on either side of the altar, then tossed the match into the herbs in the copper bowl in front of him, speaking the incantation that would bring the demon to him.

“What’s the matter, John?” said the smooth British voice he’d come to loathe when the second match lit up a burst of flame in the bowl after he’d finished the required Latin. “Lose my number?”

“No signal down here,” John ground out, struggling to his feet and lamenting the way his knees popped. He never thought he’d live long enough to get old, and now that he had he hated it more every day.

“Then perhaps don’t call me from a crypt.” Crowley looked around dismissively. “Or cow shed. Where are we exactly?”

“Sawmill.”

“Ah.” He looked at the devil’s trap beneath him and arched a finely manicured eyebrow. “Really? I thought we were past all of this. Pals. Chums. Frenemies, at least.”

“I need to know if you can do something for me, and I need you to tell me the truth,” John growled, and Crowley’s shoulders twitched.

“Don’t be a tease,” he cooed. “You know it sets me all aflutter.”

“Can you break Dean’s bond to Sam without it killing him?”

“The apple of your eye is having buyer’s remorse?”

“Just answer the question.”

“I can.” The crossroads demon smiled, sliding his hands into the pockets of his topcoat. “For a price, of course.”

Sam was surprised at how readily the days blurred together with no way to tell time underground chained to a bed bolted to the floor. At first he kept track of how long he’d been locked up by the number of meals he got a day, but after the second week being in the demon cell with no sign that Adam, Henry, or Dean planned to release him anytime soon he decided there wasn’t much point in doing so. In spite of feeling the invader in him losing its grip little by little the longer he was trapped between the two Keys of Solomon, he knew they wouldn’t let him go until they’d found a way to contain the dark thing inside him that didn’t rely simply on Sam’s willpower, and there was just no telling how long that would take.

Frankly, he didn’t blame them. As he slowly came back to his senses, he began to realize just how far out of line he’d been. The way he’d treated Emma, the way he’d talked to Dean - not to mention trying to force himself on his mate - it was no wonder the omega stopped coming down to see him in what he guessed was the start of the second week of October. Even Adam stopped bringing his food, leaving the task of interacting with Sam entirely up to Henry, and he wasn’t surprised at that either. He’d turned out to be every terrible thing the beta wanted to keep away from his brother, and no grand declarations of his love for Dean were likely to convince Adam that Sam could be trusted. Sam himself wasn’t even sure he could be trusted.

That’s why the alpha _thought_ the Winchester brothers weren’t checking on him anyway, right up until the dream he had about John that was so clear it was like he was standing in the room with him. He recognized some of it from previous dreams he’d had, though none had come close to showing him the full picture. Now he could see John standing in front of an altar he’d built on the floor in some kind of warehouse sublevel, judging by the structure and the old boiler and furnace that didn’t appear to be functional anymore. There were candles lit on either side of a copper bowl, out of which smoke was rising from whatever herbs and ingredients he’d thrown in there, and standing across from him was the doctor from Sam’s brief stint in the asylum - the one with the deep chin cleft and the greying hair, who had flashed yellow eyes back at the alpha when he turned to walk away. He even recognized the man’s voice, the slimy growl that made Sam suppose that’s what an asp would sound like if it could speak. Why John appeared to be having a business meeting with the thing he’d been hunting for years Sam didn’t know, nor could he figure out why John kept calling it, “Crowley.”

“So what’s it going to cost me this time?” John asked, his voice fading in and out like Sam was just a bit too far away to pick up a perfectly clear signal. “Have we worked up to you asking for my soul yet?”

“Perish the thought,” Yellow Eyes responded, his cadence a perfect imitation of the way Crowley spoke. John must not be able to see what he really was. “I’m saving that for a truly special request, something you _really_ need. We’re not quite there yet.”

“Then what?”

The Prince of Hell eyed Dean’s father for a moment, the image blurring slightly, something glimpsed through a rain covered window, seeming to weigh his options and how much he could ask for based on the desperation written plainly on John’s face. Finally he said, “How badly do you want this, John?”

“Badly,” the alpha snarled in response. “I’ve done a lousy job of protecting my boy up until now and I intend to fix it.”

“Something’s changed, though. I know you’re not part of the Sam Campbell fan club, but what you’re asking me to do seems a bit extreme.”

“You know what’s changed. Sam’s demon blood. You know what it really means - the way he’s infected. Dean will never see it. I don’t think he can.”

“They are abnormally devoted to each other. I’ve found that annoying myself.”

The demon appeared to have made a mistake in his response, because John took a step back from the altar, doing a terrible job at masking his sudden uncertainty. Normally the alpha had a much cooler head about him than this, though since the topic of conversation seemed at least in part to be Dean, Sam supposed he could understand why John’s game face had slipped. He caught himself quickly, but not quite quickly enough if the flash of those yellow eyes was anything to go by.

“So what do you want in exchange for freeing Dean?” John finally asked coolly.

“How about…” Yellow Eyes took his time, really seeming to consider it, before replying, “The Colt.”

“No.”

“I see.” The demon smiled. “You want Dean released from his bond to Sam, just not _quite_ enough to give up on your quest for revenge. How do you think that will play out when Sam’s traipsed his way over to the dark side?”

“I’ll figure something else out,” John insisted, stepping back again when the demon moved to stand at the edge of the trap.

“There isn’t anything else,” he growled. “That’s why you’re trying to make this deal. It’s all right though, Johnny boy. I’ll get what I want one way or another.”

The image rippled and shifted and John really recoiled, his face twisting in rage as the demon clearly revealed itself, laughing at the shock on the hunter’s face. John lunged for his bag to grab a flask of holy water and canister of salt, but before he could straighten he was flung back against the wall and pinned by the dark haired demon that appeared from the shadows at the far end of the basement. Sam recognized him immediately - he could no more forget Tom after the revelation about Azazel wanting him to sit on the throne of Hell than he could forget Azazel’s yellow eyes - and watched helplessly as the demons laughed at John writhing and twisting and screaming to be let go.

“Son of a bitch!” John shouted, dragging his head forward only to have it slammed back into the brick and mortar behind him. “I’ll kill you, you son of a bitch!”

“Now, now John,” Azazel admonished as Tom used the hand not holding John in place to send a surge of power down into the floor and crack the devil’s trap holding the Prince of Hell. “Is that any way to start out our very first face to face conversation?”

“Where’s Crowley?” the alpha growled, his eyes flashing red as the demons approached and kicked over the altar. “Has he been working for you this whole time?”

“Crowley?” Azazel scoffed. “Why would I need some shabby used car salesman like him when I’ve got my boy here? Say hello, Tom.”

“Hello,” Tom said dutifully, allowing John to crumple to the ground now that the Prince was freed. As the alpha landed, his ankle made a sickening popping noise and he barely suppressed a scream of pain. Tom was in front of him in moments, crouching down to grab his hair and yank his head back. “I love it when Dad gets me new toys.”

Sam woke with a start at the sound of the cell door swinging open, finding himself drenched in sweat and barely able to catch his breath. Henry had paused in the doorway with his breakfast tray, clearly wary of whatever the young man was experiencing as Sam swung his legs down off the bed and his knees gave out, sending him crashing to the floor. His head throbbed and he saw the red droplets from his bloody nose hit the floor underneath him, holding the back of his hand against his upper lip to try to staunch the flow. It had been a long time since he’d had a headache with a vision or a dream and he wondered absently what it meant, even as his thoughts were far more preoccupied with where Dean actually was.

“Are you all right Sam?” Henry asked cautiously, setting the breakfast tray on the ground and pushing it just enough into the Key of Solomon that Sam could pull it over to him in a well practiced routine.

“Have you…” Sam had to close his eyes against the glare of the overhead light as it pounded down on him, splitting his brain open and raw to the elements in the room. Suddenly his senses were heightened to a painful degree and he could taste Henry’s sweat from where he stood, hear his heartbeat, smell the dish soap he’d used the clean up after dinner the night before. “Have you talked to John recently?”

“I haven’t,” Henry replied as he stepped back to the safety of the door. “Dean and Adam have, however.”

“What?”

Sam snapped his eyes up to look at the Man of Letters, regretting it instantly as the lights seemed to double in brightness. He pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead, turning his face back to the floor and hissing in a breath. For several long moments he was quite certain his dinner from the night before was going to come back up to paint the floor, and wondered if obscuring the trap he was in with vomit would be enough to set him free. He didn’t know why John had been trying to talk to Crowley about Dean, or why he was trying to break their bond, but he desperately needed to get out of this room.

“John called a few days ago,” Henry said calmly, realizing the young alpha was highly agitated and not sure the room would hold him if he got out of hand. He wasn’t a demon, after all. “He had a lead on the demon who has brought all this misfortune on you. He needed Dean to bring him the Colt. Adam went with him.”

“What?” Sam repeated, his heart leaping into his throat. After weeks feeling the darkness in him slowly subsiding, his alpha finally seemed to be fully awake again, and the thought of Dean driving off to meet John in the middle of god knows where, almost certainly with Azazel, had Sam close to panicking. “When did they leave?”

“The day before yesterday. They were taking your children to Bobby’s in case…there were any problems here.”

Sam wouldn’t have thought it possible for him to feel any sicker than he already did at Dean walking straight towards the Prince of Hell without any kind of warning, but hearing that Lizzie and Elliott were no longer safe in the bunker definitely did the trick. It went unspoken that Sam was the potential problem his mate felt the need to keep the two infants safe from, and he wanted to scream at his own stupidity and carelessness for not paying more attention to the evil within him those first few days back from Missouri. If he hadn’t been so consumed with his anger towards Emma seeming to burrow her way into Dean’s affections he wouldn’t have ended up here, and Dean wouldn’t have a two day lead on him to wherever John wanted them to meet.

“Henry, you’ve got to let me out of here,” he insisted, the darkness unhappy that he’d finally gotten control back from it and trying to wind its way up his stomach and spine. “Dean can’t meet up with John. It’s not safe!”

“I know how concerned you must be,” Henry said. “I didn’t want them to go either.”

“You don’t know!” Sam yanked against the chain keeping him bound to the cot, struggling uselessly for several moments before giving up. No wonder Dean hated canopy beds. “You didn’t see what I saw! Please, at least call them. At least find out where they are and tell them John’s been compromised. Please!”

“All right, Sam.” It was easily the most agitated Henry had seen the young man since they brought him down here. Even early on Sam hadn’t begged to be let out. Threatened and cajoled, certainly, but he’d never begged, understanding on some level from the first time he woke up and saw Adam with the dog that he had earned a spot in the holding cell. This was markedly different, and it wasn’t hard to agree to his request. “I’ll call them. Eat your breakfast.”

“Please…” Sam repeated brokenly as the older alpha retreated from the cell, locking the door soundly behind him.  

Henry had to admit that Sam’s episode - whatever it was about - had him feeling very anxious about his son and his grandsons. It took him a while to locate the rolodex where they kept all the phone numbers, since he still wasn’t entirely accustomed to the way they worked with ten digits, pulling out both Adam and Dean’s cell numbers to dial them. Neither answered, so he left both messages that Sam was worried about John and they needed to call him back as soon as possible. Then he called Bobby to see if he’d heard from them and had any idea where they might be. Bobby had last talked to them the day before when they were just about to Montana and planning to stop for the night, the first half of the fifteen hour drive about all Dean's head could take. Besides, they'd talked to John before leaving Sioux Falls, and there was a salt and burn on the way he thought the boys could take care of. If Henry couldn't get his grandsons on the phone, the beta assured him it was probably because of the impromptu ghost hunt and nothing to worry about yet.

If Dean didn't know how much his father wanted Azazel dead, he'd have thought John was trying to stall them, sending them out of their way on a routine salt and burn in Broadus, Montana, which had a whopping population of four hundred and sixty people, ten of whom had already been seriously injured by whoever was haunting the Powder River Historical Museum. Most of those people were high schoolers looking for a thrill once word spread that something was going on there, though the part time janitor certainly wasn’t among the lunkheads that thought ghosts were cool, and he definitely didn’t think having his leg broken in two places was thrilling. He supposed it was possible John just wanted them to get back into the game of hunting something small before taking on prey like a Prince of Hell, not having actually spoken to either him or Adam recently to have any idea that neither of them were as retired as they’d like to be.

Regardless of the reason it was probably a good idea to get their game faces on, given how the brief visit at Bobby’s went. Emma had been thrilled to see Dean, Hannah, and the kids, who would be staying in her ( _formerly Dean’s_ ) room in a pair of Pac N’ Plays while their mom and uncle were off hunting. They hadn’t rolled in until after midnight, so of course she’d awakened as they were trying to get Lizzie and Elliott settled, and she’d made it pretty clear in emphatic, ancient German that she expected Dean to stay with her, which he had no idea he even needed until she was snugged up under his chin and huffing away softly in her sleep. He didn’t even mind when she started tossing and turning and ended up sideways on the queen sized mattress with her foot in his face. She didn’t hate him, and she seemed to be adjusting okay. His middle name was still “Guilt,” but at least he was able to get a good night’s sleep.

Adam wasn’t so lucky. When Dean staggered downstairs at seven o’clock with Lizzie in his arms, Emma following closely behind carrying Elliott, so they could start up breakfast and get the show on the road, he found his younger brother on the couch, neck bent awkwardly with only an insufficient pillow to provide him any comfort. He’d gone to sleep in his clothes, a thin blanket over him, and hadn’t even gotten out of his boots. Apparently there was trouble in his kid brother’s paradise, something he’d have no problem bringing up on the drive to Idaho but certainly wasn’t planning to broach before they had coffee. Winchesters had priorities, after all.

The smell of eggs, waffles, and sausage ( _Dean hoped someday he could stomach the smell of bacon again_ ) had Bobby and Ellen stumbling out of the downstairs bedroom in their bathrobes, the Winchester boys politely ignoring the swat Jo’s mom delivered to the old hunter’s butt as he bent over to get some milk out of the fridge. Bobby apologized about the condition of the couch, and Ellen said something about giving Jo time that got Adam nodding morosely into his coffee mug. Jo didn’t come downstairs at all, somehow still managing to layer the kitchen in ice and leave the younger Winchester brother shivering.

And Dean thought _his_ cold shoulder was good. He had nothing on Jo.

They lingered after breakfast a little longer than they knew they should have, mostly so Emma could drag Dean around the junkyard, her red wool coat disappearing and reappearing between the cars as they played tag in the chilly early autumn air, Hannah chasing after her with happy wufs that set Rumsfeld to barking several times. Adam wasn’t in any rush either, hoping to talk to Jo before they left and not succeeding, though at least Ellen was on his side if her sour expression over her daughter staying firmly locked behind her bedroom door was anything to go by. Bobby handed Adam a book he’d just gotten in on demon hierarchy, traps, and summoning rituals to give Dean some privacy while he nuzzled and scented both Lizzie and Elliott and barely succeeded in holding himself together. Bobby promised the babies were in the capable care of him and Aunt Ellen before giving them gruff pats on the back and sending them on their way in his late model Caddy. It wasn’t nearly as pretty as the Impala and it guzzled gas like a drunk, but it was the most comfortable long distance riding car he had and the trunk was already warded to keep their weapons nice and safe. Both boys got huge hugs from the six year old, who proclaimed in a heavy accent, “Back soon,” before they swung the car around and headed down the driveway, Dean popping an AC/DC tape into the ancient cassette deck to signal to his brother that he wasn’t expecting them to talk - yet.

Adam turned down Dean’s awful music and gave John a call as they pulled onto I-90, getting the location where they should meet him and word of the ghost in Broadus. Dean tried to cheer the kid up as they discussed the case, saying the town sounded too small to have a Bed, Bath and Beyond, so Adam was in luck, but Adam was plainly not in a mood he wanted lightened. He mumbled something about staying focused so neither of them died, and thinking there might be something useful in the new demonology text in his lap for helping Sam, before burying himself in Bobby’s book for a couple of hours and then falling asleep against the passenger door. He could tell Dean wanted to talk about what was going on with Jo, and he should probably take him up on it. While his older brother would rather have a root canal than talk about his own feelings, he’d always been perceptive and open when it came to what Adam was going through. Despite a confrontation with Azazel looming on the horizon, that hadn’t changed, but Adam really didn’t want to talk about anything beyond the case.

Because he didn’t have a clue what was going on with his girlfriend ( _if she even still_ **_was_ ** _his girlfriend_ ), and he didn’t want to burden his older brother with it when there was so much shit going on with Sam and whatever was happening with Jo really paled in comparison. She’d been tired and cranky the night before when she got home from work shortly after they arrived, and all he really knew was that she planned to stay at Bobby’s until she found an apartment in Sioux Falls and had called her old employer in Nebraska over a week ago to quit. When he asked where that left the two of them, she had unhelpfully said, “That’s up to you,” before disappearing into the bathroom to take her shower. With the third guest bedroom full of clutter, the twin beds covered in boxes, he’d ended up downstairs on the couch, his stomach tied in knots. He needed to take a page out of Dean’s book and lock it all down before they met up with John, otherwise things could and probably would go sideways, and then he’d never be able to figure out what the hell the deal was with Jo.

The problem was Adam wasn’t Dean, and he wasn’t good at locking shit down, and he had a broken wrist to show for it the next day by the time they’d managed to salt and burn the museum’s former manager, who’d been fired a day before dying in a particularly horrific car accident on his way to confront the board members that signed off on his dismissal. It landed them in the emergency room an hour away in Miles City, trying to get a hold of John before their cell phone batteries died and finding their calls going straight to voicemail. Much as they hated the idea of tacking another day onto their trip to meet up with their dad, knowing full well what was at stake, it was after one in the morning by the time Adam was released with a bright blue cast on his left arm and it was way too late to get on the road. So much for a simple job on the way out to Idaho.

Adam was out cold almost as soon as his head hit the pillow on his queen bed at the Shady Pines Motel, not even caring enough to check for mystery stains or bed bugs and sure as hell not bothering with a shower, no matter how much he needed one. Dean was putting the hunt into the FDH system with John’s details at the rickety table by the peeling green wallpaper while their phones charged, figuring he’d be able to use one of them to try John again when he got done washing off the cemetery dirt and grime, even if it was still plugged into the wall. He gave his brother’s foot a kick, asking if he was sure he didn’t want a shower and getting a grumbled half reply that was muffled almost completely by the pillow, before grabbing his toiletry kit and heading to the bathroom.

He took a little extra time under the hot water, trying to work the kinks out in his back and still the dull throbbing in his head from the first real physical exertion he’d forced his body through since Lilith almost cracked his skull open, and for the first time in a while didn’t rush through applying his scar cream, since there were no fussing babies demanding attention or slightly off-kilter mate who might get the wrong idea if he caught Dean lingering as he stretched himself to check how he was healing. A single finger was only slightly uncomfortable now, which was a definite improvement from when this all had started and he couldn’t even spread the cream without wincing. He realized bitterly that his internal injury was probably the best thing that ever happened to him, as he wasn’t likely to be able to trust Sam again much before he was healed and at least thus far the alpha had accepted that limitation to their relationship. That train of thought was a quick, one-way trip to the Kingdom of Self Pity though, so he switched the water off and grabbed the least threadbare towel he could find to fluff his hair into haphazard spikes and get enough moisture off of his skin that his boxer briefs and pajama bottoms wouldn’t stick.

The phones were half charged by the time he was back in the bedroom, clicking the light off quietly behind him as Adam’s quiet snores filled the room. He grabbed his to set an alarm, noticing the voicemail he had from the morning they started the hunt. Broadus didn’t have the best reception, so it must have been sitting out there in the ether waiting for the Winchester brothers to get somewhere it could download. Expecting to hear their father’s voice, Dean was quite surprised when the message was from Henry instead. Hearing that Sam was adamant something had happened with John and Dean shouldn’t meet him had Dean shaking Adam awake even as he grabbed his younger brother’s phone to see what the single voicemail there said. That it was a repeat of the message Henry left Dean had a cold weight forming in his stomach as Adam growled, “What?”

“Something’s wrong,” Dean said, pulling up his last call to John and hitting the redial button. The phone rang a seemingly endless number of times before going to his dad's voicemail and directing the caller to get in touch with Bobby. He hung up and tried again, muttering, “Come on Dad, answer your phone, dammit.”

“He’s probably just asleep,” Adam yawned. “What time is it, anyway?”

“He’s not asleep, Henry called, Sam says Dad’s in trouble.” The phone went to voicemail again as Adam rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and really started to pay attention. “Dammit!”

“How far are we from Last Chance?”

“I don’t know. Six, seven hours? I was gonna plot a route in the morning once he called back and told us where to meet him.”

Dean’s phone looked like it was about three seconds from meeting an untimely demise via motel room wall as the omega paced, his agitation evident as he tried to slow his breathing down. Adam wasn’t faring much better, trying to rein in the flood of worry crashing over him as he tried John’s phone himself, listened to Henry’s voicemail, then tried John’s phone again. No matter how strained their relationship was, the idea that something serious might have happened to their indestructible father was making it hard for Adam to think clearly.

“Try him again,” the beta ordered, swiping through his contacts to the bunker’s number. “He never picks up for me anyway, see if you can get him and I’m going to call Henry.”

“He should have called by now,” Dean said to himself, pinching the bridge of his nose against the headache trying to build behind his eyes, his heart racing and stomach lurching.

“Try him again!” Adam repeated as the bunker’s phone rang endlessly.

Dean hit the redial button once more, running through all the possible ways they could locate John in his head while he waited to see if the call picked up. They could pull up the GPS on his cell, and Bobby and Henry both knew tracking spells. Maybe they could tell if he was still alive, or…

“Your dad really screwed up this time,” said the male voice on the other end of the phone. It wasn’t John, but it sounded familiar, though Dean couldn’t quite place it.

Immediately he put it on speaker, waving to his brother as he demanded, “Who the hell is this?”

“Dean.” The omega could tell just by the tone that the man was pouting. “I’m hurt. Really, I am. After that special moment we shared right before you popped out Sam’s little bastard? Though of course he’s made an honest woman out of you by now.”

“Tom,” Dean growled as Adam mouthed “Who?” and Dean waved him off. “Where is he?”

The demon on the other end of the phone merely laughed, finally replying, “Oh Dean, Dean, Dean. You are never going to see your father again.”


	133. Oh Crap, Here We Go

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time to get Dad back.

It had been a long time since Adam felt like a little kid around his brother, particularly with everything that had happened in the past year and how much help Dean had needed with all his health problems, but now, as he stared at the omega’s clenched jaw and flashing gold eyes, he just wanted Dean to fix things. He wanted Dean to protect him and save their dad and kill whatever boogeyman was on the other end of the line answering John’s phone. He wanted to be four years old again with no idea that monsters existed, instead of sitting in this crappy motel room with the water stained ceiling with a broken wrist and older brother who appeared to be on the verge of snapping his cell phone in half with his bare hands. He hoped to god that Dean was working on some kind of plan, because Adam was having a hard time remembering how to form words.

“Listen, you black eyed son of a bitch,” the omega snarled, sounding a lot more confident than he felt. His stomach and heart were competing for space in his throat, and he was just glad that Adam was a beta and couldn’t smell how scared out of his mind he was right now. “You’ve got one chance to let him go, or I swear…”

“You swear what, Dean?” Tom laughed. “That you’ll kill me? I _dare_ you to try. Oh hey, how’s Miles City? I’ve never been, but I hear it’s lovely this time of year.”

The call cut off and Dean’s phone finally did make the acquaintance of the wall, the older Winchester son stalking around the room with his hands digging at his hair. Adam watched him dumbly, his brain still trying to grasp the concept that their father had been taken by something, and with six hours at least between them and his last known location the odds were good that they wouldn’t find him alive. He hadn’t managed to move or speak by the time Dean went to their duffels and began to hastily pack.

“What are you doing?” he ground out as his older brother picked up the pieces of his phone and chucked them in with his dirty clothes from the hunt, caught for a moment as he wavered over whether he should change back into proper clothing and deciding sweats were sufficient.

“We need to get out of here,” Dean told him, not even bothering with socks before shoving his feet back into his boots. “He knows we’re here, they’re going to be coming for us.”

“Who’s ‘he’?”

“Tom. Azazel’s son.”

“Azazel. When Sam left with Dad after Elliott was born he said that name. Is he the Prince of Hell?”

“Yep. You remember that demon that tried to kill us in Windom?”

“Yeah…”

“That was Meg, Tom’s sister. They’re both kinda pissed about her dying. And of course they want Sam. Grab your stuff.”

Adam didn’t need to be told twice, tossing his phone and charger back into his duffel before swinging it over his shoulder as he followed Dean out to the car at a jog. Dean left the engine running while he ran into the office to return the keys to the room, telling Adam to get Bobby on the phone as they peeled out onto the highway and veered south towards Wyoming. While they could easily be moving in the opposite direction John had been taken, with a Prince of Hell and his son on their tail it seemed like a good idea to head to the least populous state in the country. Fewer civilians meant fewer potential meatsuits for demons to possess.

Bobby was decidedly unhappy about being awakened in the middle of the night until he heard the panic in Adam’s voice and found out what was going on with John. Rufus Turner had an old hunting cabin north of Gillette, and Bobby gave them directions so they could hole up while he broke out the items he was going to need for a tracking spell and see if he could find something of their father’s to let him home in on the alpha’s location, down to the street. Dean was positive John had left a couple of shirts behind after the pharmacy parking lot incident and told the beta to check the closet in his room. Hell, John’s leather coat might still even be tucked away somewhere. It had been one of the only things that had allowed Dean to sleep back in those early days of learning what panic attacks and morning sickness felt like.

Rufus’ cabin turned out to be little more than a shack, not even possessing proper indoor plumbing, just a line that ran from a spring into the kitchen, such as it was, and an honest-to-god outhouse about thirty yards from the back door along a stone path that made it easy to find in the dark. There was a single bedroom that didn’t have a door with what barely qualified as a bed, and a sofa in the living area right off of the kitchen that had definitely seen better days. The pot bellied stove looked to be about a hundred years old and served as the sole source of heat, as well as the only way to cook anything. A pile of well dried wood was still there ready to be used, and for being as old and decrepit as it was, the place was surprisingly clean aside from the expected layer of dust on everything after years of disuse.

They still had about two hours before sunrise, Dean taking the couch after losing the coin toss ( _he insisted it wasn’t fair to play rock-paper-scissors with a gimp_ ), laying down salt lines and starting a fire to ward off the chill before collapsing with his duffel pillowed under his head. He could already hear Adam snuffling in his sleep as he closed his eyes and hoped he wouldn’t have any dreams. As spent as his body was after the salt and burn ( _how had that been less than twelve hours ago_?), taking care of Adam’s arm, and fleeing Montana he didn’t have much to worry about in that department, falling into a heavy, inky darkness mere minutes after his eyes slid closed.

Neither man woke until almost noon, the fire having long since died along with the battery to Adam’s phone. Fortunately the day was mild and they had a car charger that gave them enough juice to get Bobby’s voicemail to call him ASAP as they headed into Gillette to grab some food. It would have been safer, probably, to eat the canned food in the cupboards, since it wasn’t that old, but neither of them felt like having baked beans for breakfast.

Cowpoke’s seemed to be the safest bet for food, set up on the edge of town and boasting a mostly empty parking lot, which the Winchesters figured had something to do with the menu and overall atmosphere that didn’t give them confidence the place had passed any recent health inspections. It was Old West themed, right down to the grimy film on the tables and the faint smell of manure clinging to the wooden floors, but beggars couldn’t exactly be choosers. Dean and Adam seated themselves at the corner table farthest from the door, the two alphas at the counter lifting their heads to sniff the air and glancing over in the direction of the brothers, openly trying to decide if the omega was worth pursuing regardless of the claim mark on his neck. Dean had never felt so stupid for not wearing scent blockers, having gotten used to not needing them now that he smelled like Sam’s. Of course, he hadn’t been with Sam in weeks now, hadn’t even been able to touch him, and he was glad he’d strapped on the demon blade since he undoubtedly smelled like Sam wasn’t making regular deposits to his bank account anymore.

“What can I get’cha?” the waitress barked at them, looking affronted that she’d had to move all the way across the dining room to take their order. Her name tag read “Eunice,” and she definitely looked the part.

“Two coffees, two orange juices,” Dean replied, setting down the menu and flashing her a smile. It had surprisingly little effect. He must be slipping now that he was mated. “I’ll have a short stack with the corned beef hash.”

“I’ll have the same,” Adam said, and Eunice turned on her sizeable heel to plod her way over to the kitchen, menus tucked beneath her fleshy arm. As he dialed Bobby’s number, he asked, “You think those alphas at the counter are going to be a problem?”

“Maybe.” Eunice clunked down their coffee cups and silverware, sloshing the overly dark and bitter smelling liquid onto their paper napkins and rendering them useless before the food even arrived. Dean tried his smile on her again and got the same unimpressed result. “We’ve got bigger things to worry about.”

Bobby picked up the phone as Eunice all but tossed their plates in front of them, one of Dean’s pancakes flopping onto the table. He hoped like hell she wasn’t expecting a tip. Bobby had managed to track John down to Laramie, and was in the process of giving Adam the street when Eunice came back over to demand if everything was okay and whether they needed more coffee. Dean retorted, “Food’s fine, but I am wondering if everyone who comes in here gets this gold star treatment or if it’s just our lucky day?”

“We don’t take kindly to oms who don’t know their place around here,” she snarled back, slapping the check down on the table. “Especially mated ones runnin’ around on their alphas with a damn beta.”

The glint in her eye and the way the alphas at the bar both swung around to stare at their table sent a loud, clear message that things were on the verge of going south. Dean highly doubted it would matter to anyone that they were actually brothers, just as he highly doubted their food was free from bodily fluids. It was very clearly their cue to get the hell out of Gillette.

Dean flung down just enough money to cover the tab, grabbing Adam’s shoulder and dragging him back to the car as his stomach growled and the beta finished up his conversation with Bobby. He would have preferred dealing with demons first thing in the morning instead of just assholes. Demons he could either exorcise or kill. He couldn’t even punch Eunice ( _she was a big girl - she could take it_ ) without ending up in a holding cell.

Adam was scribbling down the street Bobby gave him when the phone rang again, **Bunker** lighting up on his screen. Henry must have figured out how the answering machine worked and got Adam’s message from the night before to call them about Dad. Dean was already headed for the Wendy’s at the end of the block to get them something to eat they could be reasonably sure no one had spit in, despite how open to attack sitting in a line of cars would leave them, and Adam put the phone on speaker as he said, “Hey Henry, sorry for calling so late last night.”

“ _Hey Adam_.”

Sam’s voice on the other end of the line sounded tired and thick, nearly causing Dean to drive into the microphone box as they pulled around to order. He straightened the wheel just in time, his knuckles white as he started running through ten different scenarios that could have resulted in Sam breaking out of the demon cell. He prayed Henry was still alive as he ordered their breakfast and tried to think of how fast Bobby’s car would go. Now that Sam was out, they really  needed to find their dad and kill Yellow Eyes.

“Sam.” Adam did his best to keep his voice light, switching off the speaker and moving the phone to his ear as he reached out to give Dean’s arm a reassuring squeeze as best he could with the cast. “Henry give you time off for good behavior?”

“ _More like he let me out so I wouldn’t gnaw my leg off_.” Adam heard a clanking in the background that sounded more than slightly like Sam was chained up, and he barely managed to contain a sigh of relief. “ _Can I...talk to Dean_?”

Adam glanced over at his brother’s clenched jaw and blanched skin as Dean forced himself to wait patiently for the line of cars pulling up to the window to pick up their food, and replied, “He’s driving and I really don’t want to distract him. We’re both kinda high strung at the moment.”

“ _About John_?”

“Yeah. We had kind of a rough time and breakfast, too. Apparently the town we’re in expects mated omegas to walk around on leashes, so...”

“ _Is he...are you two okay_?”

Adam’s eyes shifted to his brother again, Dean still resolutely staring straight ahead. He wished he’d left the call on speakerphone so the omega could hear how...well... _Sam_ -like the alpha sounded. Whatever Henry was doing seemed to be keeping the demon blood under wraps. Either that or Sam had been in the cell long enough to quell it like they’d hoped. It was possible his friend was faking the concern in his voice, but Sam had never been that good of an actor; certainly not the times Adam had seen him really off the rails. A part of him wanted to just turn the phone over to Dean, who was openly struggling in his attempts to pretend he didn’t care that Sam was on the other end of the line, except Dean was already dangerously close to the bumper of the car in front of them and after the chilly reception they’d received in the diner the last thing they needed was for the omega to rear-end someone in a Wendy’s drive through.

“We’re okay,” he finally replied. “Though we’ll be better once we get Dad back.”

“ _You know where he is_?”

“We have a rough idea.”

“ _Look, Adam, I know it’s your dad but...it’s_ **_not_ ** _safe for the two of you to try to get him back_.”

“Did you have another dream?”

“ _Yes. It didn’t make a lot of sense, all I know is that he’s surrounded by demons and they know you have the Colt. It’s the whole reason they took him instead of just killing him. And the sunrise...it’s dangerous somehow_.”

Even though he was busy paying for their meal, Dean didn’t miss the third sideways glance his younger brother cast in his direction, and he grabbed the phone out of Adam’s hand. Those asshats at the diner had gotten under his skin far more than he’d let on, the need to put on a brave face for his kid brother always at the front of his mind. He’d wanted to tell Eunice where she and everyone else there could shove their backwards notions about omegas needing to have their alpha with them just to walk out the front door when all he could think about was how badly he wanted his alpha with him. He was trying so hard to act like he was okay with the way things were between him and his mate, that he was just ducky sleeping in a different room in a different bed that didn’t smell like Sam at all, but it had been weeks since he'd been able to slot himself up against his alpha and he felt completely hollow. He’d snagged the only two dirty shirts of Sam’s he could find to wear on this trip, upset to no end that he’d just done laundry the day before Sam’s ultimatum about Emma when everything fell apart, and had very seriously considered bringing his mate’s pillow, only he had no idea how he’d justify that to Adam. Not that he thought he’d need to - Adam wouldn’t give him shit about it - he just wasn’t sure if he’d be allowed to keep his man card if he got much more desperate to be with Sam. A phone conversation might be enough to dull the constant ache inside him these days, or it might inflame it until it consumed him. Either way, he wasn’t going to know if he never tried.

“Sammy,” he said quietly, inching the car forward and grabbing the bags from the teenaged alpha who definitely needed a job that didn’t require him to be around so much frying oil, judging by the blemishes covering half his face.

Sam sucked in a breath on the other end of the line, and for several long seconds Dean wondered if he’d hung up. Adam had already grabbed the food from him so he could keep one hand on the wheel as they pulled out into traffic and headed south, the other hand occupied with keeping the phone pinned to his ear while he waited for his alpha to respond. After barely visiting him in the cell and then taking the kids, he could only imagine the response he was going to get now that they were talking - or at least attempting to.

“ _Dean_.”

The alpha breathed out his name solemnly, like a prayer, and the omega’s chest tightened at the sound. He hadn’t heard Sam sound like that in close to a month, and it made the aching emptiness within him that much worse. It doubled his resolve to find his dad and kill Azazel just so that voice was never buried again under anger and darkness and demon blood, though at the same time he wanted nothing more than to drive back home to Lebanon and bury his nose in Sam’s hair. He swallowed hard, tightening his grip on both the steering wheel and the phone as he pushed down a swell of tears that tried to seal his throat closed.

“Hey, we...uh...we appreciate you calling but we’re in good shape,” Dean said, aiming for assertive and missing by a mile. “We’ve got the Colt and a plan to get to Dad, and then we’ll take out Yellow Eyes and this will all be in the rearview mirror. And we can have our lives back.”

“ _Dean, there are at least a dozen demons watching him_. _You can’t take out that many. There aren’t enough bullets for all of them_.”

“We’ve got the knife, too. We’re not...we’re not gonna do anything stupid, okay? We’ll be careful.”

“ _Baby…_ ”

“Gotta go, Sam.”

He hung up before he could break down completely, tossing Adam the phone and digging into the bag for one of the cheeseburgers and some fries even though he’d lost his appetite. No wonder his dad tried to get him out of this life; set him up with someone who was at least decent. Look at him now, working a case where John’s life was on the line and Dean was seconds from falling apart after talking to Sam for less than a minute. Just a weak little omega pining for his mate. Goddamned emotions.

The four hour drive to Laramie flew by in a relatively silent three and a half. Adam told his brother about the sunrise being dangerous, something neither of them could figure out without further context. That came as they were walking the block Bobby’s spell had pinpointed and spotted the Sunrise Apartment complex; a relatively small three storey building smack dab in the middle of the block across from a tiny little park that gave them minimal cover for surveillance. A number of people were milling around - a couple of families with small children and some more people walking their dogs - and it was after five o’clock already so people were going to start getting home from work, which greatly complicated things. Short of Dean walking up to sniff everyone, Adam tossing holy water on everyone they walked by, swiping Dean’s EMF meter around like they were checking for radiation, or both of them muttering “Christo” as they entered the building, there would be no way to tell who had a demon riding shotgun. None of their methods for demon detection were subtle enough to work when Azazel’s foot soldiers were bound to be looking for Dean. As frustrating as it had been to the younger Winchester brother that the omega had kept him in the dark about what was really going on with Sam for so long, it looked like keeping him out of the mess might have been the smartest thing Dean had done since Meg came for them in Windom as Adam spotted a fire hydrant in front of the building and got an idea.

Adam decided that if he left the bunker anytime soon, it was definitely not going to be to move into the Sunrise Apartments in Laramie. The security doors in the front of the building weren’t even locked, and there were no surveillance cameras anywhere on the block to catch someone sneaking in to set off the fire alarm. The one thing it did have going for it was the overhead sprinkler system and after he’d pulled the little red lever just down the hall off the front door, he was able to duck down another hallway and get up on his tiptoes with his lighter, ending up drenched with all the slightly panicked residents rushing to escape the building. It would give them extra cover once the firefighters showed up if the throng of people gathering on the sidewalk was uncomfortable and distracted by wet clothing.

The fire trucks pulled up in under seven minutes, and Adam - soaked through like everyone else - hurried up to one of the firefighters to blather on about his yorkie with a nervous bladder who was still inside and was going to pee everywhere if they wouldn’t let him go upstairs. While he was being the most annoying version of himself Dean had ever seen, the omega ducked behind one of the fire trucks with his lockpick kit to get at the cabinet with the spare gear in it. In a matter of minutes he’d snagged two full sets of firefighting gear complete with helmets and masks, grabbing Adam from the crowd and heading between buildings to suit up.

The actual fire department managed to get the sprinklers turned off as they were climbing the stairs to the second storey, the EMF silent the whole of the first floor, though Dean hedged on whether or not it would actually work with water pouring down over them. He’d never tested it in water and it _was_ made from an old walkman, so it was possible that setting off the sprinklers hadn’t been such a great idea after all. They were just starting to get really worried that the EMF meter was toast when they reached the last apartment at the back of the building on the second floor and the lights started going wild. The normal beeping that would have accompanied that high of a reading didn’t sound, so it appeared they had half-killed Dean’s MacGyvered contraption. Still, the lights were enough for the brothers to agree they were at the right apartment, and the omega rapped loudly on the door, announcing, “Fire department! We need everyone to evacuate the building!”

He stowed the EMF in the duffel he was carrying as a chair slid back somewhere on the other side of the door and they listened to the approaching footfalls. Dean swept Adam behind him as the beta pulled a large flask filled with holy water out of Dean’s duffel seconds before the deadbolt clicked and the knob turned. The omega slammed his shoulder against the door, splintering the frame and sending the man on the other side stumbling backwards across the room into the dining room table by the kitchenette, where a seated woman was starting towards them, her eyes black as she roared. Adam was striding forward instantly as the man was recovering, flinging streams of the holy water into their faces with a high arc of the flask. The demons’ skin sizzled and smoked as they recoiled from the hunters, flailing, directly towards a large coat closet. Dean yanked it open and shoved them inside, slamming it behind him and throwing his body against the door to keep it closed as Adam dug through their supplies for the salt.

“Any day now, Runt,” he growled, the demons flinging themselves on the other side of the door as Adam found the canister and hurried to lay a thick line between his brother’s feet and the closet.

“Maybe if you didn’t pack half the car in this thing I’d be able to get at what I need,” Adam growled back while they stripped out of the fire suits as quickly as they could.

“Salt the apartment door in case anyone tries to join the party,” Dean ordered as he headed for the hallway that led to the bathroom and bedroom. Adam was just finishing with the salt when he heard his brother exclaim, “Dad!”

The beta rushed to catch up to Dean where he was in the bedroom, John spread-eagled and tied to the bed posts, his face badly bruised and a terrible gash on his forehead leaving him pretty well covered in blood. Adam couldn’t breathe, never having seen his father look so vulnerable. He tried to think of a time before this that he’d recognized John Winchester was a mortal man capable of being hurt and came up empty, running to the opposite side of the bed to start working on the ropes binding his feet.

“Wait -” Dean said as soon as he saw what his brother was doing.

“Wait?” Adam demanded. “Dean, he’s got a head injury! We’ve got to get him out of here and see how bad it is, he might need a hospital!”

“He could be possessed,” Dean insisted. “The holy water. Now, Adam!”

The younger man felt like an idiot for forgetting one of the basic rules of victim recovery; checking at least with silver, holy water, and salt to make sure it _was_ the victim. It was a good thing he was out of the game, since he wouldn’t last long making rookie mistakes like that. He unscrewed the cap from the flask and dumped a generous amount over John’s shirt, holding his breath as he waited to see if it burned. Nothing happened, and after a minute or so John muttered blearily, “Adam, why are you pouring water on me?”

“Dad?” Dean asked as Adam returned to his task of untying their father. “Are you okay? How’s your head?”

“Painful,” John rasped, sitting up with their Dean’s help once his hands were free. “Turns out getting slammed into a wall by a demon ain’t the thrill ride it’s cracked up to be. I don’t remember much after that.”

“It’s okay, we’ll get you checked out,” Adam told him, coming around to get under his other arm so the two Winchester boys could haul John to his feet. “What are we thinking? Fire escape?”

“Well, I didn’t see a back door and going out the front seems like a really bad idea, what with the crowd and the fire department,” Dean replied as the three of them stumbled over to the bedroom window and lifted the sash so they could climb out.

Trying to get a half conscious John down the drop ladder was an interesting experience and one neither brother wanted to repeat anytime soon. Dean led the way, his omega status affording him just enough extra strength to get John on his feet on the pavement without either of them falling over, Adam hurrying down the rungs right behind them. Adam took John’s weight once he got to the ground, Dean adjusting the duffel on his back and taking a second to check the direction of the sun and figure out which way they needed to go to get back to Bobby’s car over near the railroad tracks. He waved his brother after him as he headed down the alley towards the rear of the building, stopping in his tracks at the sight of the dark haired man who climbed out of a Cobalt parked by a dumpster at the far side of the complex.

“Hey Dean,” he said, smiling broadly as he approached, looking the omega over hungrily. “I gotta say, you’re much more attractive without the baby weight or the bleeding to death.”

“Tom,” John rasped a second before Dean was flung into one of the other cars parked along the side of the neighboring building, smashing the rear window and leaving a serious dent in the trunk lid.

Adam shouted, “Dean!” and bolted for him, caught mid-stride by the demon, who thrust out an arm to toss the beta into the side of the Sunrise. John followed his younger son and was similarly thrown as Tom advanced down the alley towards Adam, who was slowly getting to his feet, coughing against the pain spreading through his ribs.

“Well, well, well,” Tom growled, his eyes flicking back from black and flashing as he took Adam in from head to toe. “Who do we have here? Can it be Baby Brother Winchester himself? I didn’t think you were going to be part of this little gathering.”

“Fuck you,” Adam snarled, regretting his chosen retort instantly as Tom’s fist connected with his nose and sent his head bouncing back against the wall behind him.

“You really are a Winchester,” Tom laughed before raining down blows on the beta, knocking him to the ground and straddling him as Adam felt the skin on his cheek split under the demon’s knuckles.

Adam was fairly certain he could hear his brother and his father screaming his name, but the whole world turned blurry fairly quickly as his ears began to ring and his vision swam under the demon’s assault. He tried to fend Tom off, feebly attempting to buck him up and away, but holy hell, demons were stronger than he could ever have imagined. He had a brief reprieve when Dean tackled Tom into the brick wall of the apartment building, hearing the meaty thunk of his brother’s fists colliding with the demon’s face, and somehow Adam found the coordination necessary to roll onto his hands and knees and try to crawl away. Seconds later Dean yelped and there was the sound of breaking glass, then Tom was on him again, slamming Adam’s face into the ground. It occurred to the beta that this was probably the way he was going to die when a shot rang out, followed by what sounded like an electrical surge above him, and the demon slumped forward onto him, the front of his forehead blown out by the bullet that had just pierced the back of his skull.

“Adam!” He felt the body being rolled away, then Dean was there, flipping him onto his back and starting to clean off the blood and get a better look at his injuries. “Jesus, Jo’s gonna read me the riot act for letting that asshole mess up your face like this.”

“Jo…’s pissed a’ me…” Adam mumbled, his mouth unwilling to comply; not surprising when it was entirely possible his jaw was broken.

“Yeah, we’ll get her past that,” Dean said, wincing as he dragged Adam up from the pavement. “Dad, can you walk?”

“I can stagger,” John replied, struggling to his feet and trailing after his sons. “Where are we headed?”

“I know a place we can try between here and Medicine Bow,” Dean told him, swinging the duffel onto his free shoulder. “Vamps attacked the owner last year. That tends to kill the resale value. I’m betting it’s still vacant, and it’s a hell of a lot more secure than an alley.”

“All right then,” John said, getting his younger son’s other arm slung over his shoulders to help hold Adam up while giving himself something to lean on. “Lead the way.”

Dean nodded, doing just that and weaving them through back alleys all the way back to where they’d parked the car near the rail lines. The omega was grateful he and Sam had spent so much time in the city the year before that he still vaguely remembered where the railroad was in relation to everything else, tamping down on the intense desire to call Sam as soon as they were out of town and beg him to come meet them. His side was burning with every breath where he’d hit the first car, his head beginning to throb from where he’d hit the second car, and he was hoping Adam would be a little more lucid by the time they got to Daniel Elkins’ ranch so he could take some of his pain killers. He also hoped his guess that the place was still vacant turned out to be right, as he’d probably have to give a couple of the pills to whichever one of his family members was worse off and that would leave them stuck until they’d recovered some. Being out in the open when all three of them were undoubtedly dealing with concussions wasn’t the best position to be in and killing Tom wasn’t exactly the sort of thing that would get Azazel off their backs. Dean would prefer not to be facing Yellow Eyes alone if he had a choice. He didn’t though, so he shoved his need for his mate to the back of his mind and focused on getting his dad and his brother away from Laramie.

Unfortunately, when he shoved his need for Sam to the back of his mind, the nagging little voice he should have been listening to, telling him they were getting away far too easily, went right along with it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It always bothered me that Sam had to tell Dean their dad might be possessed. Dean's not a moron.


	134. Nothing Can Kill My Dad

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nothing good happens at the Elkins ranch.

The year and change since Dean and Sam had checked out what remained of the Elkins ranch after its owner had been killed by a vampire nest, along with all his cattle, had not been kind to the home’s structural integrity. Daniel Elkins had no relatives to inherit the property and he’d owned his house and his land outright so there was no bank interested in making sure the back half of the building where the vampires had broken in through the ceiling and the windows got repaired, and after a long, harsh winter it seemed the best course of action to holing up was closing off the bedroom and bathroom entirely and laying salt in front of the interior and exterior doors and windows. The floorboards were warped where snow had blown in, and it looked like mold had started spreading down the walls even past the area they were blocking off. The kitchen and living room had a fine sheen of dust over all the furniture, clearly animal life had taken up residence throughout the winter judging by all the droppings left behind, and the number of dead bugs who’d made their way inside and never left was enough to make anyone’s skin crawl. At least the electricity was still on so they had light in the open concept living room and kitchen ( _though why the electricity was still on confused all three men_ ), making all entrances and exits to the space visible. They silently shared the relief that Elkins lived in a small house. It would be easier to defend.

John had gotten steadier on the forty minute drive to the Elkins ranch, so he was in charge of helping Adam inside while Dean hid the car in the barn and brought in their supplies. Dean gave Adam two of his pain killers as soon as he got to the house and got him settled down on the sofa before he started locking them down for the night. Once the salt lines were laid, he plunked his duffel down on the rickety kitchen table with a heavy “thud,” worrying briefly that the ancient piece of furniture might collapse under the weight, then proceeded to clean up his brother’s face as best he could with no real cleaning supplies to speak of outside of a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. A few minutes of painful palpating from his older brother revealed that the beta, shockingly, did not appear to have any broken bones; not even the one eye socket that was completely swollen shut. While normally he might have started to bristle a little at his sibling’s obsessive mother henning once he moved past Adam’s face, he could tell by the set to Dean’s jaw that checking his kid brother over head to toe was something the omega desperately needed to do, and bit his tongue as Dean was methodically checking his scalp for any cuts or indentations.

Dean was doing his best not to let the memory of the hunt with Sam overwhelm him and Adam was an excellent way to distract from the unwelcome thoughts. They’d passed a couple of places in Laramie that the two had stopped to interview people as the faux newly-mated alpha and omega that had gotten so many “aws” out of those with whom they spoke. They’d even passed Hal’s Diner, Dean tempted to stop in and see if Dolores still worked there in spite of it being the scene of his first flashback, having no idea she’d been murdered over a year ago and they’d never caught her killer. Being back at the Elkins ranch where they’d started on the trail of the vampire nest was a lot of nostalgia to try to deal with when they were on the run from demons and Sam was still locked up back home. He kept his focus on getting his brother taken care of so he could start a fire in the hearth to keep them from freezing throughout the night, hoping his game face was more convincing than it felt and doubting it was when Adam reached out to give his arm a comforting squeeze.

Dean’s pills definitely helped Adam feel better, even if he was pretty sure he had a couple of cracked molars and wouldn’t be able to go back to work for a while. John was over by the living room windows, having found and cleaned off an arm chair that appeared to be in decent shape so he could play at being a sentinel, even with the gash still an angry red where the skin was split on his forehead. He’d gotten his face cleaned up himself, his profile stoic as he watched for any signs they’d been followed while his eldest son left his fledgling fire in the hearth to find a pitcher to fill with water from the kitchen sink ( _the water was still on, too – Dean counted his lucky stars that Wyoming was really slacking in getting utilities turned off in abandoned houses_ ), dropping in a rosary and repeating the Latin incantation that would purify the water and make it holy.

“See anyone?” Dean asked as he started refilling the flasks from his duffel bag, getting out their remaining salt canisters as well. They were down to only two after sealing off the windows and doors and once he had the holy water set he started rummaging through the cupboards for supplies.

“No, I don’t think we were followed,” John replied, dropping the curtain back and heading to the couch to check on Adam. “How are you feeling?”

“I’ll survive,” Adam told him with a half smile that he instantly regretted. “I don’t think my modeling career will ever be the same, though.”

“Well, I hate to break it to you, but Dean got all the looks in this family anyway,” John laughed, clapping him on the shoulder before straightening with a wince to look at his older son, whose movement had stilled as he regarded his father. “What about you, Dean? You okay? You took some hard hits back there.”

“Nothin’ I haven’t had before,” Dean replied gruffly, returning to the supplies on the table. “Hey, you uh…you think there was someone in there with Tom? A person still?”

“I dunno,” John said, shrugging. “Does it matter? He was beating your brother to death. You did what you had to do.”

“I know.” Dean gave a shrug of his own. “It’s just…I’ve _been_ that person, you know? And if it hadn’t been Sam with me when it happened, if it’d been another hunter I’d be dead. And that guy - I didn’t hesitate. Didn’t even flinch. The things I’m willing to do for my family, that line I’ve drawn between us and everything else? The stuff I’ll let slide when it’s us, the way I’ll just kill anything that’s a threat…It scares me sometimes. Guess it’s a good thing I’m getting out of the business.”

“That’s just because you’re an omega, son,” John told him gently, heading for the kitchen table where Dean had all the supplies laid out. Dean cast a glance at his younger brother, not sure what to make of their father’s statement, and found Adam’s eyes just as confused.

“Because I’m an omega?” Dean echoed carefully, his left hand coming to rest on one of the salt canisters as John continued to slowly approach him. “Since when do we just…talk about my designation instead of acting like it doesn’t exist?”

“Since now.” The alpha had reached the table and was regarding his son with a soft smile. “I know it’s gotta be hard not having Sam with you. You didn’t say much about what’s going on with him, but I know it’d be easier if he were here, helping to ground you, so you could understand that you did good.”

Dean kept his focus on his father, even as Adam was sitting up carefully on the couch so the old springs didn’t squeak as the beta asked, “You’re not mad?”

“For what?” John countered, turning to his younger son, who quickly schooled his features into something that didn’t look half as nervous as he felt.

“Dean used a bullet,” Adam said. “He told me you need that gun to kill the demon that killed his mom. There are only so many bullets and he used one to save me.”

“Why would I be mad about that?” John’s tone was still intimate, gentle, soothing even as he moved the few feet back to the sofa to look down at the beta who was currently glad his face was such a mess so his emotions wouldn’t be so easily read. “Dean’s always been the one to protect you. Even when you were just a baby. I should have known then he was going to be an omega. Should have been prouder of that. He’s always watched out for this family.”

“Thanks,” Dean said quietly as he tucked a flask into the pocket of his jacket and pulled it out at the hem to cover the Colt in his waistband, picking up the demon blade to sheath on his hip before heading over to the couch to check on Adam. He gave the beta’s arm a squeeze, helping him to his feet as John took in the salt and the water, then casually looked through the remaining contents of the duffel.

“I haven’t told you boys how proud I am of you, have I?” he asked, his voice low as he glanced over his shoulder at his sons where they stood close to the door, Dean standing with Adam pressed against his back.

“No sir,” Adam replied, tensing at the smile that split John’s face a few seconds before the wind picked up outside and the lights started to flicker.

The alpha whirled to look at them, then ran back to the front windows to look outside again as the brothers sidestepped him, Dean urging his brother back towards the table with a hand fisted into Adam’s shirt. John scanned the area, scowling, a low growl echoing through the room.

“Shit,” he hissed. “It found us. It’s here.”

“Yeah, we know,” Dean said, grabbing the Colt from his waistband and leveling it at the man standing in front of him. “And you’re not our dad.”

John turned to his boys, incredulous, as Dean pressed the demon knife into Adam’s hand. For good measure, Adam also grabbed a canister of salt from the table and flicked off the lid, both young men fully prepared for whatever the thing masquerading as their father was going to dish out. Dean had to hand it to whatever it was. It had John’s affronted glare down pat.

“What are you talking about?” John demanded, advancing a few steps only to have the omega cock the gun at him. The elder brother’s lower lip trembled as he pressed himself into Adam’s chest and hip, which Adam certainly didn’t mind when he was busy trying to press himself into Dean’s back. Presenting the most united front possible seemed the obvious path to take. “Dean, it’s me! You know it’s me!” The lights flickered again, dangerously so, almost plunging them into darkness for a few seconds, and John took a few hasty steps towards them. Dean barely suppressed a whimper as Adam sucked in his breath. “Dean, give me the gun before that thing gets here.”

“I salted the doors and windows myself,” Dean shot back, his free hand tightening on Adam’s shirt. “The only way something’s getting in is if it’s already here.”

“Give me the gun,” John snapped. The omega shook his head. “What are you doing, Dean?”

“My dad would never say he’s proud I’m an omega,” Dean spat, his chin quivering as his voice wobbled. “Pretty sure the second worst day of his life was when I didn’t present as an alpha or a beta. And it was probably a real close second to when my mom died. The only time he ever even _mentioned_ my designation was to ask if I was taking my suppressants. And he sure as hell wouldn’t thank me for raising Adam, cuz to him that was just me following orders. I know my dad, better than anyone. And you are not him.”

“What the hell’s gotten into you?” John roared, glaring from Dean to Adam and back again. “All that time with Dick Roman must’ve really screwed with your head, making you think everyone’s out to get you!”

“How do you know who had him?” Adam demanded, moving a step in front of his brother as he felt Dean start to shake and saw the color draining from his skin.

“What are you talking about?” John shot back. “Dean told me!”

“No, see, Sam may be Dean’s mate, but he’s my best friend, and I distinctly remember him ranting to me about what a piece of shit you are that you never even asked either of them what happened to Dean with the OPS,” Adam said. “Dean’s right, you’re not Dad. You’re a shifter, or you’re a revenant, or you’re possessed. And I think you’ve been possessed since we rescued you.”

“The two of you have lost your damn minds,” John growled. “Dean, if you want to kill the demon that killed your mother, you’ve gotta trust me.”

Dean shook his head, swallowing hard and clenching his jaw as he ground out, “No.”

John dropped his head to his chest, staring at the floor and releasing a heavy sigh as his sons held their breath, waiting for him to make a move. The lights flickered again and the wind howled outside, then everything went completely still as John lifted his face to look at them again, his eyes yellow with thin black slits for pupils.

“Well, can’t say I didn’t try,” he hissed as he jerked his chin and the brothers went flying, Adam into the sink behind them and Dean over into the fridge. “Should’ve just used my alpha voice, I guess.”

The omega recovered first, reaching for the Colt on the floor as his younger brother was crumpling to the ground from his kidneys making direct contact with the counter, and with the tiniest flick of his wrist the demon was dragging Dean across the floor by one foot and pinning him to the wall by the front door. Adam tried to go for the gun next, and found himself trapped face down against the floor, his father’s boots coming into view as Yellow Eyes came for the gun. Adam tried to twist his head around to see his brother, but from his position on the floor could only see his legs where he dangled, struggling to break Azazel’s hold on him.

“What a pain in the ass this thing has been,” he grumbled as he picked the gun up and laid it on the table in view of both boys but well out of their reach. “I gotta say though, it seems fitting that this is all happening in Elkins’ house, since that bastard is the one who had it all those years.”

“Dad’s been looking for you a long time,” Dean growled.

“Well,” Azazel laughed. “He found me! He’s all cozy up in here, too. Though I gotta tell you Dean, that’s some fucked up shit you were sayin’ about him. Just how bad of a father is he that he’s never said he’s proud of the two of you? Children need praise.”

“Yeah, I’m sure Meg and Tom would nominate you for father of the year, right?” Dean snarked. “Let’s ask them! Oh. Whoops.”

“What about the holy water?” Adam demanded when he saw the glare the demon had leveled at his brother. Sometimes he really wished Dean would keep his witty retorts to himself.

“You think something like that works on something like me?” Azazel asked with a grin. “Don’t try to answer that, it’s rhetorical.” He moved away from Adam towards the front door as the beta tried to stretch his fingers out enough to grab the table leg and pull it closer, keeping an eye on Dean’s legs until the demon had moved between them and all he could see was his brother’s left foot. “If I can hide my scent, I sure as hell can shake of a little water. I have to tell you Dean, this is fun. I could’ve killed you a hundred times today, but having you here, like this? All alone in the middle of nowhere, where no one’s gonna find your bodies for months maybe? This is worth the wait.”

“Monologuing,” Dean grunted. “My favorite part of the big showdown.”

“So funny, Dean,” Azazel snarled. “Cuz that’s your armor and shield, right? Toss a joke out here, a comeback there to mask all that nasty, nasty pain. You’re just full of it after the way the world’s chewed you up and spit you out before you even hit thirty. John likes to _think_ he tried to save you from it, but we know the truth. You were so young when he started twisting you all up that you’re always gonna be just a little warped.”

“Shut up about my dad!”

“Your daddy - he really is in here, trapped in his own meatsuit. Says ‘hi,’ by the way. Not real thrilled in your choice for a mate, though. And for what you did to my son? I’m gonna let him watch. He’s gonna tear you apart. He’s gonna taste the iron in your blood.”

“My mate.” Dean huffed out a laugh. “Yeah, that’s what you’re really pissed about. Not Tom, or Meg, just Sam. You can’t stand that he picked me over you, can you? No matter what you throw at him - unlimited power, the throne of Hell - he’s always going to pick me.”

“You so sure about that?” The demon moved in close, his mouth hovering over the omega’s neck as he took a slow, long sniff up to behind Dean’s ear. “I don’t see Sammy boy here right now. It’s true, I haven’t been able to break whatever hold you’ve got over him, but lately it hasn’t really mattered, has it? And now - now I know how to get him to release all that darkness just pent up inside him. He’s got a shit ton of anger, that boy. I bet if I riled him up enough, by...let’s say, killing his mate? Why he’d open up the Devil’s Gate just so he could march into Hell and stick that demon blade through my neck.”

“Doesn’t that kind of defeat the purpose of being the next Lucifer?” Dean said, turning his face away as Azazel sniffed him again and pressed flush up against him. “It’s hard to play the part of Satan himself if you’re dead.”

“I never said he’d succeed in getting to me, now did I?” Yellow Eyes closed his mouth over one of Dean’s earlobes and sucked until the omega was on the verge of vomiting. “I do want to apologize to you, Dean, for what happened to your mother. But contracts mean something to those of us in residence downstairs, and she was just collateral damage.”

“Are you finished?” Dean managed to raise his eyebrows in obvious irritation to mask the terror coursing through him at all the unwelcome memories of Baton Rouge that were flooding to the forefront of his mind. “I mean, even for a mega supervillain, you’ve been talking a really long time.”

Azazel took a few steps back and cocked his head to the side, like a puppy being presented with a new toy, a slow smile curling his lips as he regarded Dean. Finally he whispered, “So pretty, Dean,” and the omega felt something dig into his chest and try to split it open, like a pair of claws sinking into his sternum to crack it. He screamed, blood pouring from his collarbones and soaking his shirt as he heard Adam thrashing on the floor and shrieking for him in a voice Dean hadn’t heard him use since they were little and his brother had nightmares at school. The omega’s vision went white from the pain as he felt something pierce his lung and coughed up blood, locking his eyes on the demon in front of him and fighting back the tears that wanted to overflow their ducts.

“Dad…” he gasped, his teeth stained red. “Dad, please! Dad, don’t let it kill me, please!”

“ _Dean_!” Adam sobbed, reaching for the table leg again but unable to move any farther than he already had. “ _Dad_! _You’ve got to stop_!”

“Dad…” Dean said again before passing out, a thin line of blood dripping down his chin to the floor as Adam shouted again, “ _Dean_!”

“Stop,” John grunted, and Adam reached his goal, latching onto the table and hauling himself up to grab the gun. Dean fell to the floor, his boots hitting hard before he collapsed onto his side. “Stop it!” Adam leveled the gun at his father’s chest as the demon turned to him, his eyes rolling back over to yellow. “Careful Adam. That thing might go off and kill Daddy. I know the two of you aren’t on the best of terms, but that’s still patricide and a one way ticket downstairs.”

“I know,” Adam snapped, changing his aim to the meat of John’s thigh and pulling the trigger. His father’s body crumpled as the beta ran to where his brother lay in a heap by the door. “Dean? Dean, Christ, please say something!”

“I don’t think this shirt can be saved,” the omega mumbled as Adam checked him over for injuries.

“The bleeding’s stopped, but you’ve lost a lot of blood,” he said. “I gotta get you to a hospital.”

“Where’s Dad?” Dean rasped.

“He’s right here.”

“Go check on him.”

“Dean…”

“Check him, Runt.”

Adam pressed his bossy older brother’s hand in his before heading over to their father on the floor. He had no idea how possession worked, or if John would still be alive after the ordeal of having a Prince of Hell inside him. There had been a brief flash of golden light that radiated out from the bullet wound in his leg when Adam shot him, and he half expected that to have killed his unkillable father. He nearly wet himself when John’s eyes flew open and he clutched at his chest, growling in obvious agony.

“God, Adam...it’s inside me! It’s still alive! I can feel it!” he exclaimed, his eyes wild but his own as he curled in on himself and groaned. “You have to shoot me. You have to kill it! You shoot to kill, you don’t let it get away! You shoot me straight through the heart, do you hear me?!”

“Adam, don’t…” Dean begged, rolling to his stomach to try to crawl his way over to their father.

“Dad…” Adam said, torn between the anguish on Dean’s face and the determination on John’s.

“I can’t hold it much longer,” John whined. “You have to kill it, I’m begging you, he’s gonna keep trying to get to Sam. He’s gonna keep trying to hurt your brother. Shoot me, Adam, I’m begging you, please, protect Dean, whatever you have to do, you protect your brother, do you hear me?!”

“Yes Dad,” Adam said, nodding even as his vision blurred with tears and his hands shook.

“Adam, please don’t!” Dean cried, as John shouted, “ _Shoot me_!” and for once Adam obeyed their father without question.

Adam could hear his brother screaming over the high pitched wail coming from the demon as John’s body sparked and flashed with a bright golden light, tendrils of fire racing down his major veins and arteries as the bullet in the alpha’s left lung killed the Prince of Hell. The youngest Winchester had meant to shoot his dad through the heart as commanded, but in the end his hands simply shook too badly for the bullet to hit its intended target. Still, a shot through the lung had obviously worked at ending old Yellow Eyes, though it was clearly going to take John Winchester from them, too.

Dean was sobbing, trying to make his way across the floor as John’s eyes snapped open and he looked up at his beta son, foamy blood spurting out of his mouth as he coughed and reached out towards Adam, who was in full on hysterics. Mere hours ago had been the first time Adam realized his dad really might not come home from a hunt one day, and now he was the reason John wouldn’t. The gun slipped from his hand and hit the floor as something in the back of his mind screamed at him to stop the bleeding, that he was training to be a nurse, why the fuck was he just standing there crying, and he tore his outer shirt off as he dropped to his knees and pressed the fabric against the wound.

“Adam…” John gurgled, choking on his own blood as his eyes grew glassy, a hand grabbing feebly at his son’s elbow.

“Shh, Dad, don’t talk,” Adam ordered, yanking his father’s free hand up to press it against the flannel that was quickly soaking through. “Help me hold this here, I’ll call an ambulance, you’ll be fine.”

“Adam…” John repeated, giving him a little tug.

“No, I saw a sign with one of the mile markers, there’s a hospital nearby.” He swiped at his eyes, streaking his face red as he kept one hand in place on the alpha’s chest and looked around for where his coat with his cell phone ended up. He really needed to stop crying and shaking so he could fix this. “They can mercy flight you or somethin’, you’ll be okay.”

“Don’t you…” John sucked in a breath that rattled and broke into such horrific coughing that it got Adam’s attention solely on him, the beta running a hand over his father’s face as he shushed him. John’s eyes rolled around the room, looking for Dean, who had gone quiet on the floor by the door, before he managed with obvious difficulty to focus on Adam’s face again. He pulled his hand away from the bloody flannel and clasped his youngest son’s cheek, leaving a huge red handprint from his jaw to his hairline, his eyes locked on Adam’s so the young man wouldn’t look away again as he leaned up the best he could. “Don’t…you _dare_ …feel bad for this. You…saved Dean. No matter what…you have to…do... _always_ …save Dean. O…kay?”

“Okay Dad.” Adam couldn’t see or breathe, trying to suck in air past the blockage in his throat that he was pretty sure was his heart, violently wiping at his face to get rid of the tears and the snot running out of him like a broken faucet. It was a damned inconvenient time to realize how much he loved his father in spite of all his imperfections. “Okay.”

“Good boy.” John laid his head back on the floor, his eyes still on Adam even as his pupils began to dilate and his vision went hazy. “You’re a…good boy.”

“Okay Dad,” Adam repeated stupidly for lack of anything better to say. He was pretty sure he should be coming up with something more profound than that, but his brain wasn’t working and it was too quiet with Dean unconscious and their father not breathing.

Which was when he realized their father wasn’t breathing.

Duke University would be stupid to take him back, he thought among the other useless things running through his head, like how sorry he was that he hadn’t tried to call his dad more, even if he knew John would never pick up the phone, and how he shouldn’t have left the life because maybe if it was the three of them hunting together this would have never happened. But no, he hadn’t even noticed the second John took his last breath, and his hands wouldn’t stay still long enough to try to find a decent pulse, and he was using the wrong fingers anyway since he knew that was his own heartbeat he was feeling and not his father’s. His father was dead, and Adam had killed him, and he needed Dean to wake up and tell him what to do so that he wouldn’t just lay on the floor clutching John’s slowly cooling body and turn into a puddle when there were things that had to be done. Dean had to be taken to a hospital and someone had to come get the shell that had been their father ( _Adam had seen dead bodies before, but this was fundamentally different - his father simultaneously there and not there anymore_ ), plus Adam was going to have to call Henry to tell him that John and Azazel were dead and see if there had been any change in Sam. Dean was going to need Sam now that Adam had killed their father; had orphaned them both. Fuck, he thought dismally, he had to pull himself together and stop bawling like a three year old, or he was going to end up killing his brother, too.

Adam hoped he hadn’t been laying across John for as long as he thought he had when he looked over to Dean and saw the thick red trail from where he’d fallen to the floor to where his body had finally given in and dragged him into darkness. His brother really did need to be seen by a doctor, even if the bleeding had stopped with Azazel’s death, and Adam pulled himself away from their dad with only a slight grimace at how the flannel was momentarily stuck to both of them with all the blood. He gave his dad a last, long look before closing his eyes and pressing a kiss to his forehead, then stumbled over to where Dean was breathing shallowly, face down on the floor.

Turning him over revealed his brother’s ashen skin to him, horrifying the beta with how close he looked to when he’d almost bled to death giving birth to Elliott. His freckles were blanched and only the slightest tinge of pink remained in his lips. Adam thought it would serve him right if he’d waited too long to get Dean help and he ended up without any family at all, slapping Dean’s cheeks lightly to try to rouse him as he fought against the panic sweeping over him at the idea that this would all be for nothing if his brother died too. After a few moments the omega’s eyes fluttered and opened, and he looked up through half-parted lids at his younger sibling, slurring out, “Adam…”

“Yeah, I got you Dean, don’t worry,” Adam said instantly, grateful to have something active to do to distract from John’s dead body behind him on the floor.

“Wh’re’s Dad?” Dean mumbled, his tongue uncooperative as he managed ( _barely_ ) to close his fingers around the hem of Adam’s shirt.

“Don’t worry about Dad, okay?” Adam ordered, getting his arms underneath Dean’s shoulders to haul him to his feet and get him slowly and painfully into a fireman’s carry. “You’re always worried about Dad. Worry about yourself. Come on.”

“Wh’re we goin’?”

“The hospital, Dean. You need a hospital.”

“Nnnno, no hos…pital.”

“You’re not getting a vote.”

Adam was grateful beyond words that the house was on a hill ( _probably the only one for miles_ ) and the drive down to the barn was on an incline. It had been a bitch to try to climb to get into the house when they arrived earlier, but it made getting Dean back to the car a whole hell of a lot easier when Adam wasn’t trying to fight gravity. His brother was still asking about John as Adam got him into the passenger seat and buckled in, then ran back for his jacket, their supplies, and the Colt. He took a second to pull the blood soaked flannel up over John’s face, promising again that he’d take care of Dean, then shut off the lights before sprinting back to the Cadillac. His face was just starting to throb again, and he thanked the gods for adrenaline and pain pills. He wouldn’t be functional without them right now.

Elkins’ ranch was down a long dirt road that connected after about three miles to the main highway, and Adam searched for a signal on his phone as they tore down the blacktop in the direction he’d seen the hospital signs. Dean was awake as he leaned heavily against the passenger door, his half lidded eyes trained on his brother, who murmured, “Yes,” as a signal appeared after about ten minutes so he could pull up Bobby’s number. The call dropped before the first ring, and Adam was cursing and juggling driving and checking the bars on the cell phone. He knew he should probably pull over, but he didn’t feel like Dean had time for that.

“Adam…” Dean murmured.

“Quiet, Dean, you need to just…save your strength,” Adam said, hitting the “call” button the second he got three full bars.

“’S Dad dead?” Dean asked quietly, just as Bobby picked up and said, “ _Singer Salvage. It’s past close of business, this better be good._ ”

“Bobby, it’s Adam,” the beta replied, ignoring the way his brother said his name again. “We’re headed for Medicine Bow, just left Daniel Elkins’ ranch…”

He didn’t see the pick-up or hear the police sirens until the Silverado slammed into the passenger door, flinging Dean across the interior of the Cadillac and into his brother’s side as the shoulder anchor snapped free of the body of the car, the lap belt left alone to try to contain the omega and prevent him from being thrown around the cabin or through the windshield. The truck didn’t even pause but kept on going, the momentum swinging the Caddy around a full turn and a half until it was facing the other direction on the road, glass shattered everywhere and the frame twisted like pipe cleaners. The truck continued on as far as it could, which was only a couple of hundred feet before the broken axle gave out, a couple of hubcaps from the Cadillac managing to roll farther as the cop cars stopped to barricade off the side road and the officers filed out efficiently to aim their guns at the drunk driver they’d just chased the entire length of the county. The driver didn’t stir, sitting with his head against the headrest, face bloody from where he’d hit the steering wheel and bounced off. The searchlights in the patrol cars hit Adam in the face and woke him, the glass shards lodged in his skin a painful welcome back to reality after several minutes, and when the officers had decided it was safe to move in on the truck, guns still drawn, someone in a black uniform was at the driver’s side door, shining a flashlight square in his eyes.

“Christ,” the man breathed before turning back towards the patrol cars. “Get an ambulance here!”

“Dean…” Adam mumbled, leaning away from the light as he reached out and discovered the weight pressing along his side was his brother’s limp body. “Dean...”

“Hang on, help is coming,” the officer told him, reaching in to check his pulse and then Dean’s, fingers pressing right above Dean’s mating scar. “Are you his mate?”

Adam managed to shake his head, trying to turn to get an arm around Dean but finding himself wedged partially between the door and the seat. God, there was so much blood, more than there had been at the house, and Dean’s breathing sounded wet and shallow.

“Brother,” he managed as he got a hand on Dean’s leg to shake him. “Dean. Hey, Dean, wake up. Dean, please, wake up.”

The cop was saying something about staying calm, but everything blurred into the bright white of the searchlights, punctuated occasionally by the blue lights flashing on the tops of the cars. It hadn’t even been half an hour since Adam promised to always save Dean and they’d been t-boned by a drunk driver, his older brother’s face distressingly peaceful under all the red pouring down his face. One of the officers had run over with a first aid kit and was reaching around Adam to keep pressure on Dean’s head wound while they waited for the ambulance to arrive. It seemed like years before the red and white lights started flashing, the screeching sirens drawing nearer to them by the second - not just an ambulance but fire trucks as well. Adam’s head pounded as he struggled to stay conscious and keep his eyes on his brother, but eventually he had no choice and had to give in to the heavy weight of his eyelids. It was okay though, he decided as the fire fighters started to cut the vehicle open to get them out. Maybe he’d wake up and find that this was all just a horrible nightmare.


	135. What Am I Supposed to Do?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The hospital gets a hold of Sam.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't want to leave everyone on a cliffhanger like that over the weekend. This chapter got a little long...

Something was terribly wrong. Henry didn’t know what it was - what had happened - but the universe seemed to have shifted and he had no idea how or why and now something was terribly wrong. He considered using his scrying mirror to see if he could find out what had gone on beyond the bunker’s outer door, except he hadn’t been back to Sinclair’s lair in days and rather liked not being right under his thumb. Besides, he wouldn’t know what to begin to look for to figure out why his stomach was tied in knots and his chest had a growing hole in it.

Things had been quiet at the bunker since Sam tore off a considerable length of skin and nearly broke his foot trying to pull free of the ankle cuff after the dream he had about Dean and Adam covered in blood. Sam’s sheer, undeniable panic had gotten the Winchester patriarch to slap on the demon wrist and ankle cuffs and hook the loop and pole around Sam’s throat to bring him up to the war room so he could call them, and after Henry had moved him back to his cell and bandaged his foot, the young alpha calmed down some as promised. That was this afternoon, and Sam hadn’t made a peep to indicate to the Man of Letters that he’d had another vision or night terror, though he hadn’t actually set up camp outside the cell door or anything. And at any rate, if something were as wrong as Henry felt it was, someone would call with news of...whatever had happened. That’s what they always did when there was bad news. The police called, or a clergyman, or - well, _someone_. They wouldn’t just be left in the lurch, not when Adam and Dean both had the bunker number programmed into their cellular contraptions.

It was therefore with a considerable amount of dread that he answered the phone when it rang shortly before nine o’clock. He’d hoped to hear from his son or one of his grandsons, but instead Bobby was on the other end of the line, wanting to know if Adam or Dean had called _him_. He’d been talking to the beta about half an hour before when the line went dead, and he hadn’t been able to get either of the boys back since. His gut told him they were in trouble, but all he knew was they’d been at Daniel Elkins’ ranch, and he didn’t know who the hell Daniel Elkins was. He figured maybe some old buddy of John’s, though if he were, he moved outside of regular hunting circles. Based on the time they called, they were probably still in the relative vicinity of Laramie, Wyoming.

When Henry replied that he hadn’t heard from them since they spoke shortly after lunch, it didn’t improve Bobby’s mood at all, or really do anything to change his gut instincts telling him to start calling Wyoming hospitals and morgues. Henry’s instincts were the same, and after a brief conversation they agreed it might be a good idea to find out Sam’s opinion on the subject. He was tied to Azazel and bonded to Dean, so if they were facing a worst case scenario, Sam was the likeliest one to know about it without needing to be told.

Sam didn’t know anything, though he didn’t feel anything wrong with his bond to Dean. Granted, it had been weeks since he’d tried to reach out to his mate at all, so the connection would be muted. The only thing he felt was a difference in his thinking. It had been sudden, and he’d chalked it up to the amount of time he’d spent in the holding cell, but it was almost as if he’d been looking at the world through a slightly dirty window and someone had come along with a bottle of Windex and a rag. He felt lighter too somehow, not that he could explain it. It wasn’t the fuzzy, floaty feeling he’d gotten from the sleeping pills, more akin to having had a constant low level headache that up and went away. He’d been enjoying the feeling, thinking maybe he could convince Henry to let him out of the room again if he agreed to the wrist and ankle cuffs, until the older alpha opened the door and asked if he’d had any dreams.

The way Henry asked was what clued Sam in to the fact that Dean’s grandfather felt like something was off and didn't know where to start figuring out why. To date, the only way Sam had been able to get Henry’s attention was when the alpha was bringing him food, or by screaming at the top of his lungs until he lucked out and the alpha was wandering down to check on him. It was very clear that the Winchesters had been trying to prod Sam as little as possible about anything related to his abilities to prevent the demon blood from surging up when its control was finally beginning to ebb. Learning that Henry couldn’t get his grandsons on the phone and Bobby hadn’t heard from them either had a cold pit settling in Sam’s stomach as he politely asked for Henry to let him out of the room.

It was nearly ten o’clock by the time Henry got Sam unlocked from the cot and into the cuffs, forgoing the loop and pole since he suspected the Prince of Hell was dead and knew enough self defense magic that he could fend off his grandson-in-law if this was all an elaborate ruse on Sam’s part. Deep down he didn’t think it was. It was hard to fake the anxiety that was flooding off the young man and filling the halls as Henry brought Sam back upstairs to sleep in his own bed for the first time in over a fortnight. Sam didn’t miss the fact that the cribs were no longer in the room and that the bed looked like it hadn’t been touched since the last time he’d been in there with Dean, but he didn’t comment on it, instead thanking Henry and waiting until he’d muttered an incantation out in the hallway that undoubtedly sealed Sam inside before limping over to the bed, crawling under the covers, and losing himself in what little of Dean’s scent still clung to the pillows.

Christ, he missed his mate. Now that he had emotions again, was aware of his feelings and thoughts again, he needed to find Dean and bury himself in his omega. He missed the smell of him, the feel of him, the weight of him asleep on the mattress or on Sam’s chest, the sound of his laugh, his terrible off-key singing, his awful puns - he missed every goddamn thing there was to miss about Dean. It was almost like when he’d been withering away, only instead of the sharp pain stabbing through him there was a persistent emptiness at his core that Dean alone could fill. The deep ache of it made him feel slightly nauseated, and his skin tingled with a kind of phantom pain at the sense memory of his omega pressed up against him even as the demon cuffs clanked and weighed heavy and cold against his wrists and ankles. He would have prayed that when Dean got home from this case Sam could show him how sorry he was for the awful things he’d said when he’d been in the demon blood’s grip, could make him believe nothing like that was ever going to happen again, except he’d met an angel and was pretty sure based on their encounter that God wasn’t even slightly interested in hearing what Sam Campbell had to say.

Besides, it was going to take a lot more than just promising things would be different this time to get back in Dean’s good graces. The empty space in the room where their children’s cribs should be and the lack of dog claws clacking over the bunker’s floors made that abundantly clear. It wouldn’t have even surprised him if he’d checked the dresser drawers and discovered his mate’s clothes were missing, but at the moment he was too relieved to be on their memory foam mattress after weeks on a metal cot to bother looking. The building dread was still there, rotting in his guts, but he was physically exhausted after weeks of poor sleep. In the morning he’d take a real inventory of the room and figure out just how much damage he had to undo when Dean got home; whether just the walls of their relationship were cracked or the fissures went all the way to the foundation. For now he just wanted to close his eyes and pull the sheets up snug under his chin so he could inhale cherry pie and coffee for the first time in weeks.

He wasn’t aware he’d fallen asleep until his phone ringing on the nightstand woke him the next morning. It was still plugged in to charge where he’d left it before the whole lockdown began, and he was surprised he was getting a signal at all. Usually the damn thing couldn’t pick up a single bar this far into the cement and metal that made up the bunker’s walls and ceiling. He didn’t recognize the number, which wasn’t unusual, and considered letting it go to voicemail but decided to roll over and answer despite the clanking of the chains connecting his hands to his feet in case it was Dean or Adam calling from a different phone.

He’d have done well to ignore it, since whoever was on the other end cut in and out so badly he couldn’t even tell if he was talking to a man, a woman, or a sheep, but his bladder needed to be emptied anyway so he wasn’t really perturbed. The time on the phone showed it was just after seven in the morning, which seemed awfully early for someone to be calling unless it was urgent, a fact of their life he’d concern himself with later. Right now he was looking forward to being able to piss in an actual toilet, the enchanted buckets that had been in the cell doing their job to dispose of his waste products as soon as he emptied his bowels or bladder into them yet leaving him feeling gross despite their efficiency.

He felt wonderfully rested, having not dreamed at all the night before; or if he had, not dreaming anything worth recalling. That was new, the kind of new that made him wonder about what it might mean. Even before the demon blood had really started to try to wrestle away his control he’d never had truly dreamless nights. There was always something that nagged at him the following morning, pressing him to recall whatever had played through his head while he slept. Now it was like he’d passed the night alone inside his head for the first time in - Jesus, _years_. He hadn’t slept that well and deeply since before Jess died. The nagging presence that had been hovering at the outskirts of his mind for such a very long while was gone, his alpha the only thing fighting his higher brain functions by insisting they chase down Dean. It was a frisky insistence, though; a puppy that wanted to play fetch instead of the wolf he’d needed to keep from mauling his flock.

He’d just finished washing his hands when there was a rather insistent knocking on his door, and Henry was demanding to know if he was decent. Sam assured him he was, shuffling over as Henry was muttering the reverse incantation on the seal he’d put in place the night before. The grim expression on the older alpha’s face did an excellent job of killing Sam’s hopeful mood, as did the way he said, “You need to come with me.”

The quick walk to the war room took a little longer with Sam’s ankles shackled, and gave Henry enough time to explain that he’d recently gotten off the phone with Bobby, who’d in turn recently gotten off the phone with Our Lady of Mercy Memorial Hospital in Carbon County, Wyoming. Dean Smith and Adam Winchester had been brought there the night before after a car accident, and they'd called Bobby trying to reach Adam’s secondary contact, Jo Harvelle. Adam’s primary contact was Dean Smith, whose primary contact was his mate, Sam Wesson, who was, according to Adam, traveling for business and couldn’t be reached. Since Dean’s secondary contact was Adam, and since Adam’s phone had been wrecked in the accident it had taken the hospital a while to untangle who they could call and how they could track Sam down. They would only tell Jo about Adam, and wouldn’t tell Bobby about either of them. Adam’s left shoulder and elbow had been dislocated by the crash, his face had significant but mostly superficial damage, and he was experiencing some mild memory loss, able to remember the concept of who Bobby was but unable to recall his name or phone number when they needed another way to reach Sam. Jo was already gearing up for the twelve hour drive, since there were no flights from Sioux Falls that would get her close to them, and Bobby got the number to the hospital, which Henry had already tried. Since he wasn’t an emergency contact for either Dean or Adam, he hadn’t been any more successful in getting information out of the staff than Bobby.

Sam wouldn’t have thought it possible to feel more terror than Henry telling him Dean was in a hospital in Wyoming nearly ten hours away and no one knew what had happened to him. He learned how wrong he was when he managed to get the doctors at Our Lady of Mercy on the phone and they started using words like “traumatic brain injury” and “persistent vegetative state” and “permission to remove life support.” He’d needed them to repeat the information three times before it all began to sink in. A drunk driver had been trying to evade police and slammed into the passenger side of Dean and Adam’s car at seventy miles an hour. Dean had been sitting at the point of impact. He had limited brainwave activity and if he ever woke up - which at this point they didn’t expect would happen - he would need to be placed into a long term care nursing facility that could provide ‘round the clock care and see to his medical needs, like keeping his feeding tube clear and making sure his catheter didn’t crimp. That was if he managed to survive his internal injuries, for which he’d been in surgery most of the night. They’d had to revive him twice already, and his younger brother, who’d been admitted with him, refused to even discuss the possibility that they might someday very soon need to turn off the machine that was breathing for him. As his alpha, Sam had the final say in these matters, but he needed to get there as soon as possible, because they weren’t sure how many times Dean’s heart could be restarted before it simply gave out.

When they’d finished explaining the situation to him, Sam asked for their address, hung up the phone, and threw up all over the map table when he tried to stand. He’d barely managed to impress upon them the fact that he certainly did not consent to them turning off life support, since his brain and his mouth didn’t want to work in tandem to form words, and after several long minutes of Henry shaking him and demanding to know what was wrong he’d succeeded in giving Dean’s grandfather the Cliffs Notes version of events. Henry wanted to know if they said anything about John, but if they had, it hadn’t registered with Sam. The Man of Letters assured Sam he'd dig through every spell book in his possession to find a way to save his mate, and while it might turn out to be a spectacularly bad idea, the older alpha hadn’t hesitated to unchain Sam so he could race back to his bedroom to grab his phone and shove on his shoes before rummaging around for the keys to the Impala. Sam hoped after some time on the road he’d be calm enough to call the hospital back and be routed to Adam’s room to find out exactly what the fuck had happened, since at the moment he needed to focus every fiber of his being on not curling into a ball and sobbing until he felt Dean die so he could put a gun in his mouth and follow.

This was all his fault. No matter what anyone said, Sam should have been more aware of what the darkness inside of him was doing. _He_ should have been the one with Adam delivering the Colt to John. Dean would have been able to stay safe in the bunker if Sam hadn’t lost his goddamned mind and needed to be locked in the demon cell just to quell the evil inside him to the point where he could rein himself in. Now Dean was facing life as a vegetable ( _and fuck, he had just wanted to reach through the phone and beat the doctor to death with his stupid, “We don’t use that term” bullshit_ ), provided he managed to live at all, and the quickest way to get to him was almost ten hours of straight driving. If there were an award for Most Ineffectual Alpha Ever, Sam would be winning it hands down. He needed Dean to hang on so that he had time to fix this, find a hoodoo priest to lay some mojo on him or something if Henry didn't come through, but based on what the doctor told him he didn’t think Dean _could_ hang on. It twisted Sam’s stomach that with everything Dean had survived, all the horrors of hunting and Omega Protective Services, Sam was going to lose him at the hands of some drunken asshole in a pick-up.

Adam had been stalking the halls of the hospital since sunrise trying to find that drunken asshole who had reduced his brother to a shrunken mass of bruises and wires and a gigantic breathing tube so he could hold a pillow over the man’s face until he stopped struggling. A young nurse had taken pity on him around four in the morning after Dean came out of surgery and had to be shocked back to life for a second time ( _he’d already flatlined on the table while they were removing his shredded spleen and ruptured uterus_ ), telling him only that the other driver had survived and was expected to recover, but not who or where he was. He promised he’d go back to his room if she told him - he wasn’t supposed to be in intensive care anyway - and while he did wander back to the floor below Dean’s, he only stayed until she’d gone back to making her rounds, then slipped back upstairs to hold his brother’s hand and beg him to wake up. When his voice was hoarse after a few hours from pleading and crying, he started his hunt for the monster who’d done this. Adam had killed his father less than twelve hours ago. Suffocating some bastard who decided he’d rather risk the life of everyone on the road than get pulled over for a DWI seemed like small potatoes in comparison.

He returned to Dean around eight o’clock, his hunt proving fruitless and his legs too tired to hold him up. One ankle was sprained and badly swollen, he definitely shouldn’t be walking on it, and then there was his messed up shoulder and elbow. The shoulder was expected to heal on its own, but the elbow would probably need surgery somewhere down the line after the cast on his wrist came off. He knew he could suffocate the drunk one handed if he had to, but not when he was starting to get wobbly and was so tired his vision began to blur. He staggered in to sit in the chair by Dean’s bed and lean forward to use his brother’s stomach as a pillow, promising himself he’d just take a little nap and then he’d get back to looking for the dickbag who needed to die. Just twenty minutes, then he’d start walking the halls again.

It was one in the afternoon when Dean’s monitors started going off, shocking Adam out of a nightmare about their father, and the beta sat bolt upright as a flurry of nurses and a couple of doctors rushed in to start compressions while they juiced up the defibrillator. Adam was pushed roughly out of the way so the people there to save Dean’s life could get to him to do so, though it was clear by the looks on their faces that they didn’t think there was much life left to save. Adam couldn’t blame them, much as he hated the way they went frantically about their work while clearly feeling sorry to be resuscitating a young man who was openly suffering and would be better off if allowed to slip away peacefully. Adam wondered if they’d talked to Sam yet, what Sam would say about keeping him alive if he could see the way his mate had clearly left the building; his body just a shell, his lungs working thanks to machines. He suspected Sam would feel the same way Adam did - that they’d keep him alive no matter what it took - but as the seconds ticked by and it took longer to restart Dean’s heart a third time it became clear it was going to take something very drastic to save Dean. And it was Adam’s job to save him.

He knew Sam would think it was up to him to find a way to bring his omega back from the brink of death, but Adam had literally been directed by his dying father to save Dean _no matter what he had to do_. His father who was gone because Adam put a bullet in his chest, because he hadn’t been strong enough to ignore John’s order, because he’d been too scared of what would happen to Dean and Sam if he didn’t kill the demon John was keeping trapped in his body for the sole purpose of Adam ending the horror movie that was the brothers’ lives. He’d never been good at taking directions from John until now, and he’d be damned if his inability to follow a direct order led to Dean dying, leaving behind a mate ( _who would also die_ ), two babies that would never remember their mother or father, and a dog who had already lost one family. They were in the middle of nowhere, Wyoming, his options were extremely limited, and he was already going to Hell for killing his father. It was clear what he had to do, he just had to do it fast, and that was going to be tough when he didn’t know where the car had been towed.

He waited until Dean was stabilized and the throng of healthcare professionals had filed out of the room, lecturing him on going back to his room, before he leaned into his brother’s ear and murmured, “I have to make a quick run. Don’t go anywhere before I come back.” Dean didn’t respond, of course. Not even a flicker of an eyelash, and certainly not the snarky retort he’d have come back with under better circumstances. Feeling a good deal refreshed from the hours he’d slept, Adam pressed a hand to his brother’s cheek before heading resolutely back to his room to get dressed and call the police to ask after his belongings. He should probably call…shit, he could _not_ remember his name!...their uncle up in South Dakota to let him know not to worry about Dean, that he was going to take care of it, but, well, Adam couldn’t remember his name. He’d gotten a good handle on the layout of the hospital while looking for the drunk, as well as the nursing rounds, so it was pretty easy after the cops told him where the Cadillac had been impounded and how to get there from the hospital to slip out into a parking garage when no one was looking to hotwire one of the car. He laughed morosely at the ridiculousness of being able to remember how to hotwire a car but not his uncle’s name to get some kind of back up before he started in on this plan, though he was sure that Uncle…Billy?...would just try to talk him out of it, and he would not be talked out of it.

Things almost came to a screeching halt when the guy manning the gate at the impound lot hedged on letting Adam in to see the car without some kind of proof that he was the registered owner. Normally he wouldn’t have cared, as he’d just find a spot where he could hop the fence, but with only one working arm and a messed up ankle that means of entry clearly wasn’t on the table. He tried to run through a list of ways to get in there, getting stuck between begging and bribing, except he didn’t have his wallet and he was already begging and after a very brief conversation his brain short circuited and he just started crying. He’d been holding it back all morning, needing to be strong for Dean even though Dean was completely unaware of his presence and wouldn’t have cared anyway, and now that he was stopped maybe a hundred yards from his goal he just couldn’t take it anymore. He wasn’t built for this, he wasn’t strong like Dean or Dad, and god he’d let his brother down so many times since Shreveport.

Crying was apparently all he needed to do, the sniffling and blubbering and rubbing snot on his sleeve when the gatekeeper tried to calm him down and he explained the situation with Dean and that their father had just died certainly going a long way to gaining access to the lot. The kid had a hospital gown on under his coat and there was blood on his jeans, jacket, and his shoes, so the guard didn’t doubt for a second that he had been through something like a car accident. Adam said something about pictures of Dean’s kids being in the car that was just coherent enough for the guy to get the gist and personally lead him through the graveyard of twisted and burned out vehicles to where the hunk of metal that used to be Bobby’s ( _Bobby_! _His uncle’s name was Bobby_!) Cadillac ended up. He handed Adam the keys even though he wasn’t going to need them, then headed back towards the front to give the young man some time alone to gather his things.

The trunk of the car had been popped open by the impact, and Adam was grateful the police hadn’t checked it when the car was being towed or he might find himself facing weapons charges. The duffels with their supplies were there, as was the book on demonology, though he couldn't get Dean's out because the side was crumpled in over it. After rummaging around in the front he found the Colt where it had gotten thrown under the driver’s seat. He took a minute while he was there to flip to the section in the book on summoning rituals and see what he needed and if they’d packed any of it when they left the bunker. While their supply duffel didn’t have anything he could use, John appeared to have everything but the box and the animal bones the book said Adam would need for his purposes. Anger immediately boiled his blood as he wanted to demand his father tell him what he was doing with tools to summon demons, until he remembered that he couldn’t ask his father anything anymore and sat down on the blood covered driver’s seat and _really_ cried for a long time.

The day was turning chilly and a threatening cluster of grey clouds rolled overhead, blocking out the sun, when the guard finally came back to check on him. He felt awful intruding, seeing as how the kid was going through something pretty major, but Adam assured him it was fine, that he needed to get back to the hospital anyway. The guard gave him directions, since the poor young beta looked peaked and more than a little turned around, and Adam headed off with a quiet, “Thanks,” to the stolen car to find himself a nearby crossroads.

As inconvenient as Wyoming was to every other aspect of his plan, the one thing it had going for it was all the wide open, rarely traveled roads once he pulled off the highway. He did have to drive away from the hospital for a bit before he could find a turnoff onto a gravel road, which led after a couple of miles to exactly the kind of place he was looking for. There was nothing around but wide open range, and the dirt at the crossroads was loose enough that he could dig it up with his hands. He opened to book to the ritual he needed, hunted around some until he came across the remains of a dead...something ( _it was small and would suffice_ ) and grabbed some of the bones and teeth.

He knew he shouldn't have left finding something that had decomposed up to chance, but it _was_ Wyoming, and the wildlife outnumbered the people. Thinking he'd be able to find animal bones that would fit in the jumper cable box he'd found in the trunk of his stolen car near wherever he end up stopping hadn't been too big of a gamble, though he did worry it wouldn't work. The rituals he recalled from school said bones from a black cat or milk from a black cow were needed and this mentioned neither. It had an incantation, however, which was also different, and he hoped his Latin wasn't too rusty.

“ _Daemon, esto subjecto voluntati meae_ ,” he said, once he'd dropped his license in with the bones, teeth, and graveyard dirt, then buried the box. The sounds of the crickets and the birds that filled the cool afternoon air stopped like someone had flipped an off switch, and after doing a full turn to survey his surroundings he was surprised to see his former roommate standing on the spot where he buried the box. He blinked twice, swallowed once, and said, “Becky?”

“Not quite,” his roommate's voice answered, her eyes flicking over white as she smiled at him. “Lilith's the name. Maybe you've heard of me - or maybe you haven't. Dean's a sneaky little rascal, isn't he? Big on keeping secrets for your own good. Must be a family trait. Though, since you're here to make a deal, it doesn't seem like he was wrong. Things are kind of a mess, huh?” He didn't answer, his eyes wide and worried, and after a moment she asked, “What's the matter, Adam? Is it the meatsuit?” She glanced down the length of her at the skinny jeans and “WWBD” tee shirt under the purple cardigan, looking back up just in time to catch the beta's tiny nod. “Oh. Well. I thought you might like a familiar face for this. Don't worry about Bitsy…”

“Becky,” he corrected quietly, and she huffed in irritation.

“Whatever. I’ve only worn her a couple of times. I like the crazy eyes.” She demonstrated the wild look Becky got whenever they'd discussed his friendship with Sam, and her impression was so spot on he had to take a step back. She relaxed and sighed. “Normally I pick a nice little girl for these talks, you know. I can always go grab Emma…”

“No!” he said instantly. “No. This is fine.”

“Goodie!” she exclaimed, happily clapping her hands. “Now that that's out of the way, let's get down to brass tacks. Why don't you tell me what you want?”

“You know what I want,” he snapped, eyes burning with tears he refused to shed.

“Indeed I do,” she cooed. “But there's a specific way to sell your soul, and it starts with you telling me what you want. Then I tell you if it's possible, and then maybe we haggle until we reach an agreement.”

“Maybe we haggle?”

She shrugged at his look of incredulity.

“Each case is different. So tell me, what is it you want?” As he opened his mouth to speak, she held up on long, slender finger, and added, “Be sure you’re very specific.”

That made Adam pause. He didn’t know much about demons, not beyond what he’d encountered in the last few days, but he’d read that crossroads demons tended to be fair. If she was giving him a chance to think about what he wanted her to do for him, he probably should. After several moments of deciding and playing the request over carefully in his head, he said, “I’d like you to heal Dean. No internal injuries, no massive head trauma, no persistent vegetative state. Heal him so that he’ll wake up healthy and can go on with his life like this accident never happened.”

“Good. Very specific. You’re a smart guy Adam. I like you.” She smiled, moving to him to run a hand along his jaw. It felt warm, which he wasn’t sure was a good thing or a bad thing. It meant Becky was alive in there, but being possessed wasn’t a carnival ride. Who knew what kind of mental trauma she’d have to live with after this? “Now, what will you give me in exchange for healing Dean?”

“My soul,” he replied quietly, and she cocked her head at him. “What?”

“Why?” she asked.

“Why what?” he said.

“Why would a young man like you, with his whole life ahead of him, want to trade his soul for his brother? I mean, you’re reasonably attractive - cute, even. You’re not Dean, but then few people are so it can’t be just that you’re comparing yourself to him and find yourself lacking. Do you still feel guilty about that whole Shreveport thing and then the lying about it, or is it something else?”

The beta’s cheeks flamed red, though obviously she would have known what happened at his graduation party, and he said, “Dean has a life. He has a whole _life_. A good life. The kind he’s always deserved and has never thought he’s worth. He has kids and a mate that - Christ, _loves_ him, and he’s finally getting out of hunting, and I...I’m basically a college dropout with only one real friend and whose girlfriend won’t return his calls. Yeah, maybe I’ll have a life worth fighting for in eight or ten years, but Dean has that life _now_. And I’m going to Hell anyway, so…”

“So you figure why stick around and deal with all the discomfort of coming to terms with shooting Daddy.” He glared at her, and she laughed - actually laughed, reining herself in after what seemed to be a very long time. “Oh Adam. It’s not just because you want to save Dean, or can’t look at yourself in the mirror knowing you’re the reason John’s dead. And I really am torn up about that one, I am. I wanted Azazel gone and John was one of my guys who was gonna take care of him for me so it’s really too bad he ended up in the ‘loss’ category. No, you want to be a martyr. There’s a little part of you buried down deep that thinks this will be your big contribution to the family, that it can make up for last night. Uncle Adam may not be around, but by golly, Dean will sing songs to his kids in your honor, am I right?” Adam clenched his jaw, unwilling to admit to either of them that she’d struck a nerve, and she sighed. “Well I have to say, this is _very_ tempting, especially since Sam’s going to go right off the rails if Dean dies and all that nasty demon blood it’s taken so long to get under control will just come roaring back, and then I’m probably going to have to put down a coup among all the demons who think for _some_ reason that Hell needs a king. The only problem I’m having is...your brother.”

“What about him?” Adam asked.

“Well,” she said, circling him in the dirt. “If I give you the standard ten year contract, you’re going to have to keep it a secret for _ten whole years_ that you’re on a clock ticking down to a date with my dogs. And I just don’t think you could do that after the ‘hey you were raped at my party’ thing. I just don’t think you could keep something _that big_ from him again for a whole decade. Heck, I don’t even think you could keep something like that from him for a year! And if Dean finds out I’ve got a contract on your soul, then…”

“Then what?”

“Let’s just say I know how obsessive you Winchesters can be when it comes to hunting down demons.” Her eyes turned hard, her smile unforgiving, as she pinned him to his spot with a glare. “Plus, he’s got some awfully effective hunting tools. I could end up on the wrong end of a knife or a bullet very easily.”

“So what are you suggesting, then? Obviously we’ve reached the part where we’re haggling.”

“Smart boy. No wonder you got that full ride at Duke. I’m suggesting something that will probably sound...well, a tad bit skewed in my favor, but I’m confident if you think about it you’ll see that it’s in your best interests as well.”

“Which is?”

“One week.” She took a step back from him at the look of shock that spread over his face. “One week gives you enough time to give your father a proper funeral, get Dean out of the hospital, and make a final trip back to that junkyard in Sioux Falls to say goodbye to your maybe-not-girlfriend and your little niece and nephew. It also isn’t so long that you’ll have any time to dwell on what happened with dear old Dad and how that guilt is already eating you up from the inside out, or find yourself crushed under the weight of keeping a huge secret from your brother again. And I’m going to need that demon killing knife and the Colt, just to cover my ass in case Dean figures out you made a deal and who you made it with.”

“That…” He swallowed, a thin film of sweat breaking out all over his skin despite the chill in the air. “That seems more than a tad bit skewed in your favor.”

“What can I say?” She smiled again, a twisted look that made him want to vomit on his shoes. “I’m the head of the department for a reason. Tell you what, just to make it a little more palatable, I’ll heal _all_ of Dean’s injuries, not just the ones from the accident, and I’ll throw in killing the guy who hit you. You’re not the first people he’s sent to the hospital and we’ve got a nice, cozy spot waiting for Stuart downstairs anyway. Going once…”

“Okay,” he said, her smile broadening as he nodded. He could tell by the gleam in her eye that she meant business, and if he pushed she’d probably make the deal even harsher, like only giving him a day or changing how well she’d heal Dean. “Okay. You heal Dean like you say you will and get rid of that waste of breath, then you can come for my soul in one week and I’ll give you the knife and the gun.”

“It’s a pleasure doing business with you, Adam,” she told him, and surged forward to seal the contract with a kiss.

The machines went wild on two separate floors at Our Lady of Mercy as Stuart Blake, owner of a Chevy Silverado with no license or registration, flatlined, and Dean Winchester woke up.


	136. We’re All Just Scared of the Unknown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean's awake.

Dean saw the headlights coming and tried to say something to Adam, but his brain was sluggish and he’d barely turned away before the oncoming truck slammed into them and everything was fear and pain and darkness. He fully expected when he opened his eyes to be in a hospital somewhere ( _how could they_ **_not_ ** _end up in a hospital after that_?) and was very confused when he was looking up at a bright blue sky with fluffy white clouds floating overhead, one of which looked distinctly like a rabbit. His face was warm, but the lower half of his body was cold, and when he experimented with raising his head ( _he could do it easily - that was weird after being hit by a truck_ ) he saw it was because his face was out in the sunlight while his legs were in the shadow of the huge maple tree in the backyard of their house in Lawrence where his tire swing was. Apparently he’d decided to lay down on the back lawn and simply fallen asleep; or something. He wasn’t sure what was going on and found it a little frightening, especially with the distinct lack of pain he was in. Azazel had tried to tear his rib cage open. A truck had slammed into the side of the Cadillac. Based on his past experience with severe injuries, _everything_ should hurt right now.

“Are you going to nap all day or do you want to come eat lunch?”

Dean sat bolt upright at the woman’s voice behind him, his heart leaping into his throat and then just stopping, along with his ability to breathe or process thought. A breeze wafted his way and carried with it a scent he’d never smelled, because he’d been too young when he last heard that voice to know what the aromas were that made up his mother’s scent. Cinnamon and orange blossoms with hints of ginger and peaches. It overpowered the lavender hand lotion she always used, even when she came across the lawn to squat down next to him in the blue dress with the little yellow flowers on it that always made him think he had the prettiest mother in the world.

“See any good clouds?” she asked, turning away from his wide-eyed, dewy expression to look up at the sky. The sun peeked out and hit her hair, turning the soft curls around her chin gold. Within seconds she was pointing and saying, “That one’s definitely a bunny, don’t you think?”

“Yeah…” he somehow managed to whisper, as she got to her feet and held out her hand to help him up.

“Come on,” she said. “The grilled cheese is going to get cold.”

The little tug she gave him had him on his feet instantly and wrapping himself around her like a koala. She gave a little surprised huff before she reached up to pet his hair and stroke his back while he tried not to openly sob against her scent gland and failed. He never knew she was this tiny, over half a foot shorter than him, and though he should probably be concerned about cracking a rib with how tightly he was clinging to her he couldn’t risk loosening his grip or letting go in case she vanished on him. For a long while she just stood there letting him cry and shushing him, her fingers combing his hair back from his forehead and smoothing it over his ear, occasionally kissing his cheek and assuring him everything was all right.

“I know,” she finally said when he’d allow his grip on her to ease enough that she could pull back and look up at him with moisture shining at the corners of her eyes. “I missed you too. You got so tall on me!”

“Yeah…” he whispered again, because really, what did one say to their dead mother after twenty three long and empty years? “Not as tall as Dad, though.”

“But much better looking,” she told him honestly, leaning in to wipe off his cheeks with her thumbs and sending him into a fresh bout of tears. “You’re welcome for the eyelashes, by the way. Come on and have lunch.”

She managed to get him over to the little picnic table on the littler patio off the kitchen, barely enough room on the concrete pad for the table and Dad’s grill. He’d forgotten they had a patio, even if he remembered the tire swing. The grilled cheese was cold, the bread a little mushy from the slices of American hardening into an orange gloppy substance that still tasted like home as he forced himself to eat. He may not know where he was or what was going on, but his mom made him a grilled cheese and he’d be damned if he was going to leave it there on the plate.

Millie stared at him for a long time, brushing fingertips through his locks and smiling with a deep sadness in her blue eyes. When he was down to only about a quarter of the sandwich left she got up to head inside, and though he tried not to panic he was leaking anxiety out into the air as he stood to watch her disappear through the patio doors, his limbs vibrating as he waited for her to return with the glass of milk she’d just poured. She ignored the tremble in his hands as he took it from her, moving a few feet away to the small chair that barely fit in the corner of the patio, watching him finish his eating and down the milk in two large gulps.

“Did your dad ever tell you how you monopolized me when you were a baby?” she asked when he’d finished, smiling at the raised eyebrows he threw her way. “I couldn’t put you down to do _anything_. I became an expert pretty quickly at loading the washing machine one handed because you’d fuss if I even considered setting you in your crib or a bassinet. I didn’t mind, though. How could I? You were the sweetest little boy anyone could ask for.”

“Yeah?” he said, wanting to kick himself for not being able to come up with a single other damn way to respond to his mother.

“I knew by the time you were three years old, what you were going to be.” Her smile turned impossibly fond as she looked down at the hands folded in her lap. “My Dean. I’m so… _sorry_ I had to leave you. All the things you’ve been through, that no one should have to go through, but especially not my beautiful boy.”

When she tipped her face up it was wet, and her smile broke, and Dean was hugging her again before he realized he’d moved, saying, “It’s okay, Mom. I’m doin’ okay.”

“No, honey, you’re not.” She got him to let her go again, her hands smoothing down either side of his face like she could wipe away all the pain written there. “You’re dying, Dean. And I’m really sorry to be the one to have to tell you. Normally they send reapers for these kinds of conversations, but apparently you’re too stubborn for them to want to deal with you.”

“Dying?” Well, at least his vocabulary was slowly expanding. He probably shouldn’t be so hard on himself for feeling speechless, given the circumstances, but he really wanted to say something more important. “I can’t…I can’t die.”

“I’m pretty sure you can, Dean,” she told him gently. “That driver that ran into your car - that’s not the sort of thing someone recovers from. Not even big, strong hunters.”

“But I _can’t_ die, Mom!” he repeated, this time feeling desperate instead of stupid and inadequate. “I have…I have kids, I have Sam, Adam’s going to need me after what happened to Dad…”

“You really don’t have much of a say in this,” she said, tracing the line of his cheekbone. “I wish it were different, but it’s just not. There’s a reason that we’re meeting here, so you don’t have to see what’s happened to your body. It isn’t pretty, Dean.”

“I don’t _care_ what’s happened to my body!” he insisted, standing and heading away to the opposite side of the patio so he could try to breathe. “I have…kids, and Sam…”

“You said that already.” She was at his elbow, her arm slung through his and her head on his shoulder. “I know it’s hard, sweetheart. If anyone knows how hard it is to leave your children and your mate when you know they aren’t going to be okay without you, it’s me. But I’m telling you Dean - it would take a miracle to bring you back from this.”

“Then Sam’ll figure out how to work a miracle,” he said, even as he felt himself starting to spiral into genuine panic. He didn’t believe for a second that his alpha could work a miracle. Sam was locked up in the demon cell back at the bunker. Chances were good he didn’t even know what had happened, particularly when Dean had no current concept of time. “He’ll…I don’t know, he’ll figure something out. He won’t just let me die.”

“It’s not up to him to _let_ you die. He’s not a god. He doesn’t have that kind of power over life and death.”

“I have…I have _kids_!” he exclaimed again uselessly, hoping that he could be saved from the way he was crumbling internally as Millie stared at him solemnly and nodded.

“And they’re beautiful,” she said. “And they’re going to have to learn how to live without you.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” he snapped, shrugging her off to storm across the lawn and punch the maple before he kicked the tire swing. She came to the edge of the patio, watching him silently as he kicked the tire swing again, balling and unballing his fists as he tried to figure out what else he could hit besides the tree and came up with nothing, so he punched it twice more before turning back to her. “Do you have…any _idea_ what it’s like having to learn how to live without a mother?”

“Yes,” she replied calmly.

“Really?” He shouldn’t be yelling at her, he knew he shouldn’t, she was just the messenger and he shouldn’t shoot her for that, but there was no one else to aim at. “How could you possibly know? Grandma didn’t die until a month after you did! You _never_ had to live without your mom, how can you…”

“Because I’ve been watching you, Dean,” she said, stopping him where he stood and listening to him suck in a breath. “From the minute I left you, I’ve been watching, hoping, _praying_ that you would be all right without me. And I know you haven’t been, and you don’t know how hard it was to leave you, but I didn’t have a choice and neither do you. You need to accept what’s happened and move on with me or you’ll be stuck here, until eventually you lose your mind and turn into one of the things you hunt; a vengeful spirit.”

“How can I…how am I supposed to just _accept_ it? Lizzie’s birthday is this week and Elliott isn’t even walking yet…”

“That’s all true. But all those other things, the really _bad_ things that have happened to you?” He flinched and took a step back as she came across the lawn to where he was standing, agony over what she’d seen him endure written all over her face. “It will never happen to you again. Ever. No one will _ever_ touch you again when you don't want them to. There won’t be anymore nightmares, no more panic attacks, no more memories haunting you until the only way you can sleep is alcohol or pills. All of the terrible things that terrible people have done to you, they’ll all be gone, and you’ll be safe; really, _truly_ safe.”

“Because I’ll be dead,” he rasped, his voice not nearly as forceful as he would have liked.

“You’ll be _free_ ,” she corrected. “Or you stay and suffer alone until you go insane. I think you’ve suffered enough, honey.”

Her hand was on his face again, thumb sweeping back and forth across his cheek, small and warm and perfect. Her scent swept around him again, the lavender lotion just a little stronger this time because her wrist was right by his nose, and he didn’t know what to do. He missed her so much, he couldn’t remember how to breathe sometimes, even if he’d become an expert at pushing thoughts of her away as quickly as they surfaced. Now she was here, and she was saying things that made sense, and he could have her again if he just let go. But how could he let go when he knew what that would do to Sam? Maybe he’d be able to survive now that he was back at the bunker; maybe Henry could find some way to save him from the withering disease, but what would be left behind? How could Sam possibly contain the demon blood if he was stuck in a cycle of grief that would likely never get any better, presuming he did survive? What kind of father could he possibly be to their kids? And if Sam didn't survive, how was Adam supposed to handle a set of babies by himself when he barely qualified as an adult? How could he leave that kind of burden on his brother's shoulders?

“Mom…” he started, fighting to keep his chin from quivering. “I _can’t_ …”

“There will be no miracles, Dean.” The omega’s eyes snapped up to land on a dark haired woman by the grill, her plain beige gown little more than a burlap sack as she stared at him without blinking. “At least not any that fall under divine intervention. I have it on good authority.”

“Really?” He may be dying, but his hunter instincts were still intact and he recognized a potential threat when he saw one, moving his mother behind him and shuffling them two steps back towards the tree. “And who might you be?”

“Castiel.”

Her eyes flashed an iridescent blue that quickly faded away. It did nothing to set him at ease.

“Okay. You my reaper?”

“I am an angel of the Lord.”

Dean might be dying, but he wasn’t stupid and he snapped, “Get the hell out of there. There’s no such thing.”

“This is your problem, Dean,” Castiel said flatly. “You have no faith.”

“You’re damn right I have no faith,” Dean snarled. “From what my mom says, I’m about to die on and you show up to tell me there’s no divine intervention coming my way, so what exactly am I supposed to have faith in?”

His eyes snapped open to see the off white tiles of the ceiling in his hospital room, something shoved down his throat and choking him as he gasped for breath and couldn’t pull in any air. He flailed desperately, nearly ripping out his I.V. and catheter as he tried to call for help, the mass of machines hooked up to him going crazy with whirring and beeping until suddenly there was a flurry of activity and a pair of nurses were holding him down while a doctor said something about removing a breathing tube and he did his best follow the alpha’s instructions to make the process easier. For some reason he could smell ginger and peaches and wondered if that meant he was having a stroke. It would make sense, given the accident he and Adam were in. It would explain the breathing tube and the smell and how jarring the overhead lights were, not to mention why his brain wanted to focus on rabbits. The breathing tube was mercifully removed, allowing him to cough until he thought he was going to lose a lung, then a nurse was there helping him sit up and sip some water through a straw while the doctor was checking his pupil dilation and hammering him with questions; did he know his name, did he know where he was, did he know the date. Again he did his best in answering them, but he was disoriented and frightened, failing completely at putting on any kind of brave face. He’d been in hospitals too many times to think he’d get treated fairly or decently without anyone to advocate for him, especially now that he was mated and Sam wasn't with him, and he really hoped wherever Adam was he would be there soon.

It didn’t escape his notice how once the doctors and nurses had checked his vitals and basic things like heart rate and breath sounds they huddled in the hallway outside to discuss...something, probably him, and then one of the nurses scurried in one direction while another went off in the opposite direction. Their hushed tones didn’t exactly fill him with a sense of calm, and the expression on the face of the one doctor who came back in to talk to him had Dean feeling rather like he was about to be sent off to quarantine. When the doctor attempted to smile and look reassuring he didn’t manage it, and Dean decided he didn’t feel so much like a quarantine was on the horizon as a trip to a science lab where he could be studied and dissected.

“It’s my understanding that your alpha is on his way,” the doctor said in a clear attempt to try to break the ice. “He should be here before too long.”

“Oh,” Dean choked, his throat far too sore to carry on the conversation he sensed the doctor wanted to have. Besides feeling like someone had taken a metal file to his esophagus, he didn’t know what to think of Sam being on the road, torn between elation and dread. “Good.”

“We’re going to need to run some tests.” He looked at the omega for a long enough time to make Dean very uncomfortable, finally saying, “We’ll try to have you back by the time he gets here.”

“Oh,” Dean said again before the doctor turned, at a loss, and hurried from the room.

Whatever had the doctor looking pale and spooked moved Dean right to the head of the line for a series of MRIs, x-rays, and a CT scan. He even had two ultrasounds - a standard one and a transchannel one, and wasn’t _that_ just a walk in the park? He’d expected the transchannel one to be agony with his scarring and was more than a little surprised that it wasn’t, about as surprised as he was that they were treating him with kid gloves and making sure to explain everything they did before they did it. It all seemed more than a little excessive to the omega, to whom nothing had been said about his medical condition or why everyone who encountered him looked like they’d seen a ghost.

Really though, he didn’t mind the distraction that much. He didn’t know what shape Adam was in, but thought it must be pretty bad if his brother wasn’t camped out at his bedside when he woke up. It was entirely possible Adam was worse off than he was. Tom had pounded half of his face into hamburger in that alley, and Dean had no idea what happened to the car after they were hit. They could have rolled, Adam could have been thrown, any number of things could have happened. Then there was the whole thing with Dad and needing to get his body out of Daniel Elkins’ ranch before something found him there and started gnawing, and he was _so_ not ready to think about any of that, much as it needed to be dealt with as soon as they could get out of here. Either that or they had to send someone to take care of it, collect Dad and take him somewhere they could keep him cool until his funeral. The smell of peaches and ginger hit him again and he decided it was _really_ time to stop thinking about John.

It was close to four hours before they were done with all the tests, by which time Dean was tired, starving, and starting to become concerned about how things just didn’t feel right with him. He couldn’t have explained it if he tried, other than to say he had the vague sensation of being disconnected from everything. He was worried about Adam, but not as worried as he knew he should be. He was upset about his father, but not as upset as he knew he should be. It was probably just the stress of the situation, which didn’t stop him from finding the whole thing terribly disconcerting. It was almost like he wasn’t supposed to be dealing with these problems anymore, and it was taking his brain a while to catch onto the fact that he would have to.

Adam and Jo were huddled together by the nurses’ station just down the hall from Dean’s room when he was finally wheeled back, not exactly holding hands but looking like things might not be as far gone between them as Jo led on when they left for Last Chance. Jo even looked like she might be up for actually talking about her plans and how she saw Adam fitting into them. Hell, it seemed like she _wanted_ him to fit in with them, and all it had taken was a car wreck and near death experience to change her mind. Dean might have to sit down and talk with her at some point, friend to friend, about having unrealistic expectations of perfection when it came to his brother and relationships in general.

Adam moved first, hurrying to haul Dean up out of the wheelchair and demanding to know if he was all right. When he got an answer in the affirmative, he crushed his older brother to his chest with his good arm, getting a grunt for his effort until Dean caught up to the idea of hugging and fisted his hands in the back of Adam’s shirt. The disconnect faded some as he suddenly had Adam to focus on. His kid brother was shaking, and the shoulder of Dean’s hospital gown grew damp, then Adam was stepping back and wiping at his face, wincing when he drew a hand just a bit too forcefully across his swollen eye. The nurses pushing Dean’s chair said something about visiting hours and doctors talking with the patient’s alpha, and how apparently Adam was already in some kind of trouble for disappearing from his room for a couple of hours and then reappearing to check himself back in. Adam ignored the concerned quirk of Dean’s eyebrows, and after Jo gave the omega a quick hug, the nurse got Adam into Dean’s wheelchair - largely through the withering glare method - then swung him around to take him back to his room, Jo following and dropping her hand into Adam’s hair every now and then.

There was another wheelchair behind Dean in a matter of seconds, which struck him as overkill when it was only about ten feet to his room. He might be starting to feel a little woozy from having low blood sugar, but he could walk ten damn feet. Even so, he was glad to be sitting down when he scented Sam’s leather and tea, which was nearly overpowered by a cocktail of anguish, terror, and relief. As they wheeled him through the doorway he saw Sam talking quietly with two of the doctors who had spent the afternoon and early evening running tests on him. The alpha was nodding as he took in what they were saying while he sat on the bed looking absolutely wrecked.

“Dean,” he rasped as he surged to his feet, his voice catching on a sob halfway through the syllable and choking off the omega’s name. His eyes were red rimmed and glassy, a haunted look in the hazel orbs, his face drawn and pale. “Hey.”

The second word was cut off as well by the alpha's ragged breathing that was just a hair shy of hyperventilating, and Dean was doubly glad not to be standing, as the longing and uncertainty assailing him through their bond almost certainly would have knocked him over. A bit more of the disconnected sense began to fall away, and though he was still wary of Sam, he needed the alpha to stop feeling like _that_. Sam was trying to lock down the floodgates before he broke completely in front of everyone, and after weeks of not being able to discern any of his mate's emotions, it was a lot for Dean to take given recent events.

“Hey Sammy,” he murmured, moving to stand and finding himself immediately stopped by two nurses and one of the doctors.

Sam flinched at another alpha touching his omega, but the doctor was already saying, “We’d rather our staff get you into bed, Dean, than have you trying to stand.”

“What?” Dean glared up at the man, his eyes flashing angrily at the continued coddling. He was being treated like glass, couldn’t do anything himself, and no one would tell him about his condition. This was getting fucking ridiculous. “Why?”

“Dean…” The doctor glanced back at Sam, and the omega really wanted to punch him when he turned back around. “You were in a horrific car accident last night…”

“Yeah, I know,” Dean snapped, trying to stand again and once more being forcibly held in the wheelchair. “I remember the lights from the car that hit us. And I’m pretty sure it didn’t break my legs.”

“No, it didn’t. But until this morning, you had minimal brainwave activity, were dependent on a ventilator, and we’d placed your odds of survival at around ten percent.” A choked sound escaped Sam and pulled Dean’s wide eyes away from the doctor for a moment to where his alpha had sat back down and was slightly bent in on himself, squeezing his thighs as if to keep in everything Dean could feel threatening to burst out of him. “Mind you, those were your odds of _survival_ , not your odds of _recovery_. As we explained to your alpha when we got in touch with him, we never expected you to recover.”

“But…” Dean’s mouth was suddenly very dry. Something about a grilled cheese sandwich and the tire swing from his yard as a kid ( _he hadn’t thought about that in years_ ) flitted to the front of his brain. He couldn’t make sense of it. “But I’m fine…”

“Yes, you are,” the doctor said far more grimly than the situation would seem to call for. “Not only are you fine, you’ve regrown your spleen and your uterus, which we had to remove after we managed to stabilize you enough to perform surgery.”

Dean laughed; a humorless little titter, as he caught Sam out of the corner of his eye gripping the edge of the mattress until his knuckles turned white. Both seemed like an appropriate response after one was told they’d regrown two major organs and should be dead. He couldn’t let himself start to think about what had the power to do that, not when the thought that _he_ should be dead reminded him that his father actually _was_.

“Well, chalk that one up for the record books,” he said drily, his face paling even as his cheeks pinked, and he shoved the doctor out of the way to move next to Sam on legs that were shakier than he was prepared to let on. “I guess that means you’ll have my release papers ready to go in the morning?”

“We’d like to keep you a few days for observation,” the other doctor told him, seeming to think if they presented some kind of united front the good little omega would listen to reason.

“Yeah, that’s not gonna happen.” Dean grabbed Sam’s nearest hand, prying it off of his mate’s thigh, and proceeded to try to crush his fingers as he sought the strength to methodically wall off everything he felt about what happened at the Elkins ranch. “My dad...died recently, and if you keep me here a couple of days I’ll miss his funeral. And our daughter’s first birthday. And that’s just not an option, so I’ll expect to see those release papers with breakfast. My brother will need them too, obviously.”

“Mr. Wesson…” Both doctors were now looking to Sam, who had tipped his head in Dean’s direction and was breathing him in as much as he could, unsure of what he was allowed after the weeks in the cell and what it took to get him there. “We need your mate to see reason. His recovery is not natural. It could be temporary...”

“You think he temporarily regrew his uterus and spleen?” Sam demanded, his eyes a dangerously tinged red that had both doctors taking a step back. Dean could feel how short Sam’s fuse was, shoving back against the instinctive panic that started to swell in his stomach. “Don’t worry about getting the discharge papers in the morning. I’ll be taking my mate right now.”

“Mr. Wesson, we don’t know what caused this. As we explained when you arrived...”

“Dean doesn’t want to stay here.” The omega felt Sam’s arm around his waist and it sent butterflies straight to his traitorous, fear-twisted stomach. He needed a hell of a lot more reassurance that the alpha was back in his right mind than a display of chivalry and a flood of protectiveness surging through him straight from their bond. Still, it was really easy to let Sam pull him to his feet and to lean into him a little with all the not very nice feelings Dean was actively working to suppress. If the movement put Dean a little closer to Sam’s scent gland, that was purely by accident. “You can either give us the discharge papers now or we’ll just leave. You already have our insurance information on file, presumably, or you wouldn’t have been able to find me.”

“This isn’t about insurance, Mr. Wesson…”

The doctors really were tag-teaming them now, looking like they planned to physically bar the door if they had to in order to keep Dean on the premises. It was a stupid move that got Sam to draw up to his full height, moving in front of his mate and growling, and was probably going to result in security being called in a minute. Dean was too drained for that, and just frustrated enough that if the situation didn’t de-escalate soon he was probably going to start crying simply to release some of the stress knotting his guts, because these douchebag doctors didn’t seem to understand plain fucking English, like the fact that his father was _dead_.

“Look, I’ll stay the night, but I’m leaving in the fuckin’ morning,” he snapped, sidestepping Sam even as he had to wipe a quick hand across his face to get rid of the tear that slid out of his eye and trailed down towards his jawline. It was ridiculous that he had to deal with this bullshit when there were bigger things to take care of, like getting back to the ranch to see how badly John had started to rot. “Either have the paperwork ready or we’ll just walk out. Sam?”

The alpha looked back to watch as Dean climbed into the bed and scooched over as far as he could to give his mate space to join him under the thin sheet and blanket. Sam’s brain locked for a second, never imagining he would be welcomed back into Dean’s orbit so soon, though he suspected that the current blatant invitation was mostly due to the circumstances and he shouldn’t expect it to be the norm. That didn’t mean he was going to pass up a chance to share a bed with Dean, however, and with a final growl he turned his back on the doctors and nurses before kicking off his shoes, shrugging out of his jacket, and climbing in to fold his entire body protectively around his omega. The doctors protested for several more minutes until Sam growled again much more forcefully, and then finally they gave up and shut the light off on the way out.

The wall of Sam’s muscled chest caging Dean in had the smaller man torn between contented snuggling and wanting to stab him with a syringe. The physical sensation of how right it was to share a bed with his mate again was at war with the memory of the last time Sam had been behind him like this, and how Dean thought at that time he might have to shove a butter knife into the alpha’s liver so he could get away from the sink. He was obviously doing a terrible job of keeping his emotions under control, because as soon as the lights were off and the door clicked closed, Sam released his hold until he was barely touching the omega, his fingers ghosting lightly over Dean’s forearms as he forced himself to put space between them in response to his mate’s distress.

“I’m sorry about John,” Sam whispered, inching his face close enough that he could inhale Dean’s scent without being right up against the gland behind his ear. Dean shivered slightly at the feel of Sam’s breath on his neck, but the alpha kept himself in check. “Adam told me what happened.”

“He tell you Azazel’s gone?” Dean asked quietly as his heart began to throb with a dull, persistent pain. He’d have been worried that his miraculous cure was wearing off, except he recognized this particular pain from when Benny, Lisa, and Ben were killed. Sam hummed an affirmative behind him, and he caught a couple of Sam’s fingers to hold his hand. “Did you tell Henry?”

“I called him and Bobby. He didn't take it well. They may not have been on good terms, but John’s still his son.”

Dean nodded, thinking of the first time he met his grandfather and Henry’s request that he stop John from getting himself killed. Just one more failure to tack on Dean’s ever increasing list. He started tracing sigils on Sam’s forearm to distract from the memory as he drew in a deep breath and said, “Did you do somethin’ to fix me?”

“No,” Sam replied, pulling Dean tight against him despite his best efforts to respect the omega’s need for space. He just... _couldn’t_ be separated from his mate right now, when he was barely holding it together, and he knew Dean was close to falling apart as well for different reasons. “I would have, but no. They called, and I just had to get here…”

He broke off and slid in even closer, Dean shushing him when he felt the tears hitting the back of his neck and rapidly soaking the pillow. Dean hated himself for caving so easily to Sam’s needs, but he was well versed in self loathing so it wasn’t something he was going to dwell on when he suddenly felt so drained and Sam was shaking against him as he tried not to openly weep. It seemed at least for the moment that Yellow Eyes’ demise had indeed resulted in the demon blood losing its hold over his alpha, and Dean was going to focus on that so he could get some damn sleep. Tomorrow he’d  set boundaries and let Sam know he wasn’t getting out of the doghouse that easily, even if at the moment he was content falling into the happy _myalpha mySam_ loop. He was going to need to store up as much happiness as he could, considering they had to burn his father’s remains in the morning.


	137. It's My Fault that He's Gone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time to deal with John.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy birthday Sam!

Dean’s face and clothes were soaked with blood where he stood in the doorway to Daniel Elkins’ bedroom, which was supposed to be closed off because that’s where the vampires had broken in and torn open the roof and one of the windows. There was writing on his shirt that couldn’t be made out through all the red, and his hair looked like it had actually been dyed some unnatural shade from Clairol. He was sobbing as John pulled him down the hallway, his own shirt sporting a bright red spot all down the front of it on the left side and his skin the grey-green of someone whose blood hadn’t flowed for a while.

“I had a accident,” Dean sobbed as his father stroked his hair and pulled him into a tight side hug.

“That’s okay, buddy,” John told him, his voice breaking as they headed for the front door.

“Where’s Mama?” Dean asked as John hid his view of the blonde woman on the couch, who looked just like Dee Wallace and had been eviscerated.

“She’s tired honey, she’s just laying down for a bit,” John replied. The woman opened her eyes and looked straight ahead as she sat up.

“He’s not supposed to be with you, Sam. This is going to end badly,” she said gently, and the alpha jolted awake.

The hospital room was dim, the sun just starting to rise and send light streaming through the slats of the blinds on the windows. His head ached terribly, and when he pressed a hand to his nose, Sam realized it was bleeding. Fortunately, being in a hospital, there were tissues right on the small table next to the bed with the pitcher and water. He snagged one and did what he could to stop the bleeding before Dean noticed.

The space in the far too small bed beside him was empty, and he experienced a moment of open terror before spotting Dean in the corner of the room, mostly hidden in shadow as he held the blinds back just enough to watch the colors of the morning change, the moon still hanging in the sky unwilling to give up its reign just yet in favor of the day. A deep sadness had turned the air tart, like lemonade without enough sugar. When he heard the bed creak the omega quickly rubbed a hand over his face and got up from his chair, moving rapidly towards the bathroom.

“It’s too early for breakfast,” he said gruffly as Sam listened to the water run and pretended he didn’t hear the sob it was meant to hide. After a few minutes the faucet shut off and Dean appeared in the doorway drying off his face, backlit by the bathroom light so his puffy red eyes wouldn’t be quite so noticeable. “Sorry if I woke you. Couldn’t sleep.”

“It’s okay,” Sam murmured, sitting up but making no effort to move. “Why don’t you come lay back down for a while?”

“No,” Dean said hastily, but not cruelly. He followed it up with a short shake of his head, eyes on the floor, as if to emphasize his point. “No, I’m gonna go ask the nurse for the discharge papers.”

“Dean, I won’t…” Sam ran a hand through his hair, holding his bangs back out of his face. They were just starting to skim below his eyebrows, and he was going to have to decide soon if he wanted to trim his hair back or let it grow. He didn't want Dean to notice how shaken he was by the dream and start asking questions when his father-in-law needed to be...collected...and his mate apparently didn’t want to touch him. “I won’t try anything.”

“It’s not personal, Sam.” The way Dean twisted a towel in his hands sure made it feel like it was personal. “We’ve got to get back to Sioux Falls for Lizzie’s birthday tomorrow and that doesn’t leave a lot of time to...deal with Dad. So, uh...” The omega failed to clamp down on the grief that swelled to the surface, not that he could be blamed for that when it was starting to crash over him in waves, and he kept his eyes pinned to the floor to try to get himself under control. “We need to get going. I don’t know if you’ve got something I can wear in the car…”

“No, I…” He caught himself before admitting he didn't think Dean would need clothes - or anything - by the time he got there. “Laramie has a twenty-four hour Walmart,” Sam suggested, staying very still as he watched little drops of saline drip off the end of his mate’s nose to splash on the floor between his feet. “It’ll add a couple of hours, but we can drive straight through the night if we have to once we’ve taken care of John.”

“Yeah,” Dean agreed, his voice very small. “We can get Lizzie a stuffed animal and pick up a cake mix.”

“Chocolate,” Sam said firmly.

“Then she’ll wreck whatever we put her in. Chocolate’s really hard to get out of clothes.”

“She’s turning one. We’ll put a bib on her. It’s not like we can’t afford another shirt or dress or whatever. It’ll be fine.”

Dean huffed out a laugh, hugging his arms across his chest as he saw Sam’s socked feet appear on the floor in front of his own. He gave the alpha credit for managing to keep some space between them, given how his instincts had to be going crazy with all the distress currently seeping out of Dean’s pores into the room. The omega might still be very uncomfortable around his mate, but he was willing to accept that there was only so much Sam could take before he needed to do something, even if that something was simply hovering a few inches away.

Sam was starting to feel like Charon, locked in perpetual orbit with Pluto but never touching, and thought wildly for a moment that if he blurted that out he might get Dean to call him a dork, and then he could joke about how hot his mate found it, and that might get them past this horrible impasse that left him wanting to scratch his skin off for not being allowed to hold his omega. He understood it, obviously. It would have been nice if he could claim ignorance of the things he’d said and done to Dean, but if anything his memories of the way he’d behaved when he had not been in control of himself had crystallized while he was locked in that cell with not a whole lot else to think about. As deeply as it pained him to let the chasm between them grow any wider, unless Dean gave some indication that he _wanted_ Sam’s comfort, there simply wasn’t a lot the alpha could do aside from making sure it was clear his standing offer of a hug hadn't been revoked. It would be easy enough to simply envelop the smaller man, who plainly needed to be enveloped as vulnerable as he was, except Sam would be taking advantage of Dean when his emotions were delicate and that wouldn’t get them moving in the right direction at all. It actually might get him punched under the circumstances. There was simply no way he could win in this situation.

“My dad would be so pissed at us just...talkin’ about throwing out clothes like that,” Dean said thickly, his fingers twisting out tentatively until he caught the hem of Sam’s shirt.

“You’re kidding, right?” Sam asked, a small smile curling up the corners of his mouth as he ducked down a little to try to catch Dean’s eye. “John would be the first one to tell us to toss something that was ruined.”

“John ‘you get two pairs of pants a year, you better not rip ‘em’ Winchester?” Sam’s heart did a little happy dance when he succeeded in getting the mossy green eyes to look up at him. “No offense, but you hunted with him a couple of months. I've known the guy my whole life.”

“Permission to speak freely?” Sam said, earning a snort out of the omega.

“Sure thing, Number One,” he replied.

“I _knew_ you were a closet Trekkie!”

“Only because the prequels ruined the _Star Wars_ franchise. I never should’ve watched them.”

It didn’t escape Dean's attention that the fingers he’d tangled in Sam’s shirt had somehow ended up tangled in Sam’s hand, and the pang of guilt he felt at allowing himself that tiny bit of comfort took him by surprise. It shouldn’t have, guilt was something he’d lived with long enough and it was always sideswiping him, but still; here he was, smiling about how awful _The Clone Wars_ was and the odds were good a coyote or other scavenger had already found his dad’s body for a midnight snack. Talk about being a shitty son.

Sam noticed Dean’s shift in demeanor, would have needed to be blind not to, and got a stronger grip on Dean’s hand to pull him in a little closer as he said, “Your dad was a real alpha’s alpha. And yeah, we didn’t get along, but I’m just the kind of guy _that_ brand of alpha wants for their omega son, even if they'll never admit it.” That got a pair of raised eyebrows fixed on him, and Sam took a risk and ran his hands up and down Dean’s arms before he got clobbered. “You said I had permission to speak freely. I know we’re supposed to pretend that there aren’t certain things you _need_ as an omega, like an over-abundance of throw pillows, but I check off all the boxes in those ‘have you found your alpha?’ magazine quizzes. I’m tall, handsome, strong, smart, a reliable provider, and have more money than God. John might gripe about us wasting clothes, but deep down he’d be thrilled we can afford to replace things when they get ruined, even if he hated feeling that way. In fact, any alpha father is going to take one look and me and go, ‘Now _that_ guy can provide for my kid.’ If you can get past the...uh...demon blood thing...and yeah, that was a sticking point for him...” It was another risk that seemed worth taking, and though Dean looked at him warily, he didn’t pull away. “I’m basically the perfect mate.”

“Is that your version of an apology?” Dean murmured, allowing Sam to continue soothing him for the time being. “Cuz if it is, you forgot the words ‘I’m sorry.’”

“I’m sorry.” Sam moved into the omega’s space, surprised he was allowed to as he brushed his nose against Dean’s temple and dipped his chin just enough to scent his mate without going overboard about it. “I’m sorry, Dean. I was awful to you, and I'm so sorry.”

“The demon blood’s kind of a big thing, you know.”

“I know.”

The guilt swelled up again and Dean focused everything he had on pushing it away, on just enjoying the way Sam’s hands felt where they were skimming inside the back of his hospital gown. Yesterday he should have been dead and today he was alive and if anything gave him the right to lean into his no-longer-psychotic mate’s chest in spite of everything currently heaped on his plate, it seemed like that would be it. He should be far more worried about getting him and Adam out of the hospital, getting clothes, getting back to the ranch to deal with his father. His head was just so jumbled and he kept thinking he needed to lay in the grass with a glass of milk, which left him even more confused. Then there was his bond with Sam, demanding he stop locking down his emotions, as if allowing himself to feel the mess waiting to rise up and swamp him was _ever_ going to be a good idea. It was all too much to deal with, and if the positive reinforcement loop of pressing up against his alpha and letting Sam’s scent overwhelm him for a bit made it go away, he’d let it. It was a hell of a lot better than mainlining whiskey, which was the only other thing he could think of at the moment to force his brain to slow down for a while.

Sam knew they needed to get on the road as well as Dean did, but basking in Dean’s slowly sweetening scent was rapidly becoming the most important thing the alpha had to do today. He had his omega tucked up against his chest, Dean’s nose pressed into the skin on his neck, while Sam got to trace the various marks on his back under the thin fabric of the hospital gown. Dean so rarely allowed himself to just be smaller than the alpha when he wasn’t in the middle of a panic attack or sleeping, and Sam planned to soak up every second of this. Whenever Sam was at his side it seemed to make Dean hyper aware of their height difference, and he spent most of his time puffing himself up like he had to prove that he didn’t _need_ his big, strong alpha with him, he just _liked_ having his big, strong alpha with him. Sam knew it was a holdover from his years of hunting when he couldn’t count on anyone but Benny to have his back. It still wounded his stupid alpha pride just a little, and after the way he’d behaved with the demon blood raging through him it was a relief that Dean would fold himself up like the petite little omega he was not and allow Sam to surround him - protect him - from the harsh reality of their lives this way.

It was simple enough after they’d stood slotted together for a while for Sam to tip his head down a little further and hold his breath to see if Dean might be willing to tip his head up a little, which he was. The fringed tips of the omega’s eyelashes were wet ( _not really surprising given the circumstances_ ), and Sam needed Dean to close the distance between them the way he needed food or shelter. He couldn’t be the one to move, not after what Dean had to do to get him into lockdown, and if he had to spend the next six weeks or six months hovering an inch away from his mate’s lips he’d do it. He didn’t think he’d have to, though, not with the way he could feel Dean’s heart pounding against his ribs, or the way his breathing had gone quick and shallow, but Dean was easily spooked so Sam held perfectly still.

“Fuck it,” Dean muttered after what seemed like eons, going up on his toes to make himself big again and grabbing Sam by the neck to haul him into a kiss that had the alpha gasping against his lips. Sam went easily when Dean moved to shove him up against the bathroom wall, his fingers digging into Dean’s back and hip hard enough to leave marks as Dean kissed the air right out of his lungs. Sam slid down the wall a little to keep them the same height without Dean having to stay up on his toes the entire time, letting the omega slot between his legs to mold them together as he sucked and nipped and licked his way into Sam’s mouth.

The alpha could feel his hindbrain all giddy and demanding as the omega shifted where his mouth was, pressing open-mouthed kisses all along his jaw and neck, leaving little bruises in his wake as he rubbed against his mate, making sure Sam was well marked as Dean’s. Dean knew he was probably going too far, sending Sam signals of being ready for things he absolutely wasn’t, of moving them into a place they weren’t ready to go yet, but after having come so close to losing Sam to Azazel’s control he had an obsessive urge to ensure any demon that came within ten feet of them could smell exactly who Sam was always going to belong to. He understood the growly possessiveness of alphas acutely now ( _something he’d always found irritating_ ), wondering if he could get away with peeing all over Sam or if that might be taking things a little too far. He needed to make it crystal clear to anything that might think they could have him that Sam was _his_.

And there was also the fear tucked way back in the recesses of Dean’s mind where he didn’t want to look yet that he had to make sure anything that wanted to take _him_ away knew he wasn’t going to go without a fight. Sam was his and he was Sam’s and he couldn’t be expected to just leave his mate behind; to abandon him like he was nothing, when Sam was everything. Dean wasn’t good at saying things like that, though - probably would never be. Too many years under his belt hearing that he needed to stow his feelings because no one had time for them, but he could show Sam how he felt. The alpha didn’t seem to mind, giggling and sighing as Dean slid a hand between his mate’s lower back and the wall to pull him in even closer, snuggling his nose behind Sam’s ear before twisting his neck just a little to latch onto Sam’s earlobe with his teeth.

“Careful,” Sam murmured at that, bolts of lightning racing under his skin and causing him to shiver all over. His legs were starting to turn to goo and if Dean kept at it Sam was going to have to get them moving towards the bed just so he didn’t fall over. “We’re still in a hospital.”

“Do you have…any _idea_ what it’s like having to learn how to live without a mother?”

The question was so odd, and Dean sounded so wrecked when he said it that it broke the omega’s spell over Sam and he pulled back, looking at his panting mate whose pupils were fully blown in the center of glowing golden eyes, to ask, “What?”

“What?” Dean echoed, trying to dive back in for Sam’s neck and finding himself held in place by a very confused Sam. He repeated, “What?”

“What did you just say?” Sam demanded quietly.

“I didn’t say anything,” Dean murmured, his voice low and husky, lunging forward to get at Sam’s earlobe again.

“Yes you did,” Sam insisted, wrenching him off and pulling a whine and a huff from the omega’s chest. “You did.”

“I really didn’t, Sammy,” Dean told him, though before he could say anything about the utter look of bewilderment on the alpha’s face, there was a knock at the hospital room door.

“Mr. Smith?” a nurse called as she wandered in, Dean groaning as he sagged against Sam and heard her say, “Oh. I’m sorry to interrupt. I need to do a last check of your vitals so I can give the all clear to process your discharge papers. And your breakfast will be up in a few minutes.”

“It’s fine,” Dean said, his voice slightly strained as he butted his head one last time against Sam’s jaw like a cat looking to be caressed and feeling Sam’s hand run through his hair in response.

The omega smiled thinly at knowing his alpha was so well trained before pushing off from the wall to follow the nurse over to his bed so she could check his blood pressure, lung sounds, temperature, and any other number of routine things. Sam let him go, trying to steady his breathing at first and then pressing the back of his fingers to his nose as he felt the blood start to drip. He barely managed not to get any on his shirt as he grabbed some toilet paper to staunch the flow, making up an excuse about needing a minute to get himself together when Dean asked if he was coming out of the bathroom and getting a snort in response from his mate. The blood didn’t flow for very long before stopping, even if he was starting to feel the edge of a headache come on as he ran the water and checked his reflection in the mirror to make sure he looked all right. Dean couldn’t know this was still apparently happening, not when he was mourning his father and he'd seen how poorly Dean did with grief. He’d mention it to Henry when they got back to the bunker, maybe spend some time every day in the demon cell just to tamp it down. Whatever it took to keep this under wraps until he knew why the visions hadn't stopped so he wouldn’t worry his mate unnecessarily.

The doctors came back again while Dean was eating breakfast to try to convince him to stay a few more days for observation, thinking a good night's rest may have allowed both young men to see reason. It was a mistake of course, the omega growing angrier by the second at having his breakfast interrupted and his alpha no less irritated by the intrusion. Dean needing to insist that he couldn't simply miss his father's _funeral_ spoiled the levity the couple had managed to stumble into in the bathroom, and by the time Adam showed up Dean was barely holding it together.

Adam didn't look any better, which wasn't surprising when he'd been the one to pull the trigger. Jo was with him, not doing a very good job at holding back her irritation with Sam but at least trying to be civil given the circumstances. Adam had the duffels from the car slung over his good shoulder - a strong indicator of where he'd gone the day before that got him in trouble with the hospital staff, as well as the obvious reason he had clean clothes to wear - and Dean would have teased him about the huge hickey on his throat under different circumstances. As it was, he was having a hard time looking at his brother without hearing John begging Adam to shoot him, making it difficult to find the emotional reserves necessary to comfort the beta in spite of his blatant need for it.

Adam having the duffels meant the Walmart trip was canceled, and it was just as well since Dean really wasn’t in the mood now to sit in the car in the gown and pajama bottoms provided by the hospital while Sam ran in to grab him something to wear. Dean nearly whined on hearing his duffel had been too severely wedged in the trunk to recover. A couple of his softest tees were in it, but he and Adam were close to the same size so he pulled on a pair of jeans and a tee shirt that still smelled of lighter fluid and smoke, leaving him only with the problem of what he was going to put on his feet once the nurse had taken his release papers for processing. They’d cut everything off him when he arrived, including his boots. How hard it was going to be to build a funeral pyre in a pair of socks sent the omega into a bit of a meltdown, which sent his brother into a full-on meltdown, and when the nurse returned Sam nearly had to threaten her with grievous bodily harm to keep her from calling the doctor back in.

They swiped a bed sheet so there would be something to wrap John in, and after a brief, humiliating piggy back ride ( _the alpha threatened to get his mate in a bridal carry if he wouldn’t go quietly_ ), Sam and Dean were in the Impala with Adam and Jo following behind in the truck. Sense memory turned out to be a bitch, and the omega ended up white knuckling it in the passenger seat all the way to the ranch, grumbling at Sam for his insistence that no one should drive in bare feet while just waiting for someone to run them off the road. Eventually he figured he’d stop seeing the headlights of the Silverado and hearing the shattering glass, but it was probably a little foolish to think that should have already happened. The ride wasn’t any easier on Adam, who looked like he was about to vomit when Jo put the truck in park and he hastily stumbled out onto the driveway. Adam couldn’t even enjoy giving his brother shit about his second piggy back ride of the day as Sam got Dean and the duffel with their tools into the house, busy as he was trying to keep his breakfast down. The twelve hour drive to Sioux Falls was definitely going to suck.

It was a stroke of luck, really, that finally taking out Yellow Eyes had happened in Wyoming in October, otherwise John’s body might have smelled worse. Something had gnawed a bit on one of his hands, and he looked even more like a shell than he had a day and a half ago, and rather than think about how wrong his father looked and smelled, Dean backed up a dump truck full of dirt to bury his feelings until they were at minimum six feet under and focused on getting John’s boots off so he’d have something to wear while working on the pyre. Sam turned his efforts to helping Dean get the body wrapped up, Adam looking at them helplessly from the doorway and thinking he should have asked Lilith to fix his arm when she was buying his soul so he could at least be useful. The idea made him laugh a little hysterically until he was sobbing, and when Jo tried to comfort him, he rasped, “Everything’s so fucked,” before heading out to the barn. He returned with an hand saw from the barn as they were finishing binding the sheet around his father, left with nothing to do but sit watch over John with Jo as Dean and Sam went out to find something they could chop down despite the house being surrounded by pasture land. The air had a bite to it that shot past chilly into crisp, the cloudless sky shone a bright, blinding blue, and it was far too early to have to deal with any of this.

Ten minutes of feeling useless was all Adam could stand before he headed out to find Dean and Sam dismantling the wooden corral that ran out from the barn across Elkins’ pasture as far as he could see. It didn’t look particularly sturdy, more decorative, which seemed silly in the middle of Wyoming. Then again, according to Dean this had been a cattle ranch, and Adam didn’t know anything about cattle. Maybe a rickety rail fence was all it would take to discourage a herd of cows from wandering down the long dirt road to the highway. The cattle were all dead now, though - dead like Daniel Elkins, dead like Dad, and soon enough dead like him. It didn’t seem real, the idea that he had seven days left to live ( _maybe it was six, he wasn’t sure if the day he made the deal counted as one or this was when the clock started_ ), and he thought with a laugh that Lilith had done him a favor, giving him so little time. He could definitely avoid thinking about murdering his father for the next six or seven days, and there was no way it would feel real that he was dying by then.

A pleasant numbness had been slowly seeping into his bones since he saw Dean coming back from having tests run the night before, whole and healthy and alive, and now watching him and Sam work quietly in tandem to dismantle the fence it was clear he’d done the right thing. The two of them needed each other in a way Adam was never going to really understand, and they’d have each other to lean on once he was gone. Sure, it would be a blow after losing Dad, but Sam would get Dean through the grieving process and he’d be fine eventually. Happy, even. At any rate, Adam only had six or seven days left, and he wasn’t going to spend it a bundle of panic and angst, obsessing over how him dying would effect the people he cared about. The deal had been the right call to make.  

“Are you ever gonna tell me what’s wrong with Sam?” Jo had managed to come up silently beside him, standing a good half foot away as they watched the two men build up the pile of rails that would suit the purpose of building a pyre for John quite nicely. “Or is it always going to be bros before hos?”

“Is that really what you think of me?” Adam asked bitterly. “That it’s a matter of me choosing a guy friend over a girlfriend?”

“I don’t really know what else I’m supposed to think,” she replied, tensing her jaw as Dean stopped to wipe a hand across his cheeks and Sam was there a second later, hovering close enough to massage the back of his neck but keeping his distance. “Sure, Sam’s all lovey dovey now, but you can’t tell me the two of you weren’t scared shitless by whatever happened with Emma. You were afraid of him. You _both_ were. And you want me to just believe you when you tell me ‘oh, that wasn’t really Sam’ and I have to get over it. Maybe you can get over shooting at Sam when he had your pregnant brother and infant niece trapped in a bathroom, but you’ll have to forgive me if I need a little more than your say-so that it somehow wasn’t him when I was standing right there. I’ve been willing to give him the benefit of the doubt since then, but it’s pretty clear that whatever his malfunction was back in Fort Wayne came roaring back after Emma showed up. So what is it that you don’t want to tell me about? Is he on meth or something, and that’s why you keep telling me it’s not him?”

“No. I don’t want you involved in it.”

“News flash, Adam. I _am_ involved. Dean’s my friend, and I’ve known him a hell of a lot longer than I’ve known you. If there’s something going on with Sam, you need to tell me what it is, _especially_ now. You don’t get to decide for me what I need to know and what I don’t.”

Jo’s words knocked the wind right out of him, reminding him of the conversation he’d had with his brother when Dean showed up to his apartment a year ago. The guilt from the way he’d handled things back then twisted his insides into a Gordian knot, and he supposed this would be one of his last opportunities to prove that he’d learned from his mistakes. Instead, he said, “Can we please not do this today?”

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly, and after looking up at him for several long moments she trailed her fingers through his hair and moved in to lean heavily against his arm. “I'm sorry, I'm being an ass, and I don’t want to fight about this - not today, not ever. I really don’t. I miss you so much, and I just want us to get back to where we were but we can’t if you’re keeping things from me.”

“I know,” he murmured, tipping his face to rest his chin on the crown of her head and feeling relief that he only had to lie for a few more days.

A light drizzle had started by the time the four of them were watching John’s body burn, the afternoon turning ever darker and taking the mood of the Winchester brothers right along with it. Dean had been silent since they arrived at the ranch, letting Adam say their thanks and goodbyes to their father before lighting the kerosene soaked wood, breaking down halfway through and ending up babbling pretty incoherently until Sam reached over to take the torch from him. At that point the beta managed to pull himself together enough to finish up, and once the body caught and the smell of burning flesh started to fill the air Jo headed back to the Ford to give the brothers some space, Sam eventually following to wait in the Impala. The fire burned bright in spite of the increasing rain as Dean and Adam watched their father slowly breaking down to ash. Adam turned into a blubbering puddle once they were alone, the finality of what they were doing hitting him full force, the knowledge that he’d never see his dad again since he was going to Hell, and when he was close to hyperventilating Dean said quietly, “I can finish this up.”

“No, it’s…” The younger Winchester sucked in a shuddering breath, choking on smoke and despair. “I did this. I’ll stay.” Dean nodded curtly, dragging a hand over his face to clear away the tears as his brother’s eyes landed on him. “Are you mad at me, Dean?”

He sounded like a four year old again, afraid of the monster under his bed, and Dean looked down at John’s boots on his feet and shook his head.

“I know you had to do what you did,” he replied gruffly, sniffing and thumbing away the moisture on his lashes. “I _know_ it. I really do. It’s just gonna take me some time to be all right with it.” He turned to his younger brother, whose expression was one of abject misery, and his chest clenched, making it difficult to breathe. The last thing he wanted was for Adam to feel alone in this, no matter how hard it was for Dean to begin processing the loss of their father. “That’s not the same as bein’ mad, Adam. Okay?”

“Okay,” Adam whispered, willing himself not to think of the other things Dean would need to learn to be all right with by the time the week was out as his brother slung an arm around his back and pulled him into a side hug. How he managed not to scream when John sat up, his skin melting off, to smile at them Adam didn’t know, but he was awfully grateful his brother was too busy crying to notice the way his hair stood on end.


	138. Are You That Screwed in the Head?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A brief respite at Bobby's that isn't so restful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slowing down again for just a bit. Work is getting busy and Season 14 was very taxing (plus Netflix keeps reminding me there are new episodes to watch and just...no, once through was plenty, thanks).

Dean was convinced there was something going on with his brother that he wasn’t being honest about. Adam said he hadn’t done anything to “fix” Dean, the same way Sam had, but after he insisted on having his picture taken several dozen times with his niece while she was covered in chocolate cake and “ooo”-ing over the giant stuffed cat he got her when they stopped on the drive back for clothes and party supplies, and even when she was crying after Elliott pulled her hair, it was plain to see the beta was off kilter. And yes, Dean supposed that was to be expected. A mixture of survivor’s guilt and dealing with the aftermath of patricide was likely to make anyone a wreck. Shit, Oedipus gouged out his eyes, and Adam didn’t seem on the verge of doing that yet, so Dean should probably be counting his blessings. Still, he wasn’t acting like himself at all, and it had the omega worried.

It wasn’t just his behavior at Lizzie’s birthday party that was raising alarm bells with Dean. They’d driven straight through to Sioux Falls after the pyre burned to nothing and Dean buried what remained of John’s bones on the Elkins ranch, so all four of them were pretty tired and punchy while trying to decorate Bobby’s house, wrap presents, and bake a cake. Besides, Adam was extremely close to both babies, having spent so much time helping to raise them, particularly when Elliott was left in the NICU while Dean was dragged off to Louisiana. A milestone birthday was a perfectly reasonable explanation for Adam “stop, Dean, I hate how I look in pictures” Winchester to suddenly want to be in all the ones that were taken that day.

No, it was the way that he twitched and shivered sometimes when he turned to find someone standing behind him that he hadn’t been expecting. It was the way he insisted that they stay at Bobby’s for a while instead of going right back home, under the guise of giving Henry time and space to mourn after the way John died at his youngest son’s hands. It was the way he started spending his evenings in the company of one of Bobby’s six packs or bottles of whiskey, and how he kept pestering Dean to go out drinking with him. It was especially in the way Hannah acted towards him, like something had her spooked, and she was either afraid _of_ him or afraid _for_ him. She wouldn’t even come in the house, though the cool weather and how much she seemed to like Rumsfeld probably had something to do with that as well. Even taking into account it was perfect Pyr weather as an excuse for her avoidance of the indoors, whenever Adam was outside and near her Hannah went absolutely bonkers.

Sam had to agree that Adam didn’t seem like himself, but to be fair the whole of the household was off, and that could only partly be explained by how everything was now cleaned and organized - no doubt because Bobby didn’t want to look like a total slob in front of Ellen. Though John may not have been either beta’s favorite person, he’d been a friend from way back, and while the ( _relatively new_ ) couple always expected him to die hunting down the thing that killed Millie it was still a shock that he finally had. Jo was doing her level best to remain cordial while the alpha was there, since it wasn’t her house and much as she might like to, she had no right to demand he find a hotel to keep his distance from Dean. She did refuse to give up her room, however, insisting that Adam with his injuries needed a comfier mattress, and the mated couple ended up in the guest bedroom with the two twin beds. As irritated as Sam was by her attitude, she wasn’t being a dick for no reason, and he couldn’t begrudge Dean having friends who cared about him. Obviously he’d made a very bad impression on Emma as well, since when they first arrived the kid had tended to hide behind whichever adult was nearest whenever he was in the same room with her, if she didn’t outright flee when she saw him coming. He was glad they were staying for a while so he could at least try to convince her he wasn’t a monster, even if she didn’t end up liking him any more than Jo.

Sam had plenty of time to try to get Emma to at the very least not hate him as Ellen was busy fielding calls from hunters and taking orders for car parts while Dean and Adam were spending most of their days on the back porch with Bobby, holding the two infants and a couple of beers. Bobby was better at sitting in long silences than Sam was, and neither Winchester was in any mood to talk. The old hunter had nearly broken down like someone’s grandma when Dean walked into the house in one piece after Henry told him about the young man’s grave condition, and Sam got the feeling he’d sit with the two boys every day for the next month if that’s what they wanted. Every now and then Bobby would tell a story about when Dean was little, before Adam came along, and the omega would hum in agreement while his brother murmured, “You never told me that,” but not much beyond that was said. It had been a wonder Dean managed to sing along to “Happy Birthday” the day after burning his father, and what little conversation he’d engaged in since had been short and halting. Ellen assured Sam that Dean had always been that way, and the days after Benny and Lisa’s deaths were vivid in the alpha’s memory to affirm what he knew to be the truth. That didn’t mean he was any more comfortable than he’d been back then with the way Dean was shutting down as he and Adam slowly adjusted to their new, fatherless reality.

“I was thinking,” he ventured on their third night there, reaching across the bank of pillows Dean snagged from his old room to fill the gap in the mattresses where they’d pushed the twin beds together. “Maybe Emma could come back with us, if you want.”

A ribbon of moonlight was peeking between the curtains on one of the room’s two windows, and it lit up his mate’s profile in a way that reminded Sam of when he’d moved in after Windom, when they didn’t have a bed big enough for the two of them and he could only look at Dean from across the room and hope someday he’d be allowed to touch his omega the way he wanted to so desperately. Even as his fingers trailed across Dean’s arm he was acutely aware of the distance between them, as Dean took a long time to think about Sam’s statement, his jaw working and his eyes shiny in what little light there was. He appreciated what the alpha was offering, but after leaving her with Bobby for so long it seemed cruel to rip her away, much as Dean might have liked to, and he brushed away one of the pesky random tears that was plaguing him these days before shaking his head.

“No, Bobby’d never let her go,” Dean said, surprised at how raspy his voice came out. He cleared his throat, leaning into Sam’s hand a little when the alpha moved to brush his knuckles down the smaller man’s cheek. “Maybe in a decade when she’s all hormones and angst.” Sam snorted, shifting over to pull Dean in as the little spoon and giving him a squeeze as the omega added, “Six is easy.”

“Yeah?” Sam asked, resting his lips against Dean’s shoulder without any real goal in mind. It was the closest his mate had allowed him to get since the hospital. “You know a lot of six year olds?”

“You were six when we met,” Dean murmured. ‘ _When Dad ditched us_ ’ went unspoken, and he drew in a deep, shuddering breath. “Ben was six.”

It felt distinctly like the air had been sucked out of the room, and Sam tightened his hold on the omega like he’d evaporate if Sam didn’t have a really strong grip on him. Christ, he was a dunce. Not that anyone could ever replace the Lafittes, but there was a hole in Dean's life where a six year old belonged, and when he'd found a six year old with a hole in her life where a family belonged, like pieces from different puzzles that fit anyway, Sam had gone right off the deep end; dove head first into being the parasite’s bitch like it was his job. No wonder Jo wouldn't switch rooms with them.

“He was, wasn’t he?” Sam said quietly, and Dean gave a quick nod before swiping at his face again. “I forgot.”

“It's okay,” Dean murmured. “You didn't really know him. ‘Night, Sammy.”

It was officially the longest conversation they'd had in days, and Sam wished it hadn't left him feeling like an ass. Things didn't get any better when he woke the next morning, jolting out of a dream where Dean was talking to the angel from Sinclair’s zoo. It had him hurrying out of bed and rushing to the bathroom so he could get a tissue under his bloody nose and pop a couple of aspirin to hopefully ward off the headache before it started. He missed Dean’s room with the attached bath, counting himself lucky that he was up before anyone else, though as he came back out into the hallway he saw Adam standing frozen outside the guest bedroom, staring blankly at the wall across from the door. He didn’t even notice Sam as the alpha moved to him, seeming to almost be in a trance. When Sam laid a heavy hand on his good shoulder, Adam nearly jumped out of his skin, jerking away down the hall all the way to Emma’s room and taking a full minute to focus on his brother-in-law and slow down his breathing.

Sam was okay with Adam needing a while to come out of whatever was happening to him, since it gave him some time to recover from the image of Adam and his very strange roommate kissing, which Sam was fairly certain would be seared into his brain for quite some time. He had just enough time to get the tissue back to his nose before Adam was aware enough to really notice the blood, and he asked breathlessly, “What did you do?”

“Nothing,” Adam mumbled, looking quickly at the floor so he didn’t have to see the way Sam’s face twisted, his eyes rolling back and sinking into his skull as his mouth gaped, teeth dropping one by one to the floor and leaving his gums leaking trails of blood down his jaw.

“Bullshit,” Sam whispered as he heard one of the kids stirring in Emma’s room. She’d been so content to have them with her in the Pack N’ Plays they hadn’t bothered to move them, but they did have a baby monitor and in a minute there was either going to be an omega in the hallway or a six year old or both. “Dean didn’t just get better, and _I_ didn’t do anything.”

“Drop it, Sam,” Adam ordered, eyes fixed somewhere beyond the alpha’s shoulder as he pushed past him towards the bathroom.

As expected, Dean was stumbling out of their room just as Adam was disappearing behind the bathroom door, looking not particularly well rested as he muttered something about the kids and slid past Sam towards his old bedroom. Emma was next, standing bleary-eyed in her doorway and getting maneuvered back inside with a quiet order to go back to bed. She muttered something that was half in German and half in English, too tired to notice Sam was following his mate to get both kids up and out of her room, no matter who was fussing. Despite their best efforts, Elliott’s need for a clean diaper woke up most of the house, with the exception of Jo who was too tired from her late shift at the bar to get out of bed, whether she was awake or not.

Dean was busy making breakfast while Sam was getting Cheerios out for both Lizzie and Elliott when Ellen and Bobby staggered into the kitchen, Emma close behind and holding onto Ellen’s robe as she yawned. Dean had definitely been right before about leaving the little girl where she was. The two betas had really taken to her, and though she staggered over to give Dean a “good morning” hug she returned to Ellen’s side pretty immediately. Sam took advantage of his mate being distracted by all the sudden activity in the kitchen to get a hand on Bobby’s elbow and tell him quickly and quietly that he thought Adam had done something stupid to save Dean.

Bobby already suspected as much. He hadn’t wanted to corner the boy right after they arrived, since he was the one who’d had to shoot their father and was clearly a mess, but Dean had all but come back from the dead, and from what Bobby could tell there were absolutely no lingering effects of his injuries. Whatever healed him had been thorough. He’d noticed Adam’s increasingly anxious behavior and knew they couldn’t ignore it much longer anyway, assuring Sam he’d get to the bottom of it.

No one expected the monkey wrench of a phone call Sam got from the hospital outside of Branson reminding him to make an appointment to get Lizzie’s cast off in the next few days. They’d tried reaching him the week before to remind him, but of course the week before he’d been chained to a bed in the bunker’s sub-sub-basement. Neither the alpha nor the omega were particularly interested in returning to Missouri, and Sioux Falls General wasn’t an option in case there was still anyone on the lookout for Dean and Lizzie. However, Sioux City was less than an hour and a half away, was in another state, and would give the omega a change of scenery, something Sam could see he needed quite badly. A couple of quick conversations and her records from the ER in Branson were on their way to a pediatric orthopedist in Iowa, who'd just had a cancellation for the following morning, and Sam was on his laptop looking up things they could stop and see while they were there to turn it into a nice little day trip. That he hoped to give Bobby enough time alone with Adam to find out what was going on with him was something Sam intended to keep to himself.

The day turned rapidly into tearing apart cars out back to fulfill various orders Bobby’d received for the legitimate business he ran, the one that was easy for hunters to forget he had when they needed to figure out how to kill a camazotz or a kludde. Dean did most of the tearing, Sam relegated to kid wrangling duty and actually convincing Emma to play hide and seek with him while Lizzie and Elliott were down for a nap. Adam took the truck right after breakfast, not telling anyone where he was going, just that he needed some air, and when he returned he vanished into Jo’s room. She had the day off, and to everyone’s complete surprise she and Adam didn’t emerge from her bedroom again any longer than it took to grab some food and liquids before disappearing behind the door, looking thoroughly rumpled. Ellen spent the morning grumbling under her breath while working on Bobby’s books for the business, finally barking when she’d made lunch for the men and Emma that they better be using protection because she was not raising a grandchild along with a six year old, and Sam, Dean, and Bobby almost choked on their sandwiches. The glare she leveled on all three of them had them turning varying shades of pink and finishing their food as quickly as possible with an excessive amount of “thanks” and just a few too many compliments to her skills in the kitchen before scurrying back to their tasks for the afternoon.

Elliott was cutting a tooth and miserable, leaving Dean walking around with him most of the night while Sam and Emma played checkers until her bedtime. She was starting to relax a little around him and by the time he offered to tuck her in with Lizzie she seemed okay with the idea. The two of them struggling to communicate pulled a small smile out of Dean, one of the few he’d shown so far, starting to genuinely believe his alpha might actually be back to having full control over what was going on inside his head. It wasn’t a thought he wanted to fully take flight just yet, sensing that there was another shoe just waiting to drop and not wanting it to have something to do with Sam’s demon blood. He was distracted from his musings by the little girl who ran over to give him a huge hug and then tug on him to drop down for a kiss on his cheek, which Sam mimicked on the other cheek once the omega had straightened. Bobby muttered, “Socks still need to go on doors around here,” as he sat on the couch with Ellen watching _Open Range_ and getting himself swatted.

Sam felt the briefest flash of “ _want_ ” punch him in the stomach through his bond with Dean, almost stumbling and dropping Lizzie on the stairs. Dean was already vanishing into the kitchen by the time the feeling passed, murmuring something about ice cubes just loud enough for the alpha to hear over the quiet hum of the television. He couldn’t tell what it was Dean wanted, but the feeling was heated and left the alpha sweating slightly. Emma was already pulling on his hand, however, and Lizzie was fussing against his shoulder, so he shoved it to the back of his mind and continued upstairs to put the girls to bed.

Dean shocked himself with his response to Bobby’s off-handed comment, and he was glad he could tamp down on it before something truly awful happened, like he started leaking slick and wrecked his pants. It had only been that morning after breakfast that it occurred to him he should start applying his scar cream again. He hadn’t even thought about it before, noticing between the hospital and the Elkins’ ranch that the tube had survived in the med kit with Adam’s duffel but not sparing it much thought beyond that. His brain was only half working these days, and it just didn't seem like a huge priority right after laying John to rest. When he went to slather himself up before heading out to work on cars for the day it had been an utter shock to find a finger slid in with no pain or abnormal resistance. For several horrifying seconds he thought he might have gone numb, except a second and then third finger slid in easily as well. A few minutes of very careful exploration later and he was seriously aroused and biting back a moan, unable to find a single one of the raised scars anywhere on his channel walls. What’s more, he was incredibly sensitive, and had to fight off the urge to keep going until he painted the bathroom wall with his release, stopped only by the knowledge that Sam would smell him from a mile away if he gave into that need. His internal omega was throwing a fit, insisting that Sam smelling him from a mile away wasn’t in any way, shape or form a problem, and he should go find the nearest flat surface to bend over for his alpha so they could _finally_ bond the way they were supposed to. His instincts were completely at odds with the panic racing through him at not knowing what brought him back from the brink of death or why it had apparently fixed _every_ problem he had instead of just the ones associated with the crash, and not trusting that this wasn’t going to come back in some way to bite him in the ass. As much as he instinctively wanted to resume a normal relationship with his mate as soon as he could get Sam alone and rip his pants off, he needed to know if there was some ulterior motive behind his miraculous recovery and by nightfall was very fucking glad his son was refusing to settle down. If he were really lucky they might need to spend the night downstairs together once Ellen and Bobby went to bed, leaving Sam and all his marvelous Sam-ness to his lonesome in their room while Dean struggled to get a lock on his haywire hormones.

Elliott definitely came through for his mother, going so far as to wake up and start crying when his father came to collect them both from the couch around two in the morning. The little boy was snuffling away on Dean’s chest while the omega snored lightly, still fully clothed with one foot sticking out from under the afghan that lived on the back of the sofa, and the second Sam went to lift him he began to wail. Dean groaned, pulling the afghan up over his head as he whined, “Dude, I _just_ got him to sleep. He’s gonna wake up Bobby and Ellen.”

“I’ll get him settled, go up to bed,” Sam ordered, giving his mate a quick peck on the lips before he started pacing towards the kitchen and jostling their son. Dean was grateful to be too tired for the alpha’s scent to do anything to him, and stumbled his way to bed, flopping down without even bothering to take off his clothes.

Elliott settled pretty easily once Sam got out some ice to soothe his gums, though it was apparent why Dean had ended up downstairs with him. The minute Sam tried to get him up to his designated Pack N’ Play the little boy was awake again and fussing, sending him back to the kitchen for more ice just as Adam was coming in from the back porch in his pajamas, a flashlight in his hand and the demonology book tucked under his sling high enough that Sam couldn’t see what it was. The beta visibly flinched at the sight of his friend, staggering back into the door and nearly breaking the window as he quickly looked away. He hadn’t had enough whiskey to sleep after spending the day wrapped up with Jo, never mind dealing with a vision of his brother-in-law eating his way through his nephew’s skull.

“Christ, you scared the shit out of me,” he breathed, glancing up to see if the vision had passed only to find that Sam was now picking bits of brain matter out of a large gash in Elliott’s skull to munch on like chicken nuggets. He quickly swallowed down the bile that rose to the back of his throat and blinked a couple of times before he could accurately see Sam looking at him warily as he stroked Elliott’s hair and let him suck on his pinky. “Isn’t it a little late for Alien to be up?”

“It’s a little late for anyone to be up.” Sam eyed the nearly hidden tome and asked with a short nod, “What are you reading?”

Adam had to look away again as Sam’s head burst into flames and his eyes quickly liquefied.

“Nothing too interesting,” he bit out through gritted teeth. “‘Night Sam.”

He scurried past the alpha and up to Jo’s room, slamming his eyes shut at the sight of all the roaches crawling over her, winding their way up under her hair and into her ears and nose. She rolled over and said his name, and when he looked up at her the insects were scurrying away, covering the sheets and making their way across the floor towards him. Lilith might have done him the courtesy of warning him that the closer he got to his deal coming due, the more he’d begin to hallucinate. The things described in the demonology book lined up with what he’d been experiencing, down to the letter, and lucky him, with only a week on his contract to begin with, the hallucinations had been growing stronger since they left Medicine Bow. He forced himself to smile and moved across the room, telling Jo to go back to sleep before tucking the book under the bed and sliding in next to her, his skin tingling at the phantom sensation of the bugs his mind wanted him to think were blanketing him as well. He still didn’t know if he had one or two more days left, but the ever pervasive sense of panic as he lost the ability to determine what was real distracted him enough not to be able to think about it.

Jo pulled an early shift the next day, Sam and Dean packed up the kids to get Lizzie’s cast off, and Ellen took Emma to buy some winter clothes so by the time Adam woke a little after noon he and Bobby were the only ones still at the house, aside from the dogs. He’d thought the auditory hallucinations he’d been experiencing while the house was full were bad. He’d take thinking Dean was saying he hated him or Sam was calling him a pathetic loser or Jo saying she faked it ninety percent of the time any day of the week over the whispers, laughing, and shrieking that now echoed through the empty house. The dogs started barking as he was on his way downstairs, the steps tipping and twisting beneath his feet, and it was a good thing he’d just gone to the bathroom or he’d have pissed himself. It was definitely Hannah’s “wooWOO” howl and Rumsfeld’s deep, throaty warning to intruders though, and he was able to get himself under control and drag himself into the kitchen for some coffee.

“Talked to Henry.” Adam dropped the mug, which shattered on his foot and left a long red gash as he whirled around to where Bobby had followed him into the room from the den, his own coffee mug in his hands. The old hunter watched carefully as Adam dropped his gaze to the floor, spotted his foot, and quickly looked away again, his breath catching as he focused on the clock on the far wall, sweat beading along his hairline. It was better than watching the maggots crawling out of the wound to eat his flesh. “I figured if there was anyone else who might’ve done something to save Dean it would be him, and I should at least check. So what’d you do?”

“Don’t ask me that,” the younger Winchester brother said, casting a sideways glance at the older beta to see if he’d stopped bleeding from his eyes and fingernails yet.

“Son, it’s clear that somethin’s messin’ with your gourd,” Bobby told him, taking a few steps towards him until Adam hissed in a breath and drew in on himself. Bobby stopped immediately, setting his mug carefully on the kitchen table as the poor kid started shaking hard enough for his bones to start tearing free from their ligaments. “Adam, I understand. You needed to save Dean. No one’s upset, we all get it. And whatever you did we can fix it. Between my library and your granddad’s we can find something to undo whatever you did, so long as you didn’t sell your soul or some damn fool thing like that.”

Bobby meant it as a joke to try to lighten the boy’s mood, but the way Adam flinched and shivered before making a clear effort to get control over his uncooperative body told the hunter he’d hit the nail on the head. He gaped at the young man in front of him, who looked like he was going to start crying any second, his mouth working but no words coming out. They stood rigid in their spots across the kitchen for a long time, Bobby staring at Adam and Adam trying to find somewhere safe to stare that wasn’t crawling with snakes or spiders, until at last Bobby snapped out of it and stormed across the room to grab the younger beta by the shoulders.

“Bobby…” Adam whimpered as the man shook him within an inch of his life.

“What the hell’s wrong with you, boy?” he shouted. “I could throttle you!”

“What, send me downstairs ahead of schedule?” Adam asked bitterly.

“How long did you get?” Bobby demanded, thinking it was very possible this was going to give him a heart attack as Adam still wouldn’t look at him.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“The hell it doesn’t! We need to know how long we have to fix this!”

“Not long enough.”

The finality in the young man’s voice left Bobby reeling, and he shook Adam one more time before stalking off to punch the refrigerator and then sweep everything on the counter next to it to the floor. Adam had finally gone completely still, appearing drained and dazed as Bobby tried to process the situation and figure out exactly what the fuck they were going to do. He should’ve spoken up as soon as he felt like something was off. He never should have let almost a whole week go by without pinning the boy down and forcing him to confess the reason he wouldn’t look at anyone and kept dropping in and out of conversations, rarely seeming like he’d heard a single word of what had been said. Adam was just a _kid_ for god’s sake!

“Why?” he said when he’d managed to slow his racing heart some, his knuckles starting to throb a warning that he’d better not think about punching the fridge again.

Adam looked at him - actually looked, like Bobby had lost his mind for asking such a stupid question.

“Because it’s Dean,” he blurted out as if that were the answer to everything. Bobby clearly still didn’t get it, if the way he cocked his head to the side incredulously was any indication. “Because…he matters! He’s got children and a mate who will _literally_ die without him, if he doesn’t go off the rails and turn into a psychopathic serial killer first! He hunts things and saves people and puts every fucking person who needs help ahead of himself! Even when he’s pregnant or injured or just trying to get out of the fucking business, his first impulse when he finds out someone is in trouble is to _save_ them! He got thrown into practically sex slavery for helping people and he _still_ helps them anyway! What have I done that could possibly compare to that?”

“It’s not a competition, Adam!”

“Yeah, well, good thing because I pale next to him. I’m just the kid brother that everyone puts up with because of him. It’s always been that way. I know it, and it’s okay, it really is, because _Dean_ never saw me as something to put up with. Dean always honestly wanted me around. When we were stuck at that stupid fucking school he was always there to make sure I was okay, _always_ , even if it wasn’t cool for a fifteen year old to check in on his nine year old baby brother, and he’s the _only_ reason Dad ever even bothered to come back for me those two summers after Dean got kicked out. He made sure I always knew I had a family, that he was never gonna just leave me behind, that he’d always be there whenever I needed him because I was important to him, and then he wasn’t…he wasn’t going to be there anymore. And how was I supposed to live with that?” Adam’s big blue eyes were overflowing now, sending rivers racing down his cheeks, and dammit if Bobby wasn’t on his way to crying too, which wasn’t going to do anybody any good. He looked every inch the kid that he was, terrified and traumatized and utterly stricken with grief. “After he…after he found out about Shreveport…he wouldn’t even _talk_ to me, Bobby, and it was just…it was the worst feeling and...I thought he’d never talk to me again, and I couldn’t…I couldn’t _live_ with _really_ never talking to him again.”

“And what do you think is going to happen when he can’t talk to _you_ ever again?” Bobby asked, managing through sheer force of will to keep his voice calm.

“He’ll be…he’ll be fine.” Adam wiped his sleeve across his face, struggling to rein in the torrent of tears now that they’d started. “It’ll hurt for a while, but he’s got Sam, he’ll be fine.”

“You can’t possibly believe that,” Bobby said, flabbergasted. “You think _Sam_ , your best friend, is gonna be in any kind of shape after losing you to put your brother back together? You think there’s even gonna be enough left of Dean _to_ put back together when he finds out you threw yourself into the pit for him?”

Adam’s eyes snapped up to lock on Bobby’s, wild and desperate.

“You can’t tell him,” he insisted, the panic evident on his face. “You take a swing at me, whatever makes you feel better, but please don’t tell him.”

“You tell me you couldn’t live knowin’ Dean was dead,” Bobby snarled, starting to move past the denial stage of grief and into anger at the boy’s impending demise, whenever it was going to come, though apparently it was coming soon. “Do you really think Dean will be able to live with himself if he thinks he might’ve had a chance to save you and didn’t take it?”

The light dropped out of Adam’s eyes as if he were already dead, and he shook his head as he took in the hard line of Bobby’s mouth and how tightly coiled his body was.

“There isn’t enough time for him to do anything anyway, so it doesn’t matter.”

“And what about Jo?”

“She’ll move on too. It’s not like I’m anything special.”

Bobby would have slapped him if they hadn’t heard a car pulling into the drive, setting both dogs off again and drawing the hunter’s attention to the mess on the floor in front of him. He hastened to start picking everything up as Adam disappeared out the back door into the grey autumn afternoon. The old hunter was still in the middle of retrieving pieces of the broken blender as Ellen and Emma shouted out their hellos as they came in the front, the little girl running in to show him her new boots and beam at having learned that word well enough to say it almost without an accent. He said something about stubbing his toe and reacting like a toddler when Ellen raised an eyebrow about the mess in the kitchen, but at least she seemed to buy it, giving him a quick peck on the mouth before leading Emma to the laundry room to wash all her new clothes. He’d half expected her to keep on him until he gave up what really happened ( _she could be a real bloodhound when she was in the mood - had to be, trying to raise a daughter like Jo by herself_ ) and was grateful she let it go. It was going to be enough to try to figure out just how bad the deal was Adam made and how much time he had on the clock while avoiding telling Dean and sending him off the deep end without throwing a bona fide momma bear into the mix. As he continued to pick up the mess from the counter Bobby consoled himself with the fact that Adam may have asked him to keep his brother in the dark about the deal, but he never agreed to not tell Sam.


	139. I’m Worried Because You’re Not Acting Like Yourself

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time is running out for Adam.

Neither Sam nor Dean had expected the trip to Sioux City to be quite so harrowing in such completely mundane ways. They shouldn’t have tried to bring Elliott, for one thing, since his teething left him a drooling, crying mess the whole car ride there, and ever-sympathetic Lizzie bawled right along with him. Then there was the process of getting Lizzie’s cast off, which she’d screamed all the way through because of the noise, nearly sending Dean off the rails at the way his inner omega perceived their child to be under threat. When the pink cast finally came off and revealed a shorter, thinner leg covered in terribly dry skin he fell to pieces, the guilt of having taken on a hunt with their kids along and gotten her leg broken to begin with frankly too much for him to deal with in the middle of mourning John. The doctor said something about fragile omegas and almost got punched, Elliott wailing in the carrier strapped to Dean’s chest as he hauled his arm back and was caught by his mate, who turned on a dime to focus his attentions from growling at the doctor to soothing his omega. A nurse came very quickly to discharge them, giving them the after care instructions and leaving them to try to figure out how they were going to keep her from re-injuring herself when she didn’t actually understand the word “No” yet and had been plainly peeved at having not been allowed to tear around the bunker to hone her walking skills for weeks.

Dean ordered a beer when they stopped at Applebee’s for lunch because he fucking needed a beer and Applebee’s served beer and they’d driven past three greasy spoons he would have preferred to eat at just to get to a stupid chain restaurant that they knew served beer and would let them bring in a pair of screaming babies. Sam got Lizzie settled pretty easily in a high chair, but the only way Elliott would calm down at all was if he was sitting on Dean’s lap, and the looks the omega was getting as he sipped on an adult beverage between feeding Elliott strained peas and ham had him itching to take a butter knife to the next passerby who gave him the stink eye. Like he wasn’t in the presence of another adult who wasn’t drinking and he didn’t have every goddamn right to have a beer with lunch after the crap he’d been through recently just because he had kids. Sam did his best to calm him down from across the table, though honestly he was enjoying spunky, snarky Dean a little too much to put much effort into deflecting his rightful irritation with all the lookie-loos in the restaurant. His scowl and the way his eyes flashed while he grumbled to himself about people not being able to mind their own fucking business and alternated between feeding Elliott, feeding himself, and drinking his beer was adorable; not that Sam was stupid enough to say that out loud. It was even cute when Dean dribbled ketchup down his chin and onto his shirt and declared, “Dammit!” loud enough to scandalize the old ladies sitting behind them. On another day the alpha might try to quiet and cajole him. Today he was just too happy to be out doing a regular family activity with his mate and their kids to really care what anyone else thought. It hadn’t been that long ago he thought he’d never get to do these things again.

They went to a park after lunch despite the chill in the air and it took an embarrassingly short amount of time for Dean to start freaking out about Sam taking Lizzie down the slide and going on the swings with her, because “Christ, she _just_ got her cast off, Sam,” as if the alpha didn’t have cat-like reflexes and she was going to suddenly tumble out of the carrier and crack her skull open. The suggestion that they could ride on the seesaws instead with Dean and Elliott on one side and Sam and Lizzie on the other went over about as well as a lead balloon. Sam proposed checking out the Mid America Museum of Aviation  & Transportation if they didn’t want to stay on the playground for no other reason than to see Dean pale and sputter in protest, getting punched in the arm when he laughed a little too long at the look on his mate’s face. They finally did abandon the playground in favor of checking out the fall foliage farther into the park at Sam’s insistence, Dean letting him know he was skating close to chick flick territory but not really minding when they ended up kissing with Dean pressed against a tree, trying not to squish the kids between them and only stopping when it started to drizzle. The reality of being surrounded by Sam blocked out Dean’s near death experience and his dad’s actual death and the niggling fear of something being terribly wrong with his brother for long enough that the omega nearly blurted out his discovery about his scarring, pinned down by Sam’s red-rimmed hazel eyes and completely enthralled by how pink his lips were from tangling their mouths and tongues together. The middle of a park with a pair of kids in carriers on their chests was not the place for that conversation, however, and instead of letting himself fall back into Sam’s orbit he grabbed the alpha’s sleeve so they could make a mad dash for the car.  

The drive down hadn’t been too terrible, aside from the screaming babies, but on the drive back the skies completely opened up and they found themselves crawling along the highway barely able to see three feet in front of them. Dean was in the passenger seat because he’d been an idiot who just _had_ to have a drink with lunch, and silly as it was for Sam to insist he couldn’t drive after two ( _okay, three_ ) beers when it had been a couple of hours since he’d had them, he wasn’t going to quibble with the alpha about his level of sobriety with the kids in the car so soon after a run in with a drunk driver - even if he _was_ completely fine. That left him clutching the dashboard in the passenger seat trying not to hyperventilate every time some idiot flew past them who apparently didn’t understand that the driving conditions weren’t ideal and they could easily hit someone and kill them. Sam kept asking if Dean wanted him to pull off, but that would have required them getting over into another lane and as far as Dean was concerned they’d be staying in their lane all the way to fucking Canada if the weather didn’t break. At least the sound of the rain on the roof and windows of the truck lulled both kids to sleep without the omega needing to give Elliott his pinky to suck on, and that was especially fortunate when his hands weren’t leaving the dashboard for anything.

The rain didn’t stop all the way back to Sioux Falls and the hour and twenty minute drive turned into three hours, Dean calling Bobby and telling him through gritted teeth that they were stuck in the storm and would get there when they got there. Bobby wanted to talk to Sam, but Dean wasn’t handing the phone over for anything since he’d barely escaped dying the week before and there was no way he’d press his luck by distracting the driver. He was surprised Sam was keeping them on the road as it was with all the anxiety the omega was leaking into the cabin of the Ford, and about halfway home Elliott woke up and started crying, which had Lizzie waking up to cry. By the time they made it to Singer Salvage Yard around dinner time everyone was miserable and Dean had a splitting headache from the pressure change of the storm, the screaming infants, and the stress of wondering whether some moron who shouldn’t have a license was going to run them off the road, his desire to ravage his mate officially flown out the window.

The mood in the house was tense - Ellen on the phone with Jo at her work, trying to convince her to stay there until the storm passed; Emma frightened of so much rain coming down for so long and so fast that it might sweep the house away; Hannah and Rumsfeld tied up in the kitchen while they dried out so mud didn’t end up all over the floors; and Bobby using it all as cover for the edge to his own nerves. Adam was sitting on the back porch with a bottle of whiskey, watching the rain barrels overflow from the downspouts on the gutters and deciding if tonight was his last night on earth it seemed fitting. Both Lizzie and Elliott had been sitting in dirty diapers for a while with their parents having no way to pull over to get them changed, and that had been a lovely smell to drive home inhaling. Bobby was quick to assure Dean there was plenty of time before the pot roast was done to give them both a bath, waiting until he’d disappeared into the bathroom upstairs and kicked the door closed behind him before grabbing Sam’s elbow and hauling him into the den. Ellen and Jo had been arguing for about five minutes, leaving the two of them about a minute and a half before one of them hung up on the other and Ellen came looking to see what they were up to.

“I’m going to guess based on the strong-arming that you found something out,” the alpha said quietly as Bobby pushed him towards the far end of the room.

“We don’t have a whole lotta time,” the beta groused, checking the hallway quickly to make sure Ellen was still busy calling Jo a bull-headed fool. “Adam made a deal. Sold his soul in exchange for healing Dean. I don’t know how long he got in return or who he made it with, but I’ve got Henry looking into how to figure both things out and then get him out of it. I also pulled some books for us to go through if we can keep Dean distracted. From what little the kid was willing to tell me, the clock’s tickin’ fast on his contract.”

That certainly wasn’t the conversation opener Sam had been expecting, even with the way Bobby all but shoved Dean upstairs with the kids and then rushed him away from Ellen. He knew whatever his friend did must have been pretty serious. He hadn’t imagined it would actually rise to the level of selling his soul.

“We have to tell Dean,” he murmured, more to himself than Bobby.

“Adam begged me not to,” Bobby told him with a glance back towards the door as Ellen’s shouting abruptly stopped.

“I won’t lie to him about something this big.”

“I’m not sayin’ lie. Give it a day so we have a chance to look into it before we go panicking Dean that his brother’s done somethin’ we can’t undo. He just lost his dad. There’s no reason to make him think he’s gonna lose his brother until we know more."

“The hell are you doin’ in here, Robert Singer, when the roast is tryin’ to burn?” Ellen snapped as she came around the corner and marched right up to him.

“Just checkin’ in with Sam on how the trip to Sioux City went,” he told her.

“You can talk about that over dinner,” she insisted. “Which at this rate is going to be potatoes and green beans if you don’t get that roast out of the oven.”

“The conversation with Jo went that well, huh?” he asked, and she softened almost instantly, leaning into his side with a slight pout. “She’s too much like her mother.”

“Come on, I’m not your damn cook,” she grumbled with a squeeze to his middle before heading back out of the room.

“Just one day,” Bobby whispered to Sam, earning himself a quick nod of agreement as he followed her.

Sam had no idea how he was supposed to hide this kind of thing from Dean for even an hour, let alone a day. He could barely keep his eyes off of where Adam continued to sit on the back porch watching the rain while everyone else ate the slightly overdone pot roast, the beta insisting he was fine with a liquid dinner and they didn’t need to worry about him. It was taking everything Sam had to keep his concern for Adam from seeping through his bond with Dean - not that Dean was paying attention to anything Sam was doing. He was just as focused on Adam’s state, getting yanked out of his own head every now and then by one of the kids fussing, or Emma trying out some of the new words she’d learned on him. Luckily for Bobby and his mate, the omega thought his brother was just having a harder time with their father’s death and wasn’t terribly surprised by how closed off he was. The drinking was a problem, but Dean knew he wouldn’t be any better if he’d been the one to pull the trigger on John. Assuming he could have pulled the trigger to begin with.

Adam stayed out on the porch staring at the sky until after the rest of the house had gone to bed, even after Jo came home and tried to get him to join them inside, the tension in his body evident even just looking through the back door, and by the time he finally came in it was after midnight and he was thoroughly hammered. Dean was down on the couch again with Elliott, _The Carol Burnett Show_ playing softly on the television while his brother snored and his nephew drooled all over his mother’s chest, and he took up the recliner at the far end of the room towards the front door. He hadn’t wanted to be inside if tonight was the night the hellhound came for him, hadn’t wanted to wake everyone up, but the demonology book said it would come at midnight so he was safe for another day. Officially his last day. Which apparently he was going to start out watching Tim Conway accidentally inject himself with Novocain while Harvey Korman sat in a dentist’s chair and tried not to laugh. Well, it could have started out worse. He was drunk enough that the hallucinations seemed to have stopped, Dean was with him, and he only had to live with the increasing fear of dying for another twenty-three and a half hours - a good portion of which he was likely to spend sleeping off a hangover. If he played his cards right, he could fill up however many hours he had left once he woke up with enough things he wouldn’t have time to worry about what came next.

Except that didn’t do anything to help him right now, as he sat a few feet from the brother he was going to die for, the house quiet except for the television, the rain, and Dean’s snores, and thought about all the things he was going to miss. He wouldn’t see Elliott’s first steps, or hear Lizzie’s first words. He’d never meet any other children his brother and Sam might have. Shit, he’d never have his own children, which wasn’t something he’d even really thought about, until suddenly he only had twenty-three hours and twenty-four minutes left to live and it hit him that he’d never get a chance to think about it; nor really or seriously, the way one ought to think about having kids if they hadn’t always wanted them on some instinctive level. Now that he thought about it, he _wanted_ kids - sincerely. Not right this second, but somewhere down the road, except of course the road was now leading to Hell; do not pass “Go,” do not collect two hundred dollars. And that wasn’t fair. That wasn’t fair at all. That their dad had dragged them out of the bunker, where they were safe, had exposed them to the danger of a Prince of Hell, had been stupid enough to get himself possessed, had been the reason they were at that fucking ranch in the middle of nowhere, where they never would have been if it weren’t for John and his suicidal quest. If they hadn’t been at that ranch, they wouldn’t have been on that road, and Dean wouldn’t have nearly died, and Adam wouldn’t be going to Hell. He didn’t resent going to Hell for Dean, but he sure as fuck resented that their father put him in the position where he had to. He was suddenly glad he’d shot the bastard.

Where that thought came from Adam had no idea, and it came on so strongly and suddenly that the ensuing swell of shame nearly made him vomit. How could he think such a thing about anyone, let alone his father? It was true that John had taken him from his mother and left him at Actaeon, but the stability the school provided him was something he never could have gotten on the road with Dad and Dean. Dean had already missed so much school by the time they were enrolled that they had to hold him back a grade. What kind of future would he and Adam possibly have had if John hadn’t dropped them off? Certainly he never would have been able to enroll at Duke, never would have had a hope of anything normal. It had been relatively easy to get out of the life with a high school diploma in hand from a prestigious institution, even if that institution was closer to a military academy than a regular high school. He might not have made it out of his teenage years if some of the bumps and bruises Dean sported when he came to get Adam over the summers were any indication of what life was like hunting with Dad. Adam didn’t have the heightened quickness of an omega or the abnormal strength of an alpha. His first real encounter with a demon where he wasn’t unconscious actually resulted in him nearly getting his head bashed in. Clearly the best thing John could have done for him was leave him somewhere relatively normal and keep him away from his hunt for Azazel when Adam was too young to defend himself. That was even more obvious now that Adam had encountered the Prince of Hell and knew how far they’d had to go in order to kill him. Christ, he _belonged_ in Hell if he was already happy John was dead.

Adam didn’t realize he was sobbing until Dean was on the floor in front of him, Elliott pressed against one shoulder, shaking him and running a hand over the side of his face that wasn’t a mess of bruises to wipe away the tears, his green eyes huge and wet and worried as he tried to get his younger brother to calm down. The room spun a little as Adam looked up briefly, noticing that Dean had their dad’s cheekbones ( _he’d never realized that before_ ), then dropping his eyes to Elliott’s back and reaching out to touch his nephew’s hair. Dean’s concern was thick enough Adam could have cut it with a knife, and he didn’t know how he was supposed to keep his fate from Dean for another twenty-three hours and two minutes. What he did know was that he had to, or Dean would die if necessary trying to fend off the hellhounds.

“I’m sorry,” Adam choked, his older brother trying to get down low enough to make it impossible for Adam not to look at him.

“For what?” Dean murmured, continuing to stroke Adam’s face. He hoped his brother was drunk enough to admit to whatever had been plaguing him all week, since it was clear now it was more than just shooting John. “For what, man?”

“Everything.” The word burst out of him with a fresh bout of tears, the whiskey bottle still in his good hand slipping free and tipping over to soak the carpet with its remnants. “I’m sorry for everything. I’m sorry for killing Dad, I’m sorry for lying…”

“Hey.” How firm Dean’s voice was got Adam to look up, even as he gulped in air and started to hiccup, and the same level of resolution shone in the omega’s eyes. “Stop. I forgave you for that. You gotta believe that. I forgave you. And you’ve more than made up for it. I don’t know what Sam and I would’ve done without your help the last six months. What you did is in the past, okay? It was fucked up and it was wrong, but it’s _in the past_ , Adam.”

That wasn’t the lie he meant, but Adam was drunk enough to get detoured, saying, “I didn’t protect you from them…”

“That doesn’t make it your fault,” Dean insisted. “It isn’t anyone’s fault but those asshole Campbells. No one else’s.” Jody spent a lot of time making sure Dean _heard_ that over the past year, and he needed Adam to hear it, too. “Besides, you’re my kid brother. I’m the one who’s supposed to do the protecting.”

“You’re not just my brother. You’ve always…you’ve always hated what you are, that it made you…vulnerable but…you’re the closest thing to a mom I’ve ever had.” The tears were slowing down a little, though as they did his speech was beginning to seriously slur. “You’re like my brom.” He laughed a little wildly at that, petting Dean’s hair as the alcohol really took hold of him. “That’s messed up, but it’s true. And I don’t…I don’t know why people think it makes you weak, that you’re an omega. Cuz it doesn’t, and you’re not.”

“Damn right I’m not,” Dean agreed with a small smile. “I’m made of Vibranium.”

“I mean it.” Adam had grabbed Dean’s collar and yanked on it for emphasis, almost falling out of the chair. “You need to be really strong. For me. And you need to make sure Sam always treats you the way you deserve.”

“Why are you saying this stuff?” Dean couldn’t fathom why they were suddenly talking about his alpha, or why Adam was talking like he was going somewhere, but the crying had stopped enough for him to get his brother to really look at him again. There was a sadness and resignation in the beta’s eyes that Dean had never seen before. Maybe it was just the booze, but he doubted it. “Adam, you’re scaring me.”

“Don’t be scared, Dean.” Adam practically fell out of the recliner and into a hug with his brother, resting his chin on the omega’s shoulder and grabbing a handful of the back of his shirt. “You’re the bravest person I know. Don’t be scared.”

“Yeah, okay,” Dean said quietly, running a soothing hand up and down his brother’s back while he made sure Elliott didn’t suffocate. “Okay, Runt. Let’s get up on the couch, all right? The floor’s hell on my knees.”

“’Kay,” Adam muttered, his crying bout having taken all of his energy and his body starting to sag.

He followed as Dean shuffled them over and got them set down side by side so he could lean against his brother and let the omega carefully pet his hair like he had when Adam was little and couldn’t sleep. Somehow Dean managed to get Elliott down on his lap and reach over to turn off the floor lamp at the end of the couch, Adam already starting to huff out breaths into his hair, then snagged the afghan to get over both of them as much as possible. Hannah and Rumsfeld were spending the night in the house with the rain still pouring down outside, and she “wuf”ed in their general direction from the kitchen before groaning and going to sleep, Rumsfeld giving a surly growl in reply. Dean was already regretting the crick he was going to have in his neck in the morning as he settled in with one arm around his brother and the other hand keeping his son on his lap, watching as _The Dick Van Dyke Show_ came on and smiling along until his eyes finally slid closed.

A flash of light woke him some time later, and he cracked open one set of lids to see what it was, expecting the rain had finally turned into a thunderstorm. Instead, Jo was in the process of turning off the TV, light from over the stairwell bleeding into the room but still leaving them mostly in darkness. She was wearing pajamas and holding the digital camera they hadn’t put away after Lizzie’s birthday, and she glanced back at him with what could only be termed a shit eating grin.

“The fuck…?” Dean asked, his voice hoarse with sleep.

“I woke up and Adam hadn’t come to bed so I went looking,” she said with a wicked glint in her eye. “I didn’t expect to find the two of you curled up like a pair of cats. This is going in a frame behind the bar where I work, just so you know.”

“I hate you,” the omega grumbled, as Adam snorted and shuffled in closer to his side.

“You could always buy it off of me,” she suggested, and he growled, “I don’t negotiate with terrorists,” as Sam appeared in the entryway, tying his robe closed over his bare chest.

“There you are,” he said quietly, ignoring the scowl on Jo’s face as he moved to get Elliott off of his mother’s lap. “It’s after two o’clock. Are you coming to bed or planning to stay down here and cuddle with your brother?”

“Can you blame him?” Jo asked bitterly. “Adam’s not going to make him send a little kid to another state like a piece of luggage.”

To his credit, Sam didn’t rise to the bait as Dean told him, “Adam’s havin’ a rough night. I’d rather stay down here.”

“Rough night?” Sam echoed, and Jo murmured, “He’s been having a lot of those.”

“And now he’s sleeping so maybe turn off the light on your way upstairs?” Dean suggested, a little contented sigh slipping out of him when Sam leaned down to kiss him softly, Elliott tucked up against the alpha’s shoulder. The way his heart began to pound at the two follow-up nips Sam gave his lower lip was more than slightly awkward with him sandwiched between the arm of the couch and his sleeping brother, but his mate ignored the clear pulse of desire that filled the area immediately surrounding the sofa and just gave Dean a fond smile before heading back to bed. Jo’s frown didn’t escape him, and he started to say, “Jo…”

“If you’re going to tell me I need to get over Sam’s Jekyll and Hyde thing without telling me what it is that's causing Sam’s Jekyll and Hyde thing, I swear to Christ, Dean - I’ll punch you right in the junk,” she warned, then was off as well with the digital camera still in her hand, switching off the light as she went.

The rain had stopped by morning, leaving the junkyard a muddy mess worthy of bikini-clad female wrestlers and effectively squashing any chance to tear apart cars to fill orders. It was just as well. Dean was starting to think they should head back to the bunker anyway, and Adam agreed, though he did suggest Dean show him around Sioux Falls before they go, even as he battled a disgusting headache and a stomach that wouldn’t stop doing somersaults. Adam had so many physical restrictions when he’d been staying with Bobby after the ghoul tried to eat his liver that aside from the shopping trip to buy Dean a kid-friendly vehicle he hadn’t seen much of the city his older brother called home for a year. The omega wasn’t too keen on the idea, still a bit paranoid that Agent Henricksen was going to spot him despite the odds of that happening being worse than winning the lotto. He definitely wasn’t expecting Sam to throw his support behind the plan, pointing out that Dean’s hair was much shorter than it had been on his birthday and he wasn’t pregnant anymore. Even if he walked right up to Henricksen, and even if the guy actually recognized him ( _or remembered him to begin with_ ), Sam didn’t doubt for a second Dean could outrun him. The omega appreciated the vote of confidence, though it unnerved him the way his mate seemed to be trying to hurry him and his brother out of the house. Bobby chimed in to suggest places Dean could show him - the Falls, and the Butterfly House and Aquarium, and yes, the retired hunter had been there and Emma _loved_ it, thank you very much. When Adam pointed out Dean promised Marge and Bill he’d keep in touch, it was clear there was no way he was getting out of spending the day with his brother touring the city.

Sam didn’t like manipulating the Winchesters, but he’d agreed to Bobby’s request to give it one day before he told Dean about Adam’s deal and that meant they needed to do a lot of research fast. Ellen was easy enough to throw off the trail by telling her they were looking up demon contracts for a hunter who thought she was dealing with a hellhound, and she even offered to babysit the kids since the phones for the business were quiet. While that made Sam feel guilty as well, he quickly took her up on it as there was no way they were dragging Ellen into this. Holing up in the library kept them out of the way of Jo as she worked with Emma on her ABCs, not quite successfully concealing her disappointment that Adam had headed out for the day without saying anything to her. Her mother reminding her that she hadn’t exactly been the embodiment of love and understanding didn’t really improve Jo’s mood. It gave the men even more of a reasonable excuse to avoid the rest of the house and bury themselves in books, Rumsfeld on one side of the room and Hannah laying in front of the door.

It was a little surprising to both Bobby and Sam when the brothers were still out even after Jo headed off to work and dinnertime came and went. Neither the alpha nor the omega thought to replace Dean’s cell phone since he got out of the hospital with so many other things going on, and Adam wasn’t answering his, leaving Sam and Bobby struggling not to assume the worst. Sam even called up Marge’s to see if Dean had been there, and though initially she insisted she hadn’t seen her former tenant, once he convinced her it was him and not one of the government agencies who’d stopped by in the last three months to let her know Dean was on the lam and who she should call if she saw him, she admitted they’d been there for lunch and were talking about checking out the zoo. Adam had been acting all squirrely, not at all like the nice young man she’d met back in December, but at least she tried not to sound worried at the news they weren’t home yet. They were two grown men, after all. It wasn’t like they had a curfew, and eight o’clock didn’t qualify as late at night.

The two of them rolling in at twenty past eleven, drunk off their asses, Dean telling Sam to pay the cab driver who’d brought them home an exorbitant amount of money, did qualify as late, and for some time Sam had been trying not to panic. They hadn’t found anything to hint at how long Adam might have on his contract, but what they _had_ found was certainly not reassuring. Contrary to what Actaeon taught about crossroads demons ( _almost certainly what Adam used to make a deal since they were usually the first responders in these types of situations_ ), they weren’t a one-size-fits-all kind of thing. Specific demons handled specific requests. Lower level demons took on simple things, like delivering fame and fortune, while those higher up the food chain dealt with things like curing cancer. To heal Dean’s injuries and essentially return his spirit from the brink of death required someone very, _very_ high up the ladder, if not right near the tippy top. Sam’s thoughts went to Crowley immediately, though Ruby was also a distinct possibility; not that he was sure she actually cut any deals. She’d been quiet since burning down the Roadhouse and popping into Sam’s head to fuck things up in Michigan. Swooping in to take Adam’s soul would be right up her alley. Then, of course, there was Lilith, though that seemed like a long shot, even if he did have that vision of Adam kissing Becky and he knew Lilith had possessed Becky before. Still, according to all the lore Lilith hadn’t done face-to-face deals in a couple of millennia. Any demon at or near Ruby and Crowley's level wouldn't be obliged to offer the standard ten year contract either. With the power to yank a soul from the jaws of death came the power to set their own terms. They were going to have to force Adam to tell them how long he had left once he sobered up.

The fact that Dean had a black eye, split lip, and smelled like someone had dumped an entire pitcher or beer on him momentarily distracted the alpha from his goal of getting the truth out of his brother-in-law, who declared he was going to wait on the porch for Jo to get home. Dean dismissed his injuries as a single asshole getting too handsy, not that Sam needed to worry about it - the bouncer had stepped in before Dean had to whip out his fork. He wasn’t nearly as drunk as he’d appeared getting out of the cab, letting his mate know he’d stopped drinking a while ago and was putting on an act to make Adam feel like he wasn’t alone in his total lack of sobriety. Sam was grateful for small mercies, since he didn’t want to tell the omega about his brother’s deal while Dean was inebriated, and he hoped once Dean was done showering he’d be clear-headed enough for a serious discussion, and calm enough not to fly off the handle. He wasn’t sure he’d get either, but an alpha could dream.


	140. I Just Didn’t Realize That the Time Would Come So Soon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Midnight arrives, and this isn't Cinderella.

Dean knew he shouldn’t have lied about the black eye and split lip. Not that he lied, exactly. The bouncer _had_ thrown the offending alpha out, but not until he’d cornered Dean in the bathroom, kissed him hard enough that his teeth split his lip, and then punched the omega in the face when Dean kneed his attacker in the groin. He had retaliated by kicking the guy through the bathroom door and into a couple of female betas on the way to the women’s room, their screams attracting the bouncer ( _an especially beefy alpha_ ) who took one look at Dean’s face and the broken door to the omega bathroom and tossed the offender out on his ass. He even threatened to call the cops. Dean was quick to assure him that wasn’t necessary, and as he hurried to rejoin Adam at their table he marveled at having found a bar purely by chance with an alpha bouncer that wasn’t a dick. That’s when he decided to nurse his glass of whiskey for the rest of the night, regardless of how drunk Adam wanted to get.

Adam wanted to get very drunk, though he was lucid enough to notice something had happened to Dean’s face and to comment on it and ask if they should call Sam down to kick someone’s ass. Dean knew it was mostly the booze talking, but even so, the idea of Sam jumping into the Impala to drive down and protect his honor was both irritating and thrilling. He’d been able to handle the situation on his own but his stupid, treasonous hindbrain still latched onto the idea of his alpha and flatly refused to let go. The waitress tripping and spilling a whole pitcher of beer on him didn’t cool the rising heat he felt at the back of his neck every time thoughts of Sam flitted through his mind - which was pretty much constantly by the time Adam was staggering so badly they had no real choice but to head home.

Sam was rightfully upset that they’d been gone so long without checking in ( _neither Winchester had even thought to call him - it had been a really great day_ ), though he was preoccupied with something, allowing Dean to skirt the origin of his fresh bruises and not have to get too deeply into what happened at the bar. His inner omega was aghast that he wouldn’t tell his alpha the truth so Sam could soothe and caress him into feeling all safe and giggly and weak-kneed, but the truth was Dean felt...well, not completely okay with what had happened, but mostly okay. He hadn’t been too drunk to handle some guy trying to corner him in a bathroom stall, and while it had definitely left him shaken, it didn’t send him into a panic attack or lead to any sort of breakdown. All the guy managed to do was kiss him ( _violently, to be sure_ ) and land a sloppy punch. Dean’s clothes hadn’t even been mussed, and the bouncer had his back when it came down to it. It felt like a real accomplishment and he didn’t want to spoil it by running straight to Sam and crying into his shoulder when he hadn’t needed to.

Except running straight to Sam sounded like - god, such an amazing idea. He couldn’t focus on anything else as he stood under the shower spray making sure he got all of the beer off. And that was important, because he didn’t want Sam tasting cheap, stale beer on his skin when the alpha got his mouth on him, and Christ how he wanted that. Once the idea of Sam suckling on his neck and his chest and every other inch of him took hold, Dean couldn’t get _that_ out of his head either. Discovering his scars were gone had apparently flipped some kind of switch, and now the only clear thought he had was _Sam Sam Sam_. It was like going into heat, just without the boiling fever and horrific pang of emptiness that seemed like it might kill him. Sam had been so gentle and respectful all week, giving Dean space and not trying to push any boundaries, and their trip to Sioux City had been really, really nice. Normal. It felt normal being with Sam again. The alpha was so clearly different from their last intimate encounter, so obviously in control of himself that Dean's rational higher brain didn’t have any good excuses as to why he shouldn’t go crawl in Sam’s lap and beg him for a knot, especially when Sam’s presence brought him so much comfort these days. He could only hope that whatever had Sam distracted wouldn’t get in the way of where he ( _suddenly and desperately_ ) wanted the evening with his mate to go, slipping into a pair of pajama bottoms that he didn’t bother to tie and grabbing a sock to leave on the doorknob.

The way his stomach fluttered and his heart pounded as he made his way down the hall to their room was stupid and embarrassing. He was just hoping to interest his mate in having sex, and he had two things working in his favor on that front: the first being that Sam was his _mate_ and the second being that he knew Sam had been wanting to have sex with him for months. Still, he could feel how hot his face was, that warmth spreading all the way down to his shoulders, so he was pretty sure he was blushing like some kind of virgin on prom night who’d decided to finally go all the way with their date. Which was ridiculous, because he’d gone all the way with Sam more than once. Not nearly as often as he would have liked, circumstances and his health ( _both mental and physical_ ) being what they were at the time, but he’d already had Sam’s kid so being this flustered at the idea of his alpha drilling him into one of the twin mattresses was just silly.

Though of course this was fundamentally different from all the other times Sam had knotted him. They’d both been too drunk the first time to consider anything like mating ( _or, well, discuss it anyway - Dean at least had definitely considered it_ ), and when they’d actually mated it had been a matter of necessity and not exactly intimate in nature. Regardless of whether it was what they both wanted, Dean was collared and they were in the middle of a ballroom. It had been romantic only insofar as Sam was riding in like a white knight to rescue him from a dragon, and was that what he was so nervous about, what he was hoping for? Romance? If that were the case, he really was an omega after all. No wonder he’d grown a uterus with these kinds of feelings assailing him, even if he knew it wasn’t just that he wanted romance ( _which he really kind of did_ ).

Because he was hoping he and Sam could mate - properly, in Bobby’s guest bedroom, a week after his father died and he miraculously woke up from a car accident that by all rights should have killed him. And mating was something different than just plain sex. Alphas and omegas had been engaging in this specific dance since they first evolved from wolves, and Dean didn’t get to lead. This was the culmination of all the ingrained courting rituals he tried to pretend weren’t a big deal but secretly thrilled him; the alpha buying him a safer car for their children and a boatload of baby crap and as many fuzzy blankets as Dean wanted, soothing him through nightmares and panic attacks, holding him while he grieved everyone and everything he’d lost, and allowing him free reign to build them a proper den where he could feel comfortable and safe. Mating took place _in flagrante delicto_ so an alpha could take that final step and prove they were capable of caring for an omega during a heat, when they were too overcome by pain, fever, and need to think clearly or protect themselves. Sam was supposed to show Dean he knew how to tango even when his dance partner couldn't stand up, and no matter how many other times the alpha might squelch his natural urge to be in charge, trying to flip their roles around when it came to this so Dean could lead went against every instinct he had.

He realized as he stopped outside the bedroom door and held his breath how terrified he was of the idea that he’d have to relinquish control over the situation to his alpha, even as the animal in him was already fully prepared to drop his pants and present. Sam understood without them even having to talk about it that after everything he’d been through Dean needed a sense of power if he was going to be that physically vulnerable, but just the thought of being the aggressor when he walked through that door struck Dean as so fundamentally wrong he couldn’t imagine it. He was just going to have to trust Sam would look out for both his physical and emotional needs, and trust wasn’t something that came easily to Dean. This wasn’t just something that impacted him, however, so after several long minutes passed as he focused on locking down his rising panic, he stuck the sock on the doorknob and slipped inside.

Sam was sitting cross-legged on the bed, the three-way bulb in the bedside lamp turned on low, reading over a large book in front of him on the bedspread when the soft “click” of the door caught his attention. He was surprised Dean had spent so long in the shower - it was twenty to twelve already - but it had given him time to figure out how he was going to work up to telling Dean that Adam made a deal. It wasn’t the sort of thing one just blurted out to their mate whose father had died very recently that he was going to eventually lose his little brother, too, and they needed to get a handle on the situation as quickly as they could to keep that from happening. Dean was just standing by the door though as he looked up, a plume of desire and fear hitting Sam before the air in the room turned sweet with the smell of honey and maple syrup. As preoccupied as he was with how to save Adam, Sam’s brain didn’t immediately jump to putting together the puzzle of his shirtless, flushed mate, who was clearly working to make himself look much smaller as he stood in a pose with his head slightly inclined to one side and down, like he was submitting.

“Dean?” he inquired, cocking his head like a confused puppy as his hindbrain whirred to life and started demanding he pay attention to it.

“Hey Sammy,” the omega murmured, moving to shove his hands into his pockets and realizing he didn’t have any, which left him standing awkwardly with his arms hanging at his sides. He cleared his throat and continued. “So, whatever fixed me, _fixed_ me.”

“I know,” Sam replied quietly, setting the book on the nightstand by his side of the bed. “I need to talk to you about that, actually…”

“No, it…” Dean huffed out a frustrated breath. He didn’t want to have to spell this out for the alpha, this wasn’t a Sadie Hawkins event, but Sam was clearly still preoccupied. “It _fixed_ me.”

“I know,” Sam repeated dumbly, and Dean could have slapped him. For someone who got into Stanford, the alpha could be surprisingly dense. “And I know what…”

“You aren’t hearing what I’m saying,” Dean snapped. “It fixed _everything_ that was wrong with me.”

He could practically hear the tumblers clicking into place and a bunch of gears start turning at record speed as Sam uncocked his head and looked straight at him. His eyes were huge as he inhaled deeply - not even meaning to, just feeling like he needed air - and his irises flashed red as he leveled them on Dean.

“Everything?” he asked, and Dean nodded rapidly in response. Sam swore there was howling at the back of his brain as he got slowly to his feet, noticing how tense Dean looked and not wanting to spook him. “ _Everything_ everything?”

Dean nodded again, a little whimper forcing its way out of his throat as Sam approached. He was trembling openly, desire still flooding the air and the sweet smell growing stronger the closer Sam got. Dean’s pants were probably halfway to being a ruined mess, and the alpha desperately wanted to slide a hand beneath the fabric to check, except the prey he was currently stalking looked scared out of his wits and ready to bolt in spite of how dilated his pupils were in his glowing golden eyes. The higher functioning part of Sam’s brain kept telling him he needed to bring up Adam, shouldn’t do this before letting Dean know about his brother buying a one way ticket to Hell, but that part of his brain was quickly falling offline under the constant refrain of _mate, breed, claim_ coming from his inner wolf. There would be time to tell Dean, Sam didn’t need to say anything right this second, and besides, it would be easier to keep the omega from going completely off the rails at the news if they were properly mated anyway, if the bond between them was finished and solidified the way it was meant to be. Dean would finally feel safe to stop withholding his emotions from Sam, like he had to put on a brave face all the time and couldn’t let it show that he was sad or hurt or afraid, the way he was now; trying to act like a blush hadn’t crept from his chest to his hair and Sam wouldn’t smell his apprehension.

Sam got why he was apprehensive and didn’t really blame him, but that wasn’t going to stop him from placing his hands gently on Dean’s waist to pull him forward from where he’d practically glued himself to the door. The omega’s breathing picked up immediately and Sam gave him a moment or two to get it under control before carefully leaning in to brush his mouth against Dean’s. His scent surrounded the smaller man as Sam continued to softly and gently kiss his mate for several long minutes, his lips slightly parted as they glided soft and wet over Dean’s, silently reassuring him that Sam knew how to get them where they needed to go and would take care of him. The omega gasped under all the attention and his breathing hitched, making Sam wish he had some Air Supply he could turn on in the background, his hands sliding slowly up and down Dean’s ribs to help soothe him. Gradually the tension in the omega’s body began to ebb and he moved into Sam’s space, sighing into the soft kisses the alpha kept pressing to his lips and slipping his hands under Sam’s tee shirt and up his abs to his chest, curling his short fingernails in against the hard muscle he found there.

A rumbling growl vibrated in Sam’s throat as he licked against his mate’s lips, seeking permission to enter and finding Dean opening up to him willingly, even sinking his tongue eagerly into the alpha’s mouth like he was being paid to find his tonsils. Sam was all too happy to reciprocate, swallowing the whines coming out of his omega as one of his hands traveled up Dean’s back to fist his hair and the other dipped beneath the back of his waistband to palm his ass and haul him in close, brushing a fingertip against Dean’s rim. It made his mate gasp and tip his head to the side, yanking Sam’s shirt up over his head and flinging it away before presenting his neck so Sam could latch his teeth onto the claiming scar.

“Fu…uck…” Dean managed to squeak, the front of his pajama bottoms suddenly just as wet as the back as he arched into his mate, and Sam got his other hand under Dean’s thigh to lift him up and turn them towards the bed as his hips stuttered and he sighed, locking his legs around Sam’s waist.

“That’s the idea,” Sam rasped, getting Dean’s feet unhooked from his back as the omega sank back onto the pillows, stripping him quickly with one hand and slotting himself between Dean’s legs. “This okay?”

“It’s…uh…mmhmm,” Dean managed, biting his lower lip until it was deep red like some kind of alpha fantasy, still fuzzy from having come so quickly in his pants but very much on board with whatever Sam was going to do.

Why he had been afraid of letting Sam steer the ship this evening was suddenly a total mystery, especially when two of the alpha’s long fingers slid inside him and he lost the ability to form words. The fingers teased and stretched him as he heard the rustle of fabric telling him Sam was shucking off his pajama bottoms. Sam bending him in half to get better access was definitely not scary. Neither were Sam’s lips when they trailed over Dean’s neck and chest, sucking bruises as he went and telling Dean how beautiful he was while continuously checking to make sure he wasn’t afraid. He certainly wasn’t afraid when the fingers slipped away and a completely different part of Sam’s anatomy replaced them, his mouth covering Dean’s to quiet the omega’s whimpers as Sam pushed slowly into him. The alpha stilled as soon as he was fully seated inside his mate, his nose slotted against the omega’s scent gland as Sam focused on breathing and giving Dean as much skin on skin contact as possible. Dean’s body remembered this from Laramie, Sam blanketing him, shielding him from the blows life wanted to deal him with muscle and bone. Sam’s lips grazed down his neck to where Johnny’s teeth had marred Dean’s shoulder, and he growled, “ _Mine_ ,” and started to roll his hips.

Dean soon realized he was a bona fide moron for having agonized for the past two days over telling the alpha his scarring was gone, for spending so much time worrying about this in the shower and delaying even a second of getting them to here. Sam had shot quickly to the top of Dean's “best sex ever” list a long time ago, but this was on an entirely different level. He could scent Sam’s need to please him and leave him satisfied growing with every thrust, which was a little overwhelming as Dean wrapped his legs around Sam’s back again, clung to his mate’s shoulders, and mewled. The way Sam rumbled deep in his chest in response left Dean too aroused to be embarrassed by the distinctly omega sounds he was making, heat building in his stomach and along his spine. He was glad Jo wasn’t home yet and hoped Adam was still on the porch as the bed was squeaking rather dangerously - not that the sock left much mystery as to what they were doing.

“God, the way you smell…” Sam whined, the surprisingly high pitch of his voice leaving the omega choked up. He’d resent the way Sam was turning him into a girl, but they were so close to being tied he couldn’t focus on anything outside of the red eyes staring straight into his soul and how right it felt to be filled by his mate.

Sam pulled him up into his lap, his knot starting to catch on Dean’s rim with the delicious promise of locking them together, fingers pressed into the omega's hips to keep him rocking in time with Sam's thrusts to help him chase his second orgasm. Dean threaded his hands into the alpha’s hair and attacked his collarbone, holding on for dear life and thinking it would be awful if he started crying but not sure he could avoid it, when suddenly there was a terrible snarling outside the house right below their bedroom window that he distinctly recognized from Fort Wayne. He put a hand on Sam’s chest to stop him from moving, gasping, “Stop. Wait.”

“Wh…what?” Sam gasped back, dizzy and drunk off of his omega, his knot fully inflated and just needing one more solid push to finish mating with Dean.

“Just, just be quiet a minute,” Dean insisted, panting as there was another snarl, followed by a series of vicious barks and Hannah and Rumsfeld went crazy downstairs. He swung up and off of Sam, his gold eyes wide with panic as he rummaged for a pair of pants, listening to the dogs claw at the door. “Shit!”

“What?” Sam was having a difficult time getting his breathing to slow down, largely because of how painfully hard he still was. “Dean, what?”

“There’s a hellhound outside!” Dean flipped on the overhead light so he could rummage through the weapons duffel Adam had retrieved from the car, growing frantic as he failed to find what he was looking for. “Why would a hellhound be here?”

“Oh Christ,” Sam whispered, his erection immediately flagging as the color drained from his face and he grabbed for his clothes as well.

It was Dean’s turn to demand, “What? Jesus, where’s the Colt?!”

Sam wasn’t listening to him, yanking a shirt over his head as he tore from the room, shouting, “Adam!”

“Adam?” Dean echoed, the whole of him going cold with dread as there was a scream from somewhere outside the house. “Adam!”

He was off after his mate, not even bothering with a shirt, nearly running straight into Bobby at the bottom of the stairs as the beta was loading a shotgun with rock salt, Sam already on his way for the kitchen. The entire house was awake, Bobby barking at Ellen to keep the dogs inside as the babies wailed upstairs and Emma peeked out from behind her bedroom door, terrified. Dean grabbed a knife on the way through the kitchen, knowing it wasn’t much better as a weapon than a stick but not heading out to face off against a hellhound without something in his hand. Sam had just burst onto the back porch, looking around for the source of the sound as the moon disappeared behind a bank of clouds, Dean shoving him aside and launching himself off the back porch barefoot into the dark to tear through the junk yard as he screamed, “ _Adam_!”

The beta heard his brother’s voice from where the hellhound had dragged him all the way into the field behind the scrap yard, tearing at the meat of one thigh until the muscle was shredded like hamburger. Only a few minutes ago he’d been sitting on the front porch smiling as he thought of what a great day he and Dean had. The Butterfly Museum and Aquarium had been the perfect way to start out the day with his hallucinations intensifying, since flaming butterflies were more funny than they were scary, and it was easy to tell himself the aquarium bursting and a giant octopus making its way towards him to smother him with its tentacles was nothing more than 3D special effects. The squealing children had been a little hard to take, but the place wasn’t particularly busy so it was a easy to avoid anyone walking around whose face looked like _The Scream_.

Lunch at Marge's had been a little rougher, the way the proprietor did her hair and make-up perfect for his brain to twist into something truly grotesque, like Dorian Gray's portrait come to life. Bill was so huge he looked like a troll, all gnashing teeth and blood spattered green skin covered in warts and hair, bits of flesh hanging from his mouth. At least they were the only patrons in  the place. The Falls helped to calm him down, since they were basically deserted thanks to the chilly autumn air, though the zoo had been a bit of a disaster. It should have occurred to him with all the wild animals that of course he'd hallucinate them eating the guests. Fortunately Dean wasn't opposed to finding a bar where they could have dinner, get drunk, and play darts all night.

The best part of the day was having Dean's undivided attention. Normally he wasn't jealous of sharing Dean with other people, but it wasn't a normal day. Getting Dean all to himself gave them room to talk about things beyond the surface level stuff that they otherwise avoided, like Adam’s life at Actaeon after Dean got kicked out and Dean's life on the road with Dad. Though Adam knew most of what Dean told him already, he could enjoy some of the humor and badassery of the hunts Dean and John had been on when he wasn't preoccupied with being pissed at their father for endangering Dean. Dean finally had a chance to give him shit for spending the whole day in bed with Jo, and he let his brother think the two of them actually had a future, even putting up with the lecture about telling her the truth about Sam. Azazel was dead now, she wasn’t in any danger, and lying to her was just going to wreck their relationship. Plus, he didn’t know how much longer Sam was going to play nice with her before snapping, and then they’d never be able to invite the two of them over for dinner, as good as Jo was at holding a grudge.

Adam was pretty drunk by that point, but somehow still managed to pass off how upset he was the idea of him and Jo doing couples stuff with Sam and Dean as just his grief in general. A little while after Dean had come back from the bathroom with a black eye and split lip, but they stayed until Dean beat him three more times at darts before finally getting a cab willing to take them all the way out of the city to Singer Salvage Yard. Adam managed to convince the cab to drive them to Jo’s bar first so he could say goodnight to her, stupidly blurting out that he loved her and getting a deer-in-the-headlights look in return. He assured her it was fine, she didn’t have to say it back, and for the first time all week was glad he was dying.

Sitting on the porch was slow torture as he waited for midnight and wondered how painful death by hellhound was going to be. He thought it was best to wait outside so Bobby wouldn’t have to clean up any blood afterwards. That would be rude when they were guests in his house. He broke down finally, truly, as he thought of how hard it was going to be for Dean and Sam to find him, but at least they _would_ find him. It’s not like it would have been if they’d gone back to the bunker and they wouldn’t have heard the hellhound outside. They might be looking for weeks to where it could have dragged him into the forest after he went out to meet it…

Being on the verge of death apparently brought with it a great deal of clarity, and Adam felt instantly sober at the realization of just how big of a fucking idiot he was. Lilith played him like a fiddle. Clearly she was the head of the department for a reason, and she’d probably manipulated her way right to the top. She’d planted a whole series of ideas in his head to keep him as vulnerable as possible and he’d followed her implicit instructions to the letter. She started off talking about John’s death, which got him to accept the idea that he was bound for Hell regardless ( _and now he wasn’t so sure that was even true_ ), and that he deserved Hell as his fate. Then she talked about Shreveport, making him think about how hard it had been to lie to Dean for so long and how he never wanted to do that again. Once she got him wallowing in all kinds of guilt, she’d suggested he go to Sioux Falls on some sort of grand goodbye tour, mentioned Jo and the kids - who were all there - knowing by giving him just a week he probably wouldn’t come out of mourning John with enough time to start thinking clearly. Only he _was_ thinking clearly now, almost laughing at his stupidity, because obviously he should have told Dean what he'd done so they could go straight to the bunker - the _heavily warded_ bunker, which may or may not have been able to keep a hellhound out but certainly would have been a safer bet than Singer Salvage Yard, despite all its protections. Odds were good that the hellhound wouldn’t have been able to get him in the bunker as long as he stayed inside, which would have given them time to get him out of the deal. He had to give Lilith props for never bringing up Henry or Kansas so Adam wouldn’t spare a second thought to going anywhere but Bobby’s house to spend his last week with his family and the girl he loved. The books on crossroads demons being fair definitely needed to be updated.

He realized next that he had to get inside to Sam, because Sam knew that travel spell of Henry’s and Bobby undoubtedly had the ingredients necessary to cast it. It would only take seconds to get to the bunker, and the hellhound wouldn’t come after anyone else in the house after he was gone. Maybe if they did the ritual in Bobby’s panic room it would buy them a couple of extra minutes. He could still get out of this, tell his brother everything, he didn’t have to die tonight.

Spending the week trying to drink his sorrows away had obviously been the second stupidest thing he’d ever done after making a deal with the top crossroads demon and believing he wasn’t getting royally shafted. Only the night before he’d thought about the safety of the bunker but had been too drunk to retain anything. Were he sober at the moment, he might have stood a chance of the light bulb in his brain going on before midnight hit. Instead, he was halfway to the front door when he saw it; the massive dog with fire for eyes, shaggy, blood-soaked black fur, and claws that flashed like daggers. It was behind Ellen’s Jeep, snarling at him and baring its long, sharp teeth. He tried to gauge whether he could outrun it and get into the panic room as it crept closer, the muscles under the fur rippling as it approached. It stood easily as high as his waist at the shoulder and was undoubtedly much faster than him. Before he had a chance to decide one way or the other, he heard the second hellhound around the side of the house and Hannah and Rumsfeld erupted into wild barking inside. As much as he’d sobered up in the last few minutes, he still had too much alcohol in his system, and the seconds he wasted looking towards the dogs in the house were all it took for the hellhound to be on him.

So now here he was, way out in back of Bobby’s house, hearing his brother screaming for him as the first hellhound continued to claw at his legs while the second hellhound sunk its jaws into his good shoulder. What had he been thinking, trying to brave these things by himself? Giving away the gun and the knife without even arguing? Agreeing to give up his soul after only a week? The hound on his legs was moving up to dig at his chest, and as he felt its claws sink in he screamed, “ _Dean_!”

“ _Adam_!” came the panicked reply as he felt himself being split open from his clavicle down to his pelvis, shrieking as his clothes grew wet and warm from the flow of blood, his skin shredding like paper.

“ _Dean_!” he tried to scream again, choking on the blood flooding his throat as the second hound ripped into his lungs while the first was beginning to claw at his intestines, having worked in tandem to crack open his ribs. The pain was excruciating and he knew realistically he probably only had seconds left with shock setting in and the massive internal trauma. He could tell based on how cold he was getting and how quickly he was losing any kind of feeling that it was almost over. He thought he heard his brother again, but everything was shutting down fast, and he hoped Dean got there soon because he didn’t want to die alone.

If Dean made it to him, it was after everything went dark and quiet, staying that way for only a few minutes before he was surrounded by terrible shrieking, and flashes of lightning lit up the room around him. It was cold, wherever he was, and it felt like he was laying on a metal surface. He was gagged and naked, and felt something piercing his shoulder where the hellhound had used him for a chew toy. His limbs were spread eagled and a collar that felt like ice on his skin was around his neck, further pinning him down, but he could move his head to take in his surroundings.

He was on a metal table that looked, from what he could see of it, like an autopsy table from a morgue. The table was on a circular platform maybe twenty feet in diameter in the middle of a deep, dark pit. A single walkway went from the table to the closed door, and it was lined with metal fencing, from which hung an array of knives, saws, and other tools. The thing he felt in his shoulder was a hook, and it went right under his collarbone from front to back. It was pulled taut on a heavy chain that was secured behind him to the table he was tied down on, the cuffs around his wrists and ankles attached to the same kind of chain. Despite the cold he found himself covered in a thin sheen of sweat, which left every centimeter of skin touching the frozen metal table stuck to it. Any attempt to move his body or limbs had his skin slowly peeling off where it was touching the table, and he decided quickly it was best to lay perfectly still. Not that it was easy. The shrieking was still filling the room - hundreds of voices at least - and it had to be below freezing. No matter how hard he tried to remain still, he couldn’t stop himself from shivering, his skin tearing wherever his muscles involuntarily jerked a little too hard.  

He had no real sense of time, but it felt like he was laying there naked and open to the elements for at least a few days, his skin continuing to tear and exposing the layers underneath to the metal, which then froze and tore with every shiver until his back was completely raw and bleeding, his extremities slowly beginning to turn black with frostbite. Nothing else happened aside from him being completely immobilized, though that in and of itself became a kind of torture. The longer he was left alone with nothing other than the shrieking and his peeling skin to focus on, the longer he suspected something terrible was coming and wanted to make sure he was thoroughly on edge before it made its first appearance. By the time his toes and fingers were thoroughly blackened he could no longer stop himself from crying, so much of his flesh sticking to the table that it felt like he was laying in a puddle of slime. That just made him adhere even more to the metal, and he was choking on the gag with every breath.

It was then that the door swung open and a tall, thin demon with reddish brown hair and a full, neatly trimmed beard strolled casually into the room. His face was narrow, eyes deep set, with a long nose and heavy brow. He wasn’t dressed the way Adam would have imagined, wearing a blue-grey button down with a white undershirt and black pants, and when the light caught his face at a certain angle, Adam could see what he truly looked like; his face half burned, exposed in some places down to the tendon, with a gaping wound in his cheek that revealed both bone and teeth. As he approached, he nonchalantly picked up a pair of hedge clippers, snapping them open and closed to test the hinge, and with a flick of his wrist the table lifted and inverted. Adam’s back tore free from the pull of gravity as he screamed into the gag, the collar popping off and the hook slicing clear through his muscle and bone to leave him suspended by his wrists and ankles alone. The chains rattled like they were on a wheel as they extended to allow him to hang facing the floor with his back fully exposed, the table ten feet above him to give the demon plenty of room to work.

“Hello Adam,” he crooned, his voice not quite tenor or baritone and nasal to such a degree that he almost wasn’t intimidating. Almost. “Usually I let my guests stew in their own juices for a bit longer - builds up the suspense - but when I heard Baby Winchester was waiting on my rack? I just couldn’t hold back another minute.” He snapped the clippers twice before leaving them open and leaning over to inspect the open, weeping wounds on Adam’s ass, then slotted the tip of one of the blades against the puckered opening hidden between Adam’s cheeks. The beta tensed, his breath coming in ragged gasps, as the demon leaned in close to him. “This will go in easier if you relax,” he murmured, sliding the blade in past the first ring of muscle and slicing clean through it as Adam shrieked into the gag. “My name’s Alastair, by the way. We’re going to have a lot of fun together.”


	141. You're My Brother and I'd Die for You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first stage of grief is denial.

The ground was still sodden from the rain the night before as Dean sprinted across the back field towards what he was fairly certain was his brother, following the noises of the hounds more than anything. He should have put on shoes, his bare feet slipping with every step in the wet grass, but he’d wasted too much time looking for the Colt after he heard the first hellhound to bother with footwear. He couldn’t even see where he was going because the fucking moon had slid behind some fucking clouds, and he’d never felt so fucking slow in his entire fucking life. Adam had only responded to him once, which didn’t bode well, and he shouted for his brother again as he dimly registered the sound of Sam’s feet thudding behind him and Sam’s voice crying out, “ _Adam_!” as well.

The panic sweeping through Sam was making it hard for him to breathe as he tried to catch up to Dean and couldn’t. The idea that his mate might get to the hellhounds first, armed only with a kitchen knife, was terrifying, as was whatever was happening to Adam, whose shrieks had been filling the otherwise still night from the moment Sam hit the back porch. Hannah and Rumsfeld were continuing to bark in the house behind them, and he was fairly certain Bobby was running after the two of them with the rock salt loaded shotgun, though the odds that Bobby would get to Adam in time for the rock salt to have any impact hovered around zero percent. Sam didn’t even know what _he_ was going to do once he reached his friend - maybe launch himself towards the growling, maybe try to use his powers to stop the attack, since they were clearly not entirely dormant, just subdued. Whether he even could draw out the demon blood to do his bidding he didn’t know, but he wouldn’t just let Adam die. He never could have imagined the younger Winchester brother would cut a deal for so little time.

The coppery smell of blood and other bodily fluids flooded the air and Adam’s screams had stopped, but the cloud bank was moving so the two men were occasionally able to see some of the jerking movements of the beta’s body as he was torn to shreds while they continued to race across the lawn. Fuck, the hounds had dragged him so far from the house. Getting him back to the house and keeping the hounds at bay once they got to him seemed like an impossible mission. Dean wasn’t about to let that stop him from reaching his brother, though. He had the knife gripped firmly in his hand, ready to sink it into the back of the invisible beast on top of Adam and well aware it would likely turn on him, as his last shout for Adam got no response. His brother was almost all the way to the small bank of trees beyond the field when he went quiet, and Dean knew he wasn’t getting to him quickly enough, that he needed to move faster than his feet could carry him. He was still at least ten yards away when the snarling finally stopped and the howling receded into the woods.

“ _Adam_!” he heard Sam shouting from very close behind him as he reached the prostrated figure on the ground and slipped in all the blood. He almost sliced his arm open with the knife, driving it into the lawn to keep the blade safely out of the way, as he recovered enough to scramble over to his brother.

“Adam…” he said, getting a hand on the beta’s shoulder to shake him, hard, as he heard Sam come up short behind him and suck in air sharply. “Adam…”

“Oh god…” Sam choked, staggering over as Dean was trying to take inventory of his brother’s injuries in the dark. “Adam…”

“Adam,” Dean repeated as he ignored what his nose was telling him, the clouds finally clearing enough for the moon to reappear so he could see the figure on the ground.

Adam’s face was calm and pale, his eyes closed, and it would have been easy to mistake him for simply being asleep were there not so much blood. It was splattered up his neck, over his jaw, a giant red streak trailing into his hair across his forehead and one eyelid. The arm with the dislocated shoulder, elbow, and broken wrist was twisted out at an odd angle, as if he’d tried to use it to defend himself, the cast half torn away. His other arm was nearly detached from his body at the shoulder joint, the meat of it almost gone and the bone gleaming in the moonlight. Part of his rib cage was missing - flung away somewhere across the field in all the violence - and what remained in his chest cavity was little more than soup. There wasn’t a single organ left intact. His heart had been ripped out and his lungs rended to bits. So little identifiable remained of the contents of his thorax that he no longer looked human, and his spine was visible amid the bloody mess that now was Adam’s corpse. Dean sat frozen in denial as he looked down at what was left of his brother, barely registering Sam’s sobbing as the alpha collapsed into the grass and rasped, “Adam…”

“No,” Dean managed, his hands starting to move of their own accord to run over Adam’s shredded remains and quickly becoming saturated with blood as he felt something shatter in the center of his chest. The few remaining places on Adam’s face that weren’t stained with blood quickly became so as Dean stroked his brother’s cheeks and hair, Sam keening beside him and trying not to fall all the way over. Stupidly he checked Adam’s pulse, not knowing what else to do that would be of any use as he found himself growing chilled deep into his bones, then dropped his forehead onto his brother’s when there was no thrumming against his fingers. “No, no, no, no, no, no. Oh, god. Adam.”

“What’s wrong?” he heard Ellen call from the house, and Bobby - whose trembling voice sounded much closer - told her again to stay where she was.

“Dean,” Sam tried to say, though the “n” fell off somewhere between his lungs and his lips, and the omega sat up, pulling Adam with him and clutching his brother desperately to his chest. If he noticed the way Adam’s innards spilled into his lap he didn’t show it, one arm bracketed around Adam’s back and the other hand buried in his hair.

“Oh, please god,” Dean begged, trying to get the limp body in his arms closer to him, rocking him back and forth like he’d done so many times for so many years when Adam was little and John wasn’t around to soothe him after a nightmare. He shoved his face into Adam’s neck, trying to smell his dish soap and only smelling blood and death. It stole his ability to breathe, all the liquid in his body beginning to spill out of his eyes and wash away the red on Adam’s face as he felt himself starting to shake apart. “Please, god, help me, somebody please…”

A large, strong arm circled him, a huge hand covering his on Adam’s head, and he couldn’t rock anymore as he landed against Sam’s chest, the alpha trying to comfort him and having nothing to offer besides a body to lean into. Dean could feel something trying to swell up within Sam to help him calm down, but the only thing coming through their bond was a crushing heartache. Someone was wailing, their voice echoing back to the house, and after some time Dean became aware that it was him, mostly because Sam was saying, “Shhh,” between his sobs, and the pain both within him and radiating off of Sam was getting worse. That it even could get worse was something to marvel at, as was the fact that either of them were remaining even semi-upright.

Gradually after god knows how long ( _time had effectively stopped for him with Adam’s death_ ) Dean began to quiet, mainly because his voice was wearing out, and he felt a hand on his arm that wasn’t Sam’s. Sam was still wrapped around both him and Adam, still crying and shaking but a little more collected, though the pain was still pulsing out of him in waves. The hand on his arm slid back and forth until Dean focused enough to see that Bobby was kneeling beside the three of them, one of the pick-ups he used to run around his land backed up to just a few feet from them and a blue tarp next to him on the ground.

“Dean,” Bobby said quietly, his voice thick and eyes glassy. “You have to let go of him so we can get him back to the house for the night.”

“I can’t let him go,” Dean whispered, his voice incapable of anything louder, but Bobby pulled the tarp over and tugged insistently on his arm.

“You have to,” he murmured. “You can’t stay out here all night.”

“I’m not leaving him,” the omega growled as fiercely as he was able to, his tear filled eyes shining a dangerous gold as he tightened his hold on his brother.

“We’re not leaving him,” Bobby told him firmly. “We’d never leave him. But we have to get both of you back to the house and he can’t be carried like this.”

“Dean,” Sam murmured, pressing his forehead to Dean’s temple as his mate started to cry again. “Bobby just wants to get him back to the house.”

Dean’s breath hitched as he whined and hiccupped, struggling to accept that he couldn’t keep holding his brother and finally nodding his assent to get what was left of Adam wrapped up in the tarp to keep anything from getting at him overnight. Both he and Sam were soaked with blood, their clothes absolutely ruined, and it wasn’t until Bobby and Sam had his brother loaded in the bed of the truck that Dean realized how cold he really was. His legs were asleep and he couldn’t feel his fingers, and he was lucky Sam was with him, because when he tried to stand he nearly passed out from his blood having pooled in his feet. Bobby got a blanket laid across the back seat so the two of them could climb into the truck without staining the upholstery red, then slowly drove back across the field to keep them from sinking into the soft ground and getting stuck.

The omega almost fell again getting out of the vehicle, feeling like the Earth’s gravity had shifted and not knowing how he was supposed to adjust to that. Sam wasn’t faring much better, having begun to violently shake as soon as Bobby started up the engine, without a clue how to make it stop. Adam had been one of the few constants in his life since he was six. He could barely remember a time when the beta hadn’t been his friend, hanging out in his room after class, working on homework or having lunch together. Adam was his _second_ for Christ’s sake. He couldn’t even recall the first alpha he’d been paired up with when he was a freshman. He and Adam had just worked like such a well-oiled machine when Sam entered his junior year and they were put together ( _at Sam’s insistence_ ) that the other guy faded into nothingness.

Even after Sam graduated, Adam’s presence in his life had been a given - unquestioned that he would always be there. He threw his full support behind Sam’s decision to go to college even when his grandfather bitched endlessly about it, and Sam had been the one on the phone helping Adam figure out which colleges he wanted to apply to, since Dean didn’t know anything about college and John certainly wasn’t going to help. Things had been tense after Shreveport, and the loss of Adam’s friendship after Laramie had made Sam’s separation from Dean immeasurably worse, but they got past that. Adam had stepped up and taken care of Sam’s kids and his mate when Sam was too confused by the demon blood to be thinking clearly about what was really important in his life. He routinely called Sam out on his shit and helped keep him grounded in reality when his hormones wanted to run the show. He was more than Sam’s friend; he was the closest thing Sam would ever have to a brother, and the alpha didn’t know how he was supposed to adjust to a life without him in it. He didn’t know where to find the strength to help Dean with such a terrible loss when he felt like he was drowning.

And he certainly didn’t know how to tell Dean that both he and Bobby knew about the deal Adam made and simply thought they’d have more time to get him out of it. They knew vaguely that his contract was short, but it had never crossed either of their minds that he would only get a week in exchange for his soul. Dean very well might never forgive him, which would be fine. He was never going to forgive himself for being so incredibly stupid.

Ellen was sitting at the kitchen table, a half empty bottle of gin next to her and a glass in her hand as she stared at the refrigerator, numb. Her eyes, puffy and red, flicked over at the couple as they stumbled in, looking completely lost. Bobby was behind them, wiping at his face with a handkerchief and sniffing as he went to the table to pour himself a drink.

“Henry’s here,” she said thickly, her voice trembling as a pair of tears slid down her face. “He’s up with the kids. You two should go take a shower. I’m gonna wait up for Jo. Let her know what happened.”

Sam nodded, running his thumb over his eyes as Dean choked back a sob, and steered his dazed mate towards the living room. Dean almost fell a couple of times on the stairs, having withdrawn somewhere deep within himself and clearly unaware of his surroundings. Sam could hear Henry talking to Emma in German, his voice cracking as he responded to whatever she was asking, and there was _another_ person who knew about Adam that the omega was probably going to feel he couldn’t trust. He swung Dean towards their room, his hand still shaking on his mate’s lower back, and stood him against the wall while he went to get them something clean to wear.

The room still smelled like the two of them, the scent of slick and sex clinging to the sheets, and it left Sam doubled over with his hands on his knees, a bawling mess. If he’d just been able to resist his fucking instincts and told Dean what he knew about the deal, maybe Adam would still be alive. They could have done _something_ , the beta never would have been able to keep to himself that he only had until midnight if his brother had been the one demanding how long he’d bargained for. Adam didn’t have a game face when it came to Dean wanting the truth out of him, not after last year. He’d clearly only made it through the week by drinking and hiding. Sam should have acted like the alpha he was supposed to be and put the brakes on with Dean, regardless of how much time he assumed they had to save Adam’s soul.

Dean was still standing outside the door when Sam finally managed to pull himself together and emerge with clean clothes for them to wear, staring blankly at the painting of a garden on the wall across from him. Tears were continuing to flow from his eyes but he’d gone completely still and quiet, barely acknowledging Sam as the younger man laced their fingers together to pull him towards the bathroom. The blood had dried on Dean’s chest and would start to flake off soon, leaving evidence of Adam everywhere around the house if they didn’t get cleaned up. Plus, he stank, the smell of stomach bile and urine soaked into his pants. It was easy to get him moving at least, and to get him to sit down on the toilet while Sam turned on the water to let it warm, not wanting Dean to see in the mirror just how covered he was in the remnants of his brother.

The shower spray jolted Dean back enough to at least clearly know Sam was with him, even as the alpha could feel how his mate had simply shut down inside. He leaned slightly into Sam’s touch as the taller man washed him down from head to toe, murmuring, “It’s just me,” when the omega flinched at the hands on his chest. They stayed in the tub until the water ran clear and turned cold, the swirls of pink long since vanishing down the drain, then Sam got them toweled off and dressed, his hands still shaking and Dean still silent, though the omega spent a long time after they were both clothed leaning against his mate’s chest, his face buried in Sam’s neck so he could try to hide the fact that he hadn’t stopped crying. Sam would notice, of course, but Sam was currently the only safe harbor he had, and he could pretend at least for a minute that the rest of the world wouldn’t know what a disaster he was. Anyway, Sam was crying too, so he was in good company.

They could hear Jo downstairs bawling by the time they finally made it out of the bathroom, Ellen and Bobby trying to comfort her. Emma was peeking out her bedroom door, and Sam tried to give her a smile but didn’t quite manage it. He figured he should check on the kids to make sure they didn’t need to be changed or anything, nudging Dean into their room and assuring him he’d be right in. Emma’s room was filled with the heavy smell of sorrow, Henry sitting at Dean’s desk, staring at his hands. He looked up at Sam’s entry, his eyes vacant, sighing deeply and not saying anything. Sam was starting to think selective muteness under extreme duress was a family trait. Henry looked decades older despite his physical form still being suspended in his late thirties, which seemed appropriate. It wasn’t often someone outlived a child and a grandchild in the same week without being fundamentally changed.

The kids had settled in to sleep, and he got a crushing hug from Emma that threatened to start his tears up anew. He smoothed her hair and thanked her, earning himself an extra squeeze before he could make his way back into the hall. He could still plainly hear Jo sobbing, not quite sure how they were going to navigate the next day when they’d have to take care of Adam’s remains. He didn’t have it in him to be civil if she felt like picking a fight, not even if the two of them going at each other was the last thing Adam would have wanted. Of course, Adam also wanted to keep his deal a secret from everyone and look how that turned out.

Dean was sitting on Sam’s side of the mattresses by the night stand, the demonology book Sam had been looking at earlier spread across his knees. The alpha paused in the doorway, anger poisoning the air in the room, and after a long moment he moved the rest of the way inside, closed the door, and turned off the overhead light, leaving them once more in the soft glow of only the table lamp. He was suddenly glad they hadn’t finished mating. If Dean wanted to leave him, it might not hurt as much.

“Did you know?” the omega asked quietly, his voice heavy and deeper than it had been earlier in the evening. “ _Weighed down_ ” Sam’s brain helpfully supplied.

“I did,” Sam replied just as quietly, bristling at the growl Dean quickly swallowed, his hands curling tightly around the book’s cover.

“For how long?”

“Bobby dragged it out of him while we were in Sioux City.”

“And you didn’t think I should know?”

“We spent the day researching, while the two of you were out. I was going to tell you when you got out of the shower…”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

The way Dean slowly and calmly closed the book, setting it gently back on the nightstand, was in direct contrast to the plume of rage that burst off of him, and Sam had to push forcefully against his inclination to respond in kind. He could physically feel the way the omega had walled him off, and that didn’t help his mood one bit. The alpha actually counted to ten while his mate patiently waited for a response, not wanting to end the night hurling things at each other - whether it be insults or furniture.

“Of course I thought you should know,” he said finally. “But Bobby suggested…”

“You’re gonna blame this on Bobby?” Dean demanded, his eyes flashing gold.

“I’m not _blaming_ anyone,” Sam snapped. “Bobby said we should try to have something solid to bring you so you wouldn’t fly off the handle, and I agreed to give it a day so we could hopefully figure out what he made a deal with.” Dean stared at him, incredulous, and huffed out an unamused little laugh, but Sam refused to be deterred. “You can’t tell me you’ve been okay this last week, Dean. Your father died. You just started really talking again when we had to take Lizzie to the doctor. You’ve spent more time this week with beer and a bunch of junked cars than you have with me. Which is fine, you needed time and space, I get that, but you haven’t been _with_ me all week and we had no idea Adam…” His voice cracked, and he dragged the back of his hand over one eye and then the other to get rid of the moisture clinging there. “We had no _idea_ it was going to happen so soon. I was going to tell you what we found when you got home tonight, but you got in so late and you needed to take a shower, and then when you got out of the shower…”

That seemed to get through to the omega, as his cheeks pinked and he stared at his knees, guilt immediately overpowering all the anger still hovering in the air. Sam certainly hadn’t meant to make Dean feel guilty, and now his mate was crying yet again, and the alpha felt like absolute shit. At least nothing got thrown.

“How could he do somethin’ so stupid?” Dean squeaked between hitching breaths and hiccups, and Sam’s chest just fucking _ached_ from his sternum clear through to his spine.

“I don’t know baby,” Sam choked in response, and Dean broke all over again, weeping raggedly with his elbows on his knees and his hands in his hair, any lingering anger in the room utterly overwhelmed by grief.

That just a week ago Sam had been thrilled at the omega allowing himself to be smaller than him seemed ludicrous with the tiny little ball Dean had pulled himself into as Sam got them bundled up and under the covers. The alpha, mercifully, was becoming too exhausted to cry anymore, his big monkey brain shutting down so his wolf brain could run on instinct to try to make his omega feel something other than anguish. Rationally he knew all the soothing in the world wasn’t going to help one bit, but he ran his hands up and down his mate’s back in long, smooth strokes anyway while he waited for Dean’s body to simply give up and force him to sleep. It took about half an hour before Dean lost his fight with the Sandman, and Sam followed after him within seconds of closing his eyes.

Adam was hanging naked from chains, his skin blue and covered in ice crystals, extremities turning black, a hole torn in the shoulder where the hellhound had mauled him. His front was intact, but his back looked like the skin had been flayed off and was split open in a ragged line all the way from between his buttocks, up one side of his spine, to the base of his skull. He wasn’t bleeding, which seemed strange, except it was very possible based on the state of the rest of him that his blood had crystallized. There was a gag in his mouth to muffle his screams, a frozen line of spit hanging off of it like an icicle on an eave. Even with the gag in place it was easy to understand the single word he cried over and over again.

 _Dean_.

Sam woke so quickly he nearly knocked the nightstand over, wiping away the moisture on his face before noticing the blood on the back of his hand. He looked over hastily at his mate, who was still out cold but looked bereaved even in sleep. Outside the window the sky was the unhappy grey commonly associated with the phrase, “far too early in the morning,” though to Sam it seemed fitting that this was what the day would look like as he grabbed a tissue to press to his nose and headed to the bathroom for some aspirin. He tried to tell himself the dream that had awakened him was nothing more than that, that he hadn’t just gotten a glimpse of how Adam’s soul was being tortured in Hell, but it was a weak lie that didn’t hold water, and he didn’t have any desire to try to go back to sleep, no matter how exhausted he still felt. Beyond the exhaustion was a feeling of emptiness that also wanted him to crawl back in bed and stay there forever. His brain, unfortunately, had no interest in that plan, so he headed down the hall to check on the kids and see if anyone needed a diaper change.

Checking on the kids was a mistake, as Elliott and his unhappy teeth woke up almost immediately and Sam nearly stepped on Emma, who had made herself a cozy nest of all of Dean’s pillows and throws on the floor so Henry could sleep on the bed. The Man of Letters had done little more than kick his shoes off and cover himself with his jacket, not even bothering to crawl under the sheets, and by the way he looked when he glanced over his shoulder at the noise, Sam was fairly certain he hadn’t slept at all. Henry murmured something to Emma - probably telling her to go back to sleep since she snuggled immediately back into her little burrow - while Sam got Elliott up and out of the room before he could wake up his sister, grabbing one of the diaper bags to take him downstairs to change. He wished they were back at the bunker, didn’t understand why they’d spent the whole week at Bobby’s house when the bunker would probably have been safer, and instead let inertia take hold in the wake of John’s death. Although maybe he did know why they’d stayed. As much as he wanted to get Dean, their kids, and the dog back home, he really didn’t feel like moving any more than necessary, his body physically aching and demanding he just sit down and not do anything more strenuous than twiddling his thumbs.

Jo was sitting on the recliner wrapped in the afghan and staring at the television when he made his way downstairs, and he tried not to get his hackles up in anticipation of a fight. Clearly any encounter between them could go either way at this point, as she appeared not to have slept either and a cranky Jo was usually not an even tempered Jo. She didn’t really see him, though, merely blinking as he moved between her and the TV to get Elliott onto the coffee table and change him.

Sam was in the middle of securing the clean diaper around his son’s middle when Jo said bluntly, “He stopped by the bar last night to tell me he loved me. And I just stared at him.” It was the kind of statement that couldn’t be ignored, and he looked over at her, mascara smeared around her eyes and down her face like some kind of cliché. After a few moments she returned his gaze, her brown eyes haunted. “He just…caught me off guard, you know? It’s not that I don’t...And then he said it was okay if I didn’t say it back and walked out before I could. I was planning to talk to him about it when I got home.”

Sam didn’t know what he was supposed to say to that, presuming he was meant to say anything to begin with. Before he could figure it out she’d drawn her knees up to her chest and hidden her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking as she wept. Her teeth were sunk deep enough into her lower lip to draw blood as she tried not to make any noise, and when several minutes had passed she drew in a shuddering breath and went quickly out onto the porch to sit with Hannah.  

She was still outside, Sam perched on the couch holding Elliott while he stared at the television just as Jo had, when Henry came downstairs with Lizzie, who also needed to be changed. There was no reason to stare at the TV, it wasn’t like it was on or anything, but Sam really didn’t know what else he should be looking at or doing. Everything had a kind of sluggish fog to it, like time was moving through molasses. Henry joined him on the couch silently, getting into the diaper bag and pulling out one of the diapers for “little movers” and the wipes. Under different circumstances Sam would have mentioned how thoroughly impressed he was at how well the older alpha had adapted to things like changing disposable diapers with their various sizes and features. Instead he was starting to think he understood why Dean had gone so quiet after Benny died. Just the idea of talking to anyone about anything ever again was draining what little energy he had, and once Henry was done changing Lizzie the two men sat quietly together while the kids babbled at each other, and waited for the rest of the house to wake up.

Jo had yet to move from the porch with Hannah while Bobby and Ellen were on autopilot making breakfast for Emma and anyone else who wanted pancakes ( _they hadn’t had any takers yet beyond the two babies, who were becoming maple syrup covered messes_ ) when Dean appeared hours later, looking wan yet determined. He was dressed already, right down to his boots and jacket, his whole face puffy and his hands shaking as he got the keys to the Impala from the bowl by the door. Sam could feel the carefully constructed wall Dean had built around his grief and how it was already threatening to crumble, so he certainly wasn’t expecting the omega to speak, let alone say, “Sam, get dressed so we can go get the truck from the bar.”

The betas stopped where they were between the stove and the kitchen table, Bobby almost dropping the plate of pancakes Ellen had just filled for him, and the older hunter asked, “You...really think you need to do that right now? The bar’s not gonna be open.”

“I have the keys and we need to pick it up at some point,” Dean replied gruffly. “No time like the present. We can’t take Adam home in the Impala.”

“Home?” Ellen said, her eyes shifting to Bobby, who was glancing at Henry and Sam. Neither alpha appeared too phased by what Dean was saying, which wasn’t in any way reassuring that they were all on the same page with keeping Dean there.

“To Kansas.” The look on Dean’s face spoke volumes of how tenuous his grip was on the emotions that wanted to rise up and spew themselves all over the living room. “I’m not gonna bury him here.”

“Bury him?” Bobby huffed, incredulous, and the omega snapped.

“Is there a fucking echo in here?!” he shouted, startling Elliott, who began to wail, followed quickly by his sister. “Did I stutter?! Yes, bury him! I need the fucking truck so I can get him back to the bunker, build a fucking coffin, and bury him before he starts to stink!”

“Dean…” Bobby started, and Dean spat, “He’s not going on a pyre, Bobby. It’s just not gonna happen, so drop it. Sam, I’ll be waiting in the car.”

The glare he leveled at the kitchen’s occupants left little doubt that anyone who tried to burn Adam’s body was probably going to get shot. Bobby and Ellen both looked helplessly to Sam, who was succeeding in getting the kids calmed down with Emma’s help, obviously hoping he could talk some sense into his mate. Henry stared resolutely at the table, though the single sidelong glance he shot Sam’s way spoke volumes. He was having the same instinctive reaction to his grandson’s outburst as Sam, and there was no way for them to make the beta couple understand. They couldn’t scent the agony and the wrath saturating the house. No decent alpha would deny an omega who was hurting as deeply as Dean anything they wanted.

“Henry, can you watch the kids for a bit?” Sam asked quietly, and the Man of Letters nodded and moved over as Sam got out of his chair to follow Dean.

“Sam…” Ellen tried, putting as much “concerned mother” into her tone as she could.

“Dean wants to bury him, so we’re going to bury him,” Sam told her plainly, and went to find a pair of pants.

They’d need more than just the truck to get Adam all the way back to Kansas. Some coolers full of ice wouldn’t be a bad idea. Even though it was October and the days were getting colder, the shape that Adam was in wouldn’t hold up well in the back of a black truck if the day decided to turn sunny. It struck Sam as a spectacularly bad idea not to salt and burn the body, whether they knew his soul had departed or not. The anti-possession tattoo had been shredded, and it would be just like some asshole demon to decide to take Adam out for a joyride.

There was no way he planned to share any of his concerns with Dean, though. With the entire state of Nebraska between them and the bunker, Dean would have time to realize burying Adam was a bad idea, and if he didn’t they could always ward the coffin. Whatever Dean wanted to do, Sam would back his play and they’d figure it out together.

He had no way of knowing what Dean wanted was to find a way to spring his baby brother from Hell, or that he was determined to do it alone.


	142. Baby, the People Closest to You Die

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Popeye once said, "That's all I can stands, I can't stands no more!"

Sam’s side of the bed was still warm when Dean woke up to the baby monitor relaying the sound of the alpha trying to placate Elliott while Henry was talking quietly in German to Emma. He knew he should at least make an effort to get up and help, but the comforter felt like it weighed three hundred pounds, his eyes were so puffy from crying he could barely open them, and his entire core felt hollow. It was a good thing the bedding was so heavy or he might have simply floated away, empty as he was, and he silently prayed Sam would take their son downstairs instead of bringing him into their room. He’d worry about feeling like the worst mom on the planet later. Right now he just wanted to find somewhere dark that he could hide and lick his wounds. Maybe he’d find a bottle of Jack or three to take with him so his brain would shut down for a while, since everything else had.  

He was so damn _tired_ of losing his family. It just wasn’t fair. And of course he knew life wasn’t fair, but life seemed to be coming after him pretty damn hard and Dean hadn’t done a fucking thing to deserve the kind of misery perpetually heaped upon him. He realized that was a childish way to think, and that no one ever promised things were going to be easy, he just must have really pissed off someone in a past life to constantly have to be dragging himself out of these bottomless pits of despair. John’s death he could have dealt with. It would have taken time, but he would have been fine. His dad was a hunter, and a stubborn ass, and Dean had accepted a long time ago that his quest for vengeance was going to get him killed. He hadn’t wanted it to happen or liked that it was inevitable, but he’d accepted it. Adam selling his soul to save him? His baby brother, who he used to bathe in sketchy hotel bathtubs, make mac and cheese with hot dogs, and taught to zip up his pants and tie his shoes when John was off shooting the shit with Jim, Johnnie, and Jose? Who made it all the way through a school for alphas, graduated at the top of his class, and got a full ride to one of the best nursing programs in the country? That he could not accept.

Because he knew what Adam meant when he said Dean was his brom. It _was_ messed up and twisted, but Dean had been just shy of seven when Dad put a newborn in his arms and informed his son that the tiny, squealing bundle of pink skin with huge blue eyes was named Adam and Dean was going to have to help take care of him. Most kids that age got a puppy or a kitten to take care of. Dean got a baby. That there were only six years and eight-ish months between them in age didn’t change the fact that Adam was much more than a brother to Dean.

That fact was underlined and circled in bright yellow highlighter after he presented. Dean had been playing mother to Adam for years before his biology up and left him aching for a child. He’d begged his dad for months after getting expelled to go get Adam at the end of the school year, for them to be a family on the road again, but John had been adamant the boy was still too young, and alcohol was there to try to fill up the emptiness Dean felt at being torn from his baby brother. The four years between when he got kicked out of school and when he was finally able to convince John to go back for Adam during summer breaks was when Dean learned how to really drink. He knew his brother thought his borderline alcoholism was because of the way John treated him, but the truth was getting good and drunk was often the only way to deal with his father giving him a child for a decade and then taking that child away so abruptly the minute Dean’s hormones started screaming at him relentlessly that he needed someone to care for. Knowing his brother was alive and well and safe at Duke had helped Dean suppress how badly he yearned to have a home and children, because he already had Adam. So yeah, he got that he was Adam’s brom, and he wasn’t okay with his child being abruptly taken away again.

It took him an hour or two of laying around, miserable and too tired to move, to decide what he needed to do, what the only thing _to_ do actually was. There was no way he could live with this and simply move on from Adam sacrificing himself. It didn’t matter that he had kids to live for, not to mention a mate who was hurting almost as badly as he was at the moment. He was going to have to find a way to get his brother back. That’s all there was to it. Adam had managed to save him; he could figure out some way to return the favor. There had to be something, somewhere in the lore in the massive library at the bunker, on how to get a soul out of Hell. There _had_ to be. He just needed to find it.

Finding it required getting out of bed, however, and that was a lot easier said than done. He may have seized on something active to do to fix this, but that didn’t mean his body was willing to go along with it. His body understood he’d been through a traumatic event far beyond what he normally dealt with in his job as a hunter and it didn’t want him moving unless he had to pee, which he didn’t at the moment. There wasn’t a single spot on him, except maybe the very top of his head, that wasn’t in pain. Every square inch of him hurt, like he’d been hit by another truck. He wished he’d never opened his eyes in the hospital if this is what life was going to be like. He could say with absolute certainty as he tried to keep his chest from heaving and his eyes refused to stop leaking into the pillow that his miraculous recovery had not been worth its cost.

Eventually he accepted that he wasn’t going to be able to hold back anything he was feeling and crawled into Sam’s side of the bed to have a good, long, pathetic cry and try to get it out of his system so he could function. His mate’s scent clinging to the bedding was corrupted with misery, so it didn’t help as much as he’d hoped, though it was better than nothing. Dean knew he should go downstairs and see how Sam was holding up, that he wasn’t the only one who’d lost Adam last night, but even with his brain screaming at him to _do something_ outside of curling into a fetal position, when he’d already come up with a solution to this problem and he just needed to start _moving_ , the way his broken heart felt throbbing in his chest was pure agony. He may as well be pumping blood out through an open, gaping wound onto the sheets instead of throughout his body to give him energy and purpose, and until that feeling subsided some he simply wouldn’t be going anywhere.

Being on Sam’s side of the bed at least allowed him to see the demonology book from the night before, which he’d completely forgotten about the minute he found out his mate and surrogate uncle knew what Adam had done but had none of the specifics. Sam said they’d been researching the whole time he and his brother were gone, however, and he’d still been reading when Dean got out of the shower. It might be worth it to take a look through the volume if he could somehow manage to sit up and grab it from the nightstand. That alone seemed like a Herculean task, enough so that he almost gave up in desolation before even attempting it, but after a while he’d gotten his breathing under control enough to give it a go, whether his tear ducts were willing to comply or not.

He had to hand it to Sam. The guy was meticulous when it came to research, having dog-eared half a dozen pages in the book in various sections on the rules behind demon deals, the types of demons that made them, the deals that could and could not be made, the internal hierarchies in Hell, and what each level of demon had in terms of abilities to fulfill requests. Princes of Hell and their immediate subordinates could work the kind of mojo that would have been needed to save Dean, though it seemed unlikely any of the remaining three Princes would have offered to save him after Adam shot their brother, unless they saw it as some kind of instant karma. Knights of Hell could have healed him as well, but they were strictly soldiers and never cut deals. The first demon, also known as Lucifer’s Bitch, or those who sat directly to either side of her would have the power to pull him back from the brink of death, and those under her were the only demons actually authorized to trade for human souls on a large scale. Though the book didn’t use the words “crossroads demons” it was clear they were the brokers discussed, and the only demon who could possibly be Lucifer’s Bitch was Lilith, particularly with how the term was described as a point of pride for the demon in question. That meant either Crowley or Ruby could have made Adam’s deal as well, and it turned out Sam and Bobby had been right in thinking Dean wouldn’t spiral so badly if he had something concrete to work with. He may still feel sick and drained and not really want to get out of bed, but it was easier to force himself to move when he had three viable targets for his growing fury. Azazel had accused him of using humor as a shield against the slings and arrows that life flung his way, but in Dean’s experience anger worked just as well at warding off attacks.

He could hear the house waking up and knew he’d have to join them soon, just wanting a little more time to think about what exactly he was going to do before having to face anyone. He wanted to leave here immediately and take Adam back to the bunker where he could decide what to do with his body. Burning was out of the question, since he’d likely need a physical form of some sort when Dean broke him out. There was a morgue at the bunker that would buy him some time deciding what to do, though no one downstairs needed to know he planned on a much darker remake of _Weekend at Bernie’s_. He could bury him right outside the bunker if it really came down to it; maybe a little off in the woods so he’d have some privacy whenever he needed to go back and dig him up. It would also be easier to obsess over lore books at the bunker than it would be here, and he wouldn’t be as likely to have to put up with multiple people fussing over him. Henry and Sam would be there of course, but in all probability they’d both be so deep in their own grief they wouldn’t be able to pay much attention to him, even if they wanted to. There was a reason when a plane went down they instructed passengers to secure their own air masks first before helping someone else, and his grandfather and mate were going to be too busy making sure they got enough oxygen to check if Dean could breathe, at least for a while. It was just as well, since he didn’t want to expose Sam to whatever it was going to take to get Adam back. Azazel might be gone, but he’d lost his father to get rid of him and he’d almost lost his mate to the demon blood. Whether it was a Prince of Hell behind Adam’s deal, Lilith, Crowley, or Ruby, Dean planned to keep Sam as far away as possible from any demon he needed to hunt down.

Dragging himself the five miles it seemed to take to get to the shower was a fun experience in emotional pain manifesting itself physically, and he all but collapsed when he saw the pile of ruined clothes still sitting in the corner. Right, he and Sam had both been too spent last night to burn them. The smell of blood and Adam’s bodily fluids had him on his knees in front of the toilet in seconds even though there was really nothing in his stomach to come back up, and he reached over to turn on the shower to muffle his sobs in case anyone headed upstairs to check on him. His legs threatened to give out as soon as he pulled himself up by the sink, and catching sight of the little purple bruises just the size of Sam’s mouth trailing down the side of his neck and over his chest left him flushed with shame. While Adam was downstairs waiting for the hellhounds, Dean had been trying to get laid. God, he just _sucked_ as a human being. No wonder all these terrible things kept happening to him. He certainly deserved them when he could so easily ignore his brother’s obvious pain and fear and let other people pin Adam down and demand to know what his problem was. It was Dean’s job to keep an eye on Adam and know what was going on with him at all times, and he’d been utterly derelict in his duties for the last week, too wrapped up in his own shit to corner his brother and ask why he was acting so sketchy. Some omega he was. Both his dad’s and his brother’s lives had slipped right through his fingertips. His tears were nearly choking him as he stepped in under the scalding spray, hoping the heat would burn away the sense of being a complete failure when it came to taking care of his family so he could get himself in the right headspace to do what came next.

He knew Bobby was going to push back against his plans for his brother’s body, but Sam didn't object to his declaration that they were burying Adam, and Dean only had to wait in the car about ten minutes until his mate joined him, looking tired of life. It appeared that Sam had finally, mercifully learned the value of silence, since he didn’t ask if Dean was okay or how he slept or why they were taking Adam back to Kansas. The only thing he said when they got to the bar was they should stop at a sporting goods store to pick up some coolers and ice to keep in the bed on the drive down, and that they’d have to figure out who was going to drive the truck versus the Impala. Normally the question wouldn’t need to be asked, but having to get two cars back to the bunker meant one of them would be driving Adam and the other wouldn’t, and Sam didn’t know which his mate would prefer. Dean said something about flipping a coin, which Sam was pretty damned sure he didn’t mean, but for the time being he tossed the spare truck keys to the alpha and slid back behind the wheel of his Baby.

The drive to Dick’s Sporting Goods was harder than Dean expected. Just having Sam in the car earlier made him feel better, and despite having set on an initial plan of how he was going to go about fixing what Adam had done, the lockdown he had on his need to curl back into a ball and sob was tenuous at best. He knew if this kept up he wouldn’t be able stop his despondency from seeping into his scent or from worming its way through the bond, which would undoubtedly mean that he and Sam would Have to Have A Talk, and honestly Dean would rather have his teeth ripped out by pliers. It was still nice, though, when he kind of got stuck staring at the front of the store after parking - knowing he needed to get moving but incapable of doing so - to have Sam come around to the driver’s side after turning off the truck to pull him out of Baby. For a minute Dean thought they might have to hug right there in broad daylight in front of everyone and was equally torn between relief at the thought and dread. He very badly needed a hug yet there was no way he could hold back the deluge of tears wanting to burst out of him if he got one, as his eyes plainly felt it had been too long since he’d last cried based on how they were burning.

“You okay?” Sam asked quietly, and that alone was enough for Dean’s eyes to grow moist. The alpha had managed to get his wilder emotions under control, though a dull ache still pulsed out of him in a wave that threatened to capsize his mate. “We should get something to eat after this.”

“I’m fine Sammy,” Dean murmured, managing to fight back the urge to burrow into Sam’s chest even as shoppers passing closer to them were starting to scent the air and look in their direction. Neither man could blame them. The amount of sorrow they were both starting to bleed into the surrounding area was bound to draw attention. “I just want to get this done.”

Sam nodded in understanding, his face grim, and threaded their fingers together to pull Dean towards the store.

There was no need for buying some camping coolers to take so much effort. The sales associate in the outdoor section either worked on commission or just really loved her job, because she latched onto the two of them the second she spotted them debating between Yetis and Icey-Teks, only to wonder if a cheaper brand like Igloo might suit their purposes better. After all, they needed the coolers to keep the back of the truck bed chilled, so something high end and well insulated would probably defeat the purpose entirely. Sandra, with her over processed hair and sensible shoes, launched into a long explanation of the benefits of the different lines they offered, which devolved into a general discussion of camping and fishing and from there spun off into what they planned to use the coolers for. Why she didn’t start with what they were using them for they certainly didn’t know, though it was probable she was excited at the prospect of moving some warm weather merchandise before winter arrived. Whatever her reasoning, it set both of them on edge, and Dean was nearly shaking by the time they’d finally purchased the number of Igloos they decided they’d reasonably need to get Adam back for burial.

The last thing either of the men expected when going to load the coolers into the back of the Ford were the bags of toys with a list in Adam’s handwriting, stating which toy went to which kid for which holiday. He’d bought enough to give them birthday and Christmas presents from their uncle for years. The receipts were dated the morning he’d taken the truck before spending the day in Jo’s room, and there was a slip from his bank showing he’d drained the account he'd been using to save up in case he lost his scholarship when he went back to Duke, down to the last few dollars and cents he couldn’t get out through an ATM. Dean did start shaking then, his face ghostly white as he stared at the pair of tricycles that would need to be assembled; the wooden castle; the Matchbox cars race track. Sam was thumbing rather violently at his cheeks, his breath gone ragged, and Dean started grabbing the bags and moving them to the back seat of the Impala before stagnation had a chance to take hold of him. They’d lost a whole week sitting around crying over Dad when they should have been doing something to save Adam. He couldn’t let that happen again and lose more time getting him back when there was no telling how long freeing a soul from Hell could take to begin with.

“Dean…” Sam said brokenly as the omega was dragging a particularly large stuffed elephant out of the back of the bed. “Dean, just...just stop a second…”

Stopping wasn’t an option for the omega, any more than talking about the contents of the back of the truck, and he continued transferring the toys with increasingly violent shoves as he tried very hard not to be angry with his kid brother. Had Adam really not understood what his death would do to Dean, that he would leave behind mementos to be dug out on every birthday and Christmas for the foreseeable future to remind the elder Winchester his brother was gone? As if Dean would forget for one second that his brother’s life had been cut short, whether it was Elliott’s birthday or a random Monday morning? Did he just think the omega would recover from him being torn apart by hellhounds and get on with his life? If so, then the crippling lack of self worth Dean had battled since at least the day John dropped them off at Actaeon must be hereditary, and he should have worked much harder at making sure Adam knew just how much Dean loved him.

He had no idea his tear ducts were spilling over again until Sam boxed him in by the side of the Impala, his arms going around the smaller man to crush him into a hug as the alpha buried his face into the claim mark on Dean’s neck. Dean really didn’t want to do this in the middle of a parking lot, the way Sam was trembling making him feel more vulnerable instead of less, even if he didn’t have it in him to break free from his mate. He could feel Sam doing his best to hold his own grief in so as not to burden Dean with it, but at the moment Dean could feel clearly that Sam needed to hold him as much as he needed to be held, whether he was willing to admit it or not. It forced the air out of his lungs and left him gasping against Sam’s shoulder, twisting his fingers into the younger man’s hair to anchor himself between Sam and the Impala as his knees threatened to give out. He needed to get Adam back so these terrible moments where he bordered on collapsing like a condemned building would stop assailing him. He was no good to anyone like this.

"I should have told you," Sam said into the skin on Dean's neck where it was wet with tears, his voice barely above a whisper. "I shouldn't have kept it to myself once I knew."

Dean managed a small hum of agreement, unwilling to be any harsher than that. Yeah, Sam should have said something immediately, but it wasn't unreasonable to think they could take one day to research before going to Dean with their findings. It shocked him a bit, how not upset he was with his mate for withholding information, especially information that had led to such disastrous results, but he had neither the energy nor inclination to harbor any anger towards his alpha or his surrogate uncle. Sam was the only thing even slightly keeping him together at the moment. His inner omega wasn’t about to let him push the alpha away, not when they simply hadn’t known a day would be the literal difference between life and death for his brother. At any rate, Sam’s guilt was already surrounding the car like a cloud of mustard gas meant to kill them both. Things were bad enough as it was without making them worse by rubbing salt into the alpha’s obviously festering wound. Besides, miserable as they both were, the positive _mySam_ reinforcement he was getting from letting Sam hold him while their breathing synced up was helping to keep him from falling completely apart, and when his stomach growled loudly he actually felt like he could drive well enough to keep the car on the road until they found a Wendy’s or an Arby’s. He’d even take McDonald’s at this point, with their relative approximation of something that was supposed to be pie. The alpha wasn’t faring quite so well, clearly still shaking even though he’d stopped crying. Dean wanted to tell him it would be okay, that he was going to get Adam back, but if there was one thing he could be reasonably sure of it was that Sam wouldn’t ever agree to anything that put Dean and Hell in close proximity, any more than Dean was willing to expose Sam to anything having to do with demons. In the end he had to settle for pressing his lips to Sam’s, slow and tender and sweet, to remind them both that there were nice things in the world they could still have, whether it felt like that at the moment or not.

Sam’s reaction to the kiss was plainly one of a man stranded in the middle of the ocean who’d been thrown a life raft. While a sizable portion of his brain wanted to reject the comfort Dean was offering him, insisting it was something he didn’t deserve, his alpha recognized that just about the only thing that was going to take away some of the hurt was his mate, and he’d rather cut off a limb than push Dean away so he could continue to self-flagellate. Dean’s mouth was too soft and his body was too warm, caught between Sam and the Impala, and when someone beeped and told them to break it up and move their car, Sam didn’t move a muscle from where he’d pressed himself the entire length of Dean other than to lift a hand to flip the guy off. Coming together physically didn’t fix anything, or really make it better for more than the duration of the kiss, but it did reassure the alpha that even if Dean grew distant sometimes, Sam wasn’t going to be in this alone. It also helped quiet the warning bells at the back of his head that were screaming out Dean was taking this too well, should still be balled up - mute - in bed back at Bobby’s. That he wasn’t meant something. Sam just wasn’t in any shape to figure out what it might be.

The asshole who wanted their parking spot laid on the horn after they’d been snugged up together not nearly long enough for either of them to really feel better, snarling something about slutty omegas and taking it someplace else. Dean’s mouth was gone from Sam’s in an instant, and he shoved his way free to storm over to the camouflage-clad alpha in the beat-up Dodge truck who smelled like wet socks and week old fish. Sam raced after him, catching up as Dean hauled the asshole out to throw him against the front panel of the truck. The alpha wasn’t particularly large, but he was stocky and pissed off, and it was all Sam could manage to pull Dean back out of the guy’s reach before the omega did something that was going to get the cops called. The alpha spit out something about Sam collecting his bitch, and Sam was on him faster than Dean, pinning him down to the hood by his throat, his glowing red eyes rimmed in black.

“Apologize,” he growled, his voice pitched low and murderous, the offender sputtering as Sam’s fingers dug into his throat.

“Jesus Christ,” the guy gasped, and Sam flinched at the epithet like he’d had a drink thrown in his face. The red in his eyes was dancing like flames as the alpha whimpered beneath his hand. “What the hell are you?”

“Apologize to my omega,” Sam ordered, even though Dean was already back beside the Impala, his hands pressed to the roof while he waited for his limbs to stop trembling.

“S…sorry,” he choked, prying at Sam’s hands.

“Good. Now find another parking spot,” Sam hissed before releasing the man and turning on his heel to check on his mate. The guy didn’t need to be told more than once, scrambling behind the wheel of his vehicle and peeling away as Sam leaned in to scent Dean. “Are you all right?”

Dean was far from all right, concentrating on keeping his walls up before he dissolved into a puddle on the asphalt. Just a few minutes ago he’d had a pretty good handle on this horrible cycle of grieving that refused to be ignored, had been successfully distracting himself by focusing on what they needed to get back to Kansas, but now the only thing he could focus on was how the last two times he’d run into asshole alphas he’d been with Adam, and Adam wasn’t here. Not in the Dick’s Sporting Goods parking lot, not in Sioux Falls, not in the state, not on the planet. It didn’t matter that he was going to get his brother back at some point in the future. Right now his brother no longer existed, he could feel his mate trying to bury a frightening amount of anger, and his body wanted to lock into place, halting all the forward progress he’d made today. He felt Sam’s hand on the back of his neck, thumb tracing across the hair at his nape, and his eyes flicked closed, sending trails of saline down his cheeks. Sam moved in closer as he shuddered in a breath, his other arm snaking around Dean’s waist to hold him where he was as the alpha slid up against his side so he could nose against Dean’s ear. However much grounding Dean needed at the moment, Sam clearly needed it just as badly, the hand gently stroking the omega’s side as unsteady as his breath, so Dean squelched his urge to push free before the sadness welling up in him got to be too much and leaned into his alpha instead. It was definitely time to get them pointed towards a drive through and headed back to Bobby’s house before someone else drove by and decided to be a dick, because he couldn’t deal with that a second time today.

“Not the first fuckface who’s called me a slut,” Dean said eventually, running a hand over his face and turning with every intention of wrapping himself around his mate. The blood dripping from the alpha’s nose stopped him, and he reached into his pocket, alarmed, to grab a Kleenex. He certainly had enough on hand at the moment to spare one. “Shit, Sammy…”

“What?” As Dean pressed the tissue to his face the alpha realized what was happening, closing his hand over his mate’s fingers and running a thumb along the back of his hand. “Oh, yeah, I caught an elbow. No big deal, he got in a lucky hit.”

“Are you sure?” Dean demanded, carding his fingers into Sam’s hair to keep him from turning away and shielding his eyes.

“Yes, I’m fine,” Sam insisted, his hands on either side of Dean’s face as he caressed his mate’s cheeks with his thumbs.

The hazel orbs were back, no trace of red or black, and oh how desperately Dean wanted to believe the lie Sam was telling him. The rage that had flooded their bond was gone, and Sam was back to smelling lost and more than a little forlorn. He _had_ to be fine. Dean couldn’t handle the demon blood coming back, or maybe having never left, not on top of everything else. He didn’t have the energy or emotional stamina to go through that again. And it was possible the other alpha may have simply clipped him when Dean was headed back to the car. Sam did grab the guy and swing him around rather violently. An errant elbow connecting wasn’t out of the ordinary when two alphas were grappling. Still, he had a desperate need to mark the alpha as his again, the way he had in the hospital, though under the circumstances he settled for running his face along Sam’s jaw and down his neck. A little purr slipped out of him as Sam’s fingers brushed up under the back of his shirt to press warm against the base of his spine, and the way they were flush up against each other now really threatened to bring them both to a standstill if Dean didn’t get moving. There was a lot yet to be done and loaded up before they could get the kids, the dog, and Adam on the road, and the temperature was already starting to climb with the late morning sunshine. He forced himself to drop the subject and brushed a kiss to the hinge of Sam’s jaw before dislodging himself to slide behind the wheel of the Impala, saying, “I need food.”

Sam nodded, pressing the tissue under his nose again as a fresh stream of blood began to drip down towards his upper lip. His brain was demanding he ask Dean why Sam just saw him digging up a grave with Crowley in the middle of the night, snow blanketing his hair and his left arm glowing like fire was burning beneath his skin, and why that image would be filling him with such dread. He couldn’t, of course, as that would require Sam to admit that alpha hadn’t gotten in a lucky shot, and that the rage that had bubbled up within him at the way the man spoke about his mate was particularly dark, deep, and nasty. He should have known life wouldn’t be simple enough for him that getting rid of Azazel would cleanse him of the demon blood, and he was desperately afraid of what might happen with his emotions running rampant the way they were. The demon blood had been able to take hold of him so firmly back in Elwood when he was grieving for Dean, and while he’d been much worse off then, the pain he felt over Adam’s loss seemed to have no less potential to leave him open for the darkness to overwhelm him again if he wasn’t incredibly careful. That he’d been able to rein himself back in quickly wasn’t actually a comfort when his vision had flickered and gone slightly dark before he recognized the feeling of being consumed, and in the end it only meant he had better control of himself for the time being. “For the time being” wasn’t good enough for him, not by half, when Dean no longer had a little brother around who could help protect the omega from Sam if he went off the rails, and as far as Sam was concerned, they couldn’t get back to the bunker and its demon holding cell quickly enough.


	143. Decide to be Fine Until the End of the Week

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Home again, home again, jiggity jog.

The feeling of lethargy Dean was so afraid of seizing them up in Sioux Falls had been trying to lock him in its grip ever since Jo decided to follow them back from Bobby’s, as burying Adam turned out to be far more complicated than simply digging a hole in the ground. Jo couldn’t stay in South Dakota for her mother to cluck over her when she was nowhere near being able to accept Adam’s death, nor did she want to be so close to the field in which he'd died. She was adamant about wanting to come out to watch the kids while they were getting everything done they’d need to for the burial, that if she didn’t have something to keep her mind off of things she was going to go insane, and neither Sam nor Dean would ever tell her she wasn’t welcome. Having her there torpedoed Dean’s plan of keeping Adam in the morgue, however, since the whole reason she came back to Kansas was so she’d know where he was buried, and that meant they had to bury him, which Dean was in no way ready for. He'd started to suspect hunters were laid to rest on a flaming pyre not only to ensure they didn’t become restless spirits, but to give those mourning them the ability to move on to the next job quickly. This was especially true when it was almost a week before he was able to turn his attention to researching how to get Adam back, and that was time Dean didn’t have to waste. 

He’d opted to drive the truck back with the kids strapped in, unwilling to travel separately from his brother, like if he wasn’t personally chaperoning Adam he’d lose him somehow ( _as if he already hadn’t_ ). Sam led the way with Hannah in the Impala, Jo following behind the truck in Bobby’s loaner, which added a whole other level of stress as Dean tried not to worry about one of their caravan getting t-boned. He realized when they got back to the bunker he should have been worrying less about one of them getting in an accident and more about what the trip was going to do to Adam. The six hour drive to Kansas hadn’t been kind to what remained of the younger Winchester brother with all the soft tissue damage, and all the morgue would be useful for was allowing Dean to easily wash him. Keeping him there was simply not a long term option. Things would have been different if he weren't someone they all loved deeply and they could have just wrapped him in a shroud and thrown him in him a shallow grave.

The first day no one had any energy to do anything other than sit in the kitchen and drink in silence once they’d gotten the kids to bed, Hannah walked, and Adam’s body out of the truck. Jo offered to help Dean wash his brother the next day when they all finally woke up while Sam started in on building and warding a coffin, despite Dean's insistence that she really didn’t want to see Adam like this, and fortunately the smell drove her out of the room before she saw anything other than his face. Dean really didn’t want her thinking of how Adam looked now when she remembered him, especially not when he would do whatever it took to ensure the current situation was temporary and he’d hate it if every time she saw him after he came back she pictured him all torn up, his face ashen and his eyes beginning to sink into his skull. The task of bathing his baby brother one last time took more out of him than he’d ever be willing to admit, though, and he spent most of the second day in bed afterwards staring at the wall, too exhausted to really do anything other than crawl under the covers and pray for the depression pushing insistently at the edges of his consciousness, like a monster under the bed, to go away. Sam brought him food that he didn’t eat and asked questions that he didn’t answer, and after he put the kids to bed and crawled up next to him, Dean turned his face into Sam’s neck and cried until he fell asleep.

He shouldn’t have been shocked by how draining grief was. He’d lost his pack less than a year ago, and now the Winchester family line was hanging on by a thread. Obviously he was going to be at the end of his rope. Didn’t mean he had to like how these feelings of hopelessness were derailing him and wasting precious time. They were lucky Jo had come home with them, frustrating as it was to have to delay his plan so despondency could start to creep in, as they really did need someone who could watch the kids and the dog while Dean was spiraling and Sam was getting things ready for the following day, when they’d dig up a section of land behind the bunker and lower Adam into it. They’d been hoping to have Henry there to help with things, since he’d returned via the travel spell after wishing them a safe trip once they’d packed up the kids, the dog, and Adam at Bobby’s, but he didn’t drop in to see them when they got back and he didn’t show up the next day, either. Sinclair did, though mainly to tell them Henry needed some time to himself after everything that happened and they shouldn’t expect to see him for a while. It was plain to see how badly he wanted to ask Sam when he thought he’d return to his studies, yet he managed to squelch the impulse and merely offered condolences on Dean’s losses that almost rose to the level of sincerity. Hence, even though nothing had been resolved between Jo and Sam, it was a good thing she was there to keep Lizzie and Elliott from sticking their fingers in light sockets so both men could head out with shovels just after breakfast on the third day After Adam to get to work.

Sam suggested finding a spot in the woods surrounding them, but Dean rethought that on the drive home. He’d long ago determined that the trees were enchanted, since there were no other forests in that part of Kansas, and as much as he liked the idea of having somewhere out of sight when he needed to get Adam back topside he didn’t want to run the risk of the plot being overgrown and difficult to find when the time came. It was easy enough to convince Sam he wanted to keep his brother close, and the alpha wasn’t about to push it. Besides, it wasn’t like anyone was going to stumble across a grave behind the bunker, as well hidden as they were.

Whether he was working on a plan to get his brother back or not, digging out six feet of earth to bury him under was emotionally draining enough that after they had the hole ready, Dean needed to retreat to the shower to wash the dirt off and down half a fifth of whiskey while he stood under the spray. The previous two days had been sufficiently tiring that he’d made it through mostly numb. Even bathing Adam and dressing him in a pair of clean jeans, tee shirt, and college hoodie had left Dean too exhausted to break down. Now that they were so close to Adam actually going into the box and then into the ground, the numbness was giving way and the resurgent pain kept whipping around to pull his legs out from under him when he wasn’t looking.

He resented Jo’s presence, even as he knew she was out in the bunker taking care of his kids in an effort to keep from falling to her knees and weeping at random intervals, so he could take his time getting drunk in the shower and hope she wasn't arguing with his mate. With her there he was forced to concentrate on the practical aspects of dealing with his brother’s dead body, of all the things that came after someone died that a mortician and funeral director took care of for normal people so the grieving family could spend as much time as necessary staring listlessly into space. His overwrought brain kept hammering him with the thought that they should have stayed at Bobby’s, should have stayed somewhere they had more support than just him and Sam ( _and Jo for the time being at least_ ), should have stayed somewhere it was okay that he couldn’t scrub or scald the grief out of his skin. There was a reason people brought food when someone died, because the surviving family members were more likely to be standing in the shower trying to get drunk than throwing together a casserole, and shit, he was going to have to come up with something for three people to eat for dinner, not to mention two growing infants and a big ass dog. He couldn't keep expecting Jo to cook for them as well, and Sam couldn't boil water without burning it. At least that gave him a laugh as he tipped the bottle back and shut off the shower.

It was clear to Sam by the time Dean finally emerged from the shower, tripping over his own pruned feet, that Adam was waiting in the morgue for another day, and really - that was fine. He wasn’t looking forward to shoveling dirt in over the beta’s coffin any more than Dean was, and knew there was no way it would provide any of them the kind of closure a civilian might get after laying a lost loved one to rest. Adam’s death had been too terrible and too preventable in hindsight for him to feel anything other than the utter senselessness of it all. Having his body in the morgue, a reminder of his violent end, twisted the knife a little more every day, and putting Adam in the ground wouldn’t change that. Even with a grave they could sit at and a headstone to talk to it would never erase the visual of the invisible hounds tearing at him. The alpha had gotten into a bottle of bourbon himself as soon as Dean vanished into the bathroom, having tried and failed at not filling the halls of the bunker with the sour smell of guilt since they got home, which plainly wasn’t helping the situation, and decided now that Dean was clean he should probably wash some of the grime off his own skin.

Dean was still working his way through the whiskey when a freshly showered Sam found him in the kitchen, the baby monitor sitting on the counter as he stared at the can of cream of chicken soup in his hand and couldn’t figure out how the fuck someone creamed chicken, or why they decided they should try it in the first place. It was the sort of useless thought pattern that was consuming him these days about something he’d encountered thousands of times but never stopped to consider ( _because really, who cared why they creamed chicken, it was a useful soup for casseroles_ ), when he had much more important things he could ( _and should_ ) be focusing on, if only his brain would comply. He smelled Sam before he heard him, his scent clean and crisp and sad, the sweet aroma of bourbon floating in as his mate padded over to the table.

“Did you ever think about setting a timer to see how long the hot water runs?” the alpha asked, sitting down hard enough on the bench seat to make it thump.

Dean took a swig of his whiskey in the hope the taste might ground him before setting down the can of soup, telling his mate, “It never runs out. I can stay in there for days if I want.”

“You mispronounced ‘hide,’” Sam said, taking a long pull from his own bottle. The Men of Letters had some really good stuff in their liquor cabinet, and Dean was only a little ahead of him at this point. “So I’m guessing based on how much of that you’ve had to drink we’re finishing up the...whole thing tomorrow.” Dean’s eyes came to rest on the neck of the bourbon bottle Sam was absently caressing with his fingers, and the alpha shrugged. “Just a question, not an accusation.”

“Looks like it,” Dean replied finally. Words felt thick and syrupy in his mouth. It was just a little after two o’clock and it would probably be a good thing if Sam took the whiskey away before he got any drunker. Probably. “Why, you in a rush to get Jo out of here?”

“No.” The edge to Sam’s voice said “Maybe” instead, but the alpha barreled on after swallowing another mouthful of alcohol. “I’m glad she’s here to watch the kids. And walk the dog. Gives me a chance to come in here and hit on you.”

“You mispronounced ‘check.’”

That pulled a near smile out of Sam as he ducked his head to stare at the table instead of his mate, who had started to fumble with the various ingredients he’d pulled out of the pantry to try to make something that was edible. The alcohol wasn’t doing Dean any favors, too many emotions - none of them good - hitting him all at once for him to fend off more than one or two, and peripherally he saw Sam grow still as he was inundated with a vague sense of longing the omega wasn’t able to hold back.

“Fair enough,” Sam said quietly, crossing the tiled floor to stand in Dean’s space. A fluttery sensation passed between them, followed by a spike of shame that could have come from either of them or both. He took another drink and leaned against the counter, letting his fingers trace lazy abstractions onto Dean’s arm, the alcohol really starting to hit him and making him feel flushed. “I figured I should check on you with everything. And with the kids asleep and Jo out I thought we could maybe help each other not feel so shitty.”

Dean glanced at his mate, Sam’s heated gaze washing over him and making his head spin. The whiskey was supposed to be making him feel less shitty, but it wasn’t working half as well as Sam standing less than a foot from him. Every brush of Sam’s fingers sent sparks flying south, like the alpha had opened up a direct line of communication between Dean’s arm and his dick. His eyelids fluttered as he teetered unsteadily before catching himself on the counter, and he asked, “Grave digging gets you all hot and bothered, huh?”

“No.” Sam’s hand withdrew as his eyes flickered over to his bottle of bourbon. A corner of the label was peeling away, and it suddenly became the most interesting thing the alpha had ever seen as he picked at it. “I just thought...I’d like to have a few minutes where I feel something besides sad, you know?”

Dean didn’t miss the mixture of hopefulness and hurt shining in his mate’s eyes, and yeah, he understood where Sam was coming from. Despite being well on his way to hammered he remembered the night of Benny’s funeral, how badly he needed to replace the melancholy that was suffocating him with _anything_ else, and how Sam had slowly and sweetly given him something good to focus on for a little while. The same need was currently pouring off of Sam, and it was clear the bourbon wasn’t filling up the hole he felt inside any more than the whiskey was doing the trick for Dean.

“A few minutes?” Dean raised an eyebrow as the alpha tipped forward a little, clearly giving Dean ample opportunity to decline if he wanted to. Part of Dean did want to decline, too much guilt fresh in his mind over what he and Sam had been doing right before Adam died. Another part wanted to lick all the water running in little rivulets from Sam’s hair off of his neck, because he _was_ imbibing a copious amount of alcohol on an empty stomach and he really should hydrate if he wanted to avoid a hangover. “Sells you kind of short, Sammy. Are you sure you want to go with that pick-up line?”

“Well if it’s pick-up lines you’re after...” Sam wound an arm around Dean’s back, running his fingertips lightly over his spine as he leaned in closer, a water droplet dripping down his clavicle to pool in the hollow of his throat, and murmured, “Do you believe in love at first sight, or should I walk by you again?”

Dean’s cheeks pinked with embarrassment at just how well that terrible line worked, his heart stuttering against his ribs as he felt slick starting to leak into his underwear. He was equally desperate to feel something other than pain, and the way Sam longed for his touch was flooding his system, making it difficult to think about anything beyond tasting the bourbon on his mate’s tongue, and Jesus, that lifted such a weight off of him. The idea that he could get his alcohol addled brain to just shut down for a while and let his body run the show was one of the most comforting things that had crossed his mind in the last two weeks. What he wouldn’t give just to avoid _thinking_.

“You don’t need to walk by again,” he said quietly, glad he was too drunk to feel stupid but not drunk enough that it didn’t steal his breath when Sam’s lips met his, the alpha’s fingers delicate on Dean’s jaw as he twisted his hands into the front of Sam’s shirt.

Even on the edge of total inebriation, Sam vividly recalled the last time they’d been together in the kitchen and backed Dean away from the sink towards the table. He didn’t know exactly what his mate would be up for, and however far Dean was willing to go, Sam did _not_ want them getting derailed by the omega having a flashback of Sam menacing him while he did the dishes. Dean didn’t seem to be in danger of succumbing to any unpleasant memories, purring non-stop as Sam’s hands were traveling under his shirt, desperately tracing Dean’s skin like he might have forgotten a few inches of it in the past several days. The omega tipped his head back, giving his mate better access to his throat as Sam sought out places on Dean’s body that he could nip and suck on, could taste to decide how clean he was and if Sam should drag him back into the shower. Between being mostly drunk and in mourning Sam wasn’t sure if either of them could actually get it up, but sweet lord he wanted to try, wanted to concentrate on something other than how awful he felt, especially when Dean whined, “Please,” as his legs hit the table. Sam maneuvered them awkwardly down onto the bench seat, groaning into Dean’s shoulder as he ground against him, causing them both to shudder. Apparently getting it up wasn’t going to be a problem after all.

“God, Dean…” he gasped into his mate’s hair, mouthing along the fine stubble on the omega’s jaw that had grown in after several days of not shaving.

“Please,” Dean repeated, too dizzy to help much as Sam started fumbling drunkenly with both of their jeans and decided that zippers had been invented by a sadist.

Jo had the misfortune of returning then to find them tangled up in each other, trying not to fall off the bench while they tugged frantically at the layers of clothing separating their skin. They weren’t quite as drunk as Laramie, but they were close, and didn’t hear Hannah’s claws clicking in the hallway. Though Jo knew the polite thing to do would be to turn and go back to her room ( _not hers and Adam’s - she’d been adamant about staying somewhere else_ ) when she heard the panting and the moans, her boyfriend had just been ripped apart in Bobby’s backyard before she had a chance to tell him she wanted a real future for the two of them, and that Sam and Dean would be even thinking of fucking in the kitchen had her temper flaring.

“Glad to see you’re both so broken up about Adam,” she snapped, flinging down Hannah’s leash as the dog trotted across the room and “wooWOO”ed at the couple, who were sitting up quickly and trying to hide their erections. “A lot of sensitivity you’re showing to your mate there, Sam.”

“Jo…” Sam started, stumbling a little as he got to his feet to shield Dean from her as his omega got his pants zipped back up.

“Don’t tell me, let me guess,” she hissed. “Alphas have _needs_ , and I wouldn’t understand, right? I get that, believe me, I get that, I’ve seen enough of you come through a bar thinking you own the place because you can pop a knot and it gives you the right to put your hands all over anyone with a nice ass, but Christ. Adam _just died_ and you can barely keep it in your pants for a couple of days before you’re all over Dean!”

“Jo, _stop_ ,” Dean insisted, struggling to his feet and switching places with Sam. He shouldn't be surprised this was all coming out of her barely seventy two hours after getting back to the bunker, knowing how much Adam had done to talk her into hold her tongue when she wanted to take Sam’s head off. “I want this.”

“Sure you do, Dean,” she shot back. “Just like you wanted him to trap you in a bathroom and sprain your wrist. Just like you wanted him to leave to go hunt with your dad right after you almost died having Elliott. Just like you wanted him to leave _again_ when that asshole doctor was abusing you. Just like you wanted him to send Emma away even though you _clearly_ felt like she was yours.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dean growled, and she laughed ruefully as Hannah decided she didn’t like the tones anyone was using and stood between the two to bark at everything and nothing.

“Then why don’t you _tell me_ , Dean?” she shouted, fists clenched at her sides like she might start throwing punches any second now. “I get it! You and Adam have some kind of bro code going when it comes to excusing all of Sam’s inexcusable behavior and protecting him from any consequences, but news flash, _Adam’s dead_!” The way she shrieked the words hit Dean harder than any punch she could have landed, and he felt himself trembling as he fought to suck in air. Her face was red, her eyes were overflowing, and a hard line was set to her mouth; harder than any he’d ever seen on her face, which was saying something considering the number of times he’d seen her and Ellen go at each other when she was a teenager. “Adam’s dead, so whatever he thought he was protecting me from doesn’t matter anymore! It’s not like we all have to try to get along at this point so we can be civil over Thanksgiving dinner! Hell, we never even have to see each other again after he goes in the ground! But holy shit, stop acting like I haven’t seen _what I’ve seen_ and claiming there are reasons behind it if you’re not willing to share what those reasons _are_! Because I’ve given Sam all kinds of rope and he keeps hanging himself with it as far as I can see, and if there’s something I’m missing to this equation, _just stop hiding it from me_ because you’ve been lying about _something_ for _months_!”

“I have demon blood in me,” Sam said bluntly, his hand on the back of Dean’s neck as the room continued to fill with omega distress. Jo swung her attention to him, the look on her face a clear indication of just how drunk - or crazy - she thought he was. “My mom made a deal years before I was born. I’ve had it in me since I was about six months old, but I didn’t find out about it until about a year ago.”

“What?” was all she could say as Hannah rubbed herself against her thigh to encourage the beta to calm down and give her ears a scratch, tail wagging now that the shouting had stopped.

“The demon that was possessing John was the one that made the deal with my mom,” Sam continued, running his free hand over his face as Dean pressed into his side, hoping to soothe them both. “Those times I left Dean was so I could try to track him down, so he wouldn’t be able to influence me anymore.”

“Then why was John after it? He never seemed to be your biggest fan.”

“It killed my mom,” Dean said quietly. “My dad kind of had a thing with Sam’s mom before he met mine, but her father wouldn’t let them mate. So she figured if she couldn’t have him, no one would.”

“You’re fucking with me,” she sneered, arms folded across her chest. “Sam’s mom goes all _Medea_ on your mom and you just think to yourself, ‘Yep, he’s the one’?”

“His mom didn’t exactly do him any favors, Jo.”

“Why wouldn’t you tell me this?” Her eyes were brimming with fresh tears, her face flushed as she glared at both of them. “For _months_ I’ve been trying to figure out why my strong, capable, badass friend Dean would put up with someone who hurt him and left him, like he was some kind of needy little omega stereotype. Did it matter to you that I felt like everyone around me was crazy for acting like Sam wasn’t a danger to you? Like I was the only person who cared whether your mate beat you to death? How could you let me just _move out_ and spend all that time so angry with Adam that I wouldn’t even return his calls? Why would you let me behave like a total, insufferable bitch to him and to you without letting me in on the joke?” The fire in her words was going out, giving way to the water streaming down her cheeks as she stared at Dean like she’d never seen him before, her chin quivering as she fought to keep control of her breathing. “Why would you let me think that...that Adam was putting his loyalty to Sam ahead of me? Ahead of _us_?”

“Because a demon burned down the Roadhouse. And we didn’t want you asking questions if you found out what we were dealing with, running off half cocked to hunt it down.”

“You don’t get to make that decision for me, Dean.”

“Don’t I? You’re one of the only friends I have left, you were already like a kid sister before you and Runt…” The liquor was wearing off quickly, the high of having Sam’s tongue down his throat already long gone, and the thoughts that were rushing in to demand his attention had decided to center entirely around Adam being ripped apart under a moonless sky while Dean couldn’t move fast enough to stop it. He pinched the bridge of his nose, hoping to will the images away with limited success as Hannah decided now would be a good time to paw at his arm for attention. “You’ve been talkin’ about getting into hunting for _years_. But you have no actual training, you weigh a buck fifteen soaking wet, and you’re smart enough that there’s no reason for you to throw your life away like that. You _should_ know better, especially with how many times I dragged myself into your bar all busted up, asking your mom for a patch job, but you’re so goddamned stubborn that you _don’t_.”

He tried to keep his head about him, but he was shaking violently, flushed clear down to his chest, grief crashing over his meticulously assembled internal walls, the breakwaters too small to effectively hold back the flood. Sam had wrapped himself around his mate, trying to fill the room with soothing pheromones to combat the bitter stench of the anger surrounding them, his nose buried in the scent gland behind Dean’s ear as he slowly pet his omega’s hair. Dean faltered for a second as he looked at the young woman a few feet away, who was openly torn between bawling like a toddler and staying mad as a wet hen.

“Jesus,” he finally continued, his anger beginning to subside, no match for the sorrow swelling up in his core. “You ended up in Fort Wayne because you wanted to hunt down the thing that killed Ash and Ellen kept telling you no, and you got sick of hearing it, so you came out to stay with us, and I’m sorry Jo, but my house, my rules. You can call me a sexist or a chauvinist or whatever the hell you want for not cluing you in and having you run off on us. The fact still stands that women can do the job just fine. Amateurs can’t, and you’re about as amateur as it gets. I sure as fuck get to make decisions for you when what you want to do is gonna get you killed. I didn’t even tell…” His breath caught, shuddered, and Sam’s hold tightened in response, little whispers of air ghosting across the skin on Dean’s neck to try to ground him as his eyes swam in pools of saline. “I didn’t even tell Adam everything going on with Sam...until Emma, cuz I wanted...I wanted him to stay out of it, and...look what happened as _soon_ as he knew the truth! He’s dead!” That seemed to get through to her, as the defiance finally melted away and her eyes dropped to the floor, Dean’s voice breaking as he plowed on. “He’s fucking _dead_ because he called a fucking _demon_ up to bargain for my life when he didn’t know what the fuck he was doing, or who the fuck he was dealing with! He’s _dead_ because I didn’t keep him out of this!”

“That’s not true,” Sam murmured, his hold on Dean the only thing keeping the omega up as his knees threatened to give and a wail forced its way out of his chest.

“It is,” Dean sobbed, failing in his struggle to keep himself in one piece and turning to hide his face in Sam’s shoulder as he started to break apart. “You know it is. You know it’s my fault.”

“Dean…”

Sam was holding him so tight he worried he might break a rib, like he could will his mate not to crumble into bits if he were only strong enough, but the baby monitor erupted with the sound of one of the kids crying ( _Elliott, Dean would have bet money on it_ ), followed shortly by the other kid, because their children were attached at the vocal cords. Dean pushed himself away from his alpha, sucking in a huge gulp of air, then muttered, “Fucking Christ,” and wobbled off down the hall, his unsteady movements due only partially to the whiskey. Hannah happily trailed after him, nails clicking and hips swaying as she butted her nose into his palm for reassurance that she was a good girl, occasionally reminding him of her presence with an extra “wuf.” Impossibly, it felt like the awkwardness between Jo and Sam had gotten worse after clearing the air, though it may have been due how hard of a time Jo was having holding back her tears or how it was all Sam could do not to sprint down the hall after his mate. They were both able to relax when Dean’s voice came over the baby monitor, assuring them he’d made it through the bunker, even if he sounded wrecked and couldn’t talk without slurring. Sam’s own legs didn’t feel too steady, and he was fairly certain he couldn’t trust his mouth to form words clearly, and he finally gave Jo a small nod and went to collect the monitor so he could check on his mate. He knew Dean had been in here trying to figure out a meal for the three of them, but they had to have a frozen pizza or something anyone able to read the back of a box could make.

“Killing the demon…” Jo’s voice startled Sam enough that he stopped and turned, the floor tipping under his feet as he fought for his equilibrium. Definitely no more bourbon for the day. “Did it help? With how crazy it was making you?”

Sam felt confident they’d had enough honesty for the day, and he certainly wasn’t going to share anything with her he hadn’t talked to Dean about yet. At least the hostility had gone out of her tone and she seemed to have accepted what the omega said about why they’d kept her in the dark for so long.

“It did,” he told her. “It got really bad with Emma, but it’s done now.”

“What about Elliott? Does he have it too?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so, it doesn’t seem to be something he could inherit from me. It’s kind of my cross to bear.”

“And the demon that burned down the Roadhouse. Do you know who it is?”

Well, maybe she hadn’t accepted what Dean said, though there wasn’t a whole lot Sam could do about that, other than sigh and scrub a hand over his face. He could still hear the omega trying to quiet their son and was flooded with the need to be with them, to close them all up in the den Dean made for them with its pale green comforter and soft throw pillows. It wasn’t that he didn’t care about Jo going off on a suicide mission so much as he was too tipsy and exhausted to care about anything that didn’t involve laying down with Dean for the rest of the day.

“I know you’ll just keep asking,” he said flatly, turning down the monitor to give her his full, if somewhat fuzzy attention. “Her name is Ruby, and you should forget about tracking her down. Forget about tracking _any_ demon down. If you don’t have a really good reason, like being infected with demon blood, it’s not worth it.”

Whether his words sunk in at all he couldn’t tell, since he spent the rest of the day with Dean and the kids in their room. The mood from the kitchen was officially ruined, and anyway, Dean had a chance to think about what they were on their way to doing, and circumstances being what they were decided it was a spectacularly bad idea. They had no idea how long it would take from when they finally mated to when his heat returned. It could be instantaneous, considering Sam had claimed him once it already started, and now was not the time for the omega to be out of his mind in a hormone-driven frenzy with the primary goal of getting himself knocked up again. Sam couldn’t deny he had a point, figuring it wasn’t the most important thing they had to worry about anyway, and Henry would be able to give them a better idea of what to expect when he finally felt up to seeing them. For the time being, they’d make do sitting on the floor against the bed, pressed together shoulder to thigh, while they watched Lizzie work on re-learning how to toddle and Elliott crawled after her, Hannah on Dean’s other side and watching both children with a nervous edge like one or both of them might die if they fell over.

They ventured out eventually when the alcohol started to wear off and the dehydration kicked in to get some water and food, noticing that Jo had made herself scrambled eggs and left the mess for them to clean up. She was allowed a little passive aggression, they supposed. They _had_ lied to her for months, and she and Adam had been on the outs for the last few weeks before he made the deal that resulted in this drawn out funeral procession. If she wanted to leave their kitchen a bit of a disaster, maybe ruin a few pans by overcooking eggs, neither of them would hold it against her. Just because she was a beta and emitted no scent to clue them in on how she was feeling, they knew she was obviously going to be in pain as well. It was easy to forget when they were underwater that Jo was undoubtedly drowning, too, and just because she and Adam hadn’t been mated it wouldn’t hurt her less to lose him. Sam could only hope that she didn’t use Adam’s death as an excuse to go chasing after Ruby for answers. As for Dean, he wanted her to change her mind about not needing to be civil at Thanksgiving dinner. Their inner circle was growing ever smaller, and the farther Jo drifted, the harder it would be to pull her back into their lives once he got his brother out of Hell.


	144. I'm the Daring-est Devil You've Ever Met

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grief makes it hard to think things through.

It rained the next day when they finally managed to put Adam into the ground. Dean tried to stall another day because of the weather, but Sam insisted that they couldn’t keep putting off the inevitable, no matter how much they hated it. Jo was quiet through the whole event, heading out right afterwards for Sioux Falls with a promise to shoot them a text when she got back, though she never did. That was all right, really. They understood that she probably needed space, might never want to talk to them again, and she had every right to feel however she felt given the circumstances. Still, it might have lifted a bit of the gloom that had settled over the bunker to know at least Dean’s friendship with her hadn’t been completely destroyed.

It didn’t help that there had been no further word from Dean’s grandfather, leaving the couple alone and adrift in a building that suddenly felt foreign to both of them. They hadn’t been without Adam’s support since Sam scented Dean in Windom, and while they were adults fully capable of taking care of themselves and their children, they were being forced into a new way of life that neither wanted to accept. It wasn’t as if Adam went off to school and would be coming back over break. He wouldn’t be calling on the phone to check in or see if they wanted to come out to Durham and visit for the weekend. They might have a stable residence, two kids, and a dog, but it didn’t feel like they had a home anymore with such a fundamental piece missing.

Henry didn’t return, and Jo didn’t call, and before Dean knew what happened two weeks had gone by since he buried Adam. While he was aware of how unreasonable it was to expect he’d have found a way to get his brother back in such a short amount of time, he was starting to feel like he was going to lose his mind if he didn't find something helpful soon. He’d been through a dozen books on demons, demon contracts, Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory, front to back, and had at least another dozen set aside waiting for him. While he was fairly certain he could list off every ability the Princes of Hell had and recite the name of every Knight and their immediate lieutenants, not to mention the various levels to Hell between Earth and the Pit ( _turned out Dante was pretty close with his supposition_ ), he’d found jack fucking squat on getting a damned soul out and returning it topside. What he’d managed to find assured him that if he could break Adam out, Hell would have no claim on him, since getting dragged down by the hellhounds fulfilled his end of the deal. That knowledge at least made it clear it was completely possible to get a soul off the rack, but it was all pretty meaningless without any instructions on how to do so. The one thing he had come across of use was a spell to return a soul to its corporeal form, which only required six words of Latin - just about the number Dean was willing to designate enough long term memory to retain. _Anima corpori fuerit corpus totem resurgent_. Six little words and he’d have his brother with him, if he could just find a way to get to him in Hell.

What he really needed was help going through all these books, since he was only able to do any research after Sam went to bed, and Sam wasn’t sleeping well these days. Nightmares were plaguing him, and more often than not he woke up with a bloody nose and tried to get to the bathroom before Dean noticed him, pretending he wasn’t going through aspirin like candy, and Dean didn’t have the balls to press him on it. It had gotten so bad they finally moved the babies into their own room to stop disturbing them every time Sam woke up. Dean knew it meant the demon blood hadn’t really gone away, but Sam wasn’t levitating anything yet, and he didn’t seem to be battling any violent anger or murderous impulses, so Dean was focusing on one problem at a time. Sam was self-aware enough anyway that if he truly started to have problems, the omega could be reasonably sure he’d speak up. That deep down he was terrified the darkness in his mate would rise up again without warning and Sam wouldn’t have a chance to speak up was something he’d ignore for as long as he could.

It was almost impossible to ignore when he was completely emotionally spent and physically exhausted, however. Dean wasn’t just claiming insomnia to get some alone time after dark for his little project. The bunker was far too quiet without Adam and Jo there to provide some adult conversation and give him a break from the kids. Sam was there, of course, but he was just as stifled going from being an active, full-time hunter to a full-time parent of two very busy infants. It hadn’t been so bad before, focusing his efforts on teaching Lizzie how to walk and keeping track of Elliott when he went crawling after her at top speed, considering he’d never really gotten to one hundred percent health. Now that Dean was completely healed all he wanted to do was get out on the road in Baby and find something to kill to take his mind off of how little progress he was making on cracking open the doors to the underworld. The offhanded way Sam talked about them retiring certainly didn’t take into account the nomadic life Dean had lived for the last decade. It was not going to be as easy as just dropping hunting to learn how to garden.

That Henry wasn’t even available for Dean to pick his brain about what he knew of demons and other levels of their reality left him feeling more than a little abandoned, though he would never have admitted it. Sinclair had stopped in a couple of times ( _because he was just that heartless_ ) to see if Sam was interested in resuming their lessons, and each time Dean inquired after his grandfather he got the same response: Henry needed time to himself. That his grandfather had decided to pull a Greta Garbo when he and Dean were currently the only adult Winchesters left to try to undo the mess Adam was in probably shouldn’t have surprised Dean when he’d only really known the guy for a year. It still left a heavy resentment sitting in his stomach, which just seemed to grow with each passing day as he accepted the reality that he was truly in this alone.

Sam was trying to be supportive as the two of them navigated life without Adam, though he was about as effective as a termite-infested beam to a rotting floor. When he wasn’t continuing to fill the bunker with the suffocating smell of guilt he was down in the archives for hours at a time doing who knows what, though he always came back from the depths of the bunker more grounded so Dean wasn’t about to question it. They’d gotten Sinclair to tell them a bit about the claiming elixir, despite the disgust he clearly felt discussing the topic, only to learn that once Dean and Sam had properly mated his heat would hit whenever it otherwise would have without the spell. Since Dean’s heat had just started in the ballroom, Sam knotting him would send him instantly back into it, and neither of them were ready for that. Even worse, Dean’s heat would almost certainly trigger Sam’s overdue rut, and that thought was too terrifying for either man to enjoy the way Sinclair choked on the word “rut.” The timing for either of them becoming slaves to their hormones couldn’t possibly be worse. Besides Dean hovering on the verge of a major depression compete with five o’clock shadow from not having shaved for weeks ( _a true accomplishment for any male omega_ ) and Sam only starting to feel like it was okay that the sun kept rising in the morning, they now had no one closer than Sioux Falls who could watch the kids while they spent at least a week mostly tied together, not to mention the odds that Dean would end up pregnant again. It would be one thing if they got blindsided by Sam or Dean’s biological needs. Choosing to put themselves in a position where Sam would either have to neglect a pair of infants or ask his mate to try to get by with toys until the kids went down for a nap ( _presuming his sex addled brain could even hang onto the knowledge that they had kids_ ) was unthinkable.

Unfortunately, knowing Dean’s scars weren’t an issue anymore and that they couldn’t take full advantage of it ratcheted the sexual tension in the bunker up to a forty-seven. Dean’s wolf-brain - the stupid, primitive thing - understood it had lost a child and when the sense of total loss hadn’t gone away determined the only way to make the feelings of emptiness and desolation stop was to have another child. That the idea of replacing Adam like he was nothing more than a broken coffee mug was ludicrous didn’t matter to Dean’s baser instincts, which were called “baser” for a reason. It was unbearable being anywhere near Sam - whose own wolf was insisting that he give his miserable omega anything he wanted because that might stop the pain they were both feeling - as Dean found it increasingly difficult to concentrate on anything other than straddling Sam’s lap and sinking down onto him. The pheromone trails they were both leaving all over the bunker made everything immeasurably worse. They could still have sex without knotting, and had the few times both of them needed the distraction, but it wasn’t really fulfilling with their hindbrains howling at being separated right when they should be most intimately connected, and that didn’t help either of them work through their grief. Plus, waiting half an hour to forty-five minutes for Sam to finish ejaculating into a towel and his knot to go down before they could really clean up and go to bed wasn’t what either of them considered sexy, and it sure killed the afterglow pretty quickly. It wasn’t long before the omega was having beer with breakfast, and about a week after the burial he all but threatened to pack up the kids and leave if his mate didn’t go back to his studies with Sinclair just so Dean could stop obsessing over still being denied such a necessary aspect of their relationship.

It didn’t take more than a few days of studying with the Grand Master of Spells for Sam to remember why he found the man so irritating. Sinclair had no sense of boundaries and apparently no inherent ability to feel sympathy for anyone, as he was genuinely shocked when Sam was still affected by Adam’s death even after they’d spent a whole day researching demon blood at the young alpha’s request. Either Sinclair was a sociopath or he’d never had anyone in his life that cared about him, or maybe he had a tumor pressing on the center of his brain that allowed him to feel emotion. At least Sam only had to growl once at the man’s surprised huff that he hadn’t up and moved on from losing his best friend before Sinclair decided to let the matter drop. Working together was tense, but necessary, especially now that he knew Azazel’s death hadn’t meant the parasite inside him died, too. He wanted to get down into Sinclair’s zoo to talk to the angel again, suggesting it as a logical next step to learning more about demons and the powers they held over humanity and was a bit surprised when the alpha who was so eager to preen about the beauty of his home and the collection that he kept insisted it wasn’t a good idea; that angels were biased sources of information and whatever Sam was hoping to find was better to seek out through good, old fashioned libraries.

For his part, Sinclair wasn’t thrilled about Sam having returned to his senses, as it made him much more difficult to manipulate. Whatever biological hold Dean had over him had returned in full force and aside from saying he’d spoken with a grief counselor who urged him to accept that Dean needed to grieve in his own way, Sam made it clear he had no intentions of discussing anything having to do with his mate or his children while they were studying. Donna Hanscum remembered talking to Sam from the year before, and under the circumstances was adamant that if having Sam around wasn’t helping Dean, the worst thing he could do at the moment was force his presence on the omega. Sam certainly wasn’t about to share any of Dean’s private feelings or needs with an alpha who set his teeth on edge.

Dean was grateful for the space, not only because it kept him from doing something that quite possibly would delay him getting to Adam for at least nine months, but it allowed him the opportunity to test just how much whiskey he could ingest and still be effective enough not to let his kids die or his dog out of the bunker to vanish into the woods. As it turned out, his tolerance wasn’t as high as he supposed, and it didn’t take long for Sam to call him on it. That led to the worst fight he and Sam had since St. Louis, Sam accusing him of turning into his father, of ignoring their kids, of falling back on all his stupid “lone wolf” bullshit. It resulted in Dean storming out of the bunker and into the woods with Hannah on a leash, staying out well after the sun had gone down and his feet were numb, determined to prove to his mate that he didn’t need alcohol to make it from one minute to the next.

Only he did. He’d been sliding rapidly towards functional alcoholism for years, and Adam’s loss had sped up the decline. He knew he drank too much and too often, and he was going to start missing important things in the haze of all the beer and whiskey he was throwing back these days if he didn’t stop. Lizzie was still unsteady on her feet, but getting steadier every day and before he knew what happened she’d probably be running around the bunker bumping into things and trying to rebreak her leg. Elliott was madly trying to catch up to her, even though he was still small and lagged behind physically. He was a master at crawling and scooching his way across the floor, and was already trying to figure out how to pull himself up using furniture to keep up with his sister. It didn’t do them any good to be cooped up inside all the time with their parents fighting over how often Dean turned to Mommy’s Little Helper to get him through the day. The shame sat heavy in his stomach as he swiped away more fucking tears that decided to spill down his cheeks at the way he was failing _all_ of his children.

“Well, you’re certainly not Electra.”

Dean had his Colt out and aimed at the petite bearded demon leaning casually against a tree behind him as Hannah just about lost her mind, straining against the leash as she snarled and snapped, recognizing what Hell smelled like. The omega knew his gun was useless against Lilith’s left hand man, but still felt like shooting him just on principal. But that might draw attention, and he didn’t want attention drawn to him, so instead he glared with glassy eyes at the figure outlined in the last strains of orange of the dying sunset before him and simply growled, “What?”

“Electra,” Crowley said easily, elaborating only when Dean continued to just stare at him. “Because mourning becomes her?...And it doesn’t you? Eugene O’Neill?” When Dean still just stared, the demon blinked in astonishment. “My, my. Little brother’s untimely demise really does have you off your game, doesn’t it squirrel?” Dean was on him in seconds, the useless gun pressed up against Crowley’s chest as he pulled the trigger. The demon winced, looked down at the hole in his finally tailored clothing and the flesh beneath, before saying, “Ow. I’ll have you know, this suit is Italian.”

“Did you do it?” the omega demanded, venom dripping from his voice.

“Do what?” Crowley arched an eyebrow at the golden eyes and descended canines inches from his face. “Buy the baby’s soul? What _do_ you think of me, Dean?”

“That you’re a fucking demon who’s strong enough to bring me back and trick my brother into trading himself for only seven fucking days!” Dean roared, finding himself flying into a tree with a simple push against his chest from the crossroads demon.

Hannah was even more riled, making herself a wall between the demon and Dean until Crowley ordered, “Sit,” and she dropped down on her butt as quickly as she could. Dean was busy rubbing his back and trying to determine if he’d broken a rib as he looked up at the Brit, who explained with a shrug, “What can I say? Dogs love me.”

“Answer the fucking question.”

“While it may be true that I possess the power it took to snatch you from the jaws of death,” Crowley allowed, “as I’ve told you, I’m attuned to your more intense emotions, and I have to say - these last few weeks haven’t been the best of my afterlife. All the heroin and whores up and down the West Coast couldn’t fill up that hole I’ve been feeling thanks to you. Do you really think I’d willingly subject myself to that?”

“You _are_ a demon,” Dean growled, unable to decide whether it hurt more to inhale or exhale. “I doubt you’re too torn up about needing to indulge a couple of vices.”

“Touché,” Crowley said with a grin. “Tell me though, why put yourself through all this unnecessary angst? I’m aware it’s sort of your... _thing_ , but if getting your brother back is at the top of your to-do list, you’ve got a funny way of showing it. What happened, did you lose my number?”

“Why would I call you?”

“Because you’ve been spinning your wheels on how to get into Hell when you could have just asked an expert.”

Crowley was staring at him matter-of-factly as Hannah paced restlessly between the two of them, dropping back down to sit when the demon cast a pointed look in her direction. Dean wanted to shoot him again for using some kind of Jedi mind trick on his dog, but didn’t figure that would get him anywhere. Besides, he had absolutely no leads on how to get his brother back, and he was just this side of desperate enough not to turn and walk away from someone who had, to date, never lied to him; no matter how shady Crowley was.

“You’re saying you know how to get into Hell?” Dean demanded after processing for a minute, his brain still a little foggy from getting thrown into a tree on top of the alcohol he and Sam had been arguing about, though the cold was definitely sobering him up.

“I _do_ reside there,” Crowley replied. “Much to my chagrin.”

“You know what the fuck I mean,” the omega snapped, Hannah trotting over to drop down at his feet. “You know how to get _me_ into Hell.”

“Well, not me, personally, but I know who can. Or rather, _what_ can.”

“Which means?”

“Rogue reapers. They can get you in for a price. On the down low, as the kids say these days.”

Dean figured the demon was bullshitting him now, never having heard of such a thing. In all the reaper lore he’d read - and he’d read a lot back at school - there had been no mention of anything like that, but Crowley looked dead serious.

“Rogue reapers?” Even the name sounded stupid to the omega, like a tongue twister instead of an actual thing. “So, what, they smuggle people into Hell like coyotes?”

“People, souls - they know where all the back doors are to every plane of existence. Why anyone would _want_ to go to Hell I’ve never quite understood, considering that Hell is...well, _Hell_ , but apparently it’s quite the lucrative business. And if one of them gets you in the back door, I can get you out the front.”

“Is that right?”

“Scouts’ honor. It won’t be that difficult. Contrary to popular belief, Hell doesn’t like live bodies. It will try to spit you out as soon as it senses you’re there, which will make it all kinds of fun and exciting trying to get to little Adam way down in the Pit. Once you’ve gotten in to grab your brother, getting out will be easy as pie.”

“Something tells me _nothing_ about Hell is going to be easy as pie.”

“I admit it will be a tad more challenging since Adam traded away the Colt and the knife of the Kurds along with his soul.”

Dean was on him again, landing a punch and then jamming the barrel of his gun up under the demon’s chin. Hannah broke into confused whines and “wuf”s, but Crowley merely looked bored.

“So you did take him,” Dean growled, his eyes burning gold again in the dying twilight. “You’re the black-eyed bitch who got his claws into my brother.”

“Crossroads demons have red eyes.” As if to prove his point, Crowley’s eyes flicked over with the red shimmer of his station, more like cat’s eye marbles than actual irises, and completely different from the color of an alpha’s. “But in this case, it’s a white eyed bitch you’re looking for.”

“Lilith,” Dean snarled, and Crowley nodded as the omega released him.

“She’s always been a shrewd businesswoman. She saw an opportunity and she jumped on it. Can’t begrudge her for that.” Dean stepped back from him, pacing slightly as he took in this new information while the demon watched him carefully to gauge how much of what he was saying truly sank in. “She even had the forethought to bargain for the weapons you could use to hunt her down once you found out who stole your brother from you. Which means you’re going to need a whole new weapon to make it through the levels of Hell without that pretty throat of yours finding itself slit.”

“You can’t just get the Colt or the knife back?”

“Afraid not. She keeps them under her mattress, right next to her KY.”

“I don’t suppose you have something else in mind?”

“I do. Something that can kill any demon unfortunate enough to cross your path. It’s called the First Blade. Perhaps you’ve heard of it?” The omega shook his head, jaw clenched but attention firmly held as Crowley slid his hands into the pockets of his topcoat. “I’ve been chasing it for decades. One of my droogs - Smitty - caught wind of it very recently. He was something of a protégé of mine, but a few weeks back he was nabbed by a hunter you might know. Went by John Winchester.” He appreciated the way Dean flinched at the mention of his father’s name, especially when John had left behind some serious debts Crowley intended the omega to pay. That revelation could wait until later, though. In his current mental state, Dean would only be up for one entanglement at a time. “Seems dear old Dad decided to pull out Smitty’s entrails to get information on Azazel and got Smitty talking instead. Poor Smitty. I thought there might be something in the John Winchester memorial library that could lead us to the Blade before I introduce you to a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy who can get you into Hell. I’d have told you sooner, but I’ve been feeling a bit like a Lionel Fusco ever since your father’s inevitable demise. You don’t write, you don’t call, you live in a heavily warded bunker surrounded by heavily warded woods. I’ve been waiting for you to wander far enough out of your little fortress for us to be able to have a proper conversation. Luckily for you the wardings aren’t that strong this far out.”

“Any good reason that should I believe you?” Dean snapped. “Isn’t Lilith your boss?”

“She is,” Crowley said plainly.

“Then what’s got you playing Benedict Arnold?”

“Prevailing against old Yellow Eyes has turned her into a bit of a zealot, which frankly I should have seen coming. It seems she wanted to keep Azazel from becoming Lucifer two-point-oh because she’d rather re-release the original version for mass consumption. Getting your baby boy down into the Pit is apparently the first step. It’s in everyone’s best interest if he doesn’t stay down there any longer than necessary.”

“You mean to tell me she wants Lucifer up and walking around topside?”

Crowley smirked, tapping Dean’s forehead as he said, “Those neurons in there are still firing after all the Wild Turkey you’ve consumed. I’m impressed.”

“What does Adam have to do with raising the devil?”

“Afraid that’s above my pay grade. What I _can_ tell you is that if Lucifer gets out it isn’t going to be good for anyone. It’s not like he’ll settle into a quiet life as a nightclub owner in Los Angeles, solving homicides in his spare time. He’s spent millions of years locked away by God after He decided the biggest of the baddest was wreaking too much havoc on humanity. He’ll want to stretch his wings and raise a little Hell after that.”

“That doesn’t tell me why you don’t want Lucifer getting out. He created you. If he’s running around, don’t the good times start rolling for you again?”

“You shouldn’t have skipped out on Sunday school. Lucifer isn’t a demon, remember? He’s an angel. An archangel, in fact. One that hates humanity and would be more than happy to see it wiped from existence. And yes, he may have created the first demons, but if you think that means he likes the rest of us, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I can sell you for a song. Most of us were human at one point or another. Just because we’re demons now doesn’t stop him from seeing us as tainted.”

“So...what? You’re offering to help me get into Hell and stop Satan from roaming around out of the goodness of your little black heart?” Dean sneered, earning a huff from the demon that got Hannah’s ears to perk up.

“Actually, it’s more like self-preservation,” Crowley replied. “After all, once he gets rid of humanity, what use does he have for us? No one looking for fame and fortune in exchange for their soul, no one to torture for all eternity, no one to possess and kill a couple of convents full of nuns - what does that leave us to do? Fold his laundry? Rub his feet? The pure demons will survive, but the rest of us? Canon fodder. Though he might spare your puppy - might enjoy turning Sam himself.”

“Sam’s clean,” Dean snapped, the words filling his mouth with a foul taste like rotten fruit as Crowley smiled at him. “Azazel’s dead, the demon blood’s out of him.”

“You can lie to yourself, Dean, but not to me,” the demon husked. “Your mate is corrupted, through and through. That deep, dark beast flowing through his veins will always fight for dominance with his inner golden retriever. He’ll battle it until the bitter end, but the bitter end will come eventually. You’d be well advised to take what I’m offering you and get your brother out before Lilith starts the apocalypse and speeds the whole thing along.”

“And why should I trust you?”

“Good God, don’t! Never trust anyone.”

“I find it harder and harder to believe you’re Hell’s top salesman when you keep saying shit like that.”

“I’m the best because I’m honest, Dean.” His eyes flashed the cat’s eye red again, and it took everything Dean had to suppress a shiver. “My clients sense that I’m a demon of my word. It builds consumer confidence.” When the omega’s cell phone rang he nearly jumped out of his skin, Hannah trying to figure out what she should bark at, as the demon’s eyebrows elevated to the middle of his forehead. “Bets on how worried your puppy is about his missing bitch?”

“You’re a bitch,” Dean muttered lamely as his cell phone screen was indeed lit up with the name **Sam**. After a moment’s hesitation he clicked the volume to silent and stuffed it back in his pocket before turning to the demon.

“Hiding me from your mate again?” Crowley crooned. “Makes me feel like your mistress.”

Dean rolled his eyes as his phone started ringing again and the resulting smirk on the demon’s face. He knew he should answer it, that he’d been gone a while and Sam was probably worried he’d taken off somewhere to blow his brains out, but if even half of what Crowley just told him was true he _really_ couldn’t have Sam anywhere near this.

“Getting me into Hell,” he said. “How long is it gonna take? Presuming that this First Blade you’re talking about is even real and we can find it?”

“Are you considering running away with me, Dean?” Crowley asked, entirely too amused by the deep, angry flush the question brought to the omega’s cheeks.

“If I’m gonna be gone a week or something ridiculous like that I’m obviously going to have to distract Sam and find someone to watch the kids.”

“Such a responsible mother. Of course, I suppose it is one of your babies we’re trying to save.”

Dean whipped out the phone when it rang yet again to shoot Sam a text - _I’m fine, just taking a walk_ . _Be back soon_. Silencing it a third time would be a spectacularly bad idea. If Sam was calling him that meant Sam was outside the bunker, and if he was outside the bunker he might try to follow Dean’s scent, and that would be all kinds of inconvenient when he might actually be getting somewhere in his quest to free Adam from Hell. Not that he changed his mind about trusting Crowley, or how much he wanted to rip his throat out when he kept casually talking about his brother’s current situation and still had a shit eating grin plastered to his face.

“So how long?” he demanded.

“Hard to say, really,” the demon replied with a shrug. “Up here? A few days, I would expect. Certainly no longer than a week, unless you get sidetracked. But time works differently down below. It will probably feel like months.”

“Months?”

“Didn’t they teach you in that fancy school? A month in Hell is closer to a decade for its guests.”

Dean wasn’t sure how he managed not to be sick all over the forest floor, but somehow he pushed down the bile that rose in the back of his throat at this revelation, though he did have to back up against a tree to keep his knees from buckling. A month was closer to a decade? And it was nearly three weeks since Adam died. He’d been down there _years_ while Dean was sitting on his ass reading through dusty old books instead of doing something fucking useful, like calling Crowley, which - yeah, now that he thought about it, really should have been the first goddamned thing that he did. Set up a devil’s trap, summon the bastard, and compel him to tell the truth about who traded for his brother’s soul. He’d come across more than one truth spell in those books. Christ, they didn’t come much stupider or more useless than Dean Winchester.

“I see that changes things a bit,” Crowley mused as Dean tried to swim back to the surface of the guilt that had just crashed over him, pushing him down and down into its depths until he couldn’t breathe.

“A _bit_?” Dean barked. “We’ve been talking for fifteen goddamned minutes and you didn’t think you might want to lead with, ‘By the way squirrel, your brother’s been tortured for close to ten years according to my watch’?!”

Crowley nearly complimented the omega on his British accent, pleased as he was that Dean was now firmly set on his hook. He felt a twinge of something that seemed reminiscent of guilt at the way he was using Adam’s predicament to reel the human in, but it was obvious Dean was consumed with the fact that his brother was currently burning in Hell. Crowley wasn’t lying, there was simply no point in bringing up John being on the rack as well for his unfinished deals with a crossroads demon - not yet. He was quite certain Dean held no love for Cuthbert Sinclair, however he and his children did live in the man’s bunker and would undoubtedly recognize that playing Mata Hari under the Man of Letters’ roof had the potential to get them all killed. He’d need something very persuasive to convince Dean to pick up where his father left off in order to get John out of Hell, and seeing with his own eyes what John was subjected to on Alistair’s rack, with the master torturer’s limitless toolkit, would prove very persuasive.

“Why don’t we leave it at this,” he finally said. “You see whether Daddy dearest wrote down anything helpful about the Blade and give me a call if you find something. Then we can take a little road trip to track it down.”

“You want to go on a hunt with me?”

The demon shrugged again at Dean’s incredulous expression.

“You seem to have a hard time letting go of the life. Perhaps there’s something to it. I’m sure you’ll think of a way to get out from under Sam’s nose when the time comes.”

The phone rang again, as if Sam knew they were discussing him, and Dean asked, “We about done here?”

“The ball’s in your court,” Crowley told him, and was gone with a snap of his fingers.


	145. Imagine the Surprise on Your Face

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Despite what Dean might claim, everybody's not fine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have officially exceeded the limits of another Google doc.
> 
> This is getting embarrassing.

In the time he’d spent getting to know his grandsons, Henry had clearly forgotten the most important thing he knew about Sinclair. He remembered their souls were bound, that the power imbalance went one way; that if Sinclair died, Henry would die, but the reverse wasn’t true. He remembered Sinclair could cause him intense physical pain with a few mumbled words if he lingered too long with his family or said too much. He remembered Sinclair installed failsafes throughout the bunker to destroy it if anyone outside the organization ever tried to steal its contents, and knew now it had been a mistake to lure Sam and his young family there. Though in his defense, he couldn’t have imagined his mentor would threaten to trigger his hidden spells with infants in the building if Henry didn’t stick to the script. What he forgot was that Cuthbert Sinclair believed himself to be a god, and a vengeful one at that.

He could hardly be blamed for his current predicament, trapped in the empty Alpha vampire cell across from the angel in Sinclair’s zoo, emotionally compromised as he was. His son had been killed avenging his mate’s death, and though he and John had been estranged, it was difficult for Henry to accept they would now never have a chance to reconcile. To have lost his grandson, who despite being a beta had shown the devotion of an alpha to his brother, niece, and nephew, was more than he could bear. Adam was far too young to be dragged into the Pit by the same hellhounds Cuthbert had evaded for decades. Henry should have told Bobby and Sam to bring him back to the bunker immediately. He may not have known his grandson for very long or very well, but he knew more than enough to want to know Adam better; to want to build a relationship with him, to want to have both of his grandchildren in his life for a long, long time. Were he not reeling from the double losses he might have thought better than to plainly tell Sinclair he would no longer aid him in tricking Sam into opening the Werther box; that he had one grandson left, and he would not deprive Dean of his mate and be responsible for his death as well. He might have remembered the empty cell down in the zoo and been prepared to find himself there after his tirade against the man who had effectively held him prisoner for over forty years. It was of no consequence for Sinclair to puff a yellow substance at Henry, muttering, “Abi, ab oculis meis,” to send the Winchester patriarch down into the waiting cell in the basement. In fact, Cuthbert had sounded rather bored at the time, and only slightly irritated on his subsequent visits.

“You realize no matter how long you keep me down here, I will never agree to help you with Sam again,” Henry snarled the first time Sinclair showed up to ask how he was enjoying the accommodations.  

“Hmm. Well, I'm not asking you for your cooperation Henry,” the other alpha said mildly as he approached the glass. “I'm just taking it.” A puff of something white drifted in through the vents of Henry’s cell, and as he began to cough Sinclair chanted, “Mentem tuam ac voluntatem adsumo.” Henry found his limbs sagging, the impulse towards continued defiance melting away like sugar in a summer rain. His mentor’s face lit up with a genuine smile as he watched Henry’s angry expression fall away into nothingness and he slumped down on the built in bench at the back of the cell. “Interesting effect, isn’t it Henry? I’ve been saving that one just in case you decided to grow a conscience and back out on me. All thought, all will just...drained out of you. I do this enough and you'll do whatever I tell you to without all the backtalk. See you tomorrow.”

That first time Henry was enchanted for several hours before coming back around to his senses, finding he hadn’t moved a muscle from where he’d collapsed. The angel was standing at the edge of the circle of holy fire, blue eyes fixed on the alpha while it waited for Henry to regain himself. He wondered if they’d be able to speak to each other, supposing they would but not really having any idea what they would talk about under the circumstances. Henry knew quite well exactly how escape-proof the entire zoo was, and having to rely solely on spoken magic would greatly hamper any efforts he made to get out. Even a few basic spell ingredients would mean the difference between breaking some of the warding and not, and Henry highly doubted his mentor would be slipping any sage or wormwood into his meals. Frankly it was possible he wouldn’t be allowed to eat at all until Sinclair had fully broken his will, just to ensure Henry didn’t try to get creative with his food.

“It is my understanding that the custom among humans regarding the death of a loved one is to offer condolences,” Castiel said flatly, pulling Henry out of his musings about exactly what Sinclair had planned for him and confirming they would be able to talk through the charmed glass. “Therefore, you have my condolences.”

“Thank you,” Henry murmured, his voice surprisingly scratchy considering he’d only been silent for a few hours. “I don’t suppose you could arrange a rescue for him?”

“My mission does not involve liberating Adam from Hell,” Castiel replied.

“Your mission?” Henry echoed, watching as the angel moved back to the center of the fire and sat in contemplation.

“I am a soldier, Henry. My superiors have given me a specific purpose here. Saving Adam is not part of the plan.”

“And I suppose getting me out of here is likewise not part of the plan?”

“Sadly, no. My orders are very clear. They do not involve saving anyone with the surname Winchester. I am sorry.”

“If you’re not inclined to save any of my family members, why bother to strike up any kind of rapport with me at all? What exactly are you doing here?”

“I’ve chosen to speak with you because I find your company soothing. As for what I’m doing here, I’m not at liberty to say beyond being unable to raise Adam from perdition.”

“Never bet the farm on an angel’s help,” advised a voice in one of the other cells. It was impossible for Henry to tell who it was from his vantage point, but whomever it was sounded smug. “Everyone thinks they’re guardians. Fluffy wings, halos - you know, Michael Landon, delicate waves in their hair, love for humanity in their hearts. Truth is, they’re dicks.”

As if to prove the voice’s point, the angel stood, extending its wings within the flaming circle, and replied coldly, “His grandson made a demon deal, one that has the potential of far reaching, apocalyptic consequences for all of humanity. Souls that have damned themselves so thoroughly are typically of little concern to my kind.”

“See what I mean?” asked the voice. “Dicks with wings.”

“Your opinion is of no consequence, filthy offspring of Echidna,” the angel snarled in response.

“My grandson did the only thing he felt he could, given the circumstances,” Henry snapped, bringing the angel’s gaze back to him from where it was glaring down the line of cells towards the voice. He’d completely misjudged Castiel if that was the way the angel truly felt about Adam selling his soul to save his brother. “I’d expect some kind of help from above on Dean’s behalf would have kept Adam from…” Saying the words made it real - the horrible death Adam would have suffered beneath the claws and teeth of hellhounds - and Henry had been purposely not speaking of it since Ellen called to tell him what happened. He wasn’t about to change course now. Instead, he said, “The drastic measures Adam took could have been avoided with a little divine intervention. Then there wouldn’t be these apocalyptic consequences you seem so concerned about. Surely a servant of Heaven such as yourself could have saved Dean so Adam wouldn’t have needed to.”

“A servant of Heaven could indeed,” Castiel agreed. “But as you may have noticed, I am otherwise engaged at the present.”

“Are you the only angel in all of creation capable of healing Dean?” Henry demanded, scoffing at Castiel’s apparent abdication of any responsibility in the matter even as he was laying blame for something catastrophic at Adam’s feet.

“I am not,” the angel told him, turning its face to the ceiling as if seeking guidance. “But we are forbidden from interfering in the affairs of humankind except under very specific circumstances.”

“Averting the kind of disaster you’ve been hinting at doesn’t fall under your specific circumstances?”

“Unfortunately, no. None of my brethren are allowed to visit this plane of existence. It would make life too easy for humans if we were constantly stepping in on their behalf.”

“Who is asking you to constantly step in?” Henry roared. “We aren’t talking about flitting down to change a flat tire!”

“I am sorry, Henry,” Castiel said, seeming sincere in neither expression nor tone. “My purpose is clear, and it does not involve saving Adam’s soul. Or yours.”

The pronouncement was spoken as if Henry could possibly forget that in tying himself to Sinclair it meant his soul was bound for at least an uncomfortable circle in Hell, if not the rack itself. At the moment he couldn’t possibly have cared less where he was going to end up or whether the angel actually cared. He was far too preoccupied with how he could escape from his cage before his mentor was able to turn him into some kind of mindless puppet.

As it turned out, he couldn’t. Sinclair hadn’t been named “Master of Spells” by the Men of Letters ( _before they realized what he was_ ) for nothing. There was no way out of the cell, and each day Cuthbert wore away a little more at his mind with the same puff of white powder and five words of Latin. Castiel attempted occasionally to strike up conversation with him, but after their first discussion Henry wasn’t very interested in anything the angel had to say. The sense of calm he used to feel being in the presence of the celestial being had been utterly destroyed by the realization that angels apparently didn't give a damn what happened to humans, and since Castiel made it clear it didn’t intend to lift a finger to help Henry out of his current situation there really was no reason for him to pay the angel any more attention than he gave the Alpha skinwalker or werewolf. Besides, it took everything he had to try to hang onto who he was as his mind and ability to make his own decisions was slowly eroded by Cuthbert’s magic.

He’d completely lost all sense of time when he was released from his cell nearly three full weeks later, going to sleep on the hard metal bench and waking up in his own bed in Sinclair’s mansion. He felt a pressing need to see how Dean and his great grandchildren were faring in the wake of Adam’s death, though it ran secondary to his desire to make sure Sam was still working on becoming a true Man of Letters and hadn’t let his studies slide for too long. While he understood Adam and Sam had been close, and Henry himself was still in mourning, it wouldn’t help anyone to act as if the world had stopped spinning for any length of time. Keeping a routine as close to normal as possible would help them all heal and move on quickly.

Cuthbert was reading his favorite copy of _Time_ magazine from 1958 - the one that had his interview after being inducted as a Grand Master of Spells - as he sat at the long cherry table in the dining room eating his eggs and toast and sipping his coffee when Henry made his way downstairs, halfway through tying a perfect Windsor knot. He reveled in the slightly dazed look in the eldest Winchester’s eyes and dipped his face back below the top of the magazine to hide his smirk as the younger alpha dropped down opposite him and stared at the table in confusion. Henry opened his mouth to say something, lost his train of thought, then tried twice more before managing, “I was thinking of having breakfast with Dean and Sam.”

“Oh?” Sinclair asked casually, a single eyebrow raised as he glanced the length of the table at his compatriot. “Had enough time to yourself to recover from losing your son and grandson?”

“Yes,” Henry replied slowly, his brow furrowed as he tried to dig through his foggy brain for some kind of emotional reaction to the question and came up empty. “Yes, I think I should get back to living. Don’t you?”

“It has been a while,” Sinclair agreed, nodding. “Again, I am sorry about what happened to them. Truly.”

“Thank you, Magnus,” Henry murmured as he stood and wandered towards the parlor.

Sinclair didn’t like how dazed he looked as he passed, calling out, “Henry?”

When Henry turned, his mentor was ready with a handful of powder from a pouch in his pocket, which he blew into the alpha’s face before muttering his enchantment again. The Winchester patriarch flinched before growing completely still, staring past the wall into nothingness. Cuthbert regarded him for some time, then turned back to calmly finish his eggs and dab at the corners of his mouth with a napkin. After a few moments he pushed his chair back and circled his prey with an assessing eye, before coming to a stop in front of Henry and staring at his expressionless face for a long time.

“Perhaps show a bit more sorrow at John and Adam’s deaths,” he said at last, his tone bordering on cheerful as he straightened Henry’s tie ever so slightly. “Nothing too extreme, no reason to fall down weeping, but the boys aren’t taking the death very well so…be a little less _me_ in how you bring it up and a little more _you_. And remember, I don’t have any nefarious plans in my work with Sam. I’m just interested in growing the chapter with a bright new pupil.”

Had Henry been able to nod he would have. Instead, he stood like a statue, staring straight ahead as Sinclair smiled, took his magazine, and left the room. It was over an hour later that he finally broke out of his trance, smoothing the front of his shirt and heading for the bunker to see how his grandson and Sam were dealing with life absent of Adam. For some reason he felt very strongly that the two weren’t doing very well, though he had no idea why he felt that way. He supposed it must be grandfatherly intuition, since he hadn’t spoken to them in weeks, and hoped things wouldn’t be too awkward when he dropped by.

Awkward would have been an upgrade from the suffocating tension he felt as soon as he entered the bunker and called out, “Hello?” The scent from several days’ worth of angry bickering clung to the air and the furniture in the war room, and the first response he received wasn’t from either his grandson or his grandson’s mate, but the dog. Hannah came tearing into the war room, “wuf”ing and “WOO”ing, and after several very long minutes Dean followed, a kid in each arm, looking tired, disheveled, and about two point five seconds from falling to pieces.

“Henry,” he said, openly torn between shock and anger at his grandfather’s sudden appearance. After a few stunned seconds he opted for anger, plopping the kids down in the very large play pen that now took up most of the space between the second map table and the hallway to the bedrooms so they could toddle and crawl to their heart’s content. “I expected Sinclair, wanting a fucking glass of buttermilk. You’re about the last person I thought I’d see here.”

“Yes, I…” Henry was very confused as he struggled to find the right emotion to convey, never mind the right words to convey it. “I’m sorry, Dean. I’ve had a tough time of it these last few weeks.”

“Can’t relate,” Dean snapped. “It’s been a cakewalk over here. What do you want?”

“I wanted to see how you’re doing,” Henry said quietly, watching as a bitter smile curled Dean’s mouth.

“Oh, I’m peachy. Anything else, or did you just want to stop in to say ‘hi’ before you go run off to have your precious alone time?”

“I thought…” Why had he come here again? There had been a reason. “I thought you might like a break from the children. I realize I’ve been absent when you undoubtedly needed support, but the loss of your father and your brother was…a lot to absorb.”

“Really? Cuz I have no idea how that might feel.”

The wave of fury that rolled off of Dean had Henry rethinking his visit for just a second before he remembered that his own mate would often mask her sadness with anger, and if anyone had a reason to be sad these days it was definitely Dean. Sam was nowhere to be found from what he could see, and he supposed the alpha was already off at his studies with Sinclair, who was long gone from their home by the time Henry headed over. He regarded his grandson fondly for a moment, which seemed to disarm the omega, whose anger faltered and allowed a whiff of despair to swirl into the room. Dean’s cheeks pinked at having momentarily dropped his stony façade, though he quickly reined everything in before he truly lost control of himself.

“I’m very sorry to have left you and Sam alone in your grief,” Henry finally said softly. “I still sometimes forget how to be a family man. But I’m here now, so why don’t you take a few hours to yourself? I’ll find you if something happens with the children.”

The idea of having time alone when it was still daylight outside was everything Dean had been hoping for since his encounter with Crowley two days ago, as Sam had done nothing but hover since he returned from his walk with the dog, fingers half frozen and lips blue. He’d cut back on the drinking just to spare himself the fights with Sam and to try to get his alpha to give him some space but it hadn’t done any good. He desperately needed to figure out which duffel had his father’s journal in it, having avoided unpacking things from that night up in Medicine Bow, and he strongly considered asking Henry if he’d ever heard of the First Blade. He hadn’t thought of an adequate cover story for the inquiry though, and instead gave a shrug that he hoped came across as halfhearted.

“If it’s not a problem for you,” Dean said quietly, tamping down the need to race away from the war room to start in earnest on the search for Crowley’s fabled weapon.

“Not at all,” Henry assured him. “Truly, Dean. I can't apologize enough that I wasn’t here for you sooner.”

“Okay then,” the omega agreed, giving Hannah’s neck a good scratch where she’d pressed herself up against his leg. “I’ll just be puttering around if the kids need something.”

“I’m a few weeks out of practice, but I’m a quick study,” Henry said with a smile as he scooped Lizzie up from where she’d successfully stumbled to the edge of the playpen.

Dean gave him a short nod before heading back down the hallway with Hannah at his heels. The duffels were still in the Impala, which gave him the perfect cover if Sam came to find him. The garage was Dean’s domain, and while Sam could appreciate the fine lines of the vintage cars housed there, he had no acumen for what it took to keep them running. All Dean had to do was pop the hood on the Stakebed, toss some tools around, and if Sam came looking he wouldn’t look too close. He considered grabbing a couple of beers, feeling fidgety and wanting to take the edge off, but that would be a sure fire way to keep his mate in the room if Sam did show up, not to mention earning him a lecture about problem drinking.

It didn’t take long once he’d worked himself up to reading through John’s journal to find the reference to his father’s encounter with Smitty. It was one of the last entries, dated only a few months ago, with coordinates to one of his father’s storage lockers and the letter “T.” It wasn’t the main thrust of the case; most of the accompanying notes referenced his hunt for Azazel and something about Sam’s blackened soul, though it was difficult to read. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out John had likely been plastered when writing down the end result of his encounter with Crowley’s protege. John seemed to consider the First Blade pretty inconsequential, though he had written down to “Ask T about F.B. later.” Clearly their first step in locating the weapon was to check John’s storage locker and figure out who and where “T” was.

It was blind luck that the storage locker was in Nebraska, though it was outside of Lincoln and that was still a nearly three hour drive. He had no idea how he’d get Sam off his back for six hours to drive to Nebraska and back. Shit, he had no idea how he’d get Sam off his back for ten minutes so he could go outside and call Crowley, the irony that he _was_ acting like the demon was his mistress not lost on him for a second. He hadn’t found anything in the archives yet on the First Blade to know better what he was dealing with, but with every day that passed his brother came closer to enduring a decade of torture in the Pit, and they still had to find the thing and meet up with a reaper willing to sneak Dean down to Hell. He would have preferred to be more cautious and do more research before barreling ahead with whatever Crowley had planned. He just didn’t have the luxury of time to be sensible about working with a demon with Sam hovering around, all protective alpha instincts and concern.

Though maybe he didn’t have to be the one doing research, Dean realized as he started to pick up his tools. Sam might be onto something with all his nagging about the omega drinking too much, since he was sober now and realized he’d completely overlooked the perfect person to ask for help with this. He’d never called Garth to tell him what happened to Adam, consumed as he was with the need to keep his plans hidden from his mate and anyone else who already knew his brother was gone. He knew Sam hadn’t called him either, and doubted that Bobby would have thought to let Garth know. It churned Dean’s stomach to realize he’d forgotten about the beta up in Wisconsin, particularly with how helpful Garth had been to date with the whole Azazel mess, but keeping Garth out of the loop just might turn out to be his saving grace.

“Taking Hannah for a walk,” he told his grandfather as he passed through the war room where Henry was reading while both kids napped in the playpen, sprawled out on a mattress they kept in the corner of it, Elliott on his tummy and Lizzie on her back. Hannah did a very happy dance at the work “walk,” turning in circles and wagging her tail as the omega grabbed her leash from where it hung near the door at the top of the stairs. “They been good for you?”

“They’ve been perfect,” Henry replied with a smile. “Enjoy your walk. I’ll tell Sam where you are if you’re not back yet by the time he’s done with Magnus.”

Dean stopped at the sound of his grandfather using the ridiculous title Sinclair tried to insist they call him, as it had always been his distinct impression Henry found the name equally as stupid as he and Sam did. He considered asking if the alpha was feeling all right, but Henry had already turned back to his book, his expression calm and open in the warm glow of the table lamp beside him, glancing over at the children every now and then with a small smile on his face. He’d seemed fine when he arrive earlier and there was nothing unusual about his scent, so Dean decided to let the matter drop for the time being. He really did need to call Garth and see if he could find out anything about the First Blade quickly, and if there _was_ something going on with Henry - well, Dean was still ignoring Sam’s obvious nightmares, headaches, and nosebleeds, and if there was anything else he was willing to put on his plate at this point ( _which he wasn’t_ ) it would be Sam’s issues long before he wasted time trying to figure out what was up with his grandfather.

The sun was bright enough outside to momentarily blind him as he headed across the drive with Hannah tugging against the Halti harness, eager to be out in the crisp autumn air that couldn’t quite yet be called chilly. It was perfect weather for her, and after spending so much time outside at Bobby’s the bunker must have left her feeling oppressed, despite the massive square footage it covered and how she had the run of the place. The way she pranced and wufed low in her throat, trying to convince her owner to walk more quickly towards the woods, brought a smirk to Dean’s face; a little one, but a smirk to be sure. He had to wonder if he was starting to get soft, spending so much time in a climate controlled building, as a breeze swirled the orange and red leaves littered across the driveway into little cyclones, sending a shiver through him as he followed his dog towards the tree line. Halloween was just a few days away, the air this time of year always feeling thinner, more fragile to him, and he almost wasn’t ashamed at having to zip up his coat as he headed with the Pyr into the shade of the forest and felt the temperature drop a few degrees with the loss of the sun.

He considered letting her off leash to run around while he called Garth, but he’d tried that once and she’d been gone for hours. It was stupid when he knew they’d ended up with her because she’d wandered miles from her owners’ house ( _and thank god she had, or the vamps wouldn’t have hesitated to tear her throat out_ ), she’d just seemed so happy when Dean started taking her outside again when he got really comfortable leaving the bunker for walks. No matter how dopey the grin was on her face when she finally trotted back home a little before sunset, the hours spent frantically calling her and praying she’d make it home without ending up hit by a car somewhere they’d never find her put “giving Hannah a chance to run” firmly in the “no” category of dog ownership, so he could only hope they didn’t run across any woodland creatures while he was on the phone.

“ _Dean_!” Garth exclaimed after the second ring, his smile clear in his voice. “ _How the hell are you, man_? _How are things with Sam_?” There was a brief pause, and before Dean could answer the beta continued, his voice pitched low. “ _I noticed the demon activity dropped off a couple of weeks ago. I’m guessin’ he’s all good now_?”

“Yeah,” Dean assured him as Hannah spotted something rustling under the golden blanket of leaves carpeting the forest floor. When she was brought up short in her pursuit of it by the leash she erupted into a flurry of barking, and that would certainly make the rest of this conversation interesting. “Yeah, he’s okay now.”

“ _Good. I was really worried for a while there, man. What about Adam_?” Dean’s stomach dropped in tandem with Garth’s volume, and he was glad they were only talking on the phone. “ _I heard through the grapevine about your dad. Not the specifics, just that he...well._ _I’ve called Adam a couple of times but he hasn’t gotten back to me_.”

“He’s…”

Dean really hoped it wasn’t obvious, the way his heart caught in his throat, but Garth was jumping into the silence before he could say anything else, murmuring, “ _Sorry, Dean. I didn’t mean to bring stuff up…_ ”

“No, it’s fine,” Dean said quickly. “Dad helped us get Azazel, and things got kinda...anyway Adam’s not...here...right now but he's fine. Well, he _will_ be fine. He’ll be fine. It’s…you know. He’ll be fine.”

“ _I’m sure he will be_ ,” Garth replied while Dean beat back the awful thing swelling up in the pit of his stomach to make his limbs tremble as he clung to the cell phone. “ _So what can I do for you_?”

“I…uh…had a question about a case,” the omega finally managed.

“ _I thought you and Sam were retiring_.”

“Yeah, no, we are, it’s not…my case, it’s just something I came across in my dad’s journal and I wondered if you’d heard of it. Since he’s…you know, not here to ask. It’s a weapon, supposed to be able to kill demons but I haven’t been able to find anything in the library here, and if it’s something dangerous I want to track it down, get it into our armory. You know more about demons right off the top of your head than just about anyone we know so I figured you might have heard of it.”

“ _Maybe_. _What’s it called_?”

“The First Blade.” There was a long pause, long enough that Dean thought he might have lost the call and checked to make sure he still had a signal, asking after several minutes, “Garth?”

“ _You have a lead on the First Blade_?” the beta asked, sounding awed.

“Uh…” He knew Garth had a tendency to get enthusiastic when it came to demons and lore, but he wasn’t really sure what to make of his reaction so far. “I might. My dad left something in a storage unit in Nebraska…”

Garth drew in a shuddering breath and sounded like he might be on the verge of fainting before he demanded, “ _He didn’t leave the First Blade_ **_in a storage unit_** _, did he_?”

“I…I don’t know. I haven’t had a chance to check it out. Why, what is it?”

“ _The First Blade_?” Garth exclaimed. “ _You didn’t learn about the First Blade at Actaeon_? _No, Jesus, you probably didn’t, they just started teaching it my freshman year_.”

“So do you know what it is,” Dean said, hoping to get him back on track.

“ _Do I know what it is_? _Hell yes I know what it is_! _Everyone thinks it’s probably a myth, or if not a myth, lost for all time, like the Holy Grail or Excalibur. Of course, you dad managed to find the Colt, so maybe...Jesus_!”

“What is it exactly?”

“ _It’s a weapon used by the Knights of Hell. It can even kill one, though it’ll work on things a whole lot more powerful than that. The Princes, Lucifer’s Bitch_ …”

“It’ll kill Lilith?”  

“ _It’ll kill_ **_any_ ** _demon, Dean, all the way up the food chain, except for the big guy himself. Cuz obviously he’s an archangel, not a demon, so there’s that_. _If your dad had a lead on the Blade you need to follow it. Something like that - you need to make sure it stays topside, especially if..._ ”

Again, Garth paused for a long time, which was okay since Hannah was in the process of trying to tree a squirrel, though it was still more than a little disconcerting. Dean gave him plenty of time to continue on his own before finally saying, “If what?”

“ _Sam’s demon blood_.” Garth sounded hesitant even when he did finally start talking again, and the omega felt cold for reasons beyond the autumn weather. “ _You’re sure he’s doing okay and he has it under control_?”

“I told you he’s fine,” Dean growled, though there was more fear behind it than anger. “Everybody’s fine! Why?”

“ _I did some researching and…it’s probably nothing, it’s just…according to all the lore, it’s not gonna go away just because Azazel is dead. I mean, he’ll have a lot more control over it, it’s just…it’s always going to be there. If he had been older when he was infected it wouldn’t be the same, but since he was a baby it’s kind of…fused to his red blood cells. Demons are always going to come after the two of you, and it may only be a matter of time before…_ ”

Christ, Dean wanted Garth to stop putting these pregnant pauses into the conversation that left his mind flying off to worst-case scenarios, especially when he was confirming things Crowley told him that Dean was well on his way to convincing himself had been wildly exaggerated.

“Before what, Garth?”

“ _Before he ends up giving in_.” Well. It didn’t get much more worst case scenario than that. At the sound of the omega sucking in a breath, Garth plowed on with, “ _I’m sure he’s going to be all right, he’s got a lot to fight for with you and the kids_ …”

“Yeah, he…he’s got us,” Dean said quietly, jumping as he heard his mate calling for him and giving a tug on Hannah’s leash to get her attention off the tree with the squirrel. “We’ll be all right. Thanks for your help, Garth.”

“ _Sure thing. And hey, tell Adam to give me a call, okay_?”

“I will as soon as I see him.”

He clicked the “end” button as Sam called his name again, giving a reluctant Hannah a good, solid pull to get them moving towards the bunker as he fought off the rush of tears making his eyes burn. He was so sick of crying, especially now that he had the beginnings of a plan and a lead on a weapon that could help him get his brother back. He needed to come up with a way to get to Nebraska, not break down like a simpering little omega who couldn’t keep his emotions on an even keel without a big, strong alpha to help him, even if he instantly felt better when he spotted the big, strong alpha waiting for him by the bunker door.

“You didn’t try to walk to Oklahoma this time,” Sam observed, the omega focusing on their dog as his mate tried to make light of his anxiety from just a couple of days ago when Dean sent two separate phone calls to voicemail.

“It’s getting too cold for anyone to walk anywhere,” Dean told him, stopping at the plume of distress that burst off of the alpha. He nearly took a step back at the pungent smell. Distress was typically the omega’s default setting these days. It was weird to smell it on Sam. “Are you all right Sammy?”

“Gwen called,” Sam replied, his jaw working furiously. “Wanted to know if I’ve been keeping up with the FDH jobs board at all.”

“That’s a strange question when she knows we’re out of the game,” Dean said, and his mate chuckled, even as his distress mounted.

“There’s a case in Milan, Ohio. A woman who overdosed on sleeping pills. She’d been complaining about weird electrical problems in her house.”

“Well, that’s sad, but I don’t see why the Department would be interested.”

“There have been some other deaths in the town - suicides, all people who had plenty of things to live for, all people who had electrical problems. This woman lost her mate a year ago and has a fourteen year old daughter to take care of with no other close family. And she wasn’t the type by all accounts to get depressed or orphan her kid.”

“I’m still not following you, Sam,” Dean said, watching as the alpha shoved his hands into his pants pockets while bright red splotches sprung high up on his cheeks.

“They were going by Chambers but their last name is Wandell,” Sam stated flatly, biting the name off with a bitterness that matched his scent. “And the mother left a note that if her death was in any way suspicious, the daughter was supposed to find her brother, Sam Campbell, because he’d know what to do.”

Well. Shit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everyone who went, "That doesn't sound like Henry...Cuthbert must have done something to him" wins a prize! :)


	146. I Swore I Was Done Hunting for Good

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hunting just doesn't want to let Sam or Dean go.

Dean had honestly forgotten Sam had a kid sister floating around in the wind somewhere, though he couldn’t decide if he felt worse about forgetting about her or instantly deciding that there was no way he was heading to Ohio with the alpha to meet her when it would give him the perfect opportunity to make his way up to Lincoln. Probably the latter if he had to think about it, which he didn’t really have time for when he was trying to figure out the proper response to the situation. “Great, you should go get her now” seemed wildly inappropriate given the circumstances, whether those were the words that sprung to the tip of his tongue or not, and he was left trying to read Sam’s emotions and expression for which way to go with this information.

At the moment the only thing he could feel or scent from his mate was the continued distress, and frankly he hadn’t a clue what the source of distress was. Was he upset that his sister’s mother had been killed? Worried about leaving Dean when Dean was obviously still not okay with Adam’s death? Uncertain about bringing a complete stranger into their lives, regardless of her relation to them? For a man who typically wore his emotions on his sleeve, Sam had done a damned fine job of locking them down.

“So…obviously you need to check the FDH feed,” he said carefully, and Sam nodded, nostrils flaring and jaw still furiously working, clenching and unclenching hard enough to put his dentist’s children through college with all the repair work he was going to need. He didn’t respond, though, just continued nodding, until finally Dean asked, “Sam?”

“She probably doesn’t know anything about me, right?” Sam shot back, his cheeks growing even more red and the flush beginning to spread to the rest of his face. “I didn’t know anything about her, so she probably doesn’t know anything about me.”

“That’s probably a safe bet.” Sam had gone from grinding his teeth to chewing the inside of his mouth and Dean was pretty sure if he didn’t reel him in his mate was going to end up with a hole in his cheek. “Sammy?”

“What do I say if she wants to know _why_ she doesn’t know anything about me?” Sam demanded, dragging his hands out of his pockets to ball into fists at his sides.

He’d been holding it together pretty well, he thought, since getting off the phone with Gwen. It hadn’t bothered him when his sire was killed, not after he’d met the guy and learned what an asshole he was, plus he'd never had a father anyway so losing one who didn’t want him really made no effective difference in his life. He’d given up on the idea of his sister pretty quickly and easily under the circumstances and with all the other crap he had on his plate at the time. He didn’t need the added complication of a family that wasn’t his and a father that walked away with a suitcase full of cash, nor did he want some random person trying to crack her way into their already badly damaged little pack - not then, and absolutely not now. He certainly wasn’t excited about the possibility of being flat-out rejected by some random little girl who might take after her - _their_ \- father and decide her long-lost big brother wasn’t worth getting to know. They hadn’t even started healing from Adam yet, and Henry had just returned to give them some sense of normalcy, not to mention his continued problems with the demon blood. The idea of being responsible for a strange kid, whether it was for a few days until they found someone else to take her in or for forever, was a lot to absorb.

“My vote would be for the truth,” Dean told him plainly. “Your dad was a dick who saw you as a big fat dollar sign and not as a person.”

“Because that’s going to go over _really_ well when she’s probably still mourning him,” Sam scoffed. “Giving her a reason to hate me right off the bat isn’t exactly my goal here.”

“Sam, she’s a teenage girl,” Dean said, pressing a hand to the alpha’s chest to feel how wildly his heart was racing. “She’s going to hate you no matter what. Or at least think you’re a moron and a pain in the ass until she figures out you’re basically a teenage girl, too.”

“This isn’t funny.”

“It’s kinda funny.”

“It’s really not, Dean.”

“You’re overthinking this.” Dean hadn’t meant to sound so snippy, but getting stuck inside his own worries and insecurities was what _he_ did. _Sam_ was supposed to be the one that kept a level head about him. He was hardwired for level headedness, and Dean didn’t know how to gently coax him back from the brink of spiraling like a good omega would in this situation. “She’s part of a case. Work the case and worry about the rest after. I guarantee if something did kill her mom and you figure out what it was and gank it, she won’t hate you.”

“I don’t even know why I care,” Sam admitted, his eyes wet.

Dean shrugged, drawing his hand back to run it lazily along Hannah’s head from snout to neck, saying quietly, “Cuz you don’t want to be alone. It sucks being alone.”

Sam moved forward to nudge his nose along Dean’s temple and down his jaw, stopping finally to inhale deeply behind his ear. It felt like they’d drifted so far apart since Sinclair told them mating would jump start a full-out hormonal hell for both of them, and Sam was pretty sure that hadn’t been on purpose but wished he knew for sure. It had been a solid week since they’d done anything other than roll over and go to sleep at the end of the day, _when_ Dean bothered to come to bed or stay there once he had. Sam hadn’t wanted to push it, the pain of loss still so fresh for both of them, and anyway, not being able to knot his omega left a void inside him that was far different from when they’d had to get by with hand jobs and oral, so having Dean in his space was almost as bad as having him off roaming the halls of the bunker. The unfulfilled promise of their coupling was like having an excellent meal where the portion size was too small to be truly filling. It was delicious, to be sure, but he was still hungry afterwards. Dean undoubtedly felt the same, the feeling of emptiness and a need to be tied to another person part of an omega’s biology to begin with, and it was only after they’d wrecked each other and the sheets a couple of times just to have Sam pull out at the last minute that Dean had started heavily drinking. Though Sam thought he knew how hard Adam’s death was for Dean and suspected not being able to finish mating was making it harder for the omega to keep his emotions in check, he just wanted Dean to talk to him about it before they couldn’t find their way back to each other.

“We’re not alone,” he murmured, his breath catching when Dean slid in against him to scent Sam in return. Maybe once he figured out whatever was going on with this kid and what to do with her the two of them could book a hotel somewhere, provided Henry stuck around and agreed to watch Elliott and Lizzie, and pay someone to bring them food and wash the sheets for a week or two. The timing would still suck, but completing their bond felt like something that had gone from a want to a need. “We should get packed so we can head out first thing in the morning. Ohio’s a haul.”

“I’m not going with you, Sam,” Dean blurted out incredulously before he could convince his stupid inner omega that honesty was not the best policy. At the open look of hurt on Sam’s face, he hastened to add, “I’m not...I don’t like the idea of leaving the kids alone with Henry when he hasn’t been really reliable lately. And we’re not bringing them with us on a case. Not on purpose, not when we _accidentally_ brought them on a case and Lizzie ended up with a broken leg.”

“Dean…” Sam was clearly still hurt, though less so, since everything Dean said was perfectly logical and hard to refute. That only meant he had to go for his mate’s emotions if he wanted to convince him to come to Ohio. “I have no idea how long I’m going to be gone. I’m looking at two days worth of driving one way if I go by myself…”

“I didn’t say go by yourself, Sammy,” Dean cut in, pressing close to the younger man’s chest and tipping his face into Sam’s neck to nuzzle him as the fetid smell of distress was finally starting to ebb. He felt like a total ass at seizing this opportunity to get Sam away from him, but now that he had it he was going to cling to it with both hands until he’d convinced his alpha to leave him behind. “Call Gwen back. See if she’ll go with you. You two are still active hunters in the database anyway, getting me involved is just going to complicate things. Where’d she call you from?”

“Kansas City,” Sam said with a pout as he continued to find Dean’s rationale pretty flawless. “Took her a while to recover from that stab wound and her parents insisted she stay with them until she was back to her old self.”

“She’s been a kid this whole time?” Dean demanded, wide-eyed, and Sam nodded.

“They did some research into aging spells and decided it wasn’t worth the risk of permanently injuring her back and shoulder to age her up before she’d healed.”

Dean whistled through his teeth at the idea that poor Gwen had been stuck as a teenager for months, though he supposed it was probably easier since she had her parents around to help. That was a rabbit hole he wasn’t interested in falling down though, and instead insisted, “Then she’s probably dying to get out in the field and see some action.”

“Probably,” Sam allowed as Dean forced back the guilt he felt as he watched his mate mull over how much sense he was making without the benefit of knowing the omega’s ulterior motives. “Are you going to be okay by yourself, though?”

“If you’re asking whether I’m going to fall back into a bottle of Jack, I’m not. I promise.” He lifted up on is toes to catch the alpha’s lower lip between his own when Sam still seemed unsure. “Now can we go inside please? It’s too fuckin’ cold out here without gloves.”

Sam laughed outright at that, saying, “Yes, princess.”

“ _You’re_ a princess,” Dean shot back as Sam dutifully opened the door for him and the dog. “And I wouldn’t be having this problem if you hadn’t stolen my boy gene to begin with.”  

His yelp echoed through the entryway of the bunker as Sam swatted him on the ass with a smirk, and he was quick to point out that spanking was not one of his kinks, especially not when Sam’s hands were the size of baseball mitts. He wasn’t expecting that to get him crowded up against the wall while Hannah jogged off with a “wuf” towards the balcony in the war room, Sam’s baseball mitts digging into Dean’s hip bones proprietorially, mouth slanting over his with the clear goal of leaving Dean breathless as their children’s babbles and squeals wafted up through the inner door. Sam’s hands were sliding up Dean’s sides to finally cradle his face as the omega bit back an indecent moan, his alpha murmuring, “I miss you,” against the corner of his lips before the kisses trailed over Dean’s face and jaw, then down his throat until Sam’s teeth closed gently over their bond. It made Dean’s knees buckle, the omega clutching at Sam’s shirt and whining as the scent of being wanted just about knocked him over. It was more than just being desired, though of course there was that, too - floating around the edges of the heady aroma like an aura. Dean was used to being desired by just about everyone whenever he walked into a room, but that wasn’t the same as being wanted. Sam wanted his obsessive need for throw pillows and the way he got cranky when dishes weren’t washed thoroughly; his love of all things automotive that the alpha clearly didn’t understand and never would; his encyclopedic knowledge of every spaghetti western ever made; and all his internal messiness, his emotions that he insisted on locking away from Sam for reasons even Dean couldn’t really understand, not to mention all the crap that went on in his head. One of the huge hands skimmed up under his jacket and all three shirts he was wearing, teasing along the base of his spine as Sam’s lips wandered back up to behind Dean’s ear.

“I miss you,” Sam breathed again, followed by, “Come with me on the case.”

“I don’t…” Dammit, Sam was being completely unfair about this, catching him off guard when he thought they’d just settled the matter, and now Dean was going to have to walk past his grandfather with a boner. “I don’t want to bring the kids.”

“So leave them here with Henry.”

“I don’t want to leave them, either.”

“Dean…”

“I’m not really ready to face the world yet, Sam.”

That got the alpha to finally stop and take in his mate, who looked like sin on legs with wide, dark pupils and a pretty pink flush high on his cheeks. That the flush was only half due to wanting very desperately to strip Sam’s clothes off right there in the entry hallway and half a result of how much he hated planning to go behind Sam’s back wasn’t something Dean felt the need to share with the class. This was especially true when he was currently on the receiving end of Sam’s softest, sweetest look - the one that made him understand why Crowley called him a puppy.

Although, his declaration wasn’t really a lie; not when he still felt raw whenever he got caught in his head for too long, like someone had taken steel wool to his insides, concentrating on his chest. Whoever came up with the term “heartbroken” sure picked the perfect words for what he’d been going through this last month. Dean wanted to pretend that feeling was going away, that he was slowly starting to move through the stages of grief, but the reality was he was firmly stuck in the bargaining stage, and it kept throwing him back into denial and anger the longer he spun his wheels. He just wasn’t in any shape to deal with people, and wouldn’t be until Adam was back.

“I’m not going to stop asking,” Sam said quietly, carding fingers through Dean’s hair until the omega couldn’t suppress a purr.

“Gees, Sammy,” Dean rasped. He couldn’t help himself. He needed to run his face all along Sam’s jaw to mark him up but good. “What was your lesson on today? The practical uses of sex pollen?”

“I don’t think it’s helping us,” Sam replied, mirroring Dean’s movements to get his scent all over the omega’s face and neck. “Not being fully mated. I think it’s making all of this worse.”

“What’s ‘all of this?’”

“You know.” Despite how soft Sam’s voice was or how tenderly he was sweeping his hands up and down Dean’s arms, the omega’s purr died instantly at his mate’s serious expression. “How badly you’ve been sleeping. The drinking. The fact that you haven’t even started dealing with Adam’s death.”

“Wow.” Dean twisted his arms stubbornly until Sam didn’t have a choice but to let him go, pushing the alpha back to give himself more than an inch of space. “That’s…that’s a real interesting strategy you’ve settled on for getting me to go with you to Ohio.”

“Dean…” Sam attempted before his mate spat, “I’m dealing with Adam’s death just fine, Sam,” and stalked off towards the inner door.

Why Dean thought Sam would let the matter drop was a bit of a mystery, even to the omega, when he knew damn well he’d mated someone whose stubborn streak exceeded even his own - which was saying something. Sure, Sam waited until after Henry left for the evening once he’d been assured Sinclair and Sam were done for the day, but his pursuit of Dean the remainder of the night was relentless. He gave Dean some time to fume and snarl before starting his assault on the omega’s resolve, and thereafter was infuriatingly gentle about the whole thing. He stole Elliott away after he’d clearly had a poop-splosion while Dean was headed towards the kids’ room for the changing table, pressing the whisper of a kiss to the smaller man’s cheekbone and murmuring, “Come with me.” When Lizzie face-planted in the hallway chasing after Hannah and gave herself a goose egg right on the forehead, Sam was there as soon as Dean had her up to rub her back, swooping her right out of his arms and heading away to distract her from how upset Dean was, his mouth grazing Dean’s jaw as he husked, “Come with me.” There was the real danger of the steaks ending up overcooked when Sam hiked him up on the kitchen island while he was trying to make dinner, palming Dean through his jeans as the alpha growled against his throat, “Come with me.” The double entendre wasn’t lost on Dean later when Sam pulled out instead of tying them together to spill into the towel underneath them while Dean shot thick, white ropes between their stomachs, his alpha kissing across his chest from one nipple to the other and rasping, “Come with me.”

And okay. Dean could accept that Sam’s point about not being able to finish mating and how it was negatively impacting them was valid. Even now as he struggled to catch his breath, his hands digging into Sam’s hips, a sheen of sweat covering them both, he still felt hollow somehow. The sex was great of course, had made his eyes roll back in his head and his toes curl, reminding him of why it had been one of his favorite things, especially after Sam had basically spent the entire evening seducing him. It just wasn’t _quite_ enough. However intimate they’d just been, his body and his brain knew there was another level they were supposed to have, one that was being denied to them both, and it left him with a vague feeling of emptiness, the kind of thing Lisa used to tell him about on the very rare occasions he considered the damage the suppressants might be doing to him and maybe he should go off of them and asked about heats. She always told him she knew when one was coming ( _though it had taken her a couple of cycles to figure it out_ ) because while she wouldn’t feel feverish or needy, she had a distinct sense that there was something physically missing from her - a hole that had to be filled. Then she’d tell him not to crack any jokes and to get his mind out of the gutter, and now he thought he understood what she was describing, and Christ, he missed her, being able to ask her about these things. There was a little bit extra he wanted from Sam and he couldn’t have it, and it was driving him mad. She’d have understood, might even have been able to talk him through it. They couldn’t even cuddle properly afterwards, which he’d never say out loud that he loved, but it was almost his favorite part of the whole thing. All of the skin on skin contact, the sense of being encased in Sam’s much larger body, the scenting and the constant, gently roving touches, plus the lazy kisses - it all grounded him and made him feel secure, like he was coming home. It soothed his hindbrain in ways the ( _awesome, amazing, mind-blowing_ ) sex alone simply didn't. They got some of that this way, though it was definitely not the same when he had to keep getting up every few minutes to get Sam a clean towel, and after the alpha had finally stopped soaking through the terry cloths he was too sensitive until his knot went down to properly snuggle his omega, who was finding it harder after each encounter not to just be straight-up needy. It truly would be better if he went to Ohio with Sam, figured out something to do with Sam’s sister, and convinced the alpha to buy out the floor of a hotel for a week so he wouldn’t have to worry about the other guests hearing them.

“Come with me,” Sam repeated, his teeth dragging across Dean’s shoulders as he pressed his chest to the omega’s back, keeping his groin a respectable distance from Dean’s ass to avoid accidentally brushing against him, and oh how it pained Dean to shake his head “no.” This was the perfect opportunity to get to his dad’s storage unit. He couldn’t wait a week or more to start hunting down the First Blade.

“Soon,” he said, instead of “okay,” drawing Sam’s hand to his mouth to press a kiss to the meat of his palm. “Soon, I promise.”

“I’m going to hold you to that,” Sam said drowsily, dragging the sheet and comforter up over them and hissing when they scraped across his still very hard dick.

“You okay?” Dean asked, shifting his hips a little farther forward to give Sam some extra space, wincing in sympathy as he did so.

“I’ll live.” He breathed against the back of Dean’s neck for a few minutes, soft, quiet puffs of warm air that were doing an excellent job of lulling the omega to sleep before Lizzie started crying on the baby monitor. Dean groaned, already irritated by the smile Sam pressed into his skin. “Not it.”

“What are you, twelve?”

“Thirteen, actually.”

“I went last time.”

“I’ve got _at least_ twenty more minutes before I can put on pants.”

“You’re a real pain in my ass, you know that?”

“Best compliment you can give an alpha.”

Sam laughed as a flurry of throw pillows came hurtling at his face, barely biting back the urge to accuse Dean of wanting to have a pillow fight at their sleepover. It was the first time he’d really laughed about anything in weeks, and it felt good, even if his mate’s eyes cast a warning in his direction as if Dean knew exactly what he wanted to say. It was also the first time he could recall recently where Dean’s scent didn’t have an underlying current of quiet desperation to it, and as the omega grumbled something about overinflated alpha egos, Sam resolved to continue prodding Dean to accompany him to Ohio right up until he left. He could tell he was close to winning this particular fight, and he didn’t win fights with Dean very often.

Sadly for him, he wasn’t destined to win this either, despite his best efforts to cajole Dean into going along as the omega was getting the kids up, making breakfast, checking the truck to ensure Sam had all the weapons he might need. He was close, though, and might have managed it had Henry not shown up while the two were necking in the war room, Lizzie tearing around in a walker while Hannah oversaw Elliott crawling around his playpen. Dean blushed a deep crimson, which seemed quaint to his grandfather, who couldn’t help chuckling at the typical omega behavior before puzzling at where that thought came from. It was disquieting, to have thought of his grandson as a typical omega when he knew Dean was anything but. He didn’t have time to mull it over, Dean shifting gears immediately into getting Sam on the road to pick up Gwen, and he’d completely forgotten what was worrying him long before Sam actually headed out.

Henry didn’t even blink when Dean announced, about an hour after his mate drove off, that he had to make a quick trip up to Lincoln to one of John’s storage units, and could Great-Grandpa Henry please watch the kids and the dog? He felt like he probably should be concerned about the request, but the alpha’s brain buzzed and hummed a little and that was all it took for him to readily agree. Similarly, Dean felt like he should be concerned about Henry’s _lack_ of concern, only the omega didn’t have the luxury of pressing the issue further when he needed to get on the road to Nebraska. He had a roughly three hour drive ahead of him, and he still need to get Crowley on the phone to give him an update on the blade.

Dean was barely past the forest line, Baby’s heater just starting to warm up, when he made a move to adjust the rearview mirror from Sam driving the Impala home and caught sight of the demon in the passenger seat. He nearly ran the car off the road, a half-scream escaping him that he swallowed as quickly as he could, glaring as Crowley dug into the glove compartment and pulled out his box of cassette tapes.

“I’m impressed at how quickly you were able to get Prince Charming out of your hair, Rapunzel,” Crowley said, flashing him a grin before turning back to the tapes.

“Dammit Crowley!” Dean snapped as Crowley’s mouth curled into a sneer at the contents of the box. “I called so you could meet me there, not tag along.”

“But how ever am I going to get the full Dean Winchester experience if I don’t ride shotgun?” the demon asked innocently. “Though I’m definitely beginning to regret my decision. You really must update your cassette tape collection.”

“Why?” Dean growled, the threat implicit in his tone.

“Well, for one thing, they're cassette tapes,” Crowley replied flatly. “But more importantly, Def Leppard? Rush? Metallica?” Dean snatched the Def Leppard cassette out of his hands, his cheeks turning a lovely shade of rose, and popped _Pyromania_ into the tape deck. _Foolin’_ immediately blared through the speakers as Crowley rolled his eyes, continuing to look through the box. “It’s the greatest hits of mullet rock. Hang on…what’s this?” His eyes looked like they might pop out of his head as he plucked out _Making Love...The Greatest Hits of Air Supply_ and looked at Dean like he’d never seen him before. “You can’t be serious.”

“You wanna walk to Nebraska, be my guest,” Dean snapped. “Otherwise shut your cakehole. My car, my music.”

“I could respect that if _anything_ in this box qualified as music,” Crowley grumbled, and was gone from the passenger seat with a snap of his fingers.

Dean switched to the Air Supply tape as soon as he was alone, just because he could, and enjoyed the drive to Nebraska under bright blue skies. It took a while to get past the idea that he was going to get run off the road any minute, but the traffic was light and after fifty miles or so he’d been able to relax and trust himself to avoid any idiots who might be out. He hadn’t realized how much he genuinely missed being on the road in his car on the way to a case ( _of sorts_ ), all alone with no one to answer to. Being so dependent on other people for his safety in the last year had been a blessing and a curse, since it soothed his instinctive need to run with a pack while at the same time making him feel like he couldn’t go ten feet without someone to protect him from the terrible, typically legal things society wanted to do to him. The year he’d hunted away from John may have be torturous and gone against every fiber of his being, but he sure as hell felt capable and like he could tackle anything without backup. He needed to have that feeling back, especially now when he was planning to literally walk into Hell alone to get Adam out.

Only he wasn’t walking into Hell alone. Crowley was going to get him in and out, and Dean didn't know how to feel about that. Conflicted, to be sure. Conflicted was right at the top of his list, considering Crowley was a demon and inherently untrustworthy. On the other hand, he was helping Dean locate a weapon that according to Garth could kill nearly any demon, including Crowley himself. Crowley was almost certainly working some kind of angle, but Dean knew he could trust Garth, and Garth had been pretty clear Dean needed to get that blade. At any rate, they were headed to one of John’s storage units, and if Dean knew anything about his dad, it was that the elder Winchester would have taken precautions to keep things like a crossroads demon out. He wasn’t up Shit Creek without a paddle just yet.

The storage unit didn’t disappoint with its wardings, the demon looking irritated as he stood outside the door to unit 51 as Dean pulled up and threw the car into park. The day had somehow managed to get brighter and colder in equal measure, and it felt distinctly like it might snow, despite how far they were from winter’s official start. Dean grabbed his father’s journal and a pair of thin gloves, ignoring the little voice whining that Sam could be keeping him nice and warm this very minute, and climbed out of the car.

“You know, I’ve never been to Nebraska,” Crowley groused as the omega approached. “And that was a conscious decision.”

“I thought crossroads demons go wherever the business is,” Dean said, a bit smug at how genuinely put out Crowley seemed to be.

“When you’re the top salesman in Hell you can send underlings to deal with the salt of the earth,” Crowley told him as Dean checked the journal for the combination and cast a glare over his shoulder at his companion, who was trying to peek at the code.

Once the door was open Dean reached inside, finding a light switch pretty easily, then moved into the rows of shelves filled with weapons and boxes, dust particles catching the light and giving the room the appearance of being filled with smoke. Crowley made to follow and was stopped as the omega ducked under a tripwire, noting with a scowl the devil’s trap painted on the floor in front of him. He sighed wearily while Dean was stepping over two consecutive tripwires between him and a file cabinet in the far corner.

“I thought you wanted to hunt,” the omega called back to him, not even trying to hide the smile in his voice.

“Changed my mind. I’ll just wait here,” Crowley growled, watching Dean cross referencing between the journal and the files. “Interesting decorative style. What’s this called in your inner hunter circles? Rustic obsessive? Paranoid expressionism?”

“Here it is,” Dean said after flipping him off, sliding the file cabinet closed and looking through a manila folder with a write-up in John’s handwriting. “Seems Dad got the tip on Smitty from another hunter. The ‘T’ in his notes stands for Tara.”

“Interesting,” Crowley mused as Dean looked at the picture of a blonde woman old enough to be his mother. She was attractive, but no doubt a hunter as there was nothing soft in her expression or eyes. “I’d have bet money on ‘T’ being shorthand for terrible father.”

“Shut up,” Dean mumbled, too engrossed in the case file to care what Crowley was saying. Based on the notes, both John and Tara had been in the room when Smitty started blabbing about the First Blade, but that’s all it said. It did, however, give a location for her. “Okay, I don’t know who this Tara is, but she’s in Des Moines. Not a big town in the FDH world so she must be freelance. It’s a three hour drive. We should get moving.”

“Lovely,” Crowley grumbled. “Another couple hundred miles of corn fields. I’ll meet you there.”

“Fine by me,” Dean replied, putting his father’s files back in order and shoving back the pain of emptiness he felt at John’s loss. Someday he’d get around to properly dealing with his father’s death, but that sure as hell wasn’t today. “I need to call Henry anyway, let him know I’ll be gone longer than planned.”

“And of course make sure he’ll run interference with lover boy.”

“Fuck you, Crowley.”

“I do so enjoy our boudoir banter, Dean. Don’t keep me waiting in Des Moines.”

The longer Dean worked with the demon, who was still smirking at him from the doorway, the more he felt like he was making a huge mistake. But what choice did he have? Letting Adam rot was not an option.

“How do I know you aren’t going to take off after this thing by yourself?” he demanded as he made his was back through the various booby traps towards the parking lot.

“You don’t. That’s what makes it fun.”

Crowley had the balls to wink at him before vanishing with a snap. Dean at least had the consolation of the demon not knowing where in Des Moines Tara was or what she looked like. He’d have no choice but to wait for Dean to show up before proceeding. That didn’t mean he wasn’t planning to double cross the omega at the first opportunity, though in all honesty Dean was planning the exact same thing. He spun out of the parking lot at a faster speed than he probably should have, slowing to something more reasonable once he hit the highway. He couldn’t help being anxious, though. The sooner he could track down Tara, the sooner he’d be done with Crowley for good.


	147. I'm Not Really That Old

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam meets his sister. It could probably go better.

Sam was trying his best to convince himself that he was overreacting, that the pit in his stomach after calling home to talk to Dean and having Henry answer, only to tell Sam his mate was “out,” was garden variety alpha chauvinism and nothing more. His inner wolf was just overly sensitive to Dean refusing his advances and the prospect of spending a week in a hotel fucking like bunnies, not because there was actually anything wrong. He’d been rebuffed and was upset about it, and his subconscious was choosing to process that as queasiness and cold, quiet dread. Really, it was nothing more than that.

He couldn’t make his forebrain believe it, though. There had been too many dreams waking him up at night; dreams of Adam with his eyelids cut off and needles sticking out of his pupils, of a landscape filled with bodies suspended from trees by their entrails and flayed skin, like something out of _The Silence of the Lambs_. Dreams of Dean digging in the dark as his hair turned white with snow, of him pinned to a wall by a tall, slender demon with an auburn-brown beard and a half-charred face, of Dean staring the demon down with a sneer and an expression so full of contempt Sam barely recognized him. The only things that had tamped his visions down were Dean's proximity and his daily trip to the demon cell to sit and meditate for an hour or so. He didn’t know how he’d manage for a few days without either of those things, what might happen with the demon blood, and really wasn’t sure he wanted to find out. He was almost halfway to Ohio after picking up Gwen, Dean still hadn’t called him ( _despite Henry’s assurance he’d tell the omega to do so as soon as he saw him_ ), and a very loud voice inside his head was screaming at him to turn around and go home.

It was a lucky thing he’d convinced Gwen to drive with him instead of flying like she wanted or he undoubtedly would have. Damn his debating skills and how easily she’d agreed that yeah, he was right; there was no way they could get all their gear on a plane without getting pegged as domestic terrorists. Dean hadn’t been wrong about her wanting to get back into the hunt, and annoyed as he was that he would need to continue on to Ohio to pick up this girl - who he still had no clue what he was going to do with - it did help to have another set of eyes on the case as he drove. If they could figure out the situation before they got to Milan, they could get whatever it was taken care of and head back for home in hopefully only a few days.

The case files weren’t very helpful, though. It looked like they were probably dealing with a spirit, since each of the recent suicide victims had been having trouble with their landlines and their computers turning on and off at will. What didn’t make sense was the total lack of connection between any of the dead. It wasn’t as if they all lived in the same apartment complex, or even on the same street. They were different ages, races, designations; they worked in different industries, had different hobbies; there was no connecting thread whatsoever besides the electrical problems and the fact that they all resided in Milan.

“Maybe it’s a spirit jumping through the electric lines?” Gwen suggested as they gassed up in Terre Haute, Indiana after stopping to grab some questionable looking pizza and some energy drinks. She’d been driving since they hit the midway point of Illinois, and that was good because being back in Indiana was bringing up some uncomfortable memories for Sam. He had to allow that Dean might have been right to stay home, considering their current route had them going straight through Fort Wayne.

“Maybe,” Sam mused. “Though I’ve never known of a ghost to behave that way before. Haunting electric lines?”

“Yeah,” Gwen said, taking a bite of the pizza and quickly foregoing it in favor of a pack of Twizzlers. “It does sound pretty far fetched. Guess we’ll just have to wait until we talk to some of the family members.” She took a minute after sliding in behind the wheel to pull her hair back into a ponytail, using the time to give her cousin a long, appraising look. “You okay with meeting your sister?”

Sam was trying hard not to think about that if he were going to be honest about it, which he wasn’t under the circumstances. He was too worried about where Dean was to even ponder the situation with this fourteen year old girl, whose name he should probably learn before they got to Ohio, and he definitely didn’t plan on diving deeply into the topic right this second. They’d been on the road over seven hours already, not counting the four he had to drive to get to Kansas City, and while it was true he hadn’t called the bunker until a couple of hours ago, it was well after dark already. Dean should have touched base with him by now. He shrugged instead of letting his mind run wild with thoughts about this half-sister of his on top of his potentially missing omega, popping the top to his Red Bull as he muttered, “The kid’s just lost her mom. I doubt she’s going to be thrilled to meet anyone new, never mind some random brother almost ten years older than her.”

“I don’t know about that,” Gwen mused. “Maybe she’s one of those only children who’s always wanted a brother or sister.”

“Maybe,” Sam allowed. “Let’s go.”

Dean finally called just as they were leaving Terre Haute, spinning some kind of story about being out looking for Halloween costumes for the kids, and how he’d driven over half the state of Kansas and everything was sold out because of course it would be the day before ( _Sam had to admit he’d completely forgotten it was October 30th_ ). While it didn’t seem _plausible_ that Dean hadn’t picked up the phone because he’d been driving to every Walmart within two hundred miles of Lebanon, it was _possible_ , knowing where they lived. Grocery shopping alone frequently took half a day. Dean really could have been gone for hours trying to find something to take their kids around town to con the locals out of candy that the omega would undoubtedly end up eating, which Sam suspected was the point of taking them trick-or-treating to begin with. _If_ he really was taking them trick-or-treating. He may or may not have asked Dean to send pictures of the kids in their costumes just so he could confirm his mate wasn’t trying to put one over on him.

He didn’t even know what it was he suspected Dean of doing. That was the worst part. It wasn’t as if Sam thought Dean was unfaithful, or was planning to snatch the kids and run off while he was in Ohio; that he’d come home to an empty bunker to find out he hadn’t been fooling anyone when it came to the demon blood very definitely _not_ being dormant and Dean had just been waiting for the perfect chance to disappear. And it certainly wasn’t like Dean was off on a case, not when it would mean leaving the kids and he’d been pretty clear Henry wasn’t on his list of approved overnight babysitters anymore. It was really that he just didn’t know _what_ was going on inside Dean’s head these days with how little time he spent in Sam’s company - their activities of the previous day notwithstanding - and that was the most troubling thing of all.

Sam tried to keep his concern from filling the cabin of the Ford, especially once Gwen started casting sidelong glances his way and asking if everything was all right at home, and eventually he’d simply cracked his window to air out his corrupted scent before it caused his cousin to bristle any further. They only made it to Indianapolis before deciding they really shouldn’t try to drive straight through, the gas station pizza completely inadequate as dinner and both of them starting to feel the endless drive sinking into their bones. They managed to book adjoining suites at the Conrad, Gwen making a bee line for her jacuzzi tub to work out some of the kinks in her bad shoulder, while Sam grabbed a menu to see what kind of real food they could get at quarter to ten.

They were up and out of the hotel by seven the next morning, Gwen snagging the keys at the sight of Sam’s red-rimmed eyes and his admission that he hadn’t slept well. She gave him some good natured ribbing about going soft now that he was a family man, hoping to lighten the mood, but instead of getting a smirk she got something mumbled about nightmares before he pulled a pair of sunglasses over his eyes and leaned back against the headrest. One of the many dreams about Adam had plagued him until he finally stopped trying to sleep at all around four in the morning ( _it was hard to sleep when you kept seeing your best friend being forced to eat his own nipples after they were carved from his flesh_ ), and now that the coffee was wearing off he prayed they wouldn’t return while he tried to nap. The last thing he needed was to wake up screaming with his cousin in the truck when he hadn’t even told her Adam died, not wanting to get into how he and Dean were doing on the way to meet a sister he was never supposed to know about.

Krissy Wandell certainly would have preferred to stay unknown, not only to whoever this Sam Campbell guy was that was coming to get her but to Pup and Child Protective Services as well. She knew a couple of kids that went into the system back in Twin Lakes, kids whose families weren’t anywhere near as reclusive and paranoid as hers, and she’d never seen them again once they were packed off to foster homes with everything they could carry shoved in a garbage bag. Getting scooped up by them now and deposited into a group home like a discarded pet sent to an overcrowded shelter didn’t improve her opinion of the organization any. Her mom had been smart enough to start using her unmated name - Chambers - the minute they ran from whatever it was that killed her dad, not wanting either of them to end up on the system’s radar when Steven Wandell was on a couple of watch lists already thanks to how much ammo he ordered through the mail and the fact that they used a P.O. box. The government could get awfully suspicious about those kinds of things, even if they probably knew that the guy ordering the ammo was a freelance hunter who took occasional jobs close to home. If Krissy knew that from the time she was five, then the government _had_ to know, because they knew everything.

She and her mom had managed just fine on their own for a year now; better than she thought they were going to without Dad. Then it all went to shit and Mom swallowed a handful of pills, which Krissy was trying very hard not to think about and failing pretty spectacularly at. The kids at the home had all been through at least as bad as what she was dealing with, if not worse, and most of them didn’t really care if you cried when they took your stuff. In fact, most of them seemed to like it better if you _did_ cry, and even though she was on the older end of the age spectrum at the home the other kids were harder than she was and worked at making her cry like they made money off of every tear that spilled down her cheeks. It had taken less than a day for word to spread that her mom killed herself and kids started saying her mom had been a junkie, for which she didn’t have much of a defense. She didn’t know her mom even had a prescription for sleeping pills, or that her mom was upset enough to kill herself, but those certainly wouldn’t have been the first secrets Mom kept from her - like the fact that she apparently had a much older brother.

They told her at the police station that he was twenty three, so he wasn’t just older, but **_old_** , like a real adult and everything who could legally drive and drink grown up drinks. She knew Dad had been mated before, had heard him and Mom arguing about it once when she was nine, how Mom shouldn’t compare herself to his first mate just because Mom was a beta and that other woman had been an omega. She acted like she was asleep when Mom came up to check on her afterwards. It had been past her bedtime and she didn’t want to get into trouble, plus she really didn’t know what any of it meant and obviously she couldn’t ask Mom after pretending to be asleep. She’d heard of omegas but never met one, so she didn’t know what the big deal was with Dad having been mated to one before, even if she could see the tension between her parents the next day. She made sure to ask her teacher about it, since Mr. Rosenberg had gone to college to be a science teacher and ended up teaching fourth grade only because that’s the job that was open at the time. He described omegas as needier and less intelligent than betas, and generally less able to handle life without an alpha. That made sense, since Dad wasn’t the kind who suffered fools lightly and had been adamant this “Mary” person meant nothing to him, and he’d meant even less to her. Still, it bothered her that Mr. Rosenberg said alphas were always happiest when their mate was an omega.

The Wandells had never argued about it again, so there was no opportunity to ask for clarification and the subject had gone back to being a secret between her parents, except now there was a brother attached to whatever the story was surrounding Dad and his first mate. Krissy sure wasn’t expecting to find out Dad had a _kid_ with whomever the omega was that he had been clear he didn’t love and hadn’t mourned, and now she was feeling pretty damned betrayed. It was one thing to keep Dad’s first mate a secret from her because it was no big deal. It was another entirely not to mention he’d had a _son_ with her, and now her parents were dead and not only was she unable to direct her anger at them, she felt guilty for being angry with them. The whole thing was very confusing and wasn’t likely to get less so when her heretofore unknown brother finally arrived to take her who knows where. Remembering how little Dad thought of his first mate, Krissy really had no idea what to expect when this Sam Campbell guy showed up at the foster home where they’d shoved her for the last week while they tried to track him down.

A quick Internet search on the Campbell family in her allotted computer time at the group home certainly didn’t do much to reassure her that her half brother would be anything other than a complete asshole. The Campbells were filthy stinking rich, rich to levels she really couldn’t imagine. She knew she’d grown up pretty comfortable, that Dad sold very expensive and rare artifacts and it bought them a really nice house and a lot of land, but the Campbells were rich enough to have their net worth actually listed on the Internet because random people were curious as to just how wealthy the family was. Sam apparently had inherited all of it when his grandfather died. Anyone raised with the kind of money and privilege he’d grown up around was bound to be a jerk. The more she read the less she wanted to get to know him, because that meant she might find out something else that should have stayed a secret.

Contrarily, there was very little to dig up on Mary Campbell beyond a date of her death and the fact that she’d died in a fire, which made the teen shiver despite herself. The details of the fire sounded a lot like what happened to her house. Sam had only been six months old at the time so he obviously wouldn’t have known her, but from what Krissy remembered of the argument, Sam’s mom hadn’t sounded like the inherently mothering type anyway. That was weird, since as Krissy grew older she learned that bearing children was the one thing everyone agreed omegas were good for, except Sam’s mom had been some kind of self-absorbed anomaly. Whoever Mary Campbell was, from her dad’s perspective she’d been incapable of caring about anyone but herself, and that made Krissy wonder why her dad had mated the woman in the first place. It just didn’t seem like him to enter into that kind of permanent relationship with a person he didn’t even seem to _like_ , and she hoped Sam didn’t take after his mother’s personality.

She’d worked herself into quite the tizzy by the time the _very_ tall young man with shaggy dark hair curling around his ears was brought into the lunch room by Mrs. Wallingford while Krissy was in the middle of eating her PB &J. Mrs. W. was dressed today as Glinda, the Good Witch of the North, but the young man looked much more casual in a pair of jeans, blue vee-neck sweater, and black wool peacoat. There was a woman with him, also in jeans and a sweater under a fitted black bomber jacket, following Mrs. Wallingford as her considerable frame swayed across the room, a soft smile directed at the girl. At first she thought maybe her brother was mated but no, they both smelled of sage and alphas didn’t mate each other. For as casual as their clothing was, it looked very expensive, and didn’t do much toward giving Krissy a sense that she and Sam were going to have anything remotely in common.

Mrs. Wallingford was nice enough, her white hair always in kind of a loose, frizzy bun, her brown eyes always sparkling, and she genuinely seemed to care about what happened to the kids at the home, except she was only on the day shift so she didn’t _really_ know what it was like. She’d been trying awfully hard to get Krissy to open up in the seven days she’d been there, at least to talk to the counselor they had on staff about her mom. There was something like a wistful regret in her expression as she stopped in front of the table while the teen turned to concentrate on her apple slices.

“Krissy, your brother’s here,” Mrs. Wallingford said quietly, like it was some kind of secret she didn’t want the other kids to overhear. That might have been true; a lot of the kids had no one coming for them, ever, and had been in the system since before they could walk. They’d resent the new kid getting out after only a week.

Krissy sucked her milk loudly through her straw as she pointedly ignored Mrs. Wallingford easily referring to this stranger as her brother. She cast a glance up - way, _way_ up - at the man’s face, and felt her cheeks heating up as she noticed how much he actually looked like her dad. Kind of like her, too. They had the same skin, there were a couple of moles on his face like the one tucked under her lashes on the left side of her face, and he had the same “fox eyes” her mom used to tell her would drive all the boys crazy one day. He was studying the room the way her father used to look out across the forest when he thought he heard something they should be on guard for, and she was pretty sure he hadn’t even looked at her yet. That suspicion was confirmed when the woman with him gave him a solid elbow to the ribs to get his attention.

“What?” he sputtered, and the woman cocked her head in Krissy’s direction, snarling through gritted teeth, “Kid sister, remember?”

“I have a name,” Krissy mumbled, slurping her milk again to keep the dark haired woman from asking what it was, then shoved half of the rest of her sandwich in her mouth. Well, at least she had somewhere she could channel her anger now.

“Yeah,” Sam said, looking distracted even as he finally turned his attention to her. “Yeah, it was in the file. Krissy, right? I’m Sam.”

He was smart enough not to try to shake her hand or hug her or anything, and after a minute she shrugged one shoulder and pushed her chair back to stand.

“Good for you,” she snarked. “Are we getting out of here or what?”

“Sam still has some paperwork to fill out to take custody of you,” Mrs. Wallingford informed her, smoothing the curls in her long brown ponytail. “This is his cousin...I’m sorry, what was your name again?”

“Gwen,” Gwen supplied easily before her eyes landed on Krissy. “I’m on packing duty with you.”

“Don’t have much to pack,” Krissy said with another shrug. “They wouldn’t let me bring a lot of stuff from the house.”

“We can take you back there,” Sam said. “Get you some of your clothes and other things, if you want.”

“Whatever,” Krissy muttered. “Room’s this way.”

Gwen shot Sam an openly questioning look, not quite sure what she was supposed to do with a surly fourteen year old, and then hurried off after her while Mrs. Wallingford was leading him back through the lunch room towards the office. He was still somewhat horrified by how many kids were in the group home and how widely the ages varied. He knew this was for the pre-teens up through the kids who’d presented, when they aged out of the system ( _Mrs. Wallingford had already explained briefly how the system worked_ ), but he’d clearly forgotten how much larger fifteen year olds tended to be than kids who were eleven and twelve. The older kids looked positively menacing, hanging out in mini gangs in various rooms while the smaller kids sat huddled together, keeping watch over their shoulders to see where the older kids were. The random bats, cobwebs, pumpkins, and skeletons scattered about in honor of Halloween did nothing to help the sad beige walls, worn carpeting, and industrial furniture look warm or inviting. He’d been held transfixed by the gloominess of it all since he and Gwen arrived, his stomach queasy with the knowledge that when he’d been fully in the demon blood’s grip he’d have calmly dropped Emma off at one of these agencies and never bothered to look back. The shame of it made him want to drive straight to Sioux Falls and grab her to take back to Dean, whether she was settled or not, and even if he wasn’t fully on board with the idea of having a fourteen year old sister kicking around there was no way he was leaving Krissy in such a depressing place.

Gwen and Krissy were back long before he’d finished filling out all the forms he needed to prove he was who he said he was and take formal custody of her, which left them sitting with him inside Mrs. Wallingford’s office in awkward silence, Krissy clutching her black garbage bag between her knees while a ghost attached to the ceiling fan circled above them. Gwen was clearly out of her depth with the kid, and Sam doubted he’d be much better once they got her out of there, deciding he should do what Dean suggested and focus on the fact that she was part of a case. He knew how to treat someone who’d lost a family member when it came with a potential monster attached, and it was a whole lot easier for him to think of her as a witness than it was for him to think of her as a sister, even when he was signing the last form in triplicate that would make him her legal guardian.

The idea of looking at her as just a witness went out the window when they pulled up to her house to get her some more of her things and she broke down in tears. After several minutes of Sam and Gwen trying to figure out how to calm her down they stepped outside and flipped a coin to see who would go into the house to grab as much as they could from her room and who would stay with her in the truck. Sam lost the toss, sliding back in behind the wheel as Gwen headed inside, planning to take a look around while she was in there to see if there were any clues to whether Krissy’s mom had really been a suicide or not.

Krissy was still crying pretty inconsolably, Sam huddled miserably in the front seat when Gwen returned quite some time later with several pieces of luggage and a look on her face that clearly indicated she had a lead. Sam muttered something about getting Krissy’s things in the back before climbing out to grab a couple of bags, hurrying around behind the truck with his cousin and hauling down the tailgate. He specifically did not think about the fact that Adam had been in the bed with a bunch of coolers a few weeks ago.

“Did you get anything out of her?” Gwen asked, slightly breathless from getting half a dozen bags packed and out of the house on her own.

“It’s all I’ve been able to do to keep her from hyperventilating,” Sam replied quietly. “Forget about asking her any questions.”

“Well, we need to buy her some ice cream or a puppy or something,” Gwen said. “I took a look at the caller I.D. on the phone and there’s a really weird number that showed up right before her mom decided to pull a Marilyn Monroe.”

“Marilyn Monroe was murdered, Gwen.”

“Exactly my point. This number was all over the call history back to the first suicide on the list. We need to know if Krissy has any idea who was on the other end of the call, and we need to need to do a reverse look-up on SHA-3359.”

“I have no idea how to even start that conversation with her.”

Sam sighed heavily, running a hand through his hair, and glanced towards the girl in the back seat, who was watching them through the rear windshield as she wiped at her cheeks with her sleeve. An unpleasant aroma that was a combination of uncertainty and irritation was rising off of him like he’d spent three days at the gym without showering, and Gwen was glad Krissy hadn’t presented yet so she wouldn’t smell it on him when they got back into the truck. She and Sam may not have been that close growing up, but it certainly seemed like a good time to change that as she squeezed her cousin’s arm and fixed her best soft-yet-firm expression on him.

“Look,” she started quietly, “I get that this is really messed up for you. Dean gave me the Cliffs Notes version of what happened with your dad, and that…what Uncle Samuel did, paying him off, it wasn’t right. And it wasn’t right for him to take the money either and just disappear. But this kid, she’s alone and she’s sad and she’s scared, and I’m no good with _any_ of that. If we’re going to figure this thing out you have got to get her to calm down and talk to us.”

“How?” Sam demanded, feeling the dark bubbling up in him as his frustration mounted. He took a second to breathe and push it back, wishing Dean were with him or had at least called to say good morning. When he was a little more in control he said, “I don’t know where to begin with a sister I was very clearly told was never going to be in my life.”

“That’s the problem,” Gwen replied calmly. “You’re trying to think of how to talk to her like a brother, and you’re not that yet - not in her mind, and not in yours - when you _should_ be thinking of how to talk to her like a dad.”

“I not going to act like her dad!” Sam objected, appalled.

“Not _her_ dad. _A_ dad. You are one, after all. Unless you gave away those two kids of yours.”

“My kids aren’t even talking yet.”

“Doesn’t matter. You know how to soothe your daughter, right?”

“Yes, but Krissy’s fourteen _years_ old, not thirteen _months_ old.”

“Like I said - doesn’t matter. You know the drill on a hunt. Use all your skills. So, get in there and rub her back or something. She doesn’t need a big brother specifically, she just needs someone who cares, and you’re better at that than I am.”

Sam wanted to protest that he wasn’t better at this than she was, and she’d been fourteen a hell of a lot more recently than he had, but it would only have been half true. Sam knew he was very good with witnesses, especially when they were upset, but he normally dealt with adults. Children had always made him slightly uncomfortable, even after he had his own. He _liked_ kids well enough, he just didn’t connect with them particularly well, though he didn’t know how to explain that to Gwen or if he should even try. Lizzie and Elliott were easy, different, because they were _his_ so of course he understood them; he’d had time to get to know them as little tiny people. Other people’s kids were just that - _other_ people’s kids. Still, he couldn’t deny he had more experience than Gwen did, and climbed into the back of the truck while Gwen continued loading up the bed.

“Hey,” he said when Krissy just sat across from him sniffling, scrubbing at her face, and letting out the occasional sob as she stared at the floor. “So, this is a pretty crappy way to spend Halloween, huh?”

“Yeah,” she squeaked, twisting the hem of her coat as she sputtered and tried to get herself under control. “This sucks.”

“Do you even like Halloween still? You’re kind of old for trick or treating.”

“It’s okay, I guess. I’m old enough to go to parties by myself now.”

“I was never a big fan of Halloween myself,” he confessed as he watched Gwen head back into the house. “My mom died when I was a baby, and uh…my grandfather sent me off to live at this school as soon as I was old enough where they teach kids how to be hunters, so the whole idea of dressing up like a werewolf kinda lost its appeal early on.”

He hadn’t missed the way Krissy stiffened at the mention of his mom, but she’d relaxed by the time he was done speaking, and after a moment she asked quietly, “How old were you? When you went to that school?”

“Four.” He tried not to sound bitter, clearing his throat to get the distaste of discussing his life under Samuel’s thumb out of his mouth. “I’d just turned four the spring before school started. Anyway, I’m hoping to get into the spirit of things so my kids can enjoy it when they get a little older. Maybe I can take them trick or treating without needing to pack a weapon.”

“You have kids?”

He couldn’t tell if she was surprised or wary, almost as if she sensed he was trying to connect with her and wasn’t on board with that idea just yet. He decided to act like he hadn’t caught the modulation in her tone and pulled out his phone to scroll through for some pictures he’d taken from their trip to St. Louis.

“That’s me and my daughter, Lizzie.” He was pretty sure he saw the corner of her mouth turn up a little bit as she looked at Sam with a squalling little girl strapped to his chest at the baseball game, doing his best imitation of her bright red, scrunched up face. “She really needed a diaper change there. I was lucky she didn’t soak all the way through and wreck my shirt. And then this is my son, Elliott, and my mate, Dean.”

Dean didn’t even seem aware Sam was taking the photo, deep in the middle of feeding Elliott a bottle on Sam’s very unattractive and not terribly comfortable couch in his apartment, and it really got Krissy’s attention to break her out of her crying jag. After a second of her staring, he handed her the phone so she could try to work out whatever it was running through her mind. She flipped back and forth a while, then said, “She doesn’t look like either of you,” before turning the phone back to show him the picture of the two of them at the baseball game.

“Yeah…” he replied carefully. “She’s not ours. I mean, she _is_ , but…her family...they were Dean’s family. Not by blood, but still. And when they died, they wanted him to take care of her.”

“How’d they die? Was it like a car accident or…”

“Vampires. Got them on the side of the road on the way home from a movie. We’d just seen them the day before.” It was obviously not the answer she was expecting based on the way she stared at him with huge, round eyes. He stared back at her like he trusted her to understand the point of the story without further elaboration, saying, “It made Dean very sad for a long time. He still gets sad sometimes.”

“What happened to the vampires?”

“I killed them.” The dark thing tried to swirl up again, to remind him the two people who’d helped on the hunt were dead now and how unfair that seemed, and how furious he should be about his children losing their grandfather and uncle before they’d even have a chance to know either man. He pushed it away - it went easier than it had a few minutes before, like he was really getting control of it - and told her frankly, “If something like that hurt your mom, I’ll kill it, too. I promise. That’s my job.”

He could tell she was seriously considering whether or not she should believe him, but at least he’d gotten her to stop crying. Gwen was on her way back out to the car with another couple of bags, checking the door after her to make sure it was securely locked before zipping her coat all the way up and shivering as Krissy watched the wind whipping her long black hair across her face. She didn’t know what to make of either of them, wasn’t sure she could trust that Sam cared as much as he seemed to. She still didn’t really want either of them around, because they were strangers, and given how much older than her he was he could have come looking for her before her parents died if he _really_ cared. Sam almost sensed the moment she made up her mind about him as they listened to the bags getting thrown in the back and the gate of the bed slamming shut before Gwen was climbing into the driver’s seat to get them moving.

“So what are we doing first?” the alpha asked, eyeing them through the rearview mirror. “Lunch or finding a hotel?”

“She was talking to my dad,” Krissy told Sam quietly, picking at the hem of her coat again and sniffing.

“Your dad?” Gwen echoed gently as Sam focused on running a hand slowly up and down Krissy's back to keep her from falling back into unintelligible tears.

“I heard her, telling him to stop calling,” Krissy blubbered. “She said his name, so I knew it was him. ‘Steven, you have to stop calling.’ I picked up the upstairs phone a couple of times, but there wasn’t anyone there, just a bunch of static. I just…you know, it scared me. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t think she was gonna do that.”

She was in tears again, which was all right, since she’d slid a little closer to Sam and he could get them both buckled in the back pretty easily. He mouthed the word “hotel” to his cousin, who nodded in agreement before getting them on the road and headed north, towards Sandusky, where most of the local accommodations were. Neither of them were quite sure how they were going to handle a hunt with a pretty traumatized fourteen year old to take care of, but so far she’d given them exactly what they needed to start.


End file.
